Izzy nodded casually, like he knew what that was, and took another huge bite. Half of his sandwich was gone already.

“This one day at school, Frankie was having a meltdown because she’d made a turtle out of paper scraps and the teacher thought it was trash and threw it away.”

“Rude.”

“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, Frankie was completely losing it, throwing markers and glue and stuff. I was so embarrassed, I went and stood in the corner and watched. Other kids were screaming because Frankie was scaring them, but Colette just walked over to the trash can and found the turtle and set it on Frankie’s desk.”

“Awww,” Izzy said, “that’s rad.”

“Did you just say rad?” I asked, leaning away from him so I could give him a properly weird look from a distance.

He shrugged and smiled, then popped open a flavored water and chugged some.

I kept telling the story. “When Colette gave back the turtle, it was like someone paused a video, Frankie quieted down so fast. The teacher still sent her to the principal’s office.”

Izzy laughed. “I did some time there myself.” When I raised my eyebrows in question, he said, “I’ll tell you another time. Go ahead.”

“Anyway, while our teacher was getting everyone settled again, Colette came over to me in the corner. She said, ‘I think your sister is okay now. Let’s make necklaces.’ And that was kind of it. We were just friends after that. And like Frankie was okay, being friends with Colette. I mean, it’s not like Frankie never got emotional again in her life, but Colette was black-belt-level good at seeing the thing that Frankie needed to calm her down—better than me even sometimes, and I know Frankie pretty well.”

I looked at my hands; I’d set down the lunch sack and had been tearing off pieces of skin while I’d been talking. I looked at Izzy, and it seemed like he was trying not to look at my hands—maybe to not embarrass me.

I decided to just ignore the wreckage of my fingers and finish the story.

“The three of us loved making up games, and there was this one called dare-or-scare, where you had to do a dare or get a scare,” I said. “Colette and I both loved scary stuff, and Frankie loved dares, so we all liked the game.”

“Scary movies are killer,” Izzy said, starting in on some chips. “Continue.”

“Fast-forward to this last school year,” I said. “Frankie and Colette had a falling-out.” I paused, thinking of Frankie overhearing Mia and Colette talking about her, calling her tornado brain because of Frankie’s obsession with tornadoes. And maybe because of the way she processes things, I don’t know. It hurt my heart to think about how Frankie must have felt, hearing her best friend talk about her behind her back.