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“Do you want a cookie, honey?”
Ocean didn’t look too sure.
Cookies were customary for pillow forts and movie nights. Mama always made a fresh batch, before she’d flip Disney on the TV; they’d be warm and gooey enough to melt in her palms, and Papa would always laugh, smearing the chocolate from her face and fingers with his licked thumb. They didn’t just taste good; they felt good.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Blackwood.”
But Constance’s new friend Ocean seemed kind of scared of cookies.
This was her first real sleepover, though. She had to have one. “They’re really good,” Constance assured, nodding vigorously, just to make sure she knew. “Mama makes them the best. Promise.”
Ocean shook her head, chewing a nail. “I, I want one. But…”
She got all mumbly, too quiet to hear.
Mama dropped down to one knee, lines drawn in her forehead, like they were when she was talking to loud guys who hadn’t had their coffee. “But what, sweetheart?” she asked, soft. “Are you allergic? You’re full?”
Ocean shuffled her feet, eyes wide, fists fudging with her skirt. “My mommy and daddy say if I eat processed sugars, I’ll be dead by the time I’m twenty-two.”
For a split second, Mom’s face got real dark.
Then, she shook it away. “No. No, baby,” she said, after a while. “They didn’t mean that.”
Ocean looked very surprised, like she didn’t know moms and dads could say things they didn’t mean. To be fair, this was news to Constance, too. “They didn’t?”
Mama nodded. “A little processed sugar never hurt anyone, sweet thing.”
Ocean’s shoulders fell with relief. “Okay. I don’t want to die,” she told her, very seriously. “Or else I can’t be Prime Minister.”
Mom chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll still get the chance.”
She grabbed a cookie from the tray—hot, fresh, melty—and Ocean’s fingers jumped back, just for a second, like it might bite her. But then, she pulled in a big breath, screwed her eyes shut, and took it.
Nothing bit her. She didn’t die.
“See?” said Constance. “It’s okay.”
Ocean peeled one eye open, then the next. She lit up bright as the sun.
“It is,” she marveled.
A second later, there were no more cookies. Constance shoveled hers into her mouth, followed fast by Ocean, who looked like her world just got ten times bigger.
When Mama, laughing even more than before, herded them into the bathroom and up on the stepstool to wash their faces, Ocean’s face popped up next to hers in the mirror.
A big smile came on her chocolate lips. “We’re matching.”
Constance snorted, some chips flecking her own grin. “We are.”
Mom had to come in to make them wash both of their faces. Constance didn’t want to.
* * *
“One cookie, please.”
When Mama came around with the tray, Ocean’s arm leapt up.
“Okay, my little cubs,” Mom said. “Peanut butter for you, Coco, and nut-free for you, Ocie.”
“Thamk-yhou,” managed Constance and Ocean over several mouthfuls of butter and sugar.
Mama let loose an airy chuckle. “How’s bracelet-making coming?” She set down the now-empty cookie vehicle to bend to her knees with a light oof. “Oh, wow. How pretty. B-F-F,” she read off the charms.
Ocean held hers high in the air, beads clinking and clacking. “It stands for Best Friend Forever,” she announced, loudly and proudly.
Something fuzzy and warm made a home in Constance’s chest. She looked at her own purple cord, curly and adorned with singing charms of all sorts; hearts and lollipops. Ocean picked those ones, and Constance picked Ocean’s; stars and rainbows, because she always seemed like she’d go far someday.
Still, no matter how far: “Together forever,” agreed Constance. Ocean looked over, and she smiled. Her eyes always went all crinkly when she did, which looked nice, Constance thought.
Mom’s face went soft. “Aww. Well, isn’t that sweet?”
She bent down and gave both of their heads of hair a good ruffle. Ocean giggled, her waves that Mama sometimes had to go and detangle in the sink making a frizzy red crown over her head. “It’s true,” she insisted, like it were the most obvious thing in the world. She held up her wrist for emphasis, beads jingle-clacking. “We are!”
Ocean was loud, Constance figured out from the second she watched her be the first to dart her hand up in class, when she screeched and hollered at the boy who was looking up skirts on the monkey bars, and now, when she fought to let the world know she had a friend forever.
Constance was quiet, a bunch of grown-ups always said, when they thought she couldn’t hear. She didn’t raise her hand, couldn’t ask boys not to touch her Barbies, or speak up loud enough to hear at snack time.
But Ocean did.
It was kind of nice to have someone who lent their voice to you, Constance found.
* * *
“What can I get for you, sweetheart?”
Ocean was rushing today. She’d kinda been doing that more, lately. Constance was rushing, too. To keep up.
She hurtled in from the backdoor today, yelping up the stairs when Constance had half a cinnamon-chip scone in her mouth and only the left scuffed loafer on her foot, and so here she was, having sacrificed breakfast for shoe, just to be on time. Just to have the chance to rush alongside her.
“Nothing today, Mrs. Blackwood,” said Ocean, a little breathless. She was toiling through her backpack, hands frantic, fast. It was always stuffed full, since junior high started. She didn’t seem to have half as much paper in there last year, but this year was turning out to be different. “I’ve got a history test in the morning, student council after school, and Father Markus finally said he’d talk to me about reviving the chamber choir. It could be good for presidential elections next spring.”
Mom drifted away from the display case, replacing the strawberry muffin she’d primed in a hand. Ocean hadn’t really been one for breakfast, lately, either. “What a busy bee you are,” Mom chuckled, but it was a little thin.
“No time to lose,” agreed Ocean. She seemed to find what she was looking for, tucked a clipped bundle of college-ruled pages away into her green Canadian History binder—color-coded, labeled. “Come on, Connie. I can’t be late! It’s unprofessional.”
Constance startled. “Yeah,” she managed to choke, scrambling out from behind the corner booth. “Right.” She couldn’t, after all, because it was.
As Ocean bustled past Mom lingering by the door, her hand didn’t reach to tousle her hair. Last time she did, Ocean shrieked something about needing to keep it straight. Her waves had been flattened down her back, rigid and taut and “neat,” she said.
Constance went to hurtle down the steps after her, but out reached Mom’s hand, to give her mane of curls a rifle. Straight, Ocean’s words echoed, in that second. Nice. Neat.
Abruptly, Constance ducked from Mom’s touch.
She looked back for the briefest of breaths, and kind of regretted it, because something indescribably sad was washed across her face.
“Love you,” Constance threw over one shoulder, a little limp, like that was enough apology. It probably wasn’t, but there’d be time to make it up to her later, she thought.
When Ocean wasn’t going to be late.
* * *
“What’s this?”
Ocean’s head snapped up with violent force. It felt like the first time Constance had seen her face in a hot minute, curtained by flaming hair and a neck bent over stacks on stacks of words over stationery, and for the first time, it was actually kind of a shock, almost.
There had been change happening, over a period of weeks and months and years, of course. But sometimes, it was just incremental enough. Sometimes, you were donning best friend-colored glasses long enough to still be seeing a girl who had The Little Mermaid as her favorite movie and just found out cookies couldn’t kill.
For the first time, though, Constance was looking at the someone who refused to admit she’d seen a Disney DVD in her life.
Her eyes were bagged, but still hard. “It’s coffee,” said Constance, no longer all that sure. The cup sleeve in hand slipped an inch. “I thought, it, it might help.”
“No.” Ocean got that sweetish look in her eye like she did when she thought Constance was the dumbest person on this planet Earth. Maybe she was. “What’s in it, sweetie. I mean, like, what did you put in it?”
“Oh.” Obviously. That was stupid. Her teeth, of their own accord, started to rip the skin from her lips, her fingers from her nails. “Um, I, I put some sugar. And, creamer—but, just, a little bit, and dairy-free, ‘cause I know you—”
“Are you crazy?”
Constance blinked. Was she? “I just thought—”
“Think of the extra calories,” Ocean said, appalled at the very notion. “I can’t drink this.” She used the tip of a finger to thrust the cup back in her direction, like even getting a drop of it on her skin might somehow give her Type Two, or whatever the hell she thought was going to happen. “But you can have it,” she tacked on, with another one of those sugary smiles.
Constance did, because Dad always said not to waste.
She never told her she kind of hated oat milk, though.
* * *
“You two look like you’re about to up and wither away.”
Those were the words out of Mom’s mouth that morning, and what followed was food, because of course it was. It was always food.
“Here, girls. Take this for the long drive.”
A brown crinkling bag of assorted breakfast pastries was thrust into Constance’s grip, and then they were promptly shepherded into the back seat of Dad’s decrepit SUV. He settled himself in the front, twisted his key in the engine, and Mom’s face appeared in the far window, along with her palm, waving along.
“Have fun at the Fair,” she called, muffled through glass. Then, a little quieter, “Be safe.”
“Bye, Mom,” said Constance, with some injected verve.
“We will!” added Ocean, quickly, correcting her lack of a promise.
And the car started moving.
Something about her wasn’t hungry, so Constance didn’t eat. Conversely, though, by some miracle, Ocean had a stale iced cinnamon roll in her two hands. Her fingers would pick at it like a raptor with a panic disorder, frenzied and erratic, fitfully stuffing crumbs of whatever few pieces were icing- and cinnamon-less between her teeth.
Dad drove, for another ten minutes. They twisted onto the highway, nothing but endless nothing, as it always was within a hundred kilometers of this stupid, stupid town. It was quiet for a while.
“Nervous for the competition, girls?” Dad tossed over a shoulder, once there was nothing to do but keep his foot on the gas.
Ocean jumped. She stopped her picking, but not before a particularly large wedge of roll splintered from the whole, crumbling everywhere on her pinafore. She pulled in a deep breath.
“We’ll win,” she assured, instead of an answer.
Constance didn’t give one, either. It was probably wrong.
Ocean spent the rest of the ride grooming bread from her skirt, until the sounds of chittering children and scraping metal announced the Fair’s arrival. When Constance was tugged out of the car, and Dad’s SUV crunched away over the gravel, the rest of the Choir was there waiting at the bandshell; kids whose names she might’ve totally known, if things were just a little bit different. She’d end up singing with them either way.
Throughout the singing, throughout the walking, throughout the food-frying and the fortune-telling and the ride-riding, one thought was loudest of them all.
I don’t want to be here.
But Constance would stay. She was just that kind of person, after all. And when her hand was trawled by Ocean across the fairgrounds, if she tried hard enough, she could imagine, for the smallest of seconds, it was recess, they were seven years old, and she’d rather be nowhere else.
That second was up, when the five of them shuffled in line, Constance handed over a loonie, and Ocean was glaring up at the tracks of a roller coaster.
At least I’ll get to ride the Cyclone.
* * *
“Who’s hungry?”
The door rasped open, and there they were.
There wasn’t ever an extended period of time in which they were not there, only ever leaving to put Jonah to bed or practice personal hygiene or get about a quarter of a night’s worth of sleep, but they were back.
“Mama, Papa,” Constance managed to croak, a smile creaking her lips upwards. The only thing that really sucked—well, apart from the life-complicating injuries and marginal psychological damage—was that the minute she’d just love to jump up, run twenty laps, shout from rooftops and grin until every every face muscle begged her not to about the fact that she was alive, was the convenient same minute she was currently bound to a St. Damien’s Health Centre gurney.
Still, none of it mattered. Nothing else mattered, except for the fact Constance would rather be nowhere but this crinkly old mattress, if it meant she were here at all.
“Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood?”
It was at that moment that Ocean stirred.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing she’d said those weeks ago, in the same instant they’d been able to peel open eyes and move limbs with the aid of morphine. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” she’d cried, and neither of them could turn their heads anywhere but up, but still Constance sobbed to the water stains on the ceiling, too, and even though it hurt like nothing else she stretched an arm between their beds to feel Ocean’s five cold, spindly fingers in hers, and the pain was secondary then.
Constance had the distinct feeling after that that they would both gladly and unashamedly watch every Disney movie known to man.
In the room they begged to share, Ocean sat up straight, with a little less difficulty than she was having last week.
“We come bearing gifts,” announced Dad, with that happy-sad smile that had been wrinkling his forehead with every visit. He lifted a basket high, and Mom performed some weird, jazzy gesture with her hands in a grand presentation.
It made Constance giggle, which still kind of hurt, but worth it.
Mom and Dad pulled up a set of those uncomfortably crappy hospital stools, right between the two gurneys. When they’d first visited, wordlessly, they went and pushed their beds just that little bit closer, so Constance could hold Ocean’s hand without her arm screaming. It was nice.
Mom set the basket on the bedside table, started to unfurl a well-loved picnic blanket, and in perfect tandem, Constance leaned in with Ocean, quietly curious.
Food. Processed sugar, more accurately; sweets of all sorts, Constance’s favorites—chocolate, cinnamon—and Ocean’s—lemon-poppyseed, pumpkin-spiced—all arranged in one glorious cornucopia.
“We thought you’d be sick of Jell-O cups and mashed potatoes,” hushed Mom, “but shhh. Don’t tell your nurses.”
Constance nearly cried then and there.
Maybe she did, just a little, Mom and Dad and Ocean alike all flailing around trying to soothe a sadness that wasn’t there, but no. No, she was happy. Never had Constance been so devastatingly happy to have the privilege of tasting sugar—Blackwood Café sugar—on her tongue.
She took a double-chocolate chip muffin and savored every bite of bittersweetness for all it was worth. Life was too fragile not to.
When Constance glanced over, though, Ocean’s hand was frozen over her half of the basket, and for a second, it looked like she wasn’t going to allow herself the same chance.
Then, she reached in, picked a scone, and ate.
From across what little distance there was between their two beds, Constance caught her eye.
Ocean, over half a mouthful of lemon poppyseed, smiled, small and shy.
Life was only going to get sweeter after this, Constance thought.
“Do you think we could make cookies tonight?”
Ocean’s voice yanks Constance back into the present.
There she is, leaned over the counter towards the tail end of business hours just to talk to her, casually pensive. The look she’s wearing grows ever so slightly concerned, possibly at the dumb one Constance herself is sporting. “What?” she splutters, similarly, dumb.
“Um,” starts Ocean, gently, “like, chocolate chip, or something. I thought it might be fun— Are you okay?”
Constance shakes her head, like she’s ridding it, of the dumb. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, totally, I’m cool,” she manages, only marginally more coherent.
Ocean doesn’t look wholly convinced. She frowns, softer than she’s ever been in years past. “Are you sure?”
“Surely sure,” Constance says, with more conviction, now, meaning it. “I was just, thinking.”
“About what?”
A lifetime’s worth of Ocean’s orders flashes across Constance’s mind’s eye just then; countless different iterations; young, old; some bitter, some sweet. All culminating to the best friend she has now; one big orbit on the axis from seven to seventeen, back where she started. Young, loud, and kind.
“Cookies,” answers Constance, looking back at her. “That’s a good idea.”
Ocean’s expression is wondering, for a breath, until it goes away. “Well, it is Disney Night,” she says, like this were just the most obvious solution in the world.
Constance grins.
She’s right. It is.