“Are Jason and Luis happy about your test scores?” Marianne asked.

“Yup. I did okay,” Skyla answered, zipping up her fleece and wrapping her arms around herself. “So it wasn’t so bad today?”

“Not sure what ‘it’ is,” Marianne answered.

“Sounds like you learned something?” Skyla said.

“Yeah. I learned one thing. Two, I guess.”

“Cool. Now it’s time for three and four, then, right?” Skyla said.

“So that’s how this works, huh?” Marianne muttered.

They sat down, Marianne on the fifth step, Skyla on the bottom one. Marianne waited for Skyla to talk. But after a good thirty seconds, it became clear that Skyla was waiting for Marianne to talk first, probably because she’d been the one who upset Skyla in the first place. But Marianne was upset, too. She had been furious at all the judgment! So she wouldn’t talk. She’d wait.

But what had being stubborn ever gotten her? And the comfort of Skyla’s mere presence, along with the brownies, made almost all of her earlier anger dissolve. Instead of staying upset, she wanted to tell Skyla about the practice. She wanted to tell her how bad she’d felt when Dan thought she was really trying and stood up for her, how she’d just straight-up admitted the truth about herself to them, probably with words more honest than she’d ever even expressed to Skyla, and how Vi had challenged her—almost like a bet—and won. She wanted to tell her how Skyla had been at least a little bit right about how bad her plan had been and how Mr. Garcia wasn’t going to give her the extra credit if the team didn’t win.

“Look, I—” Marianne began.

“I don’t want you to get left behind,” Skyla interrupted her, her eyes facing ahead toward the empty sidewalk.

Marianne made her way down to the lowest step and hooked an arm around Skyla’s.

“I want you with me next year,” Skyla went on. “Like always. Please?”

Marianne nodded and nestled her head on her friend’s shoulder.

As the moon rose, Marianne thought that maybe she should ask Skyla to check out the telescope in the attic together. Skyla brought it up sometimes, asking to see this or that planet, or check for constellations. But Marianne usually put it off and said, “Some other time.”

Maybe this was that other time. Up there, they could count dozens of stars and wonder about the exploding world.

But before she could ask, Skyla pulled away. “I know you don’t think you can really cut it at Quiz Quest, but what if you let me help you? I could test you and study with you and then it wouldn’t be so hard?”

How much could Skyla really help her? Would they just sit there and do homework next to each other or something? It wasn’t like Skyla was a Vi Cross type. She just did what she had to do to get good enough grades.

Plus, she didn’t really want Skyla to see how far behind she’d gotten.