“Unless you want to practice your new diaper-changing skills on some of the dogs.” I couldn’t resist teasing Jessi.

Jessi blew out a big mouthful of air in an exaggerated sigh. “This conversation makes me believe my life is already filled with chaos.” She stood up. “I’m going to see what Sebastian and his crew are up to. I’d rather hear some sci-fi geek convo than another word about dog poop.”

With that, she marched over to her friend Sebastian’s table and stood there talking to him and his friends.

I shook my head and began piling my garbage from lunch onto my cafeteria tray. Usually my mom packs me something healthy, but today she gave me money to buy lunch, and I had splurged on some chicken fingers and french fries. Even though my mom reminded me there are healthy options available in our cafeteria, like salads and veggies, or today’s special of whole wheat spaghetti with turkey meatballs, I decided I eat plenty of turkey meatballs at home, and I could not resist the smell of the fries.

I did take a picture of the fancy spaghetti and meatballs, though, and texted it to Kara. Our school cafeteria back in Connecticut never had anything like that on the menu.

I was walking over to the trash can to dump out my stuff when I ran into my friend Steven, who was doing the same.

I am kind of crushing on Steven, and Jessi has been crushing on Steven’s best friend, Cody. Recently things had gotten complicated, though, when Jessi started hanging out with Sebastian, who was a cute sci-fi geek, while Cody was a cute athlete.

According to our parents, Jessi and I aren’t allowed to date boys, but we are allowed to hang out in groups with some of our guy friends. When I thought that Jessi and Cody weren’t going to be friends anymore, I thought I wouldn’t be able to see Steven as much. But Jessi and Cody worked it out. Jessi is friends with both Sebastian and Cody, and I’ve hung out in groups with both of them. So it all worked out, and I was relieved. I really liked spending time with Steven. He has a soccer-ball brain like I do!

“Hey, I heard the Bolts gave you a hard time on Saturday,” Steven said. “If they are as fast as the boys’ team, you must have been running like crazy to catch them.”

“Oh, man.” I slumped next to the trash can. “They were zipping around the field. Whenever we had the ball, they would kick it out-of-bounds.”

Steven laughed. “I wonder if the boys’ and girls’ teams practice together. The boys play just like that too.”

“Have you played them yet this spring?”