I watched Abby tug compulsively on the Chinese Staircase choker that hadn’t left her neck since Taylor’s sister Jessica made it for her last June.
“What’s your deal?” I asked finally.
Abby snapped out of her trance. “What? Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Abigail.”
Abs sighed. “It just kills me that she can make him so miserable, and yet he follows her like a puppy whenever she snaps her acryllicly decorated fingers. He’s not like that with anybody else.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he loves her.”
Abby looked up sharply. “Don’t say that. Introducing those words makes them a possibility, and I won’t allow it. She doesn’t deserve him.”
I held up my hands in defense. “Somebody’s getting maternal here.”
Abby giggled. “I know, right? I feel this overwhelming urge to protect that boy. “ She shrugged. “Come on. Let’s go work the room.” Abby pulled me towards the door, but her sudden party-girl attitude didn’t fool me, not one bit. She was genuinely concerned for that friend of hers.
Abby
“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
“Abby! Hiiiiiii!!”
I looked down at the little blond girl who was hugging me around the waist. “Hey, Avie! Gosh, you got so big. Are you happy to be home?”
Six year-old Avery nodded, and led me into the kitchen. It was two mornings later, and Taylor and I had planned our annual Christmas shopping excursion to Plainview Mall.
“Hey, Abs,” said Diana, who, accompanied by Jessie and Mack, was up to her ears in flour, sugar, and numerous cookbooks for kids. “Taylor’s not up yet. However, if you’re interested, we’re making Christmas cookies.”
“Definitely,” I said, and rolled up my sleeves. My mother doesn’t bake too much, and I’ve always loved helping Diana with her latest endeavor. Baking calms me. It’s also a great time to talk to Di. She says it’s a blessing Taylor’s best friend is a girl- this way she’ll know how to talk to teenage females by the time Jess and Avie are my age.
“So,” she said now, handing an egg to Jessie with instructions on how to separate it-Avery and Mack had gotten bored, and were now nowhere in sight. “Any new boys I should know about?”
I giggled. “Nothing since Brad over the summer. Guys are sadistic.”
Diana smiled. “I don’t know if I’d go so far as sadistic, but definitely mentally challenged.” She glanced at her watch. “Abby, can you do me a huge favor and go wake up my son?”
I nodded. “Sure. Got a jackhammer I can borrow?”
Di laughed, and I bounded up the stairs. Swinging a right at the top, I walked into the room Tay shares with his brothers (who were both long awake and out of the house), picked a soccer ball up off the floor, and gently tossed it at him.
The ball hit the motionless lump in Tay’s bed, but he didn’t stir. “Hey,” I called, and shook him. “Get up. Your mother has requested I wake you from your catatonic state, Mr. Tiger Beat.”
Taylor awakened, and looked genuinely surprised to see me. “Christmas shopping, Genius,” I reminded him.
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I knew that,” and rolled over again.
“Taylor, I was hoping to get to the mall sometime before the newest Hanson is born. Get up or I’ll call the teenies in here to attack.”
Tay’s eyes flew open. “A fate worse than death- mauled by teenies. I’m up, I’m up.”
I nodded, and started for the door. “If you’re not down in fifteen minutes, I’m so going to give your home phone number to the president of that Jello club.”
“I have a confession to make. It’s been killing me since you got home, and if I don’t tell you, I think my head might explode.”
Taylor looked interested. He shifted his weight in one of the uncomfortable metal chairs in the food court at the Plainview, and raised an eyebrow. “Shoot.”
“I’ve read Hanson fanfic.”
Taylor burst out laughing. “You have not!”
I nodded miserably. “I didn’t mean to. I was on-line one day over the summer, and Ellie sent me this mysterious link and all it said was ‘GO HERE’ and so I did and it was...fanfic.”
Taylor wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, and tried to stop laughing. “Well, my universe is shaken. Abigail Gwenivere, who looked down her nose at me for not having read Pride and Prejudice, reading fanfic. And Hanson fanfic, no less. Which one? Or were there more than one?”
“I forget the name. Something with a zip code...wait a sec. Are you telling me you’re actually familiar with these things?”
Taylor shrugged and stole one of my French fries. “If somebody was writing random stuff about you and posting it on the Internet for all the world, ahem, including your best friend, to read, wouldn’t you be curious?”
I nodded, and he continued. “Zip code...oh! Is that the one where my prudish girlfriend slaps me when I get fresh?”
“Yeah.” I giggled. “This has to be one of the most surreal conversations we’ve ever had. Did you read, um...” I snapped my fingers, trying to recall the name of a tale that Ellie had found particularly amusing. “Oh, why won’t it come to me now? Something about worlds crashing. You and a nineteen year old in New York City?”
“Two Worlds Collided,” confirmed Taylor. “Oh, yeah, Sydney.” He grinned evilly. “I liked that one.”
I threw a fry at him. “Shut up, pervert. Could your love of that particular story have anything to do with the fact that the plot consisted of a thousand girls lusting after you and going so far as to try to mow your girlfriend down with a truck?”
Tay wiggled his eyebrows, and I groaned. “Seriously, though, are you telling me you could just get together with a random girl like that, after knowing her for, like, a minute and a half?”
“Nah,” said Taylor, crumpling up the paper from his Big Mac. “I’d need to, like, know the person. In that story, I was supposedly in love with her or whatever, but I couldn’t love somebody without knowing them really, really well first, you know? The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Taylor
“And anyone can tell,
you think you know me well.
But you don’t know me at all.” ~ Eddie Arnold and Cindy Walker, “You Don’t Know Me”
I pressed the “CH+” button on the remote control for the umpteeth time, and finally threw it down on the coffee table in disgust. “When did Monday night TV start sucking so much? And when did Dateline NBC start showing up every night?”
“Oh, come on,” chided Abby, picking up the little black rectangle. “Are you telling me you don’t absolutely love Seventh Heaven?”
I groaned. “Oh, Lord. Don’t tell me you watch that stuff. It’s like Full House Goes to Church.”
“I’m kidding,” Abs giggled. “But don’t you dare say anything negative about Full House. I love how no one on that show is ever unhappy for more than twenty minutes. And how the three guys live together for nine years or something and nobody ever questions it...oh! Sifil and Olly!” My best friend un-muted the television happily, as two sock puppets danced around on MTV.
“No, Abigail. I’m putting my foot down. We are not going to watch Sifil and Olly. I’ll watch South Park with you. I even saw Beavis and Butt-head Do America. But this is where I draw the line.”
Abby smacked my arm. “Shh.”
I grabbed for the remote, but my tiny, agile, stubborn friend lept off the couch, still holding it, and slid across the glossy wood floor in her How the Grinch Stole Christmas socks, laughing maniacly.
“I’m too quick for you, Jordan Taylor,” she mocked.
“Ooh, using my full name, are you? Well, fine.” I started after her, and Abby took off into the kitchen. I chased her through there, the dining room, the living room, and finally back into the den, with both of us giggling like we did when we were five. Abs finally catapulted back onto the sofa, and I made another grab for the remote, which she held onto like a lifeline.
I sighed. “I didn’t want to have to do this, Abby,” I told her. “But you leave me no choice.” With that, I started tickling her.
Abs shrieked and writhed in a manner quite humorous to watch. “Now,” I asked her. “Are you going to be nice and give me the remote?”
“Never!”
“Okay then. It’s your funeral.”
I tortured her for a few more minutes, until finally Abs twisted her body in such a way that she flung me off the couch. What she didn’t count on, though, was me taking her along for the ride, and we crashed to the floor in a giggling heap.
“I still have the remote, you know,” teased Abby softly, trying to catch her breath.
Neither of us spoke for a few moments after that, but I held her gaze steadily, and a chill ran down my spine. For a second, it almost seemed like we were going to...never mind. That’s impossible.
