The Six Rules of Maybe

hear my stories or support my problems or give ? We’d been best friends since the fifth grade, when she had had that operation to fix the bones in her knees. Or something like that, the details escaped me—we were eleven. She was in a wheelchair for months, and then on crutches, and it was me who wheeled her around and fetched her lunch tray and carried her books and kept her company at recess when everyone else played.I was the one who for years afterward listened to her problems and helped her out of situations and into other ones—I even wrote that note she gave to Geoff Standish in middle school, declaring her love. Maybe I should have charged an hourly rate. Minimum wage times all of the hours I’d been her friend. People like me were made for people like her. Maybe I was having an epiphany too.
    I could hear Nicole breathing. “I just want to say, any person who would do what you did is not what I would consider a friend.”
    “And what did I do? What exactly did I do?”
    She let out a disgusted sigh, the one that’s somewhere between a cough and a choke, when it sounds like you’ve got a revolting thought caught in your throat. “I think you know full well, Scarlet.”
    “I talked to someone who wanted to talk to me. I don’t think you have a relationship with Jesse that requires actual loyalty.”
    “I have one with you that requires loyalty.”
    I stumbled. For a moment I had no idea if she was right or not. But something was building in me, too, my own momentum. Hayden and Juliet, and Ally Pete-Robbins and Clive Weaver, and the Martinellis’, and now the threat of Dean Neuhaus, of Mom and Dean Neuhaus forever and ever … Anger was there, suddenly, sitting right at the surface. The kind of anger that explodes things. “You have a relationship with him in your mind. That’s all. It’s not even real.”
    “It’s real to me. My feelings are real.”
    “You think he should like you simply because you want him to. You want him to, big deal. It doesn’t work like that. Other people get a say . You can’t just force your way onto someone else.”
    She started to cry. Great. Great! I didn’t have a chance now. So much for anger! So much for speaking your mind! “I can’t believe how mean you’re being.”
    My will and my fury were shoved aside by guilt. It was that easy. I could feel the anger there, turned down to a sudden simmer, but the guilt had gotten bigger and louder. “I’m sorry, Nicole.” I wasn’t a mean person. Hurting anyone was the last thing I ever wanted.
    I tried again. “It’d be like saying I have to hate who you hate, or …” Wait. I did have to hate whom she hated. We stopped being friends with Ashley Brazlen when Ashley didn’t invite Nicole to her sleepover when we were fourteen.
    “I just, I think …” She was crying hard now. I felt like shit. “I’m sorry, okay?”
    “I talked it over with my mom, and I think we need to stop doing things together for a while. You can’t just let people think they can stomp all over your feelings.”
    “What?”
    “I think our friendship is over,” she said.
    I was stunned. “Nicole, wait …” I mean, we’d been friends for years, no matter what. It was practically like your sister saying she wouldn’t be your sister anymore, or your mother or your father …
    I felt a little panicky. I didn’t want her to just go off and leave. It seemed suddenly very, very important that she not. All of my earlier bravery turned to dust. “Please,” I said.
    But I heard only dead air—no breathing, no fuzzy telephone background noise of traffic or televisions. Only the quiet that meant that someone was gone.
    That night, I called Jasmine. I wouldn’t ordinarily have called Jasmine, but I did. I was unsure and abandoned and my conscience was bothering me, and if Jasmine was on my side, it might mean that none of those feelings was necessary. Jasmine didn’t answer—I got her chirpy voice mail and I didn’t leave a message. I called Kiley.No answer. And then I did something else. I called Erin Redfly, this girl I used to be friends with in the sixth grade. We had nothing in common anymore—she was a volleyball player and was always traveling to far-off cities for some kind of tournament that would get written about in the Parrish Island Courier . Her picture would be there sometimes, her body extended and her arm raised as she reached to spike the ball. My only experience with volleyball was in ninth grade PE, when