I wanted to tell her I didn’t think Dee really meant it when he said those bad things to her. He was saying them just to say something. Like if he thought something, he was going to say it. But sometimes he didn’t use the best specific language or stick exactly the right word on it.

And mostly I wanted to tell her that in his essay, Dee had said she was very nice and very smart, and he thought we were all friends.

I dropped my stuff on the stuff pile and ran to the brick wall. I looked at the dusty ball field and the wood-chippy playground and the matching-skirt trees, but I didn’t see Bertie.

I waited for the rest of recess, but she never showed up.

When Bertie couldn’t find me at recess on Friday, she thought it meant I didn’t want to be her friend anymore. And today I couldn’t find her. You didn’t have to be a golden-sticker kid to figure it out.

22. Vivid Tangerine

I walked back to Hidden Rivers real slow.

I was wrong about friends being like the bumper cars. Friends were way worse. Friends were more like the pirate-ship ride that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and when you get to the highest point, you feel like you’re going to throw up and fall out.

When I opened the door to our apartment, the living room had that clean-laundry smell. My mom had her back to me, and the clothes were spread out on the couch.

That’s something she does sometimes. She washes all the clothes and dumps them onto the couch to fold them. Then she either puts them away or packs them up, all clean. I didn’t think it was time to move already, since we’d barely gotten here. But maybe it was. Maybe I didn’t care.

“Sorry,” she said. She took an earbud out of her ear. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

I dropped my backpack and went to the counter. I sat and spun around and around to feel the dizziness. Every time I pushed off, I saw a flash of vivid tangerine. The Safety form was still sitting where it had been for days. It might as well be permanent, like the furniture, which would still be here after we moved out.

“Do you want to get some pizza?” she said, too loud because she still had one earbud in.

I didn’t want to tell her I’d already had pizza for lunch, because that seemed like a very long time ago. Besides, there are worse things than having pizza two times in one day.

“Do you want to call Bertie?” my mom asked. “See if she wants to come with us?”

She went back to folding the laundry. She seemed okay. She seemed like she was trying her best.