Free Bethany Caleb by Kate Spofford

something.
    And now there was no one.
    Bethany wished Jana hadn’t moved away. Jana had always known what she was feeling. Sometimes they didn’t even have to talk to know, but of course they always talked nonstop. They never got bored of each other. Every weekend they went over each other’s houses, went shopping or to the movies, had sleepovers. No one interfered with their plans. Jana never cancelled to do something with someone else, nor did Bethany. They didn’t need anyone else.
    So many things wouldn’t have changed had Jana stayed. Bethany might not have even become depressed, or started wearing black, or focused all of her attention on painting. She would be one of those geeky girls in her art class. She would be in the honors-level classes. But she would probably be happy.
    The summer after Jana moved was the loneliest summer. Bethany remembered hours spent lying on her bed crying after her parents went out for the evening and Darlene took off to the mall in her new car with a bunch of her friends. A few times Darlene had asked Bethany to go to the mall with her, when none of Darlene’s friends were around. But that wasn’t often, and after Bethany began wearing all black, it never happened again. “Look, my sister’s a little Goth girl now,” Darlene said once as she was leaving the house with her boyfriend Matt. Darlene pretended like it was cool, but Bethany knew her sister didn’t want to be seen hanging around with a freak.
    It was only when Bethany became friends with Genn in the fall that she started to feel connected again. Finally she had someone to do things with. Of course, she had to share Genn with Emily and Mara and Chester, but at least she wasn’t sitting at home alone. Then when she and James started going out, it was like having a best friend like Jana again. They shared everything.
    Freshman year passed in a blur of activity. They went to amusement parks and concerts and the drive-in and the beach, they went bowling and rock climbing and skiing. There was never a shortage of things to do. Even on week nights they would always do something, even if it was just going to McDonald’s or the skate park or smoking pot at somebody’s house. All of freshman year was like that. Even after Bethany started dating James, they still did stuff with the group. It wasn’t like James and Genn were now, isolating themselves from everyone. Everyone got along.
    It all ended over a bracelet.
    The year Bethany and Jana were in sixth grade, they had made each other friendship bracelets as birthday presents. They had celebrated their birthdays on the same day that year, since they were born only two weeks apart. They thought they would be friends forever.
    Genn was wearing the bracelet one day when they walked downtown to get ice cream. Maybe Bethany only noticed the bracelet because she and Jana used to walk downtown to the ice cream place all the time, and this was the first time she’d gone since Jana moved. She didn’t even know why she was looking at Genn’s wrist. But there it was, the bright woven stripes Bethany had memorized from two years of wear.
    At first Bethany tried to ignore it, shrug it off as paranoia. She stole glances at it, and became increasingly convinced that it was the same one. The last time she had seen it was in her jewelry box in her room, where she had put it after Jana moved. Genn had gone through her jewelry box a few times.
    “Where did you get that?” Bethany had asked as casually as she could.
    “What?”
    “That bracelet.”
    “Oh, this? I got it at the mall last week,” Genn had replied, avoiding Bethany’s eyes.
    Bethany knew it was a lie. Genn hated the mall. “A breeding ground for materialism,” she called it. Not to mention that Genn never bought jewelry–it was the easiest thing to steal. Actually, Bethany and Genn had gone on several shoplifting excursions together, but Bethany never imagined that Genn would steal from someone she knew.
    For once