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“What are you guys doing?”
    I looked at Kim. This was so weird. All these years across the street and she hardly ever even looked at me, let alone came over to talk.
    â€œGabby,” Kim said, “if someone told you that they’d give you a million dollars if you sat on a couch for a year, would you do it?”
    My stomach knotted. Another dumb conversation. She was going to think we were so stupid.
    She leaned against the railing and said, “What?”
    Kim held the Cheetos out for her, which I was sure she wouldn’t eat.
    â€œThink carefully,” Kim said. “Would you sit on a couch for a year for a million dollars?”
    Gabby took the bag and said, “Where is the couch? Like in my front room?”
    Kim nodded. “It’s wherever you want it to be. Your room. Your kitchen. Backyard.”
    Gabby pulled out a handful of Cheetos, and we were in the twilight zone.
    â€œCan it be a sectional?”
    â€œNo,” Kim said. “Just a regular couch.”
    â€œCan you exercise on it?”
    â€œYou just have to always be touching it,” I said, getting up my courage. “But you can do jumping jacks or lift weights.”
    Kim and I had worked all this out.
    â€œHuh,” she said. “What about the bathroom?”
    We went through all the scenarios and soon she was on the swing with us. She’d only do it if she could get the couch from some furniture store I’d never heard of. And she wanted it reupholstered every three months, but how would she do that? Then she said the kicker. She’d have to have at least four people on staff the entire year.
    â€œFor what?” I asked.
    â€œUhhh, basic human needs. Duh.”
    I swallowed. “How would you pay them? It’d have to come out of the million dollars,” I said because it would.
    She gave me a dirty look. “No way. I get the million after. This is part of the deal.”
    â€œWhat? It’s not a couch and a couple of servants. It’s just a couch.”
    I couldn’t believe I was arguing with her but hello. “You can’t have a staff for free.”
    â€œYou never said that in the beginning. The only stipulation was that you had to be touching a couch for a year,” Gabby said.
    â€œYeah but . . .” and on and on and on. Gabby was so stubborn and it made me mad. You can’t make up your own rules. It was our game.
    Finally, when we were both almost shouting, Kim yelled “HEY!”
    We stopped.
    â€œGabby can have a staff.”
    â€œWHAT?”
    Gabby smiled.
    â€œBut does it come out of the million?”
    â€œNo,” Kim said. “You were the one who said it was okay to have movers take you and the couch to the movies and restaurants, and we never said that had to come out of the money.”
    I folded my arms. “That’s different.”
    â€œIt’s not different,” Gabby said.
    â€œIt’s not different,” Kim said, and I was mad. I scooted over to the end of the swing.
    Gabby stood up. “Do you guys want to come swimming? We just got a new slide, and my mom went to Costco and we have a ton of good food.”
    Kim looked at me. “That’d be fun,” she said.
    â€¢
    â€œUgh.” I didn’t want to go swimming. Ugh.
    â€¢
    They both stared at me. “Sure,” I finally said.
    And so we went swimming at Gabby’s, who gets to a have a staff of four if she ever lives on a couch for a year.

• 21 •
    The worst people possible walked into Ms. Dead Homeyer’s funeral.
    First Gabby.
    She was wearing tight tiny shorts and a tank top. Her boobs were showing, which meant she was wearing the double padded bra she ordered online from Bonanza dot com last summer. She made me get one, too, but it didn’t do that to my chest.
    â€œYou should get one, Kim,” she’d said.
    Kim just laughed. Kim didn’t need a bra to do stuff to her chest.
    Now Kim