Page 17 of Mr. Principal

Piper rolled her eyes, grabbed a pretzel from the table and tossed it into her mouth. She wasn’t even done chewing as she said to us. “You two suck. Like a lot. I need new friends.”

“You love us,” Carter said, also helping himself to pretzels.

She grinned. “You’re right. And I’ve missed you guys. It’s so good to be home. And it’s so great that we’re all here together. We haven’t all lived in one place since college.”

Piper had joined the Peace Corps right after college. She had served in Bolivia and then made her way around Latin America for five years, working with various nonprofits and NGOs. Now she was running a very profitable translation services business online, so she had finally decided to come back home.

It’s funny that both my closest friends had traveled the world and lived in different countries, leading exciting lives, while I hadn’t even held a job in nearly a decade.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so hot. And then I felt ridiculous. They were my friends. And it had been me who had let that friendship falter. Piper had invited me to join her on a trip or to visit her countless times, even before Meredith had been born. I’d declined them all. And then afterward, when she and Carter would meet up somewhere in a foreign country, they always tried to convince me to come visit and I never did.

I understood that life sometimes happens. Sometimes friends fall out of touch. But we hadn't fallen out of touch. I hadn’t prioritized my friendships and had been lonely as a result.

“You know, we should all get together for lunch.”

“Tacos Tuesday like we used to do?” Carter asked with a smile.

I was about to groan and mention that salsa gave me bad heartburn now, but I didn't want to sound like the old lady I felt I was.

“You're on,” I said. “You in, Piper?”

“Yep.”

The magician appeared not so magically next to us.

“My time’s up but I don't mind sticking around.”

“Off the clock?” Piper asked flirtatiously.

“Anything for you, birthday girl,” he said with a charming smile.

I looked at Carter and he looked at me. The other two were too into each other to notice as we slithered away.

“Well, he seems nice.”

Carter shrugged. “Better than her falling for a clown.”

“Agreed.”

The noise level of the party had increased to a kind of deafening roar.

“I think I need a little air,” I shouted to Carter.

“Me too,” he said, tucking my elbow in his and leading the way.

I didn’t know Piper knew so many people. There were at least thirty people there now and only a few faces I recognized. I shouldn’t have been surprised because, as they say, Piper never met a stranger.

We made our way to a little bench in her front yard and I sat down. Carter stayed standing and leaned against a tree.

Surreptitiously, I looked at him. I remembered back in college how I would be stressed out about exams and he would take me to go get a burger and watch some wacky foreign film. And I thought about how he always let me hang out with him and his parents whenever family day happened on campus.

My parents had always been too busy to show up. And the one time that they did show, they spent most of their time criticizing me for some imaginary slight.

Carter’s parents had been the exact opposite of mine. His parents, although divorced, were a unified front. They were super supportive, and both had remarried so their partners were also pretty great. For family day at school, Carter never had to worry about who wouldn’t show up. Both sets of parents with their new spouses always did. I joked with Carter that his two sets of parents seemed more like polygamists than anything else since they all got along so well.

Carter had said it had taken years for them to reach that point. I’d marveled at them, not knowing that years later I would be struggling to do the same. I wasn’t at the point yet where I could happily hang out with Becca and Tom and not let it bother me.

Just thinking about co-parenting made me exhausted. I stretched and let out a big yawn. Suddenly, I was tired.