“What?”

“She’s fine, she’s just … a little nasty sometimes. She’s gossipy. She’s always texting me bad stuff about people, and I try and think of ways to respond where I’m not making her mad, but I’m also not agreeing, and it actually gives me a bad feeling in my whole body like…” Skyla shivered dramatically. “And me liking her comment was exactly the problem. She kind of, like, brings out a side of me I don’t love.”

“Oh.” It was like the distance between them this whole time hadn’t been half a front and back yard but rather a whole continent.

“And I mean if she’s talking about everybody, she’s definitely talking about me, too, right?” Skyla played with her moonstone bracelet. The bracelet, Marianne saw, that they’d both gotten together in Traverse City two summers ago. “You know, once she told me that people used to say I was your sidekick.”

“What?! She’s so mean!” Marianne held a hand to her heart in shock.

“Yeah. She’s probably right. Who knows what else she says about me … That I’m her sidekick now, probably,” Skyla grunted under her breath.

“No way. And I don’t know what anyone could say bad about you, even a jerk like Julie…” Marianne said honestly.

“That’s because you love me.” A tiny smile overtook Skyla’s frown.

“I do!” Marianne collapsed her forehead into her forearms, which rested on the railing. “We’re just … Maybe we’re just too different,” she said, her words muffled.

Skyla groaned. “No! I just shouldn’t have liked Julie’s mean comment. I thought you were making fun of yourself, too. That’s always been your thing, right? But still, I…” She paused. She rested her elbows on the railing and closed her eyes for a moment. “I shouldn’t have.” She opened them and looked at Marianne. “I got a little jealous of that Vi girl. Even though she’s … the way she is.”

Marianne laughed. “She’s not so bad, actually. You’d like her after a while.”

Skyla laughed, too.

“So you got a C minus, huh?” Skyla asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry,” Skyla said. “Are you ready to let me help you now? I’d really like to.”

Marianne’s memory flashed to pushing a terrified Skyla off the dock into the lake at camp. The way Skyla wiped her eyes and laughed and screamed. And reached up to pull Marianne in with her.

Marianne nodded. “Okay.”

Back at home, her texts read:

Vi: what were you thinking?!?!?!??! are they kicking you

off?

Nina: weve practiced so much, they cant do that now!

Dan: The gum pop heard ’round the world. Funnily

enough, that phrase “the shot heard round the world”

actually refers to the first shot at the battles of Lexing

ton and Concord, though for years I thought it was first

associated with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

(Wikipedia link)

Vi: dan. relevance. come on. i told you months ago that

you cant have gum in class!

Marianne: actually you said in the hallway and that