Chapter 5 #2
Abby Wheeler is my ‘everything’ friend–first, oldest, best, you name it.
We attached ourselves at the hip in the two-year-old class at The Learning Tree, and shortly after that our dads followed suit.
Abby’s mom left before she reached her first birthday, so it’s been just her and her dad most of her life.
There was a brief moment in time where there was an Evil Stepmother involved, but in an ironic (and cruel) twist of fate, wife number two also bailed shortly after giving birth to Abby’s brother two years ago.
Abby was ready to violate the Geneva conventions to exact her revenge, but Mr. Wheeler insisted that she’s the only girl he could ever need, and that he should never have tried to add another one in the first place.
The rest was history. More often than not, my childhood pictures include a redheaded angel smiling demurely at the camera, offsetting the whirlwind of blonde always too busy to stop for something as silly as a photo.
Swallowing the too-large sip of milkshake I just took, a brain freeze takes over my mental capacity and it takes a huge effort to choke out, “What are you talking about? We’ve had dinner on Fridays and sleepovers on Saturdays since we were three, you see me all the time.”
It’s the Friday evening of spring break, and this one is no different than all the Friday evenings we’ve had for as long as I can remember.
In a red booth in the back corner of the vintage diner, Abby sits with her usual order–a Diet Coke and an order of fried pickles. Her auburn curls are pulled up into a ponytail, giving her forest green eyes a clear field of vision as she pins me with a look that pierces through my bullshit.
I’m across from her, nursing a vanilla milkshake with much more restraint than I showed the basket of fries that already sits empty at the edge of the table.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Ellie, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” she shoots back with a stern glare. “When was the last time you waited for me after lunch to walk to biology?”
I try to interrupt to remind her that she switched biology periods so we aren’t in the same class anymore, but she’s hit her stride and there’s no stopping her now.
“Or the last time you called me, well after my bedtime, mind you, to lament about your so-called boredom with this town before admitting that you actually called me to help you pick what to wear the next day?”
Once again, I open my mouth to interrupt, but she powers through my protests.
“I know what you’re going to say, and don’t even try it, Eleanor Turner. Sleepovers are inevitable so they don’t count. My point stands that I feel like I never see you anymore.”
Hearing my full government name coming out of her mouth is weird.
It doesn’t sound right when it’s not in a deep Southern drawl.
But she’s on to something. When the school year first started, Abby and I had a built-in safety blanket in each other.
We made sure we walked to class together, never ate lunch by ourselves, and made contact in the halls as often as we could.
That’s changed since I became part of “Ellie )
David: And that she looked ravishing in the pick up line today
Ellie: Gross, David. See y’all soon.
On the drive over, I purposefully choose not to think about why I responded to the group chat, but left Griffin’s texts unanswered. I guess that’s an answer on its own.