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talking for an eighth grader, even if the topic was the Civil War and I love the Civil War. Henry and I watched the whole Ken Burns documentary on it more than once over the summer. But, okay, shut the heck up, I was realizing, too late. Was I acting like Hermione in the first Harry Potter book, before she got cool and popular? Because that would be bad. You don’t want to be Book One Hermione. Books Five to Seven, yes. Not Book One.
    I swallowed hard and didn’t say anything back to Natasha. Instead I sucked it up and dealt.
    â€œDon’t let her bother you,” Brooke whispered to me right then. “She’s mad because Clay keeps staring at you.”
    â€œOh, my goodness,” I whispered back, both because, wow, really? Clay Everett was staring at me? Why? But also, yikes, she startled me, appearing suddenly beside me and whispering at me while being Brooke. I still wasn’t fully used to being somebody Brooke would whisper to.
    â€œNot that that excuses what a hair ball she’s being, but . . .”
    â€œNo, it’s fine,” I said.
    â€œNatasha is just—you know.”
    I didn’t know. I mean I did, of course, but I wasn’t sure I should be gossiping about her with Brooke. “Should I apologize, you think? Or . . .”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œFor, you know. Clay?”
    â€œOh, yeah, definitely,” Brooke said. “
Sorry your ex keeps staring at me.
That would be good.”
    It’s not always easy for me to tell whether Brooke is just joking around. I’m still not completely fluent in the rhythm. But I tried teasing back. “How about if instead I said,
Sorry you’re being such a hair ball
?”
    Brooke laughed. “Perfect,” she said.

HAZEL
    TRULY SAT WITH
those people
again at lunch yesterday. It’s becoming a bad habit. Something had to be done, and I was the girl to do it.
    So first thing this morning, I waited at the cluster of lockers right near the center pole in the eighth-grade hall. That’s where all
those people
have their lockers, bunched together. They smiled quizzically at me. I smiled back. Undeterred. I sat down in front of Brooke’s locker cross-legged and waited.
    When she finally showed up, I said, “Hi, how’s it going, Brooke?”
    â€œGreat,” she said. “You?” But she was looking at boy-wonder Clay, not at me. Maybe she was hoping he’d remember my name and mouth it to her.
    â€œGreat, thanks Brooke,” I said, and then I asked her if she wanted to come over sometime.
    All
those people
stopped breathing. It was a thing of beauty.
    â€œOh, uh, thanks,” Brooke said. “That sounds great—but I’m really busy.”
    Every day from now on forever?
I didn’t ask.
    I stood up and smiled again. As if I didn’t get it, that I could not ask Brooke to come over. In what possible world could a middle-school nobody with a hunched-over, but still I do believe grand manner, just haul off and ask the number one most popular girl in the entire school to come over sometime?
    Not the one we all live in.
    Here in this world I cannot really even say hello to her. But to ask, Hey Brooke, how’s it going. Do you want to come over sometime? Hahahaha! I might as plausibly have walked sideways across the lockers and spoken in Elvish.
    But I did it. I asked her to come over sometime. Yup. Forced her to look all awkward. Brooke Armstrong, fidgeting. I did that.
    â€œThat’s okay, Brooke,” I told her, like I was used to just calling her by name, aloud, any old time. Three times so far.
    Their mouths were hanging open,
those people,
their eyes darting between Brooke and me. Seeing me. If they’d noticed me at all, before, I probably only registered in their minds as that mild-mannered mildly depressed zero with the green hair. But now I was on their radar as that superweird girl who asked Brooke to come over to her