In the cafeteria, I’m with Dee and a few other kids who have started sitting with us—or at least near us. I don’t know them all that well, but they’re all right. I see Lottie come in. She looks right at me, and there is a moment: she raises her eyebrows like a question. I turn, like I didn’t see her. I laugh like Dee just said the funniest thing. It’s a relief not to be so worried. If I crank up the volume, I can’t hear the whispers in my mind.

“What’s her problem?” Dee asks me between mouthfuls, gesturing at Lottie.

I shrug. Lottie sits at the end of the table with Breanne and Paige and their popular puppets, but she pulls out a book and starts to read. Breanne is laughing at someone at another table. I follow her eyes to see. There’s a girl in our grade with a skin condition, and Breanne has it out for her. It’s stupid; the girl is beautiful and nice. Her skin is white and brown in spots and patches, like she’s been splashed by a magic potion, from her cheeks going down into her collar and coming out her sleeves onto her wrists and hands. Her name is Michelle, and now she is staring back at the girls with her own group of friends backing her up, but I can tell by her eyes that she’s scared. There’s a silence. Breanne opens her eyes wide, bats her eyelashes, and lets out a low mooooo. Michelle turns away, her cheeks red, and one of her friends puts a hand on her back. She brushes it off.

“I can’t stand that girl,” says Dee, looking at Breanne.

“Yeah, she’s the worst.”

Lottie and I make eye contact again briefly. She turns away, and there is a little pang in my gut. Soon I see her get up and leave the cafeteria with her book under her arm. Paige calls something to her, and she turns her head and nods briefly. I wonder if she still likes Paige, if she sees what they’re like now. Maybe she’s just hanging out with them out of self-defense. I wish we could talk about it.

“Someone should teach her a lesson,” Dee says quietly.

“Well, good luck with that,” I say. “She’s got a monopoly on meanness.”

“You don’t have to be mean to fix a problem. You have to be just.”

“How very gangster of you,” I laugh, nervously. But actually, she is like a gangster, like Tommy from Goodfellas, that guy who goes from laughing to losing his shit in seconds. She’s like characters from all of my favorite movies.

*   *   *