“Hi!” Emily unintentionally backed away just as Courtney came in for a hug. Then Emily stepped forward to hug, too, just when Courtney was self-consciously stepping aside.
Emily giggled. “Come in,” she said. Courtney shuffled into the foyer and looked around, taking in the hutch of Hummel figurines in the hall, the dusty, upright piano in the living room, and the cluster of hanging plants that Mrs. Fields had brought indoors for the winter.
“Should we go to your room?”
“Sure.”
Courtney bounded up the stairs, turned right at the landing, and stopped at the door to the bedroom that Emily and Carolyn shared. Emily gawked. “H-how did you know where my room was?”
Courtney gave her a crazy look. “Because it says so on your door.” She pointed at the wooden sign that said EMILY AND CAROLYN in cartoonish letters. Emily let out a breath. Duh. It had been there since she was six.
Emily moved some stuffed animals off her twin bed so they could both fit. “Wow,” Courtney breathed, gesturing at the Ali collage over the bureau. It was a series of photographs of Emily and Ali together from sixth and seventh grade. In one corner was a shot of the five of them in the living room of Ali’s Poconos house, doing each other’s hair. In another corner was a photo of Emily and Ali in matching striped bikinis on Spencer’s pool deck, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. There were plenty of pictures of Ali alone, many of which Emily had snapped without Ali knowing—of Ali sleeping on Aria’s rollaway cot, her face relaxed and beautiful. Another of Ali sprinting up the hockey field in her Rosewood Day JV uniform, her stick raised high in the air. Propped up next to the collage was the patent leather change purse Maya had returned to her at the press conference. Emily had scoured all the dirt and grime off it as soon as she’d gotten home that afternoon.
Emily blushed, wondering if the shrine was weird. “That stuff is so old. I haven’t gone through it in a long time.” It’s not like I’m obsessed or anything, she wanted to add.
“No, I like it,” Courtney insisted. She bounced on the bed. “It looks like you guys had a lot of fun.”
“Yeah,” Emily said.
Courtney flung off her Frye boots. “What’s that?” She pointed at a jar on Emily’s nightstand.
Emily cradled the jar between her palms. The contents rattled. “Dandelion seeds.”
“What for?”
Color rushed to Emily’s cheeks. “We all tried to smoke them once, to see if we’d hallucinate. It’s stupid.”
Courtney crossed her arms over her chest, looking intrigued. “Did it work?”
“No, but we wanted it to work. So we put on music and started to dance. Aria made these squiggly motions in front of her face, like she was seeing shapes. Hanna stared at her fingerprints, like they were really fascinating. I giggled at everything. Spencer was the only one who didn’t play along. She kept saying, ‘I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything.’”
Courtney leaned forward. “What did Ali do?”
Emily jiggled her knees, suddenly shy. “Ali…well, Ali made up this dance.”
“Do you remember it?”
“It was a long time ago.”
Courtney poked Emily’s leg. “You do remember it, don’t you?”
Of course she did. Emily remembered pretty much everything Ali did.
Wriggling with glee, Courtney clasped Emily’s hands. “Show it to me!”
“No!”
“Please?” Courtney begged. She was still holding Emily’s hands, which made Emily’s heart beat faster and faster. “I’m dying to know what Ali was really like. I hardly saw her. And now that she’s gone…” She broke her gaze, staring absently at the poster of Dara Torres that hung over Carolyn’s bed. “I wish I’d known her for real.”
Courtney looked at Emily with clear blue eyes so much like Ali’s that the back of Emily’s throat burned. Emily pressed her hands to her knees and stood. She shifted from left to right, then shimmied her shoulders up and down. After about three seconds of dancing, she blurted out, “That’s all I can remember,” and went to sit down fast. But her left foot stumbled over her fish-shaped slippers next to the bed. As she groped for balance, her hip rammed into the bed frame. “Oof,” she said, hurtling face-first toward Courtney’s lap.
Courtney grabbed Emily’s waist. “Whoa,” she giggled. She didn’t let go right away. Pulsing heat sizzled through Emily’s veins.
“Sorry,” Emily mumbled, shooting up to stand.
“No worries,” Courtney said quickly, straightening her plaid shirt.
Emily sat back down on the bed and looked anywhere else in the room besides Courtney’s face. “Oh! It’s four fifty-six,” she blurted stupidly, pointing to the digital clock by the bed. “Four-five-six. Make a wish.”
“I thought that was only for eleven eleven,” Courtney teased.
“I make up my own rules.”
“It seems that way.” Courtney’s eyes gleamed.
Emily felt suddenly breathless.
“Tell you what,” Courtney chuckled. “I’ll make a wish if you do.”
Emily shut her eyes and lay back on the bed, her body throbbing from the fall and her head reeling from the smell of Courtney’s skin. There was something she really wanted to wish for, but she knew it was impossible. She tried to think of random wishes instead. For her mom to finally let her paint her side of the bedroom a color other than pink. For her English teacher to give her a good grade on the F. Scott Fitzgerald paper she’d handed in that morning. For spring to come unnaturally early that year.