Best Friends (Until Someone Better Comes Along) by Erin Downing

didn’t think I was criticizing Bailey’s clothes.
    â€œSecond,” Bailey said. She paused to think. “I have amajor, major crush on Brennan, and am having a seriously hard time hanging out with him without freaking out every second. He had this piece of melty marshmallow stuck to his upper lip when we were making s’mores at the bonfire the other night, and I literally almost licked it off him. Then I realized it would have totally creeped him out, having this random girl in a dirty tank top lick his face like a dog. So I backed off. Can you imagine? If I’d actually licked him, I mean?”
    Ava and I both laughed. “That one is totally obvious,” Ava said.
    â€œTruth!” I said. “I really hope you come up with something better for the last one. So far yours are way too easy!”
    Bailey narrowed her eyes and said, “Okay, try this one: I was a surprise.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘a surprise’?” Ava asked, pushing her hair away from her face. I’d come to find it sort of charming, the way Ava’s hair always slipped down over her face. While we were dancing one day, little pieces kept flying all over the place in front of her eyes and into her mouth. That’s when she told me how she’d been trying to grow her bangs out for more than a year, but she’d made the critical error of trying to trim and shape them herself between cuts. Now, her hairfell over her eyes all the time and no matter what she did, it refused to cooperate. I had loaned her one of my headbands, but she always forgot to wear it. She said it was a little stupid to accessorize at the lake, and I had to agree.
    Bailey shrugged. “My parents were done having kids. I guess they only ever wanted one, and they had my perfect brother, and then— surprise! —four years later, Mom found out she was pregnant with me.” Bailey smiled smugly at us. “Do I tell the truth, or am I lying?”
    Ava and I looked at each other. “I think that’s a lie,” I said. “There’s no way your mom would have told you you were a surprise, even if it was the truth. It’s like she was telling you you were an accident, and that’s kind of awful.”
    â€œAha!” Bailey said, pointing her finger in the air. “It’s the truth! I was one hundred percent surprise. Surprise kid number two. Moi! ”
    â€œHow did that even come up in casual conversation?” I asked, incredulous. “You were just sitting around the breakfast table one day, and your mom said, ‘Hey, Bailey, pass the Cheerios, and by the way, we never wanted a second kid—you were a huge surprise. La-di-da, let’s all have some hot chocolate and celebrate’?”
    Bailey laughed. “No, it wasn’t like that! I can’t evenremember how it came up, actually. But my mom and I are pretty honest with each other, so I guess she just must have told me sometime.”
    I shook my head, still in shock that Bailey was being so casual about it. Maybe it seemed crazy to me, because I knew if my mom had told me something like that, it would have come across in a totally nasty way. She would have saved it up for the middle of some war, when she really wanted to hit me hard. She would not have been able to say it in a mother-daughter-bonding, we-all-love-each-other-now sort of way. “My mom and I are pretty honest with each other too,” I said. “But in our house, ‘honest’ just means we totally slam each other and she snaps at me all the time.”
    Bailey frowned. “It really wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t hurt my feelings or anything, since my mom was really nice about it all. Mom kind of goes overboard reassuring me that I’m very wanted now, so I don’t feel less loved or something. Apparently, as soon as she saw my feet on an ultrasound she was convinced I was a good idea.” She held one of her feet in the