Lately, I’d been concentrating on using manners, so I focused on not yelling that I wanted her to leave so I could wake up in peace. Do not yell, I told myself, my voice loud in my head. Do not tell her to get out. Make your voice match hers.

I opened my eyes and looked at her sideways because I was on my side.

“Hi,” I groaned, my tired, grumpy, scratchy voice not sounding like hers at all. She ignored it.

“It’s Friday!” Mom said. “Or, since it’s your early-release day, should I say, Fri-yay?”

We got out of school at 11:25 a.m. on Fridays, so we were only there for three hours and five minutes, or three class periods—and one of them was homeroom—unless you were an overachiever who’d chosen to take zero period. Zero period is the optional period before homeroom and it’s way too early for me.

“Uh-huh,” I growled, rolling away and pulling the covers over my shoulder. “I’m awake, you can leave now.”

“You know the rule,” Mom said. “I can’t leave until you’re upright.”

That is the stupidest rule ever! I shouted in my head. It was almost painful not to say it out loud, but I thought about manners and counted to ten and managed not to yell. I threw off my covers and got out of bed, hunched forward, my fists clenched, frowning. But upright.

“There,” I said.

“Thank you,” my mom said, which bugged me.

I guess I should say right now that I love my mom, so you don’t get the wrong idea. She’s not mean or anything. I just . . . Things bother me really easily. Or they don’t bother me at all. I tend to have extreme feelings one way or the other, not usually in the middle. Maybe that’s why I’m sometimes unhappy. I don’t know. Anyway.

When my mom finally left, I put on my softest skinny jeans, the ones that I wore at least twice a week. Today, I noticed the seams digging against the sides of my thighs and I hated it, so I changed into a different pair. I pulled on my black hoodie with the thumbholes, testing out the feeling of that for a second, deciding it was okay. The seams of the new pants bugged me, too, so I changed into leggings. They had a hole in the knee but felt okay. I stuck my long fingernail in the hole and made it bigger.