Chapter 83
The invite to Frannie’s going-away party came last night, like it’d been an afterthought, or a last-minute maneuver to hedge against possible low attendance, and the throwaway nature of it made me want to see her.
One of life’s cruel jokes. The less someone needs you to show up for them, the more you want to.
People are heading out by the time I arrive around nine. I help myself to some Mormon punch—Sprite mixed with rainbow sherbet and a splash of pineapple juice—when Frannie sees me and comes over.
“Sorry the cake’s already gone,” she says. “It went quick.”
She looks down at her cup and runs her finger along the rim of it.
She’s doing something different with her makeup.
A thin smudge of brown eyeliner just over her lash line.
It’s such a small change, but it’s jarring.
A reminder that we’ve grown apart. The Frannie I knew would’ve never worn eyeliner.
“It’s been so weird,” she says. “Not see-een each other. For the whole summer really…”
She bites her lip, hesitating, buying time to decide if she really wants to commit to whatever she’s about to say. And then she says it.
“I’ve missed you.”
No “best friend.” No secret reassurance-seeking. No hidden question underneath asking, Have you missed me? Just a statement. Plain and vulnerable.
“I’ve missed you too.”
And we both mean it the same way. Neither saying it in an attempt to reignite the friendship, get it back to what it used to be.
Instead saying it in acceptance that we can’t.
That we’ve outgrown it. Both of us have.
The statement isn’t a plea for reignition.
It stands alone, in and of itself, the beginning and the end, nothing to do about it.
“I saw your post about BYU,” I say. “The campus looks really pretty…”
“Yeah, it’ll be hard to be away from Tristan for so long though…”
“Oh, right. His, um, thing—”
“His mission, yeah.”
“Mission. Right. Where’s he going?”
“Romania.”
“Far.”
“Yeah…”
She spots Tristan across the room and waves, and her eyes light up when he waves back. She leans forward and grabs my arm.
“So we haven’t told anyone besides family, but I want to tell you,” she says, hushed and giddy. “We’re gonna get engaged before he goes away. Might even get married if we can pull a reception together. But either way, we’re get-een engaged, just so that the commitment is in place.”
“Wow…”
“Yeah. We’re pretty excited. We just wanna jump right in so we can start have-een kids when he gets back.”
She goes on to tell me they’re thinking three kids, maybe four, and that they already have a shortlist of names picked out. Four girl names and four boy names, and then they’ll use the extra names as middle names. All her kids’ names picked out and I can hardly pick out an outfit.
“Does it scare you at all?” I ask. “Already knowing how your life is gonna go?”
“No way,” Frannie says. “Not know-een is what freaks me out. Reminds me of this quote I saw on a page in my planner: ‘If you don’t know where you’re go-een, you’ll end up somewhere else.’ ”
“What if ‘somewhere else’ is better than where you were going?” I ask.
“Huh,” Frannie says, looking off, really considering it. “I can’t imagine that, given that I’ve put so much thought into know-een exactly where I want to go.”
She sips the last of her drink and sets it down on the table. “So what about you? Now that high school’s over, what’re you think-een?”
“I dunno really, if I’m being honest. Taking it one day at a time, I guess.”
I try to read her face, to see if this lackadaisical admission will break her, but she just smiles.
“That can be good, too,” she says. “Figure-een it out as you go, not think-een about the future all the time. Just live-een in the present. ‘Wherever you are, be there totally.’ That’s another quote from my planner. Which, come to think of it, is kind of an ironic quote to put in a planner.”