“What if I just want to?” asked Penny. “What if I want to start fresh with someone new? What if I want to be different? Don’t I have that right?”

The cold hand of dread felt its way down my spine as Penny’s words echoed over and over in my head. With a little snip snip, could I be cut out of her life just as easily? When she talked about starting over, it was hard not to feel like she was shedding our friendship like a snake that had outgrown its skin.

Penny put the bottle to her mouth and took a deep swallow, buying me the time to collect my racing thoughts. Her silence made me feel paper-thin. It was just summer, but she was already thinking about fall. About being someone else in fall, someone who wasn’t recognizable as my best friend or Chad’s girlfriend. In that moment, she reminded me so much of one of the paper dolls we’d played with as children. Her mom had bought a book of them for us, sweet-faced dolls punched out of pages, who could be altered with just a change of outfit into someone new.

In the distance I heard the dull thuds of stroller wheels bumping over the pier. A seagull’s caw as it swooped over the water and landed with nimble grace on a support beam. The sound of water cresting at the bow of a boat slicing through the stillness.

Penny touched the cold bottle to my knee. “So? Will you? Please?”

I couldn’t say yes to her. There was no way. I ignored the thing in my stomach. Chad was our friend. Having this incredibly awkward discussion with him on her behalf would feel too much like us versus him. It was fine if Penny wanted to start college single, but I didn’t want to choose sides.

It wasn’t like when we were kids. It had been easy to be the mediator then, to fix whatever had cracked before it actually broke. When you had two best friends, it was just something you had to do if you didn’t want to be torn between them. I didn’t want to feel the pressure of having to choose. We’d never really had this conversation, but I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed anyway. I had never wanted to pick one of my best friends over the other. And yet here I was.

“Chicks over dicks,” said Penny.

In this situation, it wasn’t him who was the dick.

I rubbed the side of my nose, resenting her easy assumption that I was on her side. It wasn’t that I wasn’t, exactly, but I wasn’t her henchwoman, either. It felt dirty and grubby to do her work for her. Not looking at her, I mumbled, “Right. Yeah. I know.” I felt like it was expected of me.