At recess, I go back to the bathroom. I can’t bear to be in the schoolyard and see who is going to huddle with who. I am sitting on the radiator whispering my speech to myself when the door bangs open.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Honey says. She stands with her hands on her hips. “I just wanted to say good luck. May the best one win.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, looking down. Tears come to my eyes every time I remember her telling me off in front of my house. The whole morning, I have kept myself from looking at her. But of course, Honey is Honey and can still have it in her to go and find me and wish me good luck even though we are in a fight and competing against each other. I know I am being small, but I do not have it in me to wish her good luck back. I focus on a piece of toilet paper on the floor. I can hear her breathing, waiting for me to say something. I look up and am startled by the hurt expression nakedly on her face. I lose my balance and slide off the radiator, and before I can stammer anything out, the door bangs shut behind her.

This time, I go first. I say my speech without a hitch. Even though I feel a bit silly doing all the dramatic things over again in front of everybody, like it somehow feels fake and scripted, I do it anyway with all I have, and everyone laughs again in all the right places. I get a huge applause from my class and I feel like their clapping hands are patting me on the back. Then comes Honey. She is pretty funny too. But I notice her speech is actually a little different from the first time, and it doesn’t sound quite as good. People laugh, but more like chuckles at her performance and the strange things she is doing. At one point, she looks like she’s forgotten what she is supposed to say and so instead she does a little dance and calls it the “peeling-an-orange shimmy.”

Oh, Honey, I realize to myself. You never even wrote it out in full; you’ve just been winging it. For once, she doesn’t entirely get away with it. When the class votes again, she comes in last.

Noam comes in second.

I am going to represent our class at the middle school speech contest.

I can’t believe it. Neither can my mother. After dinner, she has me pull up a chair to the dark alcove at the back of the kitchen where her workstation is so she can show me a video on “power poses,” which are ways to stand to give you more confidence.

“Just remember, Milla,” she says, “you can ‘fake it till you make it.’ ”