None of the girls knew how to break the silence. Like clockwork, they looked toLizzie, waiting for her to make the first move, but she sat just as tongue-tied as the rest of them. Of all the times Lizzie could retreat— let someone else take the leap of faith— she chose now? Her timing was almost laughable, but you had to cut her some slack; she was planted closest to Margot- not an envied front-row seat.

     Schuyler, for one, was happy to be nestled in the corner at a moment like this. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but she was pretty sure the quiet was edging on awkward, and Schuy didn’t do well with silence. If they were in the car, she needed music; if class discussion lulled, leave it to Schuy to chime in some word-vomit to fill the void; if a conversation hit a wall, she had 6-10 fun facts on hand at all times— her “small talk CPR.” Schuyler didn’t know why, but she could never sit in silence. She had always been that way.

      Well, until now. With a few short sentences, Margot had dug a hole that even Schuyler couldn’t chit-chat her way out of, though she feared that fun facts would be useless here. Schuy could feel time ticking. She looked next to her at Anna, who stared at the ground as she bit her lip, turning it white.

     Schuyler nudged Anna’s arm with a sense of panic that she tried, unsuccessfully, to conceal as she gawked at her friend, desperate and dumbfounded. With Schuy’s eyes screaming, “What the hell do we do?” Anna scraped the depths of her brain for the answer that she, too, craved, but came up empty-handed. She shook her head apologetically before turning away from Schuyler on the corner bean bag seat. Maybe this problem was finally out of her league- something she couldn’t fix for Schuy, or for any of them.

     Schuy huffed at Anna’s turned back and, stealthily, shifted her eyes to peek at Margot. If you hadn’t been in Margot’s room for the past five minutes, in which things went from Parker leading the group in a giggly game of “Kiss, Marry, Kill” to crickets and upset stomachs, you might think Margot wasn’t real. Propped up against the ornate velvet upholstered headboard, she seemed more like a doll— distant and stoic— than a live 13-year-old girl who just dropped the bomb of the century on her friends. Unlike Schuyler, Margot didn’t seem to mind the silence. As the girls scrambled for the perfect way to fill it, Margot remained the portrait of unbothered patience, appearing oddly at peace with the news she unleashed. News that, for the rest of the room, set off a giant menacing vacuum that slurped up every ounce of the laughter from Margot’s house, leaving the girls to deal with the dismal aftermath.

     Schuyler couldn’t help but wish, a tiny bit, that the vacuum had sucked her right out of the room. She didn’t care where it decided to plop her as long as it wasn’t here— this moment in time. Bring her to California, or Brazil, or the Renaissance, and she would still be better off than she was suffocating in the silence here and now.

     Mistakenly believing that, by now, Lizzie would be ready to charge into battle, Schuyler peeled her gaze away from the unsettling sight of her stiff, yet fragile, porcelain shell of a friend and focused in on the group’s suddenly not-so-fearless leader. Still, not so much as a murmur had escaped Lizzie’s lips. She sat in her “usual” spot at the end of Margot’s bed— only now, with her back firmly turned toward the girl. If only acting like she was invisible could make this all go away. But Lizzie knew if she turned around, she would have to say something, and outspoken as she usually was, Margot’s news had left her at a loss for words. Worse, she was pretty sure that her body was rejecting the thought of speaking. Maybe she was allergic. Her throat was growing itchy and hot— burning like someone struck a match inside her mouth. Lizzie suddenly feared that if she opened up, she wouldn’t have any words, only fire. She was angry, and not just about what Margot said, but also (as embarrassing and terrible as it was) at Margot. They had gone to the mall together on Tuesday after school, soccer practice on Thursday, and saw a movie yesterday. Why was she just telling her now? Beyond this week, how long had she kept this from her? Why— how— could she keep this from her? Lizzie didn’t think they did secrets, and while she was trying not to be mad about this one, everything about it made her burn. So, as shitty as she knew it was after what Margot said, Lizzie kept her back turned on her best friend since first grade and stared at the wall in silence. God, the silence. Was it really still silent?

      Margot wondered if, in some ways, their silence would never end. If they would always be this way around her— hesitant, gentle. And not just her friends, but everyone else too. Her mom had already started acting like a particularly forceful gust of wind would be enough to knock her off her feet. Not that her dad was any better— convinced that any problem could be solved if you threw enough money at it. He already had Margot lined up for two weeks’ worth of opinions with every specialist willing to take his Amex on the East Coast. And she didn’t even want to imagine what school was going to be like. If Lizzie couldn’t even look her in the eye how would everyone else treat her? But she couldn’t deny the relief she felt getting it off her chest.

      As she restlessly swung her legs off the edge of the bed, Lizzie felt her signature red toenails nails graze the wispy ponytail strands below that she knew could only belong to Parker James. On the shaggy carpet to the left of the bed— laying on her stomach with her days of the week socks trailing close behind— Margot had stopped Parker’s monthly dose of “hard-hitting reporting,” courtesy of Lizzie’s mom’s Cosmopolitan Magazine, dead in its tracks. They had been snatching the monthly subscription from right under Lizzie’s mom’s nose for four years. Lizzie truly had a gift, and the girls had no doubt that a future in high-profile bank heists was hers if she wanted it. Slowly closing the magazine, Parker joined in the uncertain silence. She wasn’t sure what she could offer other than the horoscope predictions she had just gotten from page 18, and she had a feeling that Margot didn’t want to hear that Geminis should “face their challenges head-on” this February.

      Parker knew she should be focusing on Margot, but she couldn’t fight off the horoscopes still swirling through the back of her mind— it was who she was. It certainly didn’t help that her February horoscope revealed that “love was just on the horizon.” Reading the room, she decided to keep the glorious workings of the stars to herself, and if there was a “Friend of the Year” award, Parker felt pretty good about her odds because this was no easy feat. The love prediction was enough to make her nearly explode from excitement on any day, but with the Cupid’s Choice dance only two weeks away, Parker couldn’t help believing that Cosmo was prepared to deliver resident 7th-grade hottie Wes Butler to her on a silver platter. The corners of Parker’s mouth began to curve into a giddy smirk at the thought of dancing the night away with Wes and his dreamy hair, but her bliss quickly transformed into knots of guilt pulsing in her gut. Some “Friend of the Year” she was, thinking about a boy at a time like this.

      Still curled up in the bean bag chair, Anna— through watery eyes— caught sight of a frame that had fallen from Margot’s bookshelf. She picked up the photo and flipped it over. It was an arts and crafts project Margot had clearly done at school years ago. Purple popsicle sticks whose color had faded from the sun peeking through Margot’s curtains bordered the picture of Lizzie, Schuyler, Margot, and Anna. Anna remembered that photo. It was the one of all of them at Frankie’s Pizza after the first day of third grade. Parker hadn’t even moved to town yet. Anna traced the stick-on gems along the bottom popsicle stick and smiled. In big, bedazzled letters, it read: “SLAM 4EVER.” SLAM— for all their initials, they thought they were so clever. And Margot had kept it all these years. Anna clutched the photo to her chest— they were forever.              Schuyler knew they couldn’t sit in silence all day. They needed to speak up. Reaching over to tap Anna’s back, she noticed her unsteady breathing— the jagged contractions of her spine as she buried her face in the beanbag. It was jarring, Schuyler had never seen Anna cry. Now that she thought about it, Parker was the only one of her friends that she had ever seen cry. When her grandpa died, they all went to the services, and Parker nearly squeezed the life out of Schuyler as she wrapped her arms around Schuy’s neck and plopped her head on her shoulder, letting out what Schuy could only describe to her mom on the car ride home as “truly sad cries.” She wasn’t uncontrollably snotty-gross sobbing, but you could tell her tears came from deep down.

     Schuy had never seen any of her friends like that before. Now, here was Anna, and she could feel that same sense of sadness coming from her, and she didn’t know what to do. Did Anna want a shoulder too? Or did she want to face this alone? Schuyler hoped she didn’t want to brave it alone because if what Margot said was too much for Anna to handle, the rest of them were screwed. They were going to need each other.

      As she contemplated Anna’s silent sobs, Schuyler suddenly became aware of her dry cheeks. Should she be crying? She had been so busy searching for something to say that she hadn’t even thought to. Schuy frantically swiveled her head toward the bed. Lizzie’s fire had become water, too. Even Parker’s Cosmo cover was stained with shame showers. And here she was— apparently an unfeeling desert. She clenched her hands in fists and scrunched up her face, unsuccessfully trying to summon tears; her friends made it look so easy.

     She needed Margot to know she cared, waterworks or not. Schuyler knew what she could and needed to do. It was time. With the others clearly out of commission to break the silence, the duty seemed to fall upon her, whether she wanted it or not. Schuy figured even if she fumbled, any words had to be better than the symphony of silent sniffles that was currently booming.

      Schuyler racked her brain for sentences, words, syllables, anything, but it was like she was playing Scrabble. Everything was a jumble, and she didn’t have the letters and sounds. She was ready to speak, but with nothing to say— no words to put an end to this silence. But were there any? After all, what do you say when your best friend tells you they’re sick?