Grace
My mom always pretends she needs help, but really she can’t stand me being alone on my birthday. Plus she gets in over her head with the candy thing.
Chat bubbles appeared and disappeared so many times that Grace was on the verge of a panic attack. She’d made it weird, there was no doubt about that, and now Alix—kind, compassionate Alix—was trying to make it un-weird. If only Alix hadn’t already seen the pitiful confession, or Grace would have unsent the message and pretended it had been a mistake.
She was about to text again, to say that she’d been kidding, when her screen lit up. Not with a text. A FaceTime call.
Grace’s heart dropped at the same time her stomach lurched, so they met in some nausea-inducing point in the middle. Jumping to her feet like she was holding a grenade with a faulty pin instead of a phone, Grace wasn’t sure what to do. She couldn’t answer the phone in front of her mother. That was weird. But not answering felt even weirder. Clearly, she’d just been texting and hadn’t given any reason she couldn’t pick up.
“I have to take this,” Grace said over her shoulder while she ran.
In the kitchen, the Halloween soundtrack her mother had gotten at Party City thirty years earlier could still be heard loud and clear. Afraid that the call would go unanswered if she waited any longer, Grace dove into the pantry. She pulled the little cord for the light and tore off her glasses just as she hit the green button at the bottom of her screen.
The call took three lifetimes to connect, but as a grainy image appeared, Grace smiled. She hadn’t imagined Alix as anything other than a lifeguard stand on a California beach. She’d never let herself paint a picture that had no chance ofbeing accurate. Appearances didn’t matter for a purely platonic friendship that existed only in her phone.
And yet, at the sight of her, the roaring orchestra of anxieties in Grace’s mind didn’t just quiet. It vanished.
The first words she’d ever hear Alix speak were: “Are you in a pantry?”
Glancing at a jar of olives big enough to hold a human head, Grace laughed. She was going to explain about the noise, but then she registered Alix’s appearance after the shock of the unexpected call faded.
Short, wavy brown hair tousled back and coiffed with enviable volume, Alix was attractive by any and every metric. It wasn’t weird that she found her attractive. They were friends. Buddies. Homegirls. Bros. This was absolutely fine. And a little friendly teasing would release carbon monoxide into her body and put any errant butterflies to sleep very humanely.
“Are you dressed as Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes?” Grace managed after dodging Alix’s question.
A smile that could sell liver-flavored toothpaste ignited on Alix’s face. Surprisingly realistic vampire fangs were in place of her canine teeth. “You really don’t get it?”
Grace replied with a sheepish little shrug.
Holding the phone farther away from herself, Alix revealed a gray coat, but Grace was more curious about where she was standing. With a brick wall at her back and the dampened thud of bass, Grace guessed she was at a bar.
“Nothing?” Alix tried a different angle. When Grace didn’t guess correctly, Alix shook her head. “You’re breaking my heart,” she said with her hand to her chest. A tattoo on her finger was too hard to see in the low light, but Grace strained to make it out.
”Oscar, come here,” Alix called to someone far enough away that she had to yell. A moment later she added, “Shine your phone’s light on me.”
Under a makeshift spotlight, Alix turned and her face and neck glittered. Glittered? That was more confusing and proved her Columbo guess incorrect before she lodged it.
“Sherlock goes to the disco and turns into a vampire?”
Alix flashed an Elvis-inspired lip twitch before delivering a highly dramatic and gruff, “This is the skin of a killer, Bella.”
Hand cupped over her mouth, Grace wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or squeal with delight.
“No, you’re not Edward,” Grace said through her laughter.
“What are you? Team Jacob?” Alix chuckled. “Because I’ve got you covered.” She flipped the camera to reveal a small group standing in an alley leading to what looked like an outdoor bar, but it was too dark to see clearly. She introduced her friends as Lola, dressed as Bella wearing a broken ankle boot and a prom dress, and Oscar, dressed as Jacob complete with a wolf ear headband.
“Who did Anna Kendrick play? I’ll be on her team,” Grace joked.
Still smiling, Alix nodded toward Grace like she was standing there with her. “Where’s your costume?”
Grace looked down at her black T-shirt and leggings. She pointed at the back ears on her head. “I’m a cat.”
“You’re killing me, Gator! That’s not a costume. That’s a headband.” She shook her head, but she couldn’t sell disappointment when she was beaming. “Come on, not even a set of whiskers drawn on with eyeliner?”
“I’m sorry I don’t have your level of… whimsy.”
Alix sighed like it was a lot of work to be so artistic, and then she turned serious. “Is it really your birthday?”
