Rica Baptista: Llamas, Iguanas, and My Very Best Friend

ONE
One Small Thing

One small thing. I was only asking for one small thing. A pet.
   I didn’t even care what kind. A llama. An iguana. A potbellied pig. Actually, a baby pygmy goat would probably make me the most popular kid in the entire town. Not that I wanted to be the most popular kid, since I wouldn’t like being noticed that much. I just wanted to know that I could be the most popular kid—you know, if I wanted to.
   The real reason I wanted a pet had nothing to do with being popular, but I couldn’t tell anyone since I wasn’t supposed to know.
   “Any ideas for pet names yet?” asked Laini, making a free throw in my driveway without even trying. Laini Shanahan is my very best friend. Actually, she’s my only best friend, but if I had more than one best friend, she would still be my very best.
   “Maybe Frederica,” I answered.
   “Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s your name,” said Laini.
   “Yeah, but everybody calls me Rica,” I said. “I could say to all the world, ‘I, Frederica Baptista, hereby bestow the name Frederica onto my pet pygmy goat or maybe a baby chimp—I don’t know yet—but, whatever, I, myself, will hereby forth forever be known as just Rica.’”
   “What did your mom say about a pet?” asked Laini.
   “She said no almost faster than her mouth could open,” I answered. My shot hit the back-board and bounced off.
   “What about your dad?” asked Laini as she caught the basketball and passed it back to me.
   “He said no as quickly as my mother did. If I’d asked them together, they would have said no in perfect harmony.” I dribbled the basketball a few times and then passed it back to Laini.
   “Maybe they will change their minds,” said Laini as she tried to make a backward free throw. She missed, but that didn’t stop her from trying again.
   “Are you kidding? When I asked again—because it’s always worth trying again—they wrote out a list of reasons why I shouldn’t get a pet. They actually wrote it down. On paper! In pen! They can’t even erase any of it!”
   “What’s on the list?” she asked.
   I took a folded-up piece of paper out of my pocket. We sat on the porch steps as I read the list to Laini.
 
1.  How can we be sure you will clean up after a pet when you don’t even keep your own room clean?
 
   “They’ve got a point,” said Laini, tossing the ball from one hand to another.
   “Whose side are you on?” I asked. “Besides, my room is clean enough. It’s just a little messy. The messiness helps me to be creative. What do they call it? A creative muse?”
   “Well, unless your muse is going to get you a pet,” said Laini, “you might want to straighten up your room a bit.”
   “I guess that one would be pretty easy to take care of,” I said.
   “Okay, so moving on,” said Laini. “What’s number two?”

2.  A pet would be a distraction from your homework.
 
   “That one’s not fair. I always do my homework. Just maybe not right away,” I said. “And school doesn’t start again until September. That means I’ll have to wait until then to even try to show them that I’ll do my homework as soon as I get home. It will take forever to get a pet.”
   “Start doing some homeworky kind of things now. Read a lot, and maybe write some stuff. That’ll make you look homework-ready.”
   It’s good to have a best friend who knows how to strategize.
   “Okay, then, next one,” I said.
 
3.  Getting a pet is a long-term decision, and we’re not sure you’re ready to make that kind
of commitment.
 
   “I’ve kept them as my parents all of my life. That’s a huge commitment,” I said.
   “I don’t know if they would see it that way,” said Laini.
   “Okay, so how about the fact that I’ve kept you as a friend since kindergarten? That’s com-
mitment.”
   “That could work,” said Laini as she tried to spin the basketball on her finger. “What’s next?”
 
4.  Pets cost money. You don’t have any.
 
   Laini nodded and pointed at me. “They got you there.”
   “They kinda do,” I said. “But I could start saving my allowance. And maybe I could earn some money.”
   “I could help you earn some,” said Laini. “After all, it would kind of be like my pet, too. Except it would live here and you would take care of it. But I would come over and play with it.”
   “Sounds fair enough” is what I said out loud. Inside my head, I said, I wish that’s how it was going to happen. A secret I had overheard told me things were going to be different.
   I made myself focus on the last item on the list.
 
5.  You need to show you can be responsible first.
 
   “If I can take care of the first four items, then that means I’m responsible, right?” I said to Laini.
   “Very responsible.”
   “But this is going to be hard.”
   “Well, maybe you could come up with your own list instead,” said Laini.
   “My own list of reasons I shouldn’t get a pet?” I asked. That was a bizarre idea.
   “Come on, Rica, get your head in the game. You need a list of reasons why you should get a pet—but a list written from their point of view.”
   Like I said, it’s good to have a friend who knows how to strategize.
   “It’s time for us to get to work,” said Laini. “This is going to be fun.”
   “Sure will” is what I said out loud.
 It better be is what I said in my head since it could be the last thing Laini and I would ever get to do together.
   Earlier in the week, I had heard Laini’s mom talking—kind of whispering actually—on the phone. I had just gotten to their house and was still in the driveway when she walked out onto their side porch. I heard her say that she was glad they had finally found a house in Florida, just down the street from Grandma Shanahan’s new condo. I peeked around the corner of the house and saw that she had a big smile on her face. She said that Laini and her brother, Quinn, were going to be thrilled and that she and their dad were trying to decide the perfect time to tell them.
   My best friend was moving. Moving! And I couldn’t tell her because I wasn’t supposed to know.
   I’m not very good at making new friends, and until then I hadn’t needed to be. I had Laini. Being friends with her was easy-breezy, but now she was moving, and I had an icky-sicky feeling way down in the pit of my stomach. It felt like a giant knot of loneliness, and Laini hadn’t even moved yet.
   So, Laini moving to a whole other state was the real reason I wanted a pet. Actually, I didn’t just want a pet. I needed a pet.