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painting of a unicorn on the other. Lorelei picked it up and set it beneath the photos, then plucked off a three-year-old school portrait of Allison Ketalwan, who had been her best friend since kindergarten. Lorelei turned the photo in her hands and read the inscription on the back, written with ink that was supposed to smell like peaches: Stay cool, but not 2 cool! Luvs and Hugs Friends4EVER! AK. Lorelei smiled. Then she dropped the photo in the trash.
    Life at home had never been wonderful for Lorelei, but despite that, she had always considered herself a happy girl. Allison had been a part of that, like a sister she trusted with every secret joy or hardship, making each better. Then it seemed like everything collapsed at once. The wrong boy fell for Lorelei, Allison turned on her, and soon after, her mother had a terrible accident, making an already unhappy home a lot more frightening.
    Lorelei and her mother never got along much before that. Her mom acted like both her daughter and her perpetually unemployed husband were two pets she had gotten before realizing she was allergic. It helped Lorelei to have friends outside the house who cared about her, who made her feel like she mattered. And she always tried to do the same for them. When Allison had fallen for Nicholas Barani, the nicest and cutest boy in the class, Lorelei—like any good friend—worked hard to help get them together. A photo of Nicholas in his soccer uniform was tacked to the bulletin board in her room. Lorelei ripped it loose and dropped it in the trash, too.
    “Dating” in the social circles of thirteen-year-olds was a complicated network of protocols, negotiated by friends of the boy and girl, whose respective entourages would haggle and argue and jab their fingers into their palms over the particulars of how much the one liked the other, whether they would agree to “go with” each other (which meant hanging out at lunch and before and after class), and—if the relationship continued to develop—if, where, and when they might actually kiss. One day, one of Nicholas’s friends approached Lorelei with grave news: Nicholas had agreed to “go with” Allison only because she was friends with Lorelei. He truly did consider Lorelei the cutest of all the girls. He wanted her to like him back.
    This flattered Lorelei and her heart soared at the prospect, but her parents didn’t permit dating, and she told the emissary so. On her bulletin board, there was a picture of Nicholas and his guy friends, none of them as cute as him, laughing while stacked in a pyramid on the playground. Lorelei dropped the photo in her trash.
    Allison became furious when she learned of Nicholas’s betrayal, but rather than confront him and give up her hopeless crush, she declared Lorelei a backstabber, a liar, a whore, a bitch, and in one afternoon annihilated seven years of friendship, sleepovers, and barely concealed jealousies. Allison, humiliated, began a relentless campaign of ridicule: Lorelei’s clothes, her hair, her makeup, the music she listened to, the cars her parents drove. To Lorelei’s horror, her other friends joined in. They were terrified Allison would make fun of them, too. Kelli, Danielle, Samantha … Lorelei had a picture of the whole group at the zoo with their faces painted like tigers. She dropped it in the trash.
    The nonstop teasing worked. Lorelei was isolated, and Nicholas soon abandoned his infatuation. She became toxic, but began fighting back, dubbing Allison “Chocolate Chips” for the sprinkling of moles on her face. The name actually caught on, and their opportunistic mutual friends were no longer sure whose side to choose for their own safety. For a while, it seemed like Lorelei was gaining the upper hand. She started to matter once more.
    Then came her mother’s accident.
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    Miranda Paskal worked as night manager at a hardware store, overseeing delivery and placement of plywood, drywall, and plumbing supplies in the