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alike, I’ll call you, too, Kry, and tell you what color to wear.”
    Score—for Cynthia.
    “Oh. Thanks, I guess,” Kry says weakly. “But I’m not really sure if—”
    “It’ll be great,” Cynthia interrupts, grinning. She shoots me a
ha-ha-on-you
look. “Where’s Annie Pat?” she says, hands on her hips.
    Does
everyone
have to ask me that?
    I suddenly realize that Annie Pat probably isn’t even coming to school today. She must have told her mom she had tummy trouble again—and Mrs. Masterson is too worn out from having a new baby to argue with her.
    Lucky Annie Pat, to have such a frazzled mom.
    “But Cynthia,” Heather says in kind of a snotty way, “you’d better not call Annie Pat and Emma the next time we get dressed up, because pink doesn’t look good with red hair.”
    “Everything looks good with red hair,” I tell them in a loud, clear voice, and I turn and walk away.
    What have I done?
I’ve lost Annie Pat Masterson forever, and she was my very best friend.
    I got greedy, that’s what happened.
    “Hey, Emma,” EllRay Jakes calls out from the picnic table. “You forgot your book bag.”
    “Keep-away,” Jared cries, delighted.
    “Keep-away!” Stanley chimes in as he tosses my extremely nice book bag to Jared.
    Leave it to a bunch of boys to make a bad situation even worse.

      10      
The most Terrible Saturday in History?
    Somehow, I made it through the rest of Friday. It is now Saturday morning, but instead of getting ready to go to Marine Universe with Annie Pat and her dad and no new baby, or getting ready to take Kry Rodriguez out to lunch and a movie, I am sitting alone in my bedroom watching the rain come down. (Outside, of course.)
    I do not have a TV in my bedroom, because my mom doesn’t approve of TVs in kids’ bedrooms. Also, I do not have a computer in my bedroom, because Mom thinks kids should only use the Internet when a grown-up is watching. Watching the actual screen, not the kids.
    In my opinion, however, another reason—maybe the real reason—I don’t have these things is because extra TVs and computers cost extra money, and extra money is something we do not have ever since my mother started working at home.
    Why couldn’t she have chosen a new job that pays a lot of money? I will never understand grown-ups—until I am one, and probably not even then.
    What I do have in my room is a combination radio and CD player, which my father sent me last Christmas. (He lives in England with his new wife, Annabelle.) But when I am grounded, I am not even allowed to listen to music.
    Is my mother the strictest mom in the world? Yes. And is this going to be the most terrible Saturday in history? Probably.
    All I’m allowed to do when I’m grounded is read, which doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s like saying that reading is another part of my punishment,and TV and CDs and the radio are treats.
    Really, reading is one of my favorite things in the world—for lots of reasons. For instance, everyone is exactly the same when they read a book. Rich kids, and kids with perfectly straight hair, and undivorced kids read the exact same words that I do. But I get to choose how everyone looks in the book!
    Another reason I like reading is that no one can tell me who to like in the book and who to hate. I mean, you can always tell who you’re supposed to like, but nobody can make you. You get to decide who’s popular—with
you
.
    But I don’t feel like reading this morning. I prefer to feel a little sorry for myself.

    I am all alone in the world. Alone except for the person in the condo next door, who is thudding along on his treadmill like a giant hamster. The vibrations shake my bedroom wall.And alone except for my mom, who keeps coming up with chores for me to do.

    “Emma?” Mom calls out from down the hall. “Did you finish writing your apologies?”
    “Uh-huh,” I say, eyeballing the two letters that practically have sweat marks on them, they were so