As Rosie jumped around on me, shouting repeated questions like “What just happened?” and “Did they score?” over and over again, I made eye contact with Mom. She had been talking to the girl who was conducting the band from the tall metal death trap, but when she saw me, she came over.

“Hey, Rosie,” she said, slipping her hands under Rosie’s arms to pick her up off of me. 

“Mom, Mom, Mom!” Rosie screamed, scrambling to cling onto our mom.

“Do you wanna meet the band?” she asked my crazily energetic younger sister.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Rosie shouted, throwing her hands up and relying completely on Mom to hold her up.

I picked up Ben, who was still quietly reading, and followed after them, our mama following behind. I had already met the band, but whatever.

As we sidled up beside Mom, she shouted, “Hey, band! These are my kids.”

The crowd of band students quieted and turned to us in a single movement that really portrayed how synchronized they all were, with or without their music.

“Nice to meet you!” Rosie shouted from Mom’s arms, waving enthusiastically with her entire right arm. “I’m Rosie!”

The front two rows were suddenly gushing over my tiny, bright, loveable little sister. Mama went over to Mom and went up on her toes to whisper something into her ear. I turned my focus onto the band, some of which were climbing down from the higher seats to have a closer look at us.

One of which, sitting in the fifth to highest row, was a blonde girl who was even shorter than my mama. I admired her graceful steps and jumps as she wove her way around people, hats, and instruments, a drumstick in either hand as she swung her arms to help her balance.

That was when I realized she was heading for me.

“Hi!” she—this brave blonde girl—shouted when she was two rows up and three people over from the walkway in front of all the seats.

She sidled her way around the three people before bending her knees and jumping over the two rows.

My jaw dropped as she flew through the sky, her loose bun coming undone and letting her hair fly out in a long ponytail.

She landed in front of me like nothing happened. Like she had just walked up at a completely normal pace, no parkour involved.

“Hi?” I said, startled.

“You’re Lissie, right?” she asked, cocking her head to the side as she appraised me. “I’ve seen you at practice. Ever thought about joining? I mean, your mom is in charge of the band.”

“Which is exactly why I’m not in band,” I replied, my gaze going frosty as I hiked Ben farther up my arms from where he’d been slipping.

But she didn’t seem to notice my cold expression. That, or she didn’t care.

“Why?”

“Because once I join, my whole life will become band,” I told her. “And my name’s not Lissie. It’s Amaryllis.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said, completely unapologetically. “I just heard Mrs Paek call you that earlier. I’m Kamilla, by the way.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod.

It was silent between us for a moment. That was when Ben reached up to whisper in my ear.

“I think she wants to be your friend,” he told me.

I turned to whisper back, “I kinda noticed.”

He paused, eyeing Kamilla, who’s attention had been snagged by one of the girls in the front row holding a flute in one hand and a clarinet in the other.

“I like her,” he whispered, surprising me. “She’s a good person.”

I could almost hear his unspoken words: she’s a good person for you.

“Noted,” I told him.

He gestured for me to hand him off to Mom, which I quickly did. It was quite lucky I did because Kamilla grabbed me as soon as he was out of my arms and began to drag me up the stadium seats. Not up the stairs like a normal person. Up the seats just like she had come down. And the whole while, she was talking.

“I mean, I guess I can see why you don’t really wanna join the band—even though we’re amazing—because it can be a bit much,” she said enthusiastically.

She kept talking, but it was hard to pay attention to what she was saying while also leaping up the seats and avoiding stepping on any instruments. But eventually, she stopped in a row that was set up with five bass drums of various sizes, two quad drums, and three snares. She plopped down behind one of the quads, dragging me down beside her.

I couldn’t help but think of my sister as I sat with Kamilla. I think that’s why I accidentally gave her the impression that I didn’t mind her company. That was what eventually led her to seek me out during the school day. It was actually impressive how she always managed to find me in the most neglected corners of the school.

But still, I didn’t really think of her as a friend. She just liked to talk and I didn’t, so she talked to me. It was actually really interesting because she had a way of telling a story that made it ten times as entertaining as it should have been.

It gave my mom the wrong impression, though, especially during one of the late night marching practices.

I was sitting on top of The Box, my legs crossed, my headphones in, and trying to relax in the not-quite-autumn breeze. I didn’t mind that I was completely visible to the entire band or the fact that I was practically a hundred feet above the field; I was one of the slim group of people with almost no fear of heights.

But then a loud scream cut through my music:

“HEY, AMARYLLIS!”

My eyes popped open because if I could hear that, even with noise canceling headphones, that meant that whoever was screaming had a loud-ass voice.

I pulled one of my headphones to the side and tilted my head down to see who was screaming. In the center of the field, a tiny dot of a human, dressed in violently bright orange, green, and blue, was waving viciously up at me.

She was alone as everyone else walked off to the sidelines, sending her a glance over their shoulders.

Of course it was Kamilla.

I wouldn’t have acknowledged her except for the fact that everyone that had given her a curious look had turned their heads in my direction. And so I sent an awkward little wave down at her.

Beside me, Elias snickered.

I cut him a good natured glare. “What?”

“I thought you vowed not to make any friends ever again?” he asked, nonchalantly flipping the page of his required English reading, his legs swinging in the air behind him as he rested his chin in his hands.

“I did,” I said, turning back to narrow my gaze at the tiny Kamilla, who was prancing her merry way across the field. “She’s not a friend. She just… thinks she is.”

“Oka-ay!” he said all sing-songy, his smile wide and just as teasing as his voice. I bit my bottom lip and smacked his bookmark on his head. “Ack!” he said, but we both knew it didn’t hurt; it was a flimsy piece of paper.

That was our sort of relationship. We made fun of each other and made jokes out of everything. It was a way we coped with all the shit in our lives. And it really helped.

So I just turned back to face front and closed my eyes. I had halfway replaced the side of the headphones I had removed back on my ear when Elias spoke again, his voice soft.

“It wouldn’t hurt to make friends, Lissie,” he said, his voice so quiet I almost missed it. “You can’t avoid them forever.”

“Watch me,” I said before sticking my headphones firmly over my ears.

There really was a reason why I refused to become friends with people, even those like Kamilla who seemed so desperate to befriend me. I wasn’t always like this.

Back in elementary school, when everyone had hope and joy and no homework and gender didn’t matter, I had a best friend. We did everything together; we had the same class almost every year, we hung out during recess and lunch together, we went to the same after school program, we always signed up for the same summer school classes, we went over to each other’s houses all the time.

And when we graduated fifth grade, she got a phone. I begged my parents to get me one so that we could text and get matching phone cases and such. Surprisingly, they got me a phone; a pale pink phone with a clear, glittery phone case.

I had gotten her number through our parents, but she never replied whenever I texted or called her. I thought that maybe I had the wrong number, so when school started, I searched for her.

But I couldn’t find her, throughout the whole first day of school. Not until my last class of the day, by which I had resigned myself to believing that she had switched schools and wasn’t able to tell me.

Whatever teacher I had started roll call, and I was half heartedly waiting for my name to be called when I heard her name.

I remembered whipping my head around to stare incredulously at the girl who confidently raised her hand to announce her presence. But that wasn’t my best friend.

This girl had hair dyed a bright pink, smokey eye makeup and bright fuchsia lips, and a crop top that just barely passed the dress code.

The best friend I knew had soft light brown hair and a sprinkle of freckles across her nose.

I was still staring at her when the teacher called my name. I raised my hand and declared, “Here,” before I turned my attention back to the girl I used to know.

As if just realizing I still existed, she gave me a noncommitted glance out of the corner of her eye, smacking the pink gum in her mouth. Gave me a once over and rolled her eyes before turning her back on me and whispering to the girl beside her.

My jaw dropped.

I confronted her after school on our way home; we both lived within walking distance of the Sparrow Valley elementary, middle, and high schools, somewhere in the center of all three. 

I asked her what was up.

She shrugged and told me she made new friends.

I asked if she was ignoring my texts.

She called me clingy and told me to piss off.

Her exact words were, “Don’t be a baby, Amaryllis. Just because you don’t have a life doesn’t mean I can’t, either.”

Her words felt like a knife through my gut.

I asked her what happened to her.

She said she ‘grew up’, whatever the hell that meant.

Then, she flipped her chopped short pink hair over her shoulder, scoffed, and shoved her way past me.

It felt like she had electrocuted me where she bumped past.

I cried for over an hour when I got home. That was the beginning of my ‘fuck off’ era.

I cut my hair shorter than she had—just a year ago, we had been following the promise to grow out our hair together, but now that she’d abandoned that, I decided to do the same. I donated what I cut off, though, so at least it went to a good place.

Then I proceeded to ignore the fuck out of her. And everyone else, too, just for good measure.

Elias was there with me the whole time, so he knew exactly how badly my ex-best friend had wrecked me. But I think he deep down always thought I would give in to the ‘temptation of people’, or whatever. Or maybe hoped I would. I wasn’t sure.

I glowered down at the band, now back on the field, as I remembered how I got to where I was. I pulled on the not-very-long strands of my hair beside my right ear, hard enough for it to hurt, and curled my other hand into a fist.

She still made me so angry, and I hated how much emotion she managed to wring out of me.

It hurts because you care, a stupid little voice in my head said. It sounded irritatingly similar to Zephyr’s voice and words, and I snarled.

Shut the fuck up! I internally screamed back at it.

I flailed my arms and legs around with a shout before landing with a huff on my back, now glaring up at the velvet blanket of night sky above us.

I felt Elias pat my forearm with the warm palm of his hand before retreating, presumably to turn a page of his book. I just laid there and stared up at the sky.

What if they were all right? echoed in my head.

What if she actually was a good person? What if she was a good person for me, just like my little brother had said? What if she didn’t betray me?

I slowly pushed myself up to look back down at the band, pulling my headphones down around my neck. I quickly located Kamilla on the field, marching between two other quads but the only one that was dressed in such bright colors. She had a sort of ‘pep in her step’ that no one else had.

I took the rest of the school week and weekend to think it over. In that time, I successfully managed to avoid Kamilla during the breaks between classes. I needed space if I was going to rethink my whole life.

It took a lot of time locked in my room, headphones on while I laid on the floor, before I finally reached my tentative decision.

So instead of waiting for Kamilla to seek me out, I found her.

Over the course of the first few weeks of school, Kamilla had told me enough for me to figure out her entire schedule. That was how I knew that she had math class while I had photography, and also that she had my aunt as her teacher.

So I flitted quickly through the throng of high school students, weaving my way around distracted students as I made my way toward my aunt’s class. I could still hear a few voices from inside, recognizing the most enthusiastic one to be Kamilla.

I swung my backpack from my shoulders and let it slide down to the floor before leaning back against the wall and crossing my arms.

I watched with a blank face as three more students exited the classroom, giving me a wary glance as they passed. The fourth person, however, was Kamilla herself.

“Bye, Mrs Singh! Thank you!” she called over her shoulder as she stepped out of the classroom, waving to my aunt behind her. “Oh!”

She nearly bumped into me when she finally turned to face forward.

“What do you think of Mrs Singh?” I asked in greeting.

“I like her!” she said with a wide smile. “She’s a really good teacher, and she’s really nice, too.”

I bent to pick up my bag and swung it over my shoulder. “That’s good.”

It was silent for a moment as I turned and started walking. I paused and glanced back over my shoulder at Kamilla, who I saw was frozen in place, her eyes wide.

“You okay?” I called, turning my body fully around to face her.

“I don’t know, you usually don’t, like… talk to me,” she said hesitantly.

“Do you not want me to talk to you?” I asked, all of my worries coming back with a dizzying force.

“No!” she said, her eyes widening further. “No, I’m just… surprised.”

“Well, come on then,” I said, turning back around and continuing on my way to one of the tables I often frequented during lunch. Which meant that it was a table that Kamilla also frequented due to her habit of following me around like a lost puppy.

Nonchalantly, I set my bag down on the bench beside me as I sat; Kamilla sat opposite me, her own bag beside her.

Our conversation was a bit stunted and awkward at first, like we didn’t know how to talk to each other. Which was partially true because I wasn’t used to having a friend. Most of the time, she usually yapped my ear off while I brooded, but now I was actively participating in the conversation.

Or, at least, trying to.

But now that I had decided to become Kamilla’s friend, I understood what my brother meant. She really was a good person, and, once I finally opened up to her, I think we could be friends.

Or maybe this entire friendship would crash and burn like my last one, but if I didn’t try, I would never find out.

But I think it would be worth the risk. Probably. Most likely.