Anything But Fire

“It’s time to fight fire… with fire,” the protagonist declares dramatically. It’s how we know that the situation has become so dangerous and volatile that the heroes have no choice but to respond to their adversaries in a similarly dangerous and volatile manner.

“Now I’m ready to fight fire with fire,” I thought to myself as I prepared to douse a painful sore throat with an array of differently temperatured liquids. “Except that fire isn’t at all like a sore throat, and this glass of orange juice and sprite is like the complete opposite of fire.”

Fighting fire with fire would pretty much be the worst idea ever. All you would get when adding fire to something that’s already on fire is… more fire. It would be like getting into an argument with the ocean and then tossing a glass of water in its face. “Take that, ocean! Now you’re… more moist!” (I guess it would depend on which ocean. Maybe the sassy Atlantic. I’m sure it would be difficult to get into an argument with the Indian Ocean, which I’ve heard is very polite.)

Some situations call for action, to give as good as you get. Having a sore throat is one of them, just make sure you use cold medicine or lots of water and hot tea. Don’t use fire.

Anything but fire.

Fair Weather Friend

Annie and I have been friends for years. Well, I say “friends,” but sometimes I feel like we’re more like close acquaintances than anything else. I don’t mean to say that she wasn’t a blast to hang out with or that I didn’t enjoy her company. It’s just that sometimes I invite her out to do something, and she says no, without giving a very good reason.

We’ve gone on tons of adventures together: hiking picnics, swimming and water skiing, and once, we even went hang gliding. She always struck me as an outdoors sort of girl, but after seeing various pictures on social media, I realized that maybe she was only an outdoors person with me.

At first it sort of made me feel good. Like, I was her “athletic” friend that she went rock climbing and bungee jumping with. It’s not that I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t enjoy an afternoon at the aquarium, but Annie never wanted to go to the aquarium with me. There were plenty of pictures with her “BFF Steve” posing in front of hammerhead sharks, but the ones that featured my face were always taken at the top of a mountain or in front of a waterfall. After a while, I started to wonder why "BFF Steve" never went hiking with Annie; he looked like a fit guy in all the pictures of them together at the museum.

So one rainy Saturday, I called Annie up and invited her to an art gallery. “Sorry, I already have plans with Steve,” she said. “Want to do something next weekend? The weather’s supposed to be really nice.” The next weekend when we met to play Frisbee in the park, I surprised her with advance tickets to the opening night of a play she’d been dying to see. “Oh, it’s going to rain that night… I was planning to stay in,” she told me.

“I have an umbrella,” I said, smiling. “We can take a cab. I won’t let you melt.”

She frowned. “I think Steve and I have plans for a movie marathon.”

“Oh,” I said, trying not to sound as confused and disappointed as I felt. “I guess I’ve got some other friends I can ask.”

My sister Nicole tried to help me out with my Annie problem when she joined me at the play. “Maybe she’s just the kind of person who likes to make plans herself,” she said.

“I’ve invited her to go hiking lots of times. The only time she said no was once when the forecast said it might storm.”

“Well, that’s a legitimate reason not to go hiking.”

“Yeah, but why not come out to the play she really wanted to see?” I asked.

“She already had plans.”

“But that’s not the first excuse she gave me. She said it was going to rain.”

Nicole considered this. “Maybe… she gets depressed when it rains. Some people do. Maybe ‘BFF Steve’ doesn’t really exist and she’s just using plans with him as an excuse to avoid you when the weather’s bad.”

“But I’ve seen pictures of him,” I told her.

“Have you ever met him?” she asked.

“Not… really,” I admitted.

“Photoshop,” she pointed out.

“Look,” I told her during intermission. “Let’s stop by her place after this. Then we can see who’s right.”

“Won’t that be awkward?” she asked.

I shrugged, more curious than eager to be socially delicate at this point.

Annie was surprised when she opened her door. And it turned out that Nicole was right: it was awkward. Both Annie and I were embarrassed. I felt stupid because I had been determined to catch her in a lie, but it turned out that Steve was a really nice guy. He and Nicole filled in the uncomfortable silence with small talk, and eventually Annie invited us to stay for the rest of the movie they were watching. Steve volunteered to go grab some pizza, and after a look from Nicole, I decided to join him.

"So," he said, as we stood in front of the elevators on our way back to Annie's with our arms full of food. "You're Annie's fair weather friend."

"I'm... what?" I stuttered.

"You're the one she hangs out with when it's nice out," he clarified.

"Uh, yeah," I said, "I guess we do get together and do stuff outside a lot."

We rode quietly up to Annie's floor.

"What did you mean by 'fair weather friend?'" I asked as the elevator doors opened.

"That's what she called you when I asked her a couple of years back why she and I never went skydiving or spent a day at Disneyland." My confused look invited him to continue. He smiled. "I'm the one she enjoys hockey games with and the person who stays in to watch movie marathons with her. She saves me for rainy days. You're the one she runs marathons with and does Tai Chi with in the park. The one she shares sunshiny days with."

After a moment of stunned silence, I said, "That's... weird, right?"

Steve smiled again. "That's how I felt at first. I think she was surprised by my reaction, and maybe that's why she didn't tell you. I was convinced for the longest time that you didn't exist and she was just using my friendship as a way to feel better about herself when the weather was bad."

I still couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "It doesn't bother you that she'll only spend time with you when it's crappy out?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It's just Annie," he explained, pausing outside her door. "And I don't know about you, but I'd rather spend time with her when I can than not at all."

I followed him mutely inside, considering what he had said. As I watched Nicole chatting with Annie, I found myself agreeing with Steve. Annie was awesome, and I wasn't going to let a little personality quirk keep us from being friends. I'd just have to be content as her fair weather friend.

"Hey," I said when the movie's credits rolled. "Does anyone know what the weather's supposed to be like tomorrow?"

Sealed With a Kiss

I stared at her. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Sealing this envelope,” she replied.

“Is it a love letter or something?” I asked.

She frowned at me. “It’s the cable bill.”

I glanced at the television. “I didn’t think our cable service was that great.”

She looked confused. “What, so I shouldn’t pay the bill?”

“No, but there’s really no need to make out with it before you send it.”

“Huh?”

I sighed and asked her the question I should have started with. “Why are you kissing that envelope?”

“I told you,” she said, exasperated. “I’m sealing it. That’s how you seal an envelope: with a kiss.”

I stared at her, not knowing quite what to say.

“Isn’t… that right?” she ventured.

I opened my mouth, then closed it to keep in the laughter that was bubbling near the surface.

“Look,” I said, a couple of minutes later. “I’m pretty sure we can pay the cable bill online.”

The Price of Eggs

My mother worked until 5 pm when I was in elementary school, so every weekday I would spend that two hour gap on a three legged stool behind the counter of Widow Peach's grocery store. Sometimes I would do my homework. Sometimes I would read the comics in the newspaper that Widow Peach always kept on the counter. But usually, I would watch Widow Peach work.

She was our landlady. We lived in the apartment above the little store, while she lived in a couple of rooms in the back of the store. The best part of living there was not the fact that we didn't have to go far for our household necessities, but rather that Widow Peach baked bread every day from scratch, and the smell of it drifted up into my bedroom. A thick slice of bread with a generous smearing of butter, fresh from a local farmer, was often my after school snack (no matter how many longing gazes I cast at the jar of candy that she kept on the counter).

She looked far too young to be a widow, even with her long gray hair, but her husband had died before I was born, and everyone had been calling her “Widow Peach” for years. Her hands looked young and she wore a different pair of beautiful earrings every day. I thought she was very pretty, despite being “old,” and I never brought up her age. No one could accuse her of losing her memory, since she proved every day that it was as sharp as a tack.

There were no price tags on anything in the store. I used to sit and watch her endlessly informing customers about how much items cost, and even when she had six or seven people waiting to pay for their purchases, it never took her long to ring up everything on the antique cash register. She knew where every single item was kept, how long it had been on her shelf, and when it would expire.

Once I asked her what her first name was. She just smiled. “What, you don’t like ‘Widow Peach?’ It’s what everyone calls me.”

“I know,” I replied, applying a blue crayon to Lake Victoria (my homework that day was to color a map of Africa). “But ‘Widow’... makes you sound old.”

Her eyes twinkled. “I am old,” she informed me.

I squirmed; I hadn’t wanted the conversation to go this direction. “Well, but…” I floundered, not knowing how to delicately agree while still saying something complimentary.

She turned from refilling the chewing gum on the wall behind the cash register and patted me on the head. “Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “I like my name. Don’t you think it’s just right for someone who runs a grocery store?” She pointed at the produce section, where she had been several minutes earlier, stacking a mouthwatering pyramid of fruit for her customers.

I frowned. “I guess so.”

I had a bit more luck with the subject when Alice came to visit. She was Widow Peach’s daughter who lived in the city. She came home for a visit every few months, and it was the only time I was allowed to help to stock the shelves. I carried a big box for her which was full of smaller boxes of macaroni and cheese, and Alice lifted them out and put them on the shelf, counting them and calling to her mother when she was finished, so Widow Peach would always know how many were there.

When we were finished, I whispered the question to Alice, but she shook her head. “I’ll tell you another secret, though,” she whispered back. “When my mom was younger, all the boys had a crush on her. My dad used to tell me that she had to beat them off with a stick.” My eyes widened at the thought of the gray haired Widow, mercilessly striking a gang of suitors. “He said he knew she really loved him, because she decided to marry him even though his last name was Peach.”

“What did that have to do with it?” I asked. Alice shrugged and winked at me, a gesture I took to mean that I would have to be content with the information I already had.

When I was in second grade, a man started to come to the store every Thursday. He was an older gentleman who wore a bowtie and had meticulously combed white hair. He would ask Widow Peach how much various things cost, wandering up and down the store’s three aisles, through the produce section, and the coolers where the dairy items were kept. Although every Thursday he shopped for hours, he hardly ever bought anything. It seemed to be a game, one that he enjoyed but I could tell slightly annoyed Widow Peach, especially when there were lots of other customers who were going to actually buy the things they asked about.

One particularly slow Thursday, I had just finished my math homework when the bell on the door jingled. I looked up to see the first customer in several hours entering the grocery store: the man with the bow tie. Widow Peach stopped arranging laundry detergent on a shelf, stood up, sighed, and put her hands on her hips.

“Wilson Rice!” She cast a glance at the calendar and shook her head. “Is it really Thursday already? Well, let’s have it over with for once. What are you really here for?”

“Well now,” he said, reaching over to get a plastic shopping basket with what I could swear was a blush on his face. “You really want me to get right to the point?”

“We both know you’re only going to buy a handful of things. What is it that you really need?”

Mr. Rice smiled. “Let’s see.” He shuffled past her, out of my line of sight, and pointed at something.

“Apples are a dollar fifty a pound this week,” I heard her say. “And don’t bother asking about anything else unless you’re actually going to buy it; I’m running a business here, not wasting my time providing you free entertainment.”

I leaned across the counter and saw the man smiling in Widow Peach’s direction as he picked up several apples and put them in a small paper bag, which he tucked into the basket on his arm. She followed him out of the produce section to the back of the store. I sat back down on my stool and peered through the aisle to see him pointing at something in the dairy section.

“Two percent or whole?” Widow Peach asked.

“Whole.”

“It’s two fifty for the half gallon, dollar seventy-five for the quart.”

His basket got a little heavier with another addition, and again he stretched out his hand and pointed at something in the dairy section.

“The ones I get from out of town are the same price per dozen as the ones Tom Sutton brings in,” said Widow Peach. She was proud of selling local goods. “Some say it’s expensive, but I say: support the hardworking people in your own neighborhood.”

I slipped off the stool and stood on my tiptoes to peer over the top of the cash register. The man was reaching for an egg carton, when suddenly he stopped.

“Did you really want to know why I’m here?” he asked.

“What?” Widow Peach said. “You’re buying apples and milk and eggs, of course. Why else would you be here?”

I put my hands over my mouth as I watched Mr. Rice get down on one knee. “You know I love you, Georgia,” he said. “I have for thirty-five years. Won’t you marry me?”

Widow Peach’s face was bright red. “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?!” she choked out.

I got to be the ring bearer at Widow Peach’s wedding. That evening, I asked her what I should call her, now that her name wasn’t the same. “You don’t have the right name anymore for someone who runs a grocery store,” I told her.

“Well, Phillip,” she said, smiling at me, as she laid one hand on my head. “What do you think of calling me Mrs. Rice?”

Last But Not Least

I stepped into my darkened apartment and sighed. I slipped off my shoes and collapsed onto the couch without bothering to turn on a light. I hadn’t had a hard day at work; not in terms of actual work, anyway. I’d been trying to ignore texts from my siblings all day, but when my younger brother turned up and started bothering my assistant with questions about my schedule and offering her coffee, I had to start paying attention.

Apparently my mother had told them that I wasn’t planning to attend the family reunion.

Logan walked into my office at set the cup of tea that my assistant had prepared on my desk. “What’s this about, Jack?” he asked.

I stared at him. Little Logan, the youngest of the seven of us, the one my mother occasionally referred to as “Last but not least” had gotten engaged to his boyfriend two weeks ago.

“You shouldn’t flirt with her,” I told him, casting a glance at my smitten assistant. “What would Doug say?”

Logan laughed. “He won’t care,” he assured me. Then he continued with the object of his visit: he perched on an expensive chair in front of my desk and began the interrogation. “Mom said you’re not coming to the reunion this weekend.”

“I’m kind of busy, here,” I protested.

“You’re not,” he scoffed.

“Well, I will be if I have to keep paying attention to all of you yelling at me!” I cried, as the text alert on my phone went off for the eightieth time that day. This time it was Amy, the oldest. I shoved my phone in one of the desk drawers in disgust.

“Jackie,” he said softly. “We’re not going to stop until one of two things happens: you tell us why, or you come to the reunion.”

I wasn’t going to do either of those things.

It didn’t have anything to do with my family, really. I loved my brothers and sisters and enjoyed it whenever I got to see them, which was pretty frequently, as my mother loved to have huge family dinners at her house several times per month. The last time I had been there was right after Logan and Doug announced their engagement, and something strange happened: my mother used her favorite saying not to describe Logan, but instead used it to refer to me.

Sure, all of my siblings were either married or in long-term relationships, and I was the only single one left. It had never bothered me before. There is nothing wrong with being single; I had a fulfilling career, wonderful friends, and a supportive family. But apparently all that my mother could see about my life was my long list of ex-boyfriends.

“Last but not least!” she had said, patting me comfortingly on the shoulder as I helped her carry scalloped potatoes into the dining room.

My brother snapped his fingers in front of my nose. “Come back, Jack,” he called, as though he had hypnotized me and was awakening me from a trance.

I rolled my eyes.

It would be easier to confess. So I gave Logan my best “don’t tell Amy” glare and my brother crossed his heart, zipped his lips, and threw away the key. Then I quickly explained that I didn’t want to be “last but not least” to my entire family: siblings, cousins, and distantly related aunts.

“Boo-freaking-hoo,” Logan sneered. “Try bearing that burden your whole life.”

“Yes,” I assented, “but you can’t help that you’re the youngest; the only reason I’m inheriting the title is because I broke up with Steven.” I paused to ready my best impression of our mother. “‘And Steven was such a nice boy!’”

Logan laughed. “Okay,” he said, and sighed. “I get it. But maybe that’s not what she means.” He gave me a serious look. “You should think about going anyway. Uncle Ralph is coming this year, and he’s bound to keep Mom distracted most of the time. She’s been after him to quit smoking.”

“I’ll think about it,” I grumbled.

So I did. I thought about it for the rest of the day, all the way home, and was sick of the subject by the time I got to my couch. My siblings could never have dogged me into giving in and going to the reunion, but apparently my conscience could.

Besides. I didn’t want to miss the yearly squirt gun battle with my nieces.

Going to the reunion turned out to be a good decision. I totally dominated the squirt gun battle, and lunch was provided by my sister’s amazing personal chef/husband. We called a truce about midday so that we could all find some shade and eat. I stood around talking to a couple of my sisters-in-law by the dessert, even though I was starving for one of Joe’s delicious burgers.

My Aunt Jacqueline was sitting near the grill.

It’s really unfortunate to be named after someone disagreeable, especially the type of person that tells an eight year old at her birthday party that she’s old enough to know that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. Aunt Jacqueline was just such a delight.

I stood in the shade with my brother Ben’s wife and watched to see if my aunt would mosey on and find a new group of people to complain to about her useless ex-husband, but it seemed as though she had put down roots; besides, she had a good audience.

“Just go grab a burger,” Tanya said, nudging me. “Maybe she won’t even notice you there.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. “If only…”

Keeping my eyes down and my mouth shut, I grabbed a paper plate and waited in line for a burger behind one of my really tall second cousins. I hoped that my aunt would continue to tell the tale of how her husband never pitched in to clean up the kitchen and would take no notice of me. When my cousin wandered off with his food, I stopped paying attention to what my aunt was doing and focused on my own burger, which looked delicious. My stomach growled loudly in anticipation.

That’s when it happened.

“Jacqueline!” my aunt declared. She was the only one who called me that. Probably she was proud of the fact that I’d been named after her. The rest of the world called me Jack (or Jackie), even my work associates. “You’re dressed like a harlot! I wouldn’t be expecting to meet any men here, dear, this is a family reunion. Although I suppose you may be at the point where you’re ready to take what you can get; your mother tells me you’re the last of her brood that’s still single!”

My face immediately went as red as the raspberry Sriracha sauce that Joe had just put on my burger. I shifted my weight from one sopping flip flop to the other, and considered my waterlogged and not terribly alluring appearance. True, the cutoff jean shorts I had worn over my swimsuit weren’t all that modest, and everyone could see the green and purple stripes of my swimsuit through the old t-shirt that had been clinging to my abdomen since earlier that day when my niece had bulls-eyed me with a huge water balloon. So maybe my Aunt Jacqueline was right for once; maybe I was dressed like a harlot. But it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that I was single, and not for one second while choosing what to wear that morning had it entered into my head that I would be meeting the man of my dreams that day.

I slowly put down my plate, summoned a sweet smile from an alternate universe where my aunt didn’t exist, and turned around.

“You’re right, Aunt Jacqueline,” I said loudly, interrupting the story she had begun telling to her unfortunate audience. “I honestly didn’t think about what I was putting on this morning, so I apologize if my outfit offended you. I mostly just wanted to be comfortable while I played with the kids today. I’m not husband hunting; usually I schedule that for a day I’m not going to be completely drenched. So it really doesn’t bother me what I look like right now. And don’t worry, I’ll find the right person someday, but frankly, I’d rather be single for the rest of my life than become a bitter, hateful ex-wife like you.”

I grabbed my burger and exited the pavilion, walking across the park toward a picnic table under a tree where I could see some of my nephews and nieces kicking a soccer ball around. I wasn’t quite sure what the fallout would be after my little speech, but I felt elated, angry, and horribly embarrassed. I hopped up on top of the picnic table as scenes of my mom or my older sister Amy yelling at me flashed through my head. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry or laugh. Then I looked at my burger and decided that I didn’t care.

I devoured my food in silence until the unthinkable happened: some of the raspberry Sriracha sauce escaped onto my shirt. I had just put the burger down and whipped off my shirt to rescue the sauce when I heard someone walk up behind me.

It was a guy I didn't recognize, smiling at me while I licked sauce off my shirt.

"Uh... hi?" I said.

"Hi, sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to interrupt, it's just that... you forgot your napkin." He held one out to me.

"Thanks, I'm good," I said, wiping my face with my discarded shirt.

"You like the burger?" he asked.

I nodded and went back to my devouring.

"Glad to hear it. The sauce isn't too sweet, is it?"

I gave him a questioning look as I shook my head, then swallowed and mumbled, "It's perfect, why?"

“Joe told me I wasn’t putting in enough Sriracha,” he said, then held out his hand. “I’m Wade, one of Joe’s partners at the restaurant.”

“It’s nice to meet you, but I can’t shake hands with you while I’m devouring this,” I said, and took another bite of my burger.

“I guess I should take that as a compliment,” he replied with a smile. “Mind if I sit?”

I shrugged and finished off the burger, then wiped off my fingers. “That was really good,” I said, “How did Joe rope you into helping? I hope he’s paying you, at least. There are a lot of people here.”

Wade sat down next to me and looked at the ground. “I’d rather not say, actually. It’s kind of embarrassing.”

“Did you lose a bet or something?”

He sighed. “No, he… lured me under false pretenses. He led me to believe that there would be tons of girls here.”

I blinked at him. “There are,” I said, gesturing toward my nieces and nephews.

“I realize that now,” he said.

“Though I’m probably the only one here over drinking age,” I said with a laugh.

He smiled and looked down at the ground again.

“Wait,” I said, “is that why you came over here? Because I’m the only actual single female at this picnic?”

“No!” he said immediately. “Not… entirely. You did forget your napkin.”

“Great. I knew I should have gone in to work today.” I scowled, and glanced back toward the pavilion. After the burger, I was parched; I wished I had taken some time to grab something to drink before storming off.

Wade produced a bottle of water from the pocket of his big cargo shorts as though he could read my mind. He set it on the table next to me.

I gave him a wary look and accepted the peace offering.

“I have two older sisters,” he confessed. “They’re both married and have kids. But my mom is always after me to have some of my own, ragging on me that I’m going to ‘allow the family name to expire.’ She’s worse than your aunt.”

“Oh?” I said, taking up the challenge. “Your mom told you that you looked fat in your Tinkerbell Halloween costume when you were six years old?”

He choked back laugh. “Okay, you win.”

I took a drink of water. “So you’ve always been ‘last but not least.’”

“Pardon me?”

“My little brother Logan,” I explained, “our mom was always calling him that so he wouldn’t feel bad for being the youngest. ‘Last but not least.’”

Wade nodded in comprehension. “Last to be born, last to get married… if I ever manage to, that is.”

“Well, you’re definitely not ‘the least’ when it comes to making raspberry Sriracha sauce,” I said.

“That’s true,” he replied with a smile.

“I’m probably never going to wash my shirt again, just so I can go sample that sauce whenever I want to.”

He laughed. “Or I could make you dinner sometime.”

I smiled. “That’s an offer I don’t think I can refuse.”

Wade and I occasionally talked about the idea of “last but not least” over the first few months of our relationship. But it was only a year and a half later, on the night he proposed to me, that I realized what my mom really meant when she applied the phrase to me. It wasn’t that she was sighing over all of those I’d loved and lost. She was encouraging me. Because it doesn’t matter how many boyfriends or girlfriends you’ve had or how long you’re single before you find that one person who is right for you. The last one will never be the least.

No Love Lost

It’s an “I’ve got nothin’” Tuesday, so here’s my first cliché story.

Wendy Andrews and Drew Hopkins were made for each other. Their parents were best friends who swore that having kids would not keep them from seeing each other, and planned from the start that their children would be best friends, too.

And they were. For the first five years of their lives, Wendy and Drew were inseparable. They played together, they fought over toys together, they learned together, and they grew together.

On the first day of kindergarten, they were escorted, hand in hand, to school by their parents. And while standing in line to go inside, Drew was jostled by someone and accidentally let go of Wendy’s hand. Unfortunately the ill-timed bump also caused Drew to bang into Wendy, and she fell to the ground. If it were not for a brand new group of peers surrounding them, Drew would have tenderly helped Wendy up and kissed her skinned knee. But instead, he looked around uncertainly and did what everyone else was doing: he laughed.

Wendy stomped into their new classroom with tears stinging her eyes. Everything would have been fine by lunch time if they had not been seated on opposite sides of the room, but from where she was, Wendy couldn’t see Drew’s contrite face. He spent the morning wondering if she was okay and hoping he would have a chance to apologize, but by the time he was able to, he didn’t want to. Wendy had told her new best friend Natalie Bell about an unfortunate accident Drew had had at their fourth birthday party, and now everyone in class was laughing at him.

Wendy and Drew’s parents were puzzled by their behavior when they picked them up from school, and even though they got the whole story from the teacher, nothing they could say or do could convince their children to reconcile. It didn’t stop them from trying, not that week or that month or that year, or for the rest of the years they were in school. Wendy and Drew refused to be friendly again. They sat silent through dinner parties, glared at one another over cake at birthday parties, and looked in two different directions during Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations.

Instead, they acknowledged each other through the determination to be the best. Wendy had never been good at spelling, so every gold star Drew got in elementary school was a win for him. Her science skills bested his at every middle school Science Fair, no matter how interesting his erupting volcano was that year. Their high school tennis teams always held boys vs girls scrimmages at the beginning of the year, and there was always quite a bit of unauthorized betting between their teammates as to who would be the winner of the Wendy vs Drew match.

Nothing could stop their parents from launching various attempts to restore their friendship. But it seemed that nothing they tried could repair Wendy and Drew’s broken relationship. No secret presents or forged apology letters supposedly written by their children could bring about a reconciliation. “Drew and I are not friends,” Wendy told her mother. “Stop trying!” Drew, on the other hand, disclosed to his mother that “we may have been friends when we were little, but that’s over now. It’s nice of you to hope, but this is starting to get ridiculous.”

The last straw came when their parents began to pass out graduation party invitations. Drew hadn’t wanted to have a graduation party, and Wendy had been enthusiastically planning to have a joint party with several of her friends at Natalie’s house. But their parents had other ideas; their children were born three weeks apart and had shared every birthday party, so why shouldn’t they share a graduation party? Their families would expect it, they told their annoyed children. Drew agreed to show up and cut a piece of cake for his grandma while wearing his cap and gown, but Wendy told her parents that she was having her party at Natalie’s, her name was going to be on the cake, and she had already helped pay for decorations. “I’m not having the same graduation party as Drew,” she told her father angrily. They grudgingly compromised: Wendy would show up for her grandparents’ sake and then she would be allowed to go to whatever party she wished. She gave way when her parents promised not to take any pictures of the two of them together, though they knew that it would be impossible to make the same promise for their guests (and planning all the while to ask for copies of any shots featuring both Drew and Wendy).

Prom was another obstacle: their parents wanted pictures of them together, standing in front of Drew’s house, just like they had taken on their first day of kindergarten. Drew said he couldn’t because he and his friends were picking up their tuxes right before dinner and going straight to prom afterward. Wendy absolutely refused; she had plans to ride in a gigantic limo with all of her friends and then to meet her boyfriend outside the school right before the dance began. Neither of them would tolerate any attempts to rearrange schedules. “At least we have the graduation party,” Drew’s mom told Wendy’s dad sadly.

That evening Drew’s dad got a text with a picture Drew had taken of himself and one of his friends at dinner. Their bow ties were hidden by plastic bibs meant to keep bits of delicious crab meat from ruining their rented suits. Wendy sent a picture to her mom that Natalie’s mom had snapped: Wendy and six of her friends standing in their formal wear in front of their impressive transportation. “Maybe they’ll see each other at prom and make up,” said Wendy’s dad, not really believing it himself.

Drew and his Crew rolled in to prom amid the cheers of many female underclassmen. Drew enjoyed the adulation, but had never really been interested in dating any of the girls that were supposedly “in love” with him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in girls, it was just that none of those girls were interesting. He spotted Wendy’s group of friends gossiping at a table near the refreshments. They were hard to miss, since they were all dressed in different colors of the same dress: a gauzy, Disney fairy-like affair. The girl in the pink dress was missing, though. He wandered over to get some punch.

“She should just come inside,” Natalie was saying. “It’s not like she isn’t going to have a good time, just because stupid Luke decided not to show up.”

Drew found Wendy trying not to cry on her phone or her dress. She was sitting on the step outside the door she had stomped through on their first day of school. He sat down next to her.

She gasped and glared at him. “What do you want?” she asked scornfully.

“I…” he began. “It was the first day of school and I was nervous and I wanted people to like me. I’m sorry.”

Wendy’s eyes went to the spot on the sidewalk where she had lain in humiliation years ago. “It’s a little late for that now,” she said, carefully wiping tears from her face in an attempt to avoid ruining her makeup.

She flinched when Drew kissed her knee. More tears found their way down her cheeks when he said, “Are you okay, Wendy?”

After staring at one another for a moment, Wendy could no longer hold back her sobbing, and threw her arms around Drew’s shoulders, pouring out all her woes of a cheating boyfriend who had just informed her he couldn’t come to prom because he was going out on a date with someone else.

When Wendy calmed down a bit, Drew helped her up. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll dance with you.”

Twenty minutes later the pair were spotted by the math teacher. “Is that Drew Hopkins slow dancing with Wendy Andrews?” he asked the girls’ tennis coach. “I thought they hated each other!”

“There was definitely no love lost between them,” the coach agreed. “I wonder what happened.”