In that moment, one of my deepest fears came true. Madeline didn’t just tolerate Reid or laugh at his stupid woodwind puns. She liked Reid. Over the summer, Madeline was one hundred percent Team Reid Is the Worst. But since he went to another school, she only knew him through stories of our rivalry. Now Reid’s mutant eyes and extra-floppy hair had morphed her into a total stranger.

Caught so off-guard, all I could do was stammer, “O-Okay.”

I FaceTimed Henry after school.

“I don’t understand. Reid is the worst. Madi knows this!”

Henry shrugged, his bangs (yes, bangs) falling into his eyes. “I think you need to let Madeline find out about Reid herself.”

“So let her go on a date? Henry! What if Reid is using Madi to get back at me? For first chair? This could all be a prank.”

“That would be messed up, even for Reid.”

I heard Henry’s words, but still I clung to this theory. Reid messing with me? I was used to it. But messing with Madeline? Nope. Not okay.

Date night came that weekend, and I spent the entire evening hoping it was a disaster. But when Madeline FaceTimed me the next morning, she gushed about how sweet Reid is. Gushed. About Reid.

And then, just like that, he was her boyfriend.

We were literally twelve, so the “relationship” consisted of handholding and eating lunch together, mostly. But it was still complete torture. I ate lunch at the same table as Reid for an entire week! I kept waiting for Reid to mess up, to show his true colors, that this was all a revenge scheme.

But I couldn’t wait forever. I had to double down.

Henry was right. I needed to let Madeline form her own opinions about Reid.

Telling her Reid was the worst clearly did not work.

But what if I showed her?

CHAPTER TWELVE

Assembling the invitations for Delia’s bat mitzvah is a family affair.

Planning a bat mitzvah is like directing a play—the months spent organizing logistics, the slow burn of rehearsing the script… and then tech week, where everything needs to happen all at once. Except, it’s tech weeks. Six weeks, to be precise. Crunch time. Invitations need to go out, centerpieces need to be designed, an over-the-top slideshow of Delia’s life needs to be created (my job), speeches need to be written. The next month and a half pretty much consist of a never- ending list of bat mitzvah to-dos, which would be a lot without the never-ending list of Melted to-dos on top of it, now that I have to transform the script into songs.

It’s a lot.