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averted.
    “Let’s just talk to your mother when she gets back.”
    She snapped her head back. “No! Don’t tell my mother. Promise you won’t tell her.” Her fat face was flushed a kind of purple, and her pale, little eyes were glittering like small pieces of green Jell-O.
    “Okay, okay, Ellen, calm down. Let’s make a bargain. I promise not to tell your mother, if you promise not to kill yourself.”
    “And I don’t want you to tell your girlfriend either,” Ellen yelled, her face full of blotchy, purple spots. “I don’t want her laughing at me. That’s what she’ll do if you tell her. She’ll laugh at me.”
    “No, no, no, Ellen. You don’t know Norma. She would never laugh at you. She likes you. She . . .”
    “Well I don’t like her, and I want you to promise that you won’t tell her. I want you to promise you won’t tell her, or my parents, or anybody else.”
    “Okay, Ellen, I promise. Just calm down.”
    She did calm down. Then she began talking, while I listened and watched the clock.
    “I’ve never had a friend. Once, in second grade, there was another girl who was fat too. And everybody kept acting like we had to be friends because we both were so fat. I guess I was willing, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t as fat as me, and she acted even meaner than the others. They didn’t like her either, but she would rather sit by herself during lunch than have anybody see her with me. Once she even told me to stop watching her all the time. She always thought I was watching her. But I wasn’t. Why would I watch her anyway? If I’m going to watch somebody, it wouldn’t be her. It would be . . .”
    She hesitated. I tried not to look at the clock.
    “It would be somebody good-looking, somebody like you. I know you hated it because I kept watching you. But I didn’t mean anything. It was only . . . well . . . I’ve got my dreams like anybody else. I can’t help that. Inside, I’m just like anybody else.”
    “Sure you are, Ellen. Just don’t get so worked up. Here, have a cookie.”
    I held one out to her, but she shook her head and went on talking, her small, squeaky voice high and shrill.
    “Why should you be interested in me? No boy’s ever been interested in me. I’m like any other girl inside. I’m nearly seventeen, and I want what everybody my age wants. But there’s no way I can have it.”
    “Sure you can, Ellen,” I told her. “People will get to know you, and they’ll like you.”
    She shook her head.
    “You knew I was watching you, and I knew you knew and you hated me, but I couldn’t help myself. I used to watch you and that girlfriend of yours. I’d see you kissing and making out, and it made me feel good, like I was a part of it. But you hated me, and you gave me all those mean looks, and then you said . . .”
    “Look, Ellen, I’ve been a jerk. Okay? A real jerk, and I’m sorry. It’s going to be different from now on. I’m going to be your friend, and Norma’s going to be your friend. You’ll feel better and you’ll have friends and nobody will ever say mean things to you again, because . . . because I won’t let them.”
    Her mother didn’t come back for two and a half hours. Ellen stood up and walked with me to the door. “Remember,” she whispered, “you promised you wouldn’t tell anybody.”
    “Sure, Ellen,” I said. “I remember.”

six
    From the first phone I could find, I called her house. If Ellen had answered, I would have hung up. Luckily it was her mother.
    “Mrs. De Luca, this is Jeff Lyons.”
    “Who?”
    “The boy in Ellen’s class. I was just at your house.”
    “Oh yes, J—”
    “No, no, please, Mrs. De Luca! Don’t say my name. I don’t want Ellen to know I’m calling.”
    “Oh?”
    “Is she there, Mrs. De Luca? I mean, in the same room?”
    “No, she’s upstairs watching TV. What is it? What’s wrong?” Her voice was worried.
    “I’m very sorry to tell you this, Mrs. De Luca, but Ellen told me she was going to