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stupid,” I said.
    â€œYou think?” Patrice asked. Before I could respond, she took the popcorn from me and poured it into a bowl. “Oh, this is all burned! It’s ruined.”
    I was starting to get really annoyed at her—I mean, who needed a schoolmarm for a friend? On the other hand, part of me knew she was right. The prank had been stupid. And as much fun as it turned out to be, I had really gone along only because I felt I had to. In any case, I didn’t want the whole afternoon to be ruined. What I needed right then was to smooth things over. So I took two brownish pieces of popcorn, stuck them under my nose, and curved up my lip to make a popcorn mustache. Pretty dumb, but it broke the tension. Patrice giggled. Then she took a piece and threw it at me. Hit me right on the forehead.
    â€œYou’re an idiot,” she said.
    I didn’t know if she was kidding or talking about the prank. But I laughed.
    â€œYou too!”
    Then I threw my mustache right back at her, and next thing I knew, we were having a giant burned-popcorn fight, laughing our heads off. Cleaning up a few minutes later, we were both careful not to mention Brett or the prank. But later on, we sprawled out on the ratty couch in her rec room to watch the movie with a fresh batch of unburned popcorn. I felt like I had to get something out of the way.
    â€œYou know, I think I can get them all to come to my bar mitzvah. That’s cool, right?”
    I brought up the subject right when Gene Kelly was doing this fantastic dance number around a bunch of lampposts, hoping I could slip in the news without Patrice noticing.
    â€œHuh?” she said.
    â€œBrett and the gang,” I said. “I think I’m going to invite them.”
    Patrice paused the film. Suddenly Gene Kelly was frozen in space, an umbrella upside down in his hand.
    â€œIf that’s what you want,” Patrice said. “But they’re just gonna act stupid and ruin the whole party.”
    I sighed. When I was with Brett and his gang, I had fun. When I was with Patrice? I got lectures.
    â€œWhat is it with you and them anyway?”
    Patrice leaned back on the couch. “Ask Lucy and Kendra. It might surprise you to know that we were friends when we were younger.”
    I couldn’t quite picture that. “What happened?”
    Patrice shrugged. “The minute we hit middle school, I suddenly didn’t wear the right jeans. Or say the right things. I didn’t smoke. It was mostly Lucy. She shut me out first, and Kendra and the others followed right along.”
    â€œWow,” I said. “That’s crazy.”
    And yet it wasn’t crazy. Spending a day with Kendra and Lucy made it all too obvious that Patrice didn’t fit in with them. But looking at Patrice, still filled with hurt and anger, I wished that I could do something to fix it.
    â€œSo?” Patrice said. “Wanna finish the movie?”
    I pressed the remote, and Gene Kelly swung around the lamppost and splashed in a puddle. He made it all look so easy.
    Â 
    The week before the start of school went by in a blur. What started as a day at the quarry with Brett and his gang turned into a whole string of plans that took up a lot of my time. Eddie, Fudge, Kendra, and Lucy were his main gang, but there were five other kids—Ryan, Nicole, Bridget, J.D., and Seth—who came along sometimes. Mostly we hung around Calvi’s, playing video games and eating ice cream, but there was also a night at the movies, a state fair, and a minor league ballgame. All this in addition to my daily trips to Cranston to suffer with Rabbi Weiner. So Iguess I just didn’t have a whole lot of time to see Patrice, and the couple of times we did get together, it was awkward. I mean, we tried to pretend that everything was the same as it was before I had started to hang with Brett: We went to the library, we sat in her basement and watched movies. We had some