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better with a cooler friend than me.
    â€œYes?” Mom says.
    I am thinking about how warm it will be in my pajamas, the soft blue flannel with tiny pink sheep. I am wondering when the last time was that my head was in my mother’s lap. I wonder if my head’s ever been in my mother’s lap.
    â€œWill you make me some hot chocolate?” I say.
    For a second, she smiles and her face doesn’t seem so old. But then she is my mother again, with the double chin and the blotchy skin and the bags under her red, puffy eyes.
    â€œOf course,” she says, and takes a drag from her cigarette, and I decide that I will let her be Morales tonight.

(FIVE)
    â€œI know him,” Alex says.
    â€œHe’s cool.”
    We’re standing in line for tacos and the new guy’s across the cafeteria slapping fives with the lunch-table boys.
    â€œHis name’s Ethan,” she says. “And he
drives
.”
    â€œHow does he drive if he’s only a ninth grader?”
    â€œHe flunked a grade.”
    â€œOh.”
    One taco, Tater Tots, and a Diet Coke.
    â€œHe got kicked out of Rose Hill for selling weed,” she says. All the guys are over there treating him like a celebrity. The girls are pushing their chests out, trying to get close and laughing whenever he says anything.
    â€œLet’s go talk to him,” she says, and starts walking.
    â€œNo,” I say, but she pretends not to hear me. I throw my food in the trash can even though I just got it. I cannot eat in front of boys, especially celebrity boys.
    James the asshole has his arm around the slutty girl and he grins at me before he starts sucking on her ear, and she’s looking at me and giggling like his dirty mouth on her ear makes her better than me. I look at the clock above the painting of the school’s stupid wolf mascot and there are still fourteen minutes until class and I cannot wait that long to get out of here. Even sitting in class surrounded by people who hate me would be better than meeting this boy who’s too cool and too old to talk to me.
    â€œHey, Ethan,” Alex says to the new guy as he sticks his hamburger bun on the wall and everyone laughs.
    â€œOh, hey,” he says. “I know you.”
    â€œMy brother’s David.”
    â€œOh yeah. How is he?”
    â€œGood,” she says, but he doesn’t hear her. He’s already looking at me, and everyone’s looking at him looking at me, and I want to disappear.
    â€œHello,” he says, and extends his hand. I give him mine and let him shake it and his hand is big and warm and mine feels tiny and safe inside it. I know I am blushing but I look athim anyway and his lips look soft and wet and his eyes are big and brown. I let go of his hand and he smiles. I take a sip of my Diet Coke because I have to do something and it makes a slurping noise that is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard. Someone says something and he turns around and says something back, and pretty soon everyone’s talking to someone and no one’s talking to me. Alex is whispering something to Wes and his hand’s on her leg and I’m just sitting here waiting for the bell to ring.
    I’m looking at all the tables in the lunchroom—the gangsters next to us and nobody else brave or cool enough to sit next to them; the jocks and their skinny girlfriends; the Christian kids with their dorky clothes; the small table of Asians who are all somehow related and don’t talk to anyone else. In the middle of the cafeteria is the ocean of normal kids who all look the same, who all look like the people I used to dream of being friends with, the girls who still have slumber parties, who pass notes and giggle in the halls. They are the boring kids, and among them are the even more boring gifted kids, the ones I was almost friends with, the ones who think about law school and med school, the ones who have never even tasted liquor, who are destined