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get over the braces when she starts to say something terrible about a girl in a tube top. No, braces won’t help her
Mean
self, oreven her
Sarcastic
self. Somewhere around the ponds, I start to hear the Ellen that no one else gets to. She’s using more than one word now, and most of them are funny. It’s out here I remember that Ellen is great, once you get past being afraid of her, she’s hilarious. Only it takes me a little while to remember. She’s tough because she thinks that’s how she has to be. And I guess I don’t know that she’s wrong. Ellen always knows the things that no one else will tell you about. She knew about adjectives. She knows how things are supposed to go, and she’s usually only mad when they don’t. In her mind she’s thinking somebody in some way is going to be a jerk about something, so you might as well plan ahead for it. So she does. And even though I don’t like it, she’s always kind of right.
    It’s around the ponds that I see the Ellen that laughs so hard, she has to blow her nose, and the Ellen that loves dancing to music strangers are playing on their speakers, and the Ellen that sticks up for me, all the time, even when it’s me that is being awful to myself. That’s the Ellen that takes my arm after I’ve said something really horrible about myself and says, “Could you stoptalking about my friend like that?”
    I always forget that. But at the ponds, she reminds me.
    Ellen still walks through the park sort of fast, but she takes in everything and has something to say about all of it. She loves to see older girls’ outfits. Shorts and big parachute shirts, with big, long necklaces, those are Ellen’s favorites this summer. “I can’t wear them, because I’m so short. I’d drag that necklace on the ground. Allegra has one just like that though.”
    â€œAllegra. Worst Evah,” I say, and that makes Ellen really laugh.
    Allegra is a cool girl in our school who started hanging around with Sophie this year. She says this thing where everything is the Best Evah! Everything. Or at least everything she likes. Ellen loved to make fun of it to Sophie at first, who used to laugh about it but recently stopped. Sophie and Allegra are becoming real friends, like us friends, and I hate it. Ellen does too.
    Ellen said something crazy about it to Sophie, like, “She’s Gross. She just wants to hang out with you because you’re black.”
    That made Sophie laugh and say, “I match her shoes.”
    That made us all laugh. But it didn’t make Sophie stop hanging out with Allegra. If anything, it only got worse.
    â€œDid you hear about the makeover?” Ellen says as she stops to watch some boys park their bikes. Her eyes get really big like she’s had an accident. It’s the creepiest thing she’s done today.
    â€œWhat makeover?” I ask.
    â€œForget it. Seriously. Nothing,” says Ellen, going back to short barks.
    â€œOh, no! Now you have to tell me. You have to,” I say, pulling at Ellen’s sleeve and watching her eyes, and she looks for a way to get out of here. She hears the sound of the ice-cream truck and runs away, yelling, “You want?”
    â€œNo, I’m fine.” I’m not, but I’m not going, and you need to tell me, Ellen. I say all this with my eyes, and that just makes her mad, because for the first time today, I’m not doing what she’s telling me to do.
    So she says, “Do you not have any money or do you think you’re too fat?” Like it’s nothing. But it’severything. She knows that. It’s not just a thing that everyone can say. She’s not even allowed to say it. But she does, and now both those things are just out there, as if everyone knows them like it’s common knowledge. And maybe it is, but I don’t want it to be. And I don’t want it coming from Ellen. My