Friend Is Not a Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft Read Free Book Online

“I stopped by Emma’s on the way home,” I said defensively, glancing down the hall toward the empty kitchen. “Where’s Sarah?”
    “Out back with your mother. She says the garden is falling apart.”
    For some reason, that irritated me. Who was Sarah to say that the garden was falling apart? And so what if it was? What had she expected, that we would all become expert horticulturists to make up for her absence? Screw the garden, I felt like saying. I didn’t know why I was so upset, but I found myself wishing we’d blacktopped the backyard and outlawed gardening altogether, in any form, period.
    Dad leaned back in his chair. “Hen, what do you see yourself doing when you graduate from college?” he asked, peering at me over the rims of his glasses.
    The question caught me off guard. “What do you mean?”
    He nodded toward the bass slung across my back. “Do you see yourself being a professional musician?”
    I didn’t answer right away. Dad almost never asked about my plans for adulthood. Any rare discussion of my future usually occurred at mealtimes and was pretty much limited to Dad’s insistence that I give up vegetarianism. (“You don’t want people not to trust you,” he’d told me in one of his more memorable non sequiturs—as if honesty and, say, hamburger,were inextricably linked.) Obviously, this peculiar line of questioning had something to do with Sarah’s reappearance; I just wasn’t sure how.
    “I don’t know,” I said finally. “Why do you ask?”
    “I suppose I’d just like to know how seriously you take playing the bass,” he said.
    “ You’re the one who bought me that great bass rig,” I replied, feeling defensive again. “I have to take it pretty seriously, right?”
    “Do you see yourself applying to a music school, like Juilliard, or that one in Boston…?” He tapped his chin.
    “Berklee?”
    “Yes.”
    I glanced up the stairwell, wishing I were upstairs already. “I don’t know. Probably not. You have to pass an audition to get in. I don’t think I’d qualify.”
    “Do you think taking bass lessons with Sarah’s friend might help?”
    I laughed. Dad’s pensive expression didn’t change. “Um, I doubt it,” I said. “You know, I really don’t have to take lessons with him if you don’t want me to. I’ll look for some summer tutors first thing tomorrow.”
    “The time for finding summer tutors was back in March,” Dad said.
    I kept quiet, not wanting to get into another argument about what should have been done in March, especially during what Emma now calls my Lost Weekend. Dad had been invitedto attend a freelancer’s conference in Palm Beach, Florida (fun!) and Mom decided to tag along. Before they left, they charged me with a) finding summer tutors to help get my math and science grades back up, b) doing my laundry, and c) weeding the garden. The date of the conference was March 23, which coincidentally happened to be Sarah’s birthday. Unfortunately, being left home alone for this conspicuously uncelebrated occasion depressed me so much that I sat in front of the TV for two days straight—not only accomplishing none of my appointed tasks but also allowing an ant problem in our kitchen to go unchecked. The exterminator ended up costing more than $400. Mom and Dad’s subsequent freak-out marked the first time Mom threatened to burn my socks, in fact.
    Dad exhaled deeply. “If these bass lessons are legitimately helping you achieve your goal of being a professional bassist, it’s worth the risk,” he said.
    “The risk?” I repeated.
    “Sarah and her friends…Well, they’re technically fugitives until certain legal matters get straightened out. That’s all I can tell you. And aiding and abetting criminals is not something I generally condone; but, like I said, I’m willing to let the circumstances slide for the time being. God knows I’ve let a lot worse slide this past year.”
    I slung the bass case off my back and propped it up