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| HEIDI EMILY EUSEBIO-ABAD |
| My New Best Friend |
| THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS STORY. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. |
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| My name is Trisha. I’m an only child. When I was eight years old, at the start of summer vacation, my parents and I moved house from the big city to the suburbs. I cried when my mom locked the front door to our apartment for the last time. I cried to see my neighborhood friends lined up on the sidewalk, waving goodbye as our car drove off. I cried when daddy said that we didn’t have time to pass by the school for one last look. He made a right turn to the main highway leading out of the city. I must have fallen asleep in the car because when I awoke, the car had pulled into a small driveway beside a two-storey house which looked like the rest of the houses beside it. The following days were busy ones for all of us. We lived out of boxes for the first two days. Need a fresh change of clothes? Look in the box marked CLOTHES. Need to set the table for supper? The glasses are in a box marked FRAGILE, and the spoons and forks are in a blue plastic bag together with the kitchen towels. After a week, most of the furniture had been delivered and put in the right places. Most of the boxes had been emptied. By then, I could go out and explore the new neighborhood. Maybe even make new friends. Unfortunately, only a few houses were occupied. Most were locked up and the rest were unfinished shells of hollow blocks and concrete. By the second week, I was getting bored. I started to miss my friends. I missed the old apartment where all I had to do was sit on the front steps and I could already watch the kids playing on the sidewalk. At night, when there were even less cars passing by our street, my friends and I would play a game of patintero. I even learned how to bike just by going around in circles from one end of our street to the other end. One lazy, quiet afternoon, as I sat on the newly-cemented sidewalk that had hardened into a pale gray color, somebody finally walked up to me. “Care to go biking?” a friendly voice asked. I looked up at the person silhouetted against the afternoon glare of the sun. “Sure!” I replied too eagerly, maybe relieved that someone had come to ease my boredom. No long conversation followed afterward. The afternoon passed as we both took turns riding the two-wheeled bicycle around the block. She watched me ride easily away until out of view. Then I would reappear from the other end of the block and stop very smoothly right in front of the house. She, on the other hand, wobbled forward at first. The next day, my new friend brought an old set of Scrabble and a box of Junior Monopoly. We played Scrabble the whole morning. My friend would check out the spelling of some funny-sounding words in her pocket dictionary just to get high scores. I, on the other hand, beat her later at Junior Monopoly. There were some days when we would munch on newly-cooked french fries while watching cartoons. Twice, we caught an afternoon movie that squeezed the tears out of us. She sniffed and snorted at the same parts in the movie. Then, with eyes puffy from crying, my friend would laugh at her silliness. One time she asked to sleep over in my room so we could play beauty parlor. She rolled up my hair in huge curlers, painted gloss on my nails, and plastered avocado cream on our faces. We swapped boy stories and giggled at the mention of their names. “Tell me again about the boy who sent you paper roses at school,” I begged her. I found that story so exciting I could hardly wait to go back to school. Maybe some boy next door would send me flowers, too. Before I realized it, the summer was nearly over. I had gotten over my boredom and homesickness. I had a new house now… and a new friend. The thought of having a lot of new things happening to me in this new place changed all that. On our last weekend of the summer, my best friend decided to bake some cookies. “Let’s celebrate this really fun summer,” she said, smiling at me. While waiting for the cookies to bake, we helped my dad wash the car. It was fun spraying each other with cold water. “Hey…” daddy interrupted our game. “I smell something.” “The cookies!” my best friend gasped. She ran into the backdoor of the house, forgetting to wipe her soaked, squishy slippers on the mat. “Everything’s under control, daddy,” I said. “Mom’s got it.” That summer I found out that Mom could make a really good friend. |