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mouth falls open when I’m supposed to say something back to her, and I can’t.
    â€œNo. Ellen. I’m. Fine,” I almost growl at her.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? Wait!” Ellen looks at me. She knows, but she doesn’t want to. Or she regrets it. She freaks out in these moments when she can’t control the other person. She doesn’t know what to do when she ruins things.
    â€œI need to go.”
    â€œNo you don’t. C’mon. I’m sorry,” Ellen says, grabbing my arm.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter if you are. You just can’t say . . .”
    â€œI know. But both those things aren’t true. So it’s funny. Seriously. Because it’s not true. It’s not.” Ellen laughs. It’s a joke trying to get me to laugh back, but I don’t. She’s definitely buying the ice cream now.

    We walk home slowly with the cones. I hate getting anything on me, so I’m always really careful. Mostly because it’s gross, but also mostly because when you’re even a little bigger and you get a food stain on you, even the smallest one, from an accident or a spill, that anybody could get, people think the worst. They think,
Oh, look at that fat kid, he was so hungry he just couldn’t help himself. He’s a slave to the ice cream. He was probably eating a five-gallon tub of it anyway, so I guess it serves him right. Wear a bib, fatty. Wear a
bib
!
    People never say this. But they think it. And when you see it on their faces, it’s awful.
    For Ellen, it doesn’t matter. She’s always dripping on herself and no one cares. The braces are her excuse.
    â€œHere, let me wipe your face,” I say, picking a big glob of sprinkles off her chin. She smiles thanks, and looks like she wants to say something but takes another bite. We’re quiet for a while on the way home, which might be the ice cream, but might be the other stuff too. We’re a block away when she says, “So Sophie didn’t tell you about the makeover thing?”
    I might have an ice-cream headache, or I might be totally lost to the world, but my head actually hurts. All the words in the sentence I can’t really understand. Sophie. Told. Ellen. Something I don’t know.
    â€œWhat makeover thing?”
    â€œFor her birthday,” says Ellen.
    More Words. What is this? How? What?
    â€œNo,” I say. And Ellen just looks at me, like she’s actually sorry for me. Like the ice cream was poisoned and I don’t know it yet, but I’m going to soon as I die right in front of her.
    â€œIt’s Allegra’s thing,” says Ellen. “I don’t want to go.”
    Now she’s Invited! I’m not even supposed to know about it, but she’s Invited!
    But I just say, “Yeah. Sophie told me. It’s cool.”
    It’s not. It’s the furthest thing from cool ever. It’s the opposite. It’s the worst, the Worst Evah.
    â€œI should just run home,” I say, not knowing what else to do, so I actually start to run. Running, I drop my ice cream right on the street, and a little flick of it splashes up and lands right in the middle of my shirt. Now everythingis officially ruined. I littered and I’m gross. Of course I’m not invited.
    â€œAll right, bye,” Ellen yells after me. I bet she’s doing her eye thing, because she’s annoyed at me for just leaving her there. But I don’t care. I really don’t. I need to go. I need to be home. I need to get this shirt off. I don’t care about anything else at the moment. It’s just the shirt. And what people will think. Nothing else in the world matters. Not Ellen getting her braces off or not even not getting invited to my former best friend’s birthday party. I don’t care about that. At all. I just want this shirt off so I don’t have to be the fat kid who couldn’t help himself. That’s all I want.

CHAPTER 5
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