*
“That thing is like an extension of you.”
“I like to think of it as an extra limb,” I say, petting Joe appreciatively.
“Yeah, what would Freud say?” Amanda teases, as I wheel my silver bike beside her as we walk up Fifth Avenue, Central Park on one side of us.
“I don’t know. What would Freud say?”
“Heck if I know. I don’t put much stock in him. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know.” She waggles an imaginary stogie.
“Speaking of,” I start, sensing an entrée, a way to slide into the most awkward of all possible conversations I could be having on a Saturday afternoon, one day after a massive lacrosse victory, “I see one. A shrink, that is.”
“Oh, cool,” Amanda says, unperturbed. “That’s so Upper East Side of you.”
I laugh. “She almost asked me if I lived off Fifth Avenue when I started seeing her. Imagine her shock when she found out I’m a West Side gal.”
“And she still admitted you into her practice?”
“I’m a pity case,” I say, but I know we need to move past the jokes and the banter. I can feel my heart beating faster, my nerves skating back and forth under the surface of my skin. This must be what it feels like to open yourself up, to let someone see who you really are. “So, Amanda, that’s where I go on Mondays. When I just take off after school and don’t say a thing,” I admit.
She stops walking and tilts her head to the side. “That’s okay. I get that you weren’t ready to tell me. That it was personal.”
“You do?”
“Of course,” she says, all nonchalant. Then she plasters on an overeager face and pretends to beg. “But now I get to be super nosy and ask you why you go. Tell me everything. Everything.”
I gesture to a bench.
“Uh-oh. This is serious. You’re making me sit down.”
We sit and I tell her everything about my mother, and my father, about how I grew up, the role I played. It’s like stripping bare. I feel naked and exposed, but even so I start at the beginning and I finish with her dad, who’s at my house right now.
Correction. My mom’s house. I don’t live there anymore.
Amanda stares at me, mouth agape. “Son of a bitch.”
She doesn’t stand up or run away or leave. Not yet. There’s time for that.
She leans her head back and pulls her loose hair into a ponytail with her hands. She shakes her head. “He is such a bastard.” She sits up straight, lets her hair go. “Shoot, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean he’s a bastard for being with your mom. I mean, he’s a bastard for cheating on my mom.”
“It’s okay, Amanda. We don’t have to defend my mom here.”
She breathes out hard. “Good. Because she’s a bitch too,” she says, but I can tell she’s not mad at me; she’s mad at my mom, but mostly at her dad. “Parents are so awful. They don’t get it, do they? They just don’t get it.”
I shake my head. “Nope. They do not. They do not at all.”
Then she snorts, this time combining it with a huff. “Hey! I invented another one! It’s the can-you-believe-our-lame-ass-parents-are-diddling-each-other snort!”
I laugh and snort too. “Who would ever have thought we’d need that one?”
We laugh more, and we snort more, and then her arms are around me, and mine are around her, and we’re laughing so hard we can’t breathe. The situation isn’t truly funny, but the laughter is necessary. It is the only way through the absurdity. When we both finally calm down, Amanda holds a finger in the air. “Let the record reflect that my reportorial skills are officially awesome. Did I or did I not predict he was having an affair?”
“You have a nose for news.” Then I turn serious. “Are you going to tell your mom?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe I need to see a shrink too to figure that out.” We sit in silence for a minute, and in the quiet my brain goes haywire and I picture that this is the last time we’ll hang out, that this is not just the beginning of the end, but that it is the end.
“Are we still friends?” I ask nervously.
“Of course.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Me too. I’m glad too. Hey, do you want to go get gelato and celebrate our championship or what?”
“Absolutely,” I say, and as we walk to the nearest shop, I tell her about Noah, and her jaw drops. Then I tell her an idea I have for prom and her mouth forms the biggest grin I’ve ever seen, and finally I tell her about the letter I found on my porch and she agrees that it has to be from Catey.
“I’ll go with you to the Met tomorrow and wait outside while you meet her,” Amanda says.
“That would be awesome.”
I buy gelato. It tastes great. So do the amends. The real amends.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kennedy
The first thing I notice is the ponytail. High on her head and white-blond. Her back is to me, her arms are crossed and she’s staring at a Rembrandt. As the sound of my shoes echoes across the museum floor, the girl turns around and shoots me a smile. In some ways, she looks the same, and in other ways she’s totally different. I am nervous because I have no clue what to expect, but even so there’s a warmth inside of me too that comes only from friendship; I am happy to see her.
“Hey,” Catey says, and walks over to me.