Zoe Whitaker

My Fridays consist of boy talk with Frongo. We meet at the pond at the edge of the Village of Teens and Frongo brings two iced chai teas for us to sip on- one human girl sized, and one in a sippy cup shot glass fit for a lady toad. Frongo pulls me off my lily pad and says, “Lisa, we’ve got trouble,” and I sigh a heavy toad sigh, because I know trouble means Wubble- Frongo’s jerkwad of an ex-boyfriend.
“Oh, Frongo. What could it possibly be this time?”
“Wubble’s been all over Jarmy! We broke up two weeks ago and its already rebound o’clock for him?”
“Whaaat? Wubble with Jarmy? Isn’t she like 5’1? She’s practically another tether toad like me!” Frongo laughs when I say this because she loves when I bully her competish’.
“Thats what I’m saying! Wubble’s really sinking his standards.”
“You must have done a number on him, sweetcakes.”
 “Truth sauce.”
 “Truth sauce.”
But the real truth sauce is that Wubble deserves Jarmy. They’re both plain ol’ regulars who aren’t worth a penny of Frongo’s sweet time. I could tell Frongo this, but that’s not what she needs. I could tell Frongo that none of the boys in the Village of Teens are worth her energy, and no one here is as good as her. I could tell her to just wait it out, enjoy the last six months she has before graduating to Grown Up City, and find love when these boys realize her worth. But, none of that will fix Frongo’s dilemma. With her eighteenth birthday fast approaching, our tether will end permanently, and Frongo will have to advance to a new world without me by her side. It doesn’t matter to Frongo if the boy that she enters adulthood with is as ugly as an earthworm, as long as she’s got company.
“Well... what ever happened with Strey?”
“Ugh! You know Strey! He was too preoccupied with his snail nail salon business to give me the time of day!”
“Typical.”
And typical it was! Ever since we were mere babies in Baby Cave, Frongo has been out of luck with love. I remember her first crush on Keekee ended with her peeing her pants and shoving dirt in his mouth. After Keekee, there was Prory. They were twelve and didn’t want to move to the Village of Teens without their first kiss. But after they smooched in the garden, marking Frongo’s big lip-locking milestone, Frongo found out she was not, in fact, Prory’s first kiss and he had been on a mission to kiss every girl in their learning group before their impending transition. That night, I braided Frongo’s baby blue hair as she cried over some punk named Prory (what kind of name is that!). It was the first of many boy talks between us, and each of them ended the same.
“Lisa, what would I do without you!” Frongo exclaims, both then and now. “You’re the bestest friend in the entire world.”
And just like that, the frustration melts away. I’d do a million more boy talks with Frongo, worrying our pretty little brains over the most boring people alive, just to make my BFF happy. When we finish our chai teas and toss the grass cups into the pond, Frongo tells me she has a special surprise for me back at her room so I hop in her linen tote bag, to swing along for the ride back into village.
Frongo’s room is on the fifth floor of the old moss covered Teen Tower in the middle of town. The room is one big circle, adorned with velvet furniture and gold little trinkets on her nightstand that glimmer in the sunlight. I pounce onto the windowsill to warm up that cold blood of mine.
“Your spots look so good today, Lisa!”
 “You really think?”
 Frongo confirms this by pulling out her purple plastic camera and snapping a pic of me all tangled up in the curtains. We laugh at the photograph- how the angle is all wrong and I’m blinking. But Frongo still smiles at the picture fondly and hangs it up next to all the other ones she’s taken of me: at the lake, the cafe, on a walk, and my personal favorite from when I fell asleep on her shoulder on the train ride over from Kid Town. My green and white skin is all bumpy from the cold train air, so I’m wrapped up in Frongo’s scarf and laying against her neck. Underneath the picture, she wrote “Lazy Lisa!” in orange marker. Frongo stares at the pictures longer than I do, and doesn’t stop looking at them as she speaks to me.
“I can’t believe we only have six more months.”
I can. Frongo’s grown a whole five inches since we moved here, her once empty room has filled with clutter, and these days she rarely wears her white Filas! It’s no surprise to me that her time as a teen is nearly up.
“Let’s make it the best six months of our lives.” I smile at Frongo, and she smiles back.
“That reminds me! Your surprise!”
“I hope its a car!”
Frongo laughs at me because my joke was hilarious. She pulls out a big cuckoo clock, painted in pink, blue, and green polka dots. In Frongo’s sloppy handwriting, it says “The Time We Have Left” right above the ticking clock. She places it on her nightstand, right where the patches of sun shining in the window illuminate the metal hands of the clock.
“Now where am I supposed to keep that? I’m already starting to get too heavy for my lilypad on my own!” Frongo laughs at my joke again.
“I thought we could just keep it here, silly!”
 “Hey! You said it was my surprise!”
 “It is! It’s a surprise for you, but a gift for both of us.”
 “Selfish!”
 “Lisa! I worked hard on this!” Frongo laughs some more, because she knows I’m only playing around.
 “Don’t worry, Frongo. I love it.”
 “I knew you would! I painted it blue for my hair, green for your spots, and pink because pink is awesome. This will be our constant reminder that our time together is precious and I am valuing every second of it.”
“Thank you, Frongo.” She pulls me up from the windowsill and into a warm hug.
“I’m going to miss you so much, Lisa.”

The next Friday, when we meet at the pond for boy talk, Frongo brings me a chai tea latte with dairy in it. This is absolutely ridiculous.
“What the heck, Frongo! You know I only drink oat milk!”
“Oh, so sorry, Lisa! I must have been distracted when I was ordering.”
I shrug it off and abandon the milked up tea in a nearby bush for some local, unsuspecting squirrel to indulge on.
“Worried about Grown Up City again?”
 “No, actually. There was some new barista... Reebo? You heard of him?”
 I tried racking my little brain for the name, but come up with nothing but dust.
 “You sure you don’t meant Ribby? Ribby’s tether toad talks nonstop about him. He’s got two different colored eyes?”
 “No, not Ribby! Ribby is weird, Lisa. His eyes were brown and his name was definitely Reebo.”
 “Don’t know a Reebo!”
“That’s so strangejuice. You know everyone!”
I do know everyone, which is why I’m hesitant when Frongo starts talking about how cute this mystery boy is. If I haven’t heard of him, how good can he be! You know what they say: If his toad doesn’t talk, the boy is cheap shlock.
But, despite my better judgement, what kind of friend would I be to Frongo to not trust her taste?
“You should talk to him again! You seem excited!”
“I am excited! Maybe I’ll go in for lattes again!”
“Just remember not to get dairy this time!”
 Frongo rolls her eyes.
Frongo does not remember. I hop behind her as she enters the coffee shop with a big nervous sweat stain on the back of her white shirt. Her feet stay glued to the tile at the door until I nudge her further in with my little tiny hands. She looks back at me and says “Lisa, I’m nervous! Don’t shove!” except with her face, not her words. I give her a face that says “Get over it! Talk to him!” and she rolls her eyes and says “I’m backing out!” with her eyebrows. I give her one last look: “You better freaking talk to him, you scaredy cat!” and one last shove with my sticky hands.
She stumbles a bit from the push, but recovers quite well, before standing face to face with the barista.
“Hi.”
 “Hi! Do you know what you want?”
 The first thing I notice about Reebo is how tall he is, which I’m sure caught Frongo’s attention. I know she likes a tall boy, but my problem is that its often easy to overlook every redflag when a boy’s gorgeous height is so distracting.
“Psst. Frongo! Don’t let his height distract you!”
“What?” Frongo turns back at me, irritated that I interrupted her conversation with the boy. “Lisa, why don’t you find us a table?”
“Okay. No dairy in my tea, remember?”
 “Yes! I remember! Go on!”
 I trot away in search of a booth in the sunshine, proud of myself for embarrassing my best friend. Frongo keeps up her awkward, teen flirting. She giggles every time he speaks, and looks down at her feet as she replies. After five minutes of this unbearable back and forth, Frongo runs to the table I’m seated at squealing with a paper in one hand, and a toad-sized iced beverage in the other.
“I. Got. His. NUMBER!” Frongo shrieks.
 “Oooo! Good for you, bebs! Did you remember no dairy?”
 “Sure did!”
 Frongo hands me the drink and I take a sip, coughing it out immediately. “This is COFFEE, Frongo!”

The cuckoo clock reads five months when I perch on Frongo’s windowsill, watching her destroy her room trying to pick out a date outfit. Frongo says he likes the color red, video games, and reading poetry about divorce, which makes her think that her outfit needs to show creative, artistic, yet bad girl don’t-give-a-what vibes.
“Frongo, why don’t you just wear that white dress with the funky neckline? Really show off that decolletage!”
“No, he’ll hate that! I should wear red because that’s his favorite color!”
“Come on, you love that dress! Don’t tell me you’re gonna change your style just to impress some jackrabbit!”
“Language, Lisa! He is not some...” She quiets into a whisper, afraid to curse out loud. “Jackrabbit...”
Poor, sweet, innocent Frongo. Afraid to throw a bad word around and afraid of what boys think of her.
“Frongo, if he’s as nice of a boy as you claim he is, then why should be so worried about disappointing him?”
Frongo sighs. She can’t answer because I’m right and I’m always right. Everyone knows that best friends only exist to be right all the time. I know all the things she’s afraid to admit she’s thinking. She thinks he won’t like her, won’t think she’s pretty enough, or casual enough, or funny enough. She thinks he’ll look at another girl that he wishes he took out instead, and she thinks he’ll hurt her just as bad as the last boys, or worse. But, Frongo won’t say she thinks this because Frongo wants to be confident, and self-assured. And, for the most part, she is! But, something about the potential for pain brings out the worst in a girl’s insecurities.
“You’re right Lisa. I’ll wear the dress, okay? You happy?”
She puts on the dress and I couldn’t be happier. It flows down her back effortlessly, and wraps her waist in the silkiest white cloth. Her hair is bright and blue against the neutral canvas on her body, highlighting her skin to look even deeper and richer in tan. Red was never her color, anyway. Not the way white is.
“Now promise me, Frongo. Promise that you will not lose yourself in this boy. You have nothing to be afraid of, girl!”
“Okay, Lisa!” Frongo rolls her eyes endearingly. “I promise I will not lose myself in this boy!”

Frongo loses herself in this boy. After the first date, there is a second, and a third, and a fourth. And the dates that started as dinners, and movies, and walks through the garden, turned to dates in his basement, watching football and listening to him practice guitar. Its the three month cuckoo clock countdown and boy talk on the pond is starting to get alarming.
“I’m just so happy, Lisa. It’s like I will do anything in the world as long as it’s with him!”
Ugh. Dumb.
 “Seems like ‘anything in the world’ tends to just be whatever he wants to do.”
 “Nuh-uh! I like football now!”
 “Since when?”
 “Since he introduced me to it!”
 “Have you introduced him to your photography? What about your love for swimming in the river? Or listening to hardcore dubstep? He does that stuff for you, too?”
Frongo goes quiet, the way she does when I’m right.
 “That’s different, Lisa. Thats not stuff for a couple to do.”
 “You’re a couple, now?”
“Yeah! We’re a couple now! Are you mad or something?”
“No, Frongo! I’m happy for you! I really am! I just want to make sure Reebo is treating you the way you deserve. It seems like you’re putting in a lot and not getting a lot back.”
“I appreciate that, Lisa. I really do. But, I promise you, things are good! Maybe you just need to meet him! We can do a double date with his toad! Wouldn’t that be fun bunz?”
That sounds like the opposite of fun bunz. But, I’ll suffer through an awkward pasta dinner with a toad I have no interest in to get a good read on Frongo’s boy.

Reebo’s toads name is Tom. He is an oak toad- grey with reddish warts. Sooo not my type! Frongo knows this but she’s so entranced in Reebo’s eyes across the table to sense my discomfort. I try to distract myself by slurping down my fettuccine but Tom’s stare is piercing.
“Yeah. I think its funny that my name is Tom. Tom the Toad. I always thought that was pretty funny. I’m a funny guy. Want more soda water?”
“No thanks.” I hate Tom. I glance over at Reebo to see what he’s got Frongo so engaged in. He’s just talking about how he quit his bubble blowing addiction.
“Yeah, I’ll blow a bubble every now and then on a special occasion. But, other than that, I’m over it. Everyone needs that bubble blowing phase in their teens, right? Part of the growing up process!”
Bubble blowing? Yuck! Frongo seems to disagree, “I think its super cool that you’ve overcome your bubble blowing addiction! Really shows maturity! Right, Lisa?”
“Right.”
“I disagree!” Finally, Tom says something that isn’t useless garbage. “I think Reebo’s got a problem. One of many problems, in my opinion!” This seems to be the start of a very heated argument. Reebo starts to get defensive and the two of them go at it.
“You aren’t the boss of me, Tom!”
 “Sure I am! I’m your tether!”
 “I wish you weren’t”
 Jeez and crackers! Never before have I seen a tether toad and human teen with so much tension between them. I look to Frongo as if to say, ‘Are you seeing this?’ but she seems desensitized to the situation. As their argument intensifies I lean over to Frongo to speak with her in a whisper.
“What in the hey hey is going on with them? I’ve never seen anything like it!”
 “Well, you know, not all tether toads and humans have a relationship as close as ours!”
“Sure, but they shouldn’t hate each other!”
“I don’t think they hate each other. Reebo’s just growing up! He says its very normal for human teens to start growing apart from their tether toad as they get closer to eighteen. It’s natural.”
What a blow to the gut. Natural? Who ever wrote this rule that growing apart is synonymous with growing up? Aren’t I here to help and support Frongo through her grow up process? We’re best friends, I’m not her school teacher!
Dinner ended awkward, as double dates typically do. Reebo walked Frongo home and Tom offered to take me back to his lilypad and I declined. The date was supposed to be for familiarizing me with Reebo, and making me understand why Frongo likes him so much. But, it seemed to do the opposite. This is the sort of thing Frongo and I would discuss on the pond at Friday’s boy talk but Frongo did not show up the next week.
The excuses started out understandable. Reebo was having a party on Friday, so Frongo wanted to meet his friends. Then, Frongo had a tummy ache because Thursday night, she ate cheeseburgers with Reebo (his favorite food) despite her vegetarian diet. The next week, Frongo slept through our scheduled boy talk because she spent the night at Reebo’s room, watching his favorite crime docuseries.
The thing is, Frongo has missed our Friday pond talks in the past and I did not mind at all. She’s had band practice, a big paper to write, a job interview, and other perfectly reasonable Frongo excuses. What bothers me this time is that they’re not Frongo excuses, they’re Reebo excuses. Frongo is losing her time with me, not to go be Frongo, but to go be Reebo’s girlfriend. And as our time slipped away from us, I started to lose track of what we had left since it had been so long since I got to check our cuckoo clock. I figured it was just a couple clucks away from deeming our friendship over.
When the cuckoo clock says one day left, I don’t think Frongo remembers why she made it. I’m pretty sure she reads “The Time Until I Can Get Out Of Here Forever” instead of “The Time We Have Left” because she cannot stop blabbing about how Grown Up City is going to be so fun with Reebo and how she and Reebo are going to celebrate their eighteenth birthday together that night and how I have to play nice with Tom for just one night even though I think he’s a total lame-o.
“Reebo should have been here 30 minutes ago. You think he got lost or something?”
“Its hard to get lost in the Village of Teens.”
 “Yeah, maybe he’s stopping to pick something up for me! Like a cake! That sounds like something he’d do. He’s probably gonna get me all sorts of cakes and stuff when we live together in Grown Up City!”
I’m happy for Frongo. I’m glad she’s not scared of Grown Up City anymore. We’ve had our whole lives together so what’s the use dwelling on these final months, right? I should just put up streamers in her room like the supportive best friend I am. I can handle talking to her about Reebo for the next 24 hours until I can’t talk to her ever again. Why not waste our last words on some boy? To her, “some boy” is her whole future.
I guess that’s the part that hurts the most. It’s not about resenting Frongo for not giving me the rest of her teen life, but resenting her for giving it to someone else. That time isn’t for me, or Reebo, or anyone else. It’s for Frongo. I know her future is worth more than one boy who doesn’t even show up on time for her party. I’m not mad at Frongo for being excited for her future, I’m mad at her for thinking her future has more to do with someone else, than it does her. I’ve spent my whole life watching her become someone amazing, and its like she’s forgotten the value of her individuality.
“Lisa, have you talked to Tom? Do you have any idea where Reebo is?”
 “Me? Talk to Tom? I’d rather chew on ice cubes, Frongo! And I don’t even have teeth!”
“Play nice, Lisa! It’s just one more night and then you’ll never have to worry about him again!”
 Only, the intolerable night with intolerable Tom never comes. Frongo sits on her velvet couch watching the cuckoo clock cluck and admiring our lovely work on the decorations around the room.
“Do you think something bad happened? Like he got hit by a bike or something?”
“Maybe!” I replied, not sure if Frongo is nervous or hopeful that Reebo got hit by a bike. Before I can dwell on what could have happened, there’s a knock on the door and Frongo is lifted in the air with her relief.
“Reebo!”
Frongo swings the door open to be face to face with no one. She turns her head down to see Tom holding a note.
“Tom... where’s Reebo?”
 “Hey! I’m just the delivery toad! Hi Lisa.”
 I don’t reply. Tom hops on away, grumbling about how Reebo makes him do his dirty
work. Frongo reads the note in a rush, then sits down beside me in stunned silence, handing me the note to read for myself.
Sorry Frongo. I’ve had a lot of fun with you in the Village of Teens but its time for us to grow up. We’re going to Grown Up City, and I feel like I gotta do that alone. I don’t want you to hold me back from being fully mature. It’s been fun, and maybe we can link sometime in the future, but I gotta be single for now. Sorry - Reebo
I knew he was a jackrabbit.
 “Frongo, I am so sorry.”
 She’s too busy crying on her birthday to reply. I hop into Frongo’s lap and let her press
her face into my back, so my wet skin can soak up her tears. She sobs for a while, and I know not to talk until she does, just letting her process whatever chaos is going on in her brain.
“I am so stupid.”
 “No, you aren’t.”
 “Yes, I am! I wasted all my time on Reebo just so we could be together in Grown Up City and I was played yet again!”
 “That’s not your fault, Frongo. That’s Reebo’s fault.”
 It is a little bit Frongo’s fault. I wouldn’t say it because she doesn’t need me to. She knows it and she knows that I do, too.
“I’m sorry, Lisa.”
“Why are you sorry? You’re the one who got hurt, you don’t need to apologize to me!”
“No, Lisa. I do. I’m not hurt. I’m mad. I’m mostly mad at myself. Reebo took away the last few months I had with you! I’m mad at him for ruining that, but more mad at myself for letting him. I messed up. I let this relationship take over my life, and I didn’t listen to you.”
“You were scared, Frongo. I understand. You didn’t want to go into Grown Up City alone! I can’t blame you for that.”
“You should! Because now I am going in alone and it was all for nothing!”
“It wasn’t for nothing. Don’t you feel more independent now than you did before you met him?”
She thinks about it for a second, looking at me with surprise at the accuracy of my assumption.
“Yeah, I guess I do. I don’t want to be alone exactly... but I also am glad I’m getting to do this myself, right? No more watching football or eating cheeseburgers.”
I couldn’t be prouder of Frongo. All this time I grew frustrated with her for letting herself fade away for a boy, but I forgot how valuable it is that she lived and learned from this experience on her own.
I don’t wish she learned sooner. The cuckoo clock reads just a few more hours until the sun rises, and the tether ends. Frongo will get to step into Grown Up City with her heartbreak raw and the necessity of being self reliant will feel greater in her than it ever has before. She’ll get to live out her dreams knowing that they are hers and hers alone, and with this fresh experience to remind her just how valuable that is.
But, for now, we have one more night. We decide to spend it where we always share our time together, a place recently neglected in sacrifice for Frongo’s much needed growth.
When we sit at the pond watching the darkness slowly fade before us, Frongo apologizes once again.
“Lisa, I wish I kept my promise to value our last months together.”
 “I’m glad you didn’t”
 “Hey! What the heck, man?” she laughs.
 “I don’t mean it like that! I’m just saying you seem ready for Grown Up City now. Really ready. You may have spent all that time with Reebo, but it feels like you really learned a lot about yourself.”
“I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I wanted Reebo to make me feel mature, but I don’t think another person can do that for you. I guess I thought being with Reebo would help me feel ready for Grown Up City. But, I was wrong.”
“That’s okay, Frongo. You weren’t wrong, necessarily. It just wasn’t Reebo himself making you grow up, but your experience with him that helped you do it on your own. You still learned the lessons yourself. You just needed that one last heartbreak to get you there.”
“I still feel stupid.”
“But that’s what growing up is, isn’t it? Just realizing how stupid you’ve been all along. That’s how you know you’ve really changed for the better.”
“I’m going to miss you so much, Lisa.” I want to say it back. But, as the sun rises over the pond, reflecting light over my spotty skin, all I have left in me is a croak.
“Lisa?”
I let out another croak, light and airy, hoping Frongo gets the message. As my voice fails me, I try to speak with my face again like we used to do. But, there’s not much my eyes can say about how much she means to me. Frongo’s eyes get watery and she tries to reach out to hold me but I pounce back. I feel the Bufotoxin setting into my skin and secreting out my glands. Frongo knows that one touch will be poisonous now. The sun told her she’s all grown up, and our tether is lost. It’s not safe to be around me anymore. We’re no longer Frongo and Lisa, the inseparable duo, but a grown up human and one poisonous toad, never meant to cross each other’s paths.
It hurts me to see Frongo cry. It hurts me more to know that as I sink into my matured animalistic demeanor, it won’t hurt anymore. All I’ll see is a girl blurred in the crowd of others and the name “Frongo” will mean less to be than the bugs I’ll grow accustomed to eating. And while I reside in the destitute wilderness, living off my soon-to-be developed survival instincts alone, I will feel sorry for Frongo. Because, despite her getting to proudly accomplish her life’s destiny and seek out the bright future she deserves in Grown Up City, she’ll be cursed with the burden of remembering me. And I wish I could switch places with her, for her sake, so all she would have to do is eat worms and sleep on a rock instead of going the rest of her life missing a friend she didn’t give enough time to.