“Oscar,” he adds. “Coach Herda wants to know if you’re coming out for the team.”

Oscar scoffs.

“What team?” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

Weird.

We stop in the kitchen so I can call my mom’s office to let her know I’m hanging out here for a little while. I can’t wait to start eighth grade and get a cell phone. It’s like I’m living in the nineties or something. Aren’t parents supposed to want a better life for their kids?

Oscar stands guard, looking over his shoulder every now and then, in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Is everything okay? Where’s Luis?” I ask while the line rings.

“I don’t know,” says Oscar. “And that’s the problem. I made the mistake of telling Mom he had a girl in his room with the door closed for a whole hour yesterday after school, and she made us all sit down on the couch last night while she gave us the talk on ‘adult choices’ she gives the eighth-grade class on their field trip to the clinic, and she grounded Luis too.”

“That stinks,” I say. I’m grateful for Mrs. Rivera, though. For real. A few months ago, Oscar reached into the front zipper compartment of my backpack looking for a pencil and ended up finding my stash of pads. I was mortified. Oscar might be my BFF, but he’s still a boy. Thanks to Mrs. Rivera, who’s a nurse at the Valentine Urgent Care, Oscar knew almost more than I did about periods and didn’t think it was a big deal.

“I know. And she called the girl’s parents, so Luis is definitely out for blood right now.”

“I’ll be fast,” I say just as my mom’s office phone goes to voice mail. “Hey, it’s me,” I say. “I’m hanging out at Oscar’s for a little while, and then I’m walking home.”

After I dial Dad and leave him the same message, Oscar grabs two watermelon-flavored fizzy waters from the fridge and we run down the hallway to his bedroom.

He swings the door open and there’s Luis, stretched across his bed, waiting.

Luis laughs like an old-timey villain. “You didn’t think I’d let you sneak in here without going through me, did you?”

Oscar launches his backpack at Luis, but he catches it like he knew all along to expect a flying backpack to the head. If he weren’t Oscar’s brother, I might even think he was kind of . . . cute? Which is weird . . . because he looks a lot like Oscar.

“It was an accident!” Oscar moans. “Come on. You know it was.”

“You got Reyna in serious trouble,” Luis says. “And we weren’t even doing anything!”

“I didn’t say you did.”

Luis turns to me, noticing for the first time that I’m here too. “What’s up, Sweet Pea?”

I don’t really get how to answer that question. Like, do people really want to know what’s up? The longer I wait to answer, the warmer my cheeks get. “Nothing,” I say. “Just, like, the usual divorced-parents stuff, I guess.” What? Why am I so weird?