Page 12 of Happiness for Beginners

“And he makes me crazy. He doesn’t make you crazy? The way he loses his keys? The way he never arrives anywhere on time? Or finishes what he starts? Or keeps a promise?”

“Not his strong suits,” Jake said. “True.”

“But you’ve been best friends for five years.”

“Six.”

“Why?”

Jake thought about it. “He has other good qualities.”

I knew he did, of course. But I couldn’t call them up at the moment. “Like?”

“Like he is hands-down the funniest person I have ever met.”

I frowned. There was nothing funny about Duncan. “That can’t be right,” I said.

Jake shrugged. “Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard, my lunch comes out my nose. Once it was a full-length spaghetti noodle.”

I pushed away that visual to scan back for a memory of Duncan making me laugh, ever. “Duncan never makes me laugh.”

“That’s because you’re always mad at him.”

“Not true! There are lots of times when I’m not mad at him. I’m not mad at himmost of the time,in fact.”

“As long as he’s nowhere near you, you mean.”

He had me there. “Fair enough.”

He smiled. There went those dimples again.

“You seem to get along very well with him, though,” I said, shifting the focus.

He shrugged. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“So you picked Duncan?”

“He picked me, actually.”

I hadn’t known that.

“He dared me,” he went on. “He bet that I couldn’t throw a Ping-Pong ball against the side of the gym and catch it in my mouth.”

“And could you?”

“I could.”

“And did you?”

“I did.”

“That’s how you became friends? On a dare?”

He nodded. “Sure. I can never resist a dare. Plus, he offered to teach me how to juggle.”

“I didn’t know Duncan could juggle.”

“He can’t. But by the time I figured it out, it was too late. We were already pals.”

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