Page 20 of The Last Thing You Said

The question comes out of nowhere and socks me in the stomach. “What makes you think I don’t like Ben?” I almost choke on the words.

“You never talk to him. You don’t laugh with him or tell him stories like you tell my mom and me. Why can’t you be friends with him? You were friends with Trixie.”

I nod and blink back the tears that, like Emily’s question, have come out of nowhere. “Well, Ben and I used to be friends. We were all friends.”

“But Trixie’s in heaven now.”

I nod again. I’m not prepared for this conversation.

“You aren’t friends with Ben because Trixie’s not here anymore? I don’t get it.”

That about sums it up. I don’t get it, either.

“Well, Emily, it’s not that Ben and I aren’t friends, exactly.” A tight ball of pain in my chest moves its way up into my throat. “It’s—it’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated mean?”

I pause again and pull at a blade of grass. “Complicated is like a puzzle. All the pieces have to fit a certain way, and it’s tricky to figure out which pieces go where.”

“Oh,” she says, but I’m not sure that I’ve explained it well enough. “You know what I do when I’m working on a puzzle I can’t figure out?”

“What do you do?”

“I ask my mom for help.” Emily bounds up and runs back toward the swings.

That night, I don’t sleep much. I wish I had the Book of Quotes. I wonder if Jane has cleaned out Trixie’s room or if it’s how we left it the morning we hurried to the park with our beach towels and sunscreen. I wonder if the notebook is on Trixie’s desk where we’d set it the night before. She’d written a new quote from Audrey Hepburn: The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.

I open my laptop and create a new folder on my online bulletin board. I search for the quote and find a graphic of the words, handwritten in dark blue ink, swirling letters with doodles of hearts. It’s perfect.

I search for more images: growing up, best friends, memories. I pin a dozen more quotes, some familiar, some new, and then find this Dr. Seuss quote: Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory. I think about the moment I told Trixie that I had a crush on her brother, a bitter cold winter afternoon. We were twelve.

We were playing the Game of Life in Trixie’s basement next to the woodstove, filling our plastic cars with pastel plastic babies. We always named our husbands after our latest crushes. For a long time I’d wanted to name my plastic husband Ben, but I was too shy and embarrassed and scared of what Trixie might think. I usually chose the most popular boy in class—a tall boy named Jack who all the girls liked—or Tyler Clark, my neighbor who was in high school.

“Congratulations!” Trixie said as she handed me a blue stick person. “I now pronounce you husband and wife. Who will it be this time? Jack? Tyler?”

I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. “Ben.”

Trixie jumped up. “What?!” She spun around and twirled and clapped her hands. “Oh, this is perfect.”

“Trix,” I mumbled and tucked my chin down. My cheeks grew hot.

“Oh, you’ll get married and have lots and lots of babies and the best part is that we’ll be sisters, Lulu. Sisters.”

I had been so worried that she would make fun of me or be mad or jealous. But I shouldn’t have worried. This was Trixie, my sweet, caring, compassionate best friend.

She sat back down, and I twirled the spinner, my new pinhead husband named Ben next to me in the boxy pink car.

“What do you like best about him?” she asked.

“Come on, Trixie.”

“Please? Five things?”

I named the first five things that came to mind: his one dimple that appeared when he laughed really hard. The gentle way he polished and handled his agate collection. That he called his mother “Mum” (at which point, Trixie interrupted with, “Wait a minute! I call her Mum, too!”). How adorable he looked when he held Emily. That whenever he was around, especially when we were out on the boat or swimming, I felt safe. I knew that no matter what, he would take care of me.

It would be three years before anything happened with Ben—before I thought that maybe he liked me, too—and all the while, I quietly loved him. We spent time together, the four of us—me and Clayton, Ben and Trixie—and we spent time apart. We grew up. I bought him fudge almost every week and left it in his room, even though he never mentioned it, never thanked me. I watched while he took other girls to football games and the movies, held their hands and kissed them at their lockers.

And Trixie was right by my side when I felt sad and inadequate and ugly, telling me that her brother was stupid and someday would realize how much he loved me.