After my speech, I’d made Dad come to career day to talk about what it was like to be a funeral director and how important a job it was. After all, eventually everyone needs one. I’d thought that would make things better. But no, it got even worse. Way worse. Now everyone at school thinks my whole family is weird and obsessed with death.

When you go to a small private school like I do, everyone knows everything about you, even the kids in different grades. I’d asked my parents to transfer me from Beit Sefer to a public school with a ton of kids who don’t know me. But they said I should try to stick it out for eighth grade. After that, if I was still unhappy, we could talk about my going to a public high school.

Until then I was stuck with being known as Chatty Corpse Girl, Morticia, Evil and whatever other humiliating names they could come up with.

“What’d you buy, Goth Girl?” Sasha asked as she and Miri shifted to block my way completely. She reached for the bag in my hands. “Black eyeliner?”

I pulled the bag away before she could get it. “This is a stationery store,” I said. “They don’t sell eyeliner.” And it wasn’t like I even wore makeup. Duh.

“I know that!” Sasha barked. “I’m here to pick out my bat mitzvah invitations. For my bat mitzvah.” I guess she was emphasizing the words to make it sound like a very big deal. “That you won’t be invited to, by the way,” she added.

This was a lie. At our school, when someone has their bar or bat mitzvah, they have to invite the whole class. It’s only, like, twelve people, but is a rule.

“Like I’d even want to go!” I said. I added a “Pffft!” for good measure.

All right, so maybe I did sort of want to go, but only to show her and everyone else that I was a good person who didn’t hold grudges. I definitely wouldn’t have any fun though. Or maybe I would have fun just to show her how much I didn’t care that she and Miri were so mean to me.

“Whatever,” Sasha said, adding a loud cluck of her tongue as she leaned toward me.

Miri moaned and rolled her eyes back. “Don’t get too close, Sasha—she might try to eat your braaaaaaain.”

It was a pretty lousy impression of a brain-eating zombie, if you ask me.

“Oh, yeah. Right,” Sasha said, backing up dramatically.

I fought back tears as I pushed past the girls. Just because I didn’t want any friends didn’t mean I was immune to these girls being so horrible.

I got on my bike, looping my bag over the right handlebar, and pedaled toward home. The tears poured out of me, but I took some comfort in thinking about how when I grew up and became a funeral director like my parents, I wouldn’t have to worry about my clients being mean to me.