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during the day. We’d get through this.
    As for Mac, right now, even if he did send his column to other people, they wouldn’t know that She was me . Yeah, he was still being a dickbag for dissing my advice, but at least I was the only one who knew it was my advice he was dissing. Yet, at any rate.
    A soft knock sounded at the door.
    “Come in,” Bink called, looking up from the keyboard where he was two-finger typing out his bibliography.
    My mom stepped in with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a peace offerer’s smile. “Thought you guys could use a break.” I smiled back and she set the plate on my vanity, then made herself scarce. Bink and I both called after her, “Thanks.”
    We sat for a few minutes and noshed in silence until he held out an upturned hand. “Oh, hey, Libby texted me about that guy at school messing with your column. What’s up with that? Want me to kick his ass?” he asked around the better part of a chewed-up cookie.
    I broke off a piece of one and popped it into my mouth, thinking about my response. Did I want him to? Definitely. But that wasn’t the way to solve the problem.
    If for some reason this wasn’t just a one-time deal, I was going to have to talk to Mac again, face-to-face, and tell him how I felt. Reason with him until he did the right thing and stopped this before it got out of hand. Surely he wasn’t going to go out of his way to make me miserable, because that didn’t make sense. I refused to allow myself to become a paranoid psycho just because I’d had the rug pulled out from under me. Not everyone was hiding some terrible secret.
    That firmly settled in my mind, I focused back on Bink. “Nope. Let’s sit back and see how things pan out. I’m hoping this was just for funsies and he’ll move on to other, more interesting things.”
    He nodded and wiped the crumbs off his hands. “Okay, but if he doesn’t?” He gestured, slashing his hand across his neck. There were a lot of times when it was hard to take Bink seriously. The dimples typically made him look like whatever he was saying was designed to charm the pants off the person he was talking to, and they took some of the heat off his threats.
    This wasn’t one of those times.
    He was dead serious and it felt really good to have someone on my side who I trusted completely, even if I couldn’t be 100 percent honest with him. People in my corner were in rare supply these days. An image of Mac’s mocking grin flashed through my mind and the tension that had finally lessened enough to be bearable crept back up my neck.
    I gave Bink a tight smile. “If he doesn’t, then you won’t have to worry about it because I’ll kick his cocky ass myself.”
    Bet on it.

Chapter Three
    The next day I stood in front of my locker, staring at the white tongue of paper sticking out of the slat, mocking me like a five-year-old. I plucked it free, calling on every yoga lesson I’d ever been forced to sit through, and began to read.
Dear Wit’s End:
I’m sure She is going to prattle on about setting boundaries and how you should sit down and talk it out.
    My eyes narrowed on the page. Odd how those were almost the exact phrases I’d used.
But we all know it’s past that point, yeah? Your ma’s not going to stop because she thinks she’s doing the right thing. And to be fair, maybe you’ve done some things in the past that have caused her to lose trust in you? And maybe you need someone keeping an eye out for you right now?
But hey, I’m not here to judge. Fact is, we’re here now, so my advice to you is this: get sneakier about it. Stop writing in your journal. Instead dig up one of those half-used spiral notebooks with all the paper shrapnel sticking out of the holes and label it SCIENCE or some such. On the off chance she decides to open it, the first bit will be school notes and she’ll leave it alone. Just make sure to put it back in the same place every time so she doesn’t notice it lying around more than