Page 66 of Changing the Playbook
“Same thing when it comes to you.” Fabric rustles on her end, the surefire sound of Ally settling in for a long conversation. “You only deep-clean when you’re about to snap. Remember finals week sophomore year? You reorganized your sock drawer by color gradient at three in the morning.”
“The sock thing was practical,” I protest, finally dropping the sponge into the sink.
“You were freaking out. Just like you’re avoiding something now.” Her voice softens. “What’s really going on, Soph?”
I lean against my freshly sanitized counter and feel my defenses crumble. This is Ally—the girl who covered a guy’s car with whipped cream spelling “world’s smallest penis” when he spread rumors about me, who held my hair back when I drank too much after bombing my first college midterms…
The girl who knows me better than anyone, who now lives hours away.
“It’s complicated,” I sigh.
“Isn’t it always with you? Come on, spill. I haven’t heard from you since you moved to Jersey and I’m dying to know what’s happening in Sophie Land.”
The bleach fumes must be getting to me, because my eyes suddenly sting so bad I feel like I might cry. I’ve missed her so much. We were inseparable at Michigan for years, and moving away from Ally was the hardest part about dropping everything to come here.
“Well, Mom’s better, at least compared to when she was first diagnosed,” I start, moving to open a window. “But she’s probably pushing herself too hard. And I can’t even suggest she should maybe rest without everyone acting like I’m trying to bubble-wrap her and roll her into storage.”
“Still the family watchdog, huh?”
“Someone has to be,” I mutter. “Dad certainly isn’t concerned enough.”
“And how’s the little squirt?”
A genuine smile breaks through at the mention of Hazel. “Objectively perfect, as always. She’s got one hell of a social calendar—soccer, dance, gymnastics, and now she wants to add choir—because apparently being triple-booked wasn’t challenging enough.”
“And subjectively?”
The perceptiveness catches me off guard. “I worry she’s burying complicated feelings about Mom’s illness. She acts like everything’s normal, like Mom collapsing at her soccer game was just a blip, not something that fundamentally changed our lives.”
“Kids are resilient,” Ally says. “Maybe she’s just processing differently.”
“Maybe.” I don’t sound convinced, even to myself.
“And your dad?”
“Dad is…” I search for the right words. “We had this whole thing where he told me to back off about Mom’s health.”
“So that’s everyone,” Ally says after a moment. “Except you haven’t mentioned the guy.”
I nearly drop the phone. “What guy?”
“Oh, honey.” Ally’s voice drips with knowing amusement. “I’ve known you since freshman year of high school. I know all your tells. And buried in your voice is the unmistakable sound of a woman with a crush. Sophie Elizabeth Pearson, you’re going to tell me everything.”
“That’s not even my middle name,” I scoff, my cheeks heating despite the fact that she can’t see me.
“I know, but it sounded authoritative.” I can practically see her smirking. “Stop deflecting and dish. Who is he?”
I slump onto my couch, defeated. If I don’t confess, she’ll find some more torturous method of extraction—like the time she threatened to read my seventh-grade diary entries aloud at lunch unless I admitted I’d kissed Jason Miller at Emily’s party.
“Fine. Yes, there’s a guy. His name is Mike, and yes, I like him, but things can never go anywhere, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Ah, the famous Sophie Pearson self-denial. Tell me why it’s doomed before it starts this time.”
“I’m not—” But the protest dies because she’s right. I’m already killing possibilities before giving them air to breathe.
“So,” Ally says, adopting her interrogation tone, “is he cute?”
“That’s irrelevant,” I mutter, moving to put away my cleaning supplies.
