“I can do it online,” I announced to Devi. “I should start it next week.”

Devi peered at me over her phone, smiling. She’d come over after school for a spa day, which was, essentially, her slathering herself with various goos and then chasing me around until I sat still long enough for my own goo-fest. I’d drawn the line at snail cream. She said it was super hot in Korea.

I said I was super okay not being in on the new, exciting snail secretion trend.

“My skin feels like a baby’s butt, I’ll have you know,” she said.

“Did you hear me about the Lamaze class?”

“Yeah, sure, but I hadn’t gotten past the snail thing yet. You compliment my skin all the time and I’m telling you, it’s the snail. It’s ethically harvested snail goo, bee tee dubs. They don’t puree snails. That’d be animal cruelty.”

I blinked at her.

“Devi.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you like this?”

She grinned.

“There’s no one left to stop me. Anyway, what they do is they put the snails on a screen and then shine a light on them that makes them happy. The snails happily secrete on the screen, and then they collect the leavings and make skin care with it. So really, you’re using the snail version of pixie dust on your face. It’s magical.”

“So you’re saying they get the snail excited, it uhhh...spurts and then you smear it all over your face.”

“DON’T MAKE IT WEIRD. IT’S HAPPINESS SECRETIONS. IT’S DIFFERENT.” She paused. “Oh, and if Jack doesn’t call Lamaze dibs, I’ll be your coach.”

“You would?” I hadn’t considered that I’d be there with anyone other than my mom, but the idea of it being Devi—of it being my best friend who’d been my best friend since pudding cup days—made a lot of sense.

“They’re going to assume we’re together,” I said. “When two queers are anywhere together, we must be dating, ’cause that’s how it works for the straights, right? Whatever. I’ll have the hottest girl in the room, either way.”

“You really would,” she said. “And you know why I’m hot? Snails. Snails all over my face.”

I stared at her.

She grinned back.

Five minutes later, I had snail secretions on my face. True fact: snails do, in fact, make your skin feel like a baby’s butt. I was a convert, but for the first application, I winced and whined a lot. Devi called me a baby. Then she took the snail stuff off and put a mud thing on and it hardened until I looked like Pennywise. I was five minutes shy of finishing my clown-bake mask when we heard the clatter from the other room. There was a loud thud, a crash and Mormor shouting, “Attans.”