“You don’t believe that’s a good way to live,” Darcy said. “It’s just an empty life, that’s all. ”

“What good is a full life if it’s full of nothing but hurt and misery?” Jamee asked.

Mom was quiet for a few blocks. Then she said, “Jamee, when we get home, you’re going to sit right down and write a note of apology to your aunt. ”

“I won’t,” Jamee snapped.

“Well, then you can just forget about me signing the permission slip for your cheerleader camp, and no mall on Saturday either,” Mom said.

Jamee sighed deeply. “Ohhh, I’ll write the stupid apology, but I won’t mean it. And before I mail it, I’ll spit on it!”

“You’d better not,” Mom warned.

Darcy thought about her trouble with Tarah and Cooper all day Sunday afternoon and evening. She did not want to go see Ms. Reed and ask for a new partner. She wanted to find some way to make peace, to get things to where they were before that silly water bug incident at the tidal pool. But she did not know how to do it or if Tarah would even want to work with her again.

“Brisana,” Darcy asked on the way to school Monday morning, “what should I do?”

“Darcy, after what that freak did to you, he ought to be suspended from school! I mean, you are totally crazy to have anything more to do with him and his stupid girlfriend,” Brisana said.

“Brisana, don’t call them names. I mean—” Darcy said softly. It was the first time she had ever spoken up against Brisana’s treatment of others.

“Give me a break, Darcy! Don’t tell me you like them? I mean, it’s just like my father says. ‘If you lie down with dogs, you’ll get up with fleas. ’ Those two are low class. I don’t know what my parents would even do if I brought home trash like Tarah Carson. ”

“Don’t call her trash,” Darcy replied. “It’s just that she wasn’t brought up like us, with manners and all. She’s not really bad or anything. ”

“She’s a fat cow, Darce! And she’s got a nasty hair weave!” Brisana snapped. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you remember when we were sophomores last year and we rated the kids we’d see on a scale of one to ten? Remember, the tens were the highest? Well, Tarah Carson was among the zeros. She couldn’t even make it to number one. Now, that’s low class. ”

“Oh Brisana . . . I mean, it’s not right to rate kids by numbers. And we weren’t really serious about that. We were just acting silly,” Darcy said.