Zoe giggled.

Winnie spun around, her braid whipping around her neck. “What’s so funny? The guy said, ‘Soup dumplings,’ didn’t he?”

“Exactly.” Jeanine bit off the tiny dough knot at the top of the dumpling. “Soup dumplings, not dumpling soup. The soup’s inside the dumpling.”

“I guess that’s kind of a fun change, right, Winnie?” Jim said as he popped a dumpling in his mouth. He grabbed his water and guzzled.

“And that’s why you bite the top off first,” Jeanine said.

“Hot, but good.” Jim nursed his tongue with an ice cube. “Almost worth losing that layer of skin from the roof of my mouth.”

“I almost forgot.” Josh dropped the legs of his chair to the floor. “Zoe was on TV with Brynn!”

“No way,” I said.

“Yes way. Henry and I got to go in the bed.” Zoe slurped soup from her dumpling.

“With her?”

“Uh-huh. And I told her a duck-duck joke, the one about the quack of dawn.” She popped the drained dumpling into her mouth.

“But how? I mean, why did you get to go? It’s not like you even watch her show.”

Zoe rolled her eyes, then reached up and boinged one of her orange curls.

You can’t blame Zoe for knowing she’s cute. Wherever we go, people say so right in front of her like she’s a puppy or something. And not just family and friends, strangers too. It’s weird. It’s even weirder when they try to touch her—I mean, usually just her hair, but still.

“And I told Brynn everyone should come to Petersville so it doesn’t disappear.”

“Go, Zoe,” I said.

“It was awesome, and it was all on camera,” Josh said. “Mom saw it on TV. She said Brynn even showed us with the signs and the Petersmobile.”

“Get this,” Jim said. “Cal called me after lunch to say traffic to the website went crazy after Breakfast with Brynn. So, put it here.” He held up his hand for Zoe to high-five.

Zoe put down her scallion pancake and smacked Jim’s palm.

“That’s great. But that’s just one day,” Jeanine said. “If we want to create serious buzz, we have to be out there every day with the signs. And Tris has to keep winning, which is not going to happen if he goes out there and chokes again.”

“Jeanine!” Mom said.

“What? He said the only reason he got through was because he didn’t drop his knife. He was total krill.”

Zoe spit the dumpling she’d just put in her mouth back into her steamer. “What’s krill?”

“They’re the little fish the shark eat. The girl with her own knives? Shark. The kid who choked?” Jeanine pointed her chopstick at me. “Krill.”

“Jeanine, sa soo fee,” Dad snapped.

“What? I was defining krill. How is that not helpful?”

“You know.” Dad gave Jeanine the scary slow nod.

“But I don’t.” I had that shaken-soda feeling again. “I was krill.”

“Tris,” Mom said, but it sounded like, “Stop.”

“What? I did. I choked. I trained and trained. Walter spent hours showing me what to do. And then when the time came, I couldn’t do it. It’s like textbook choking. So there! I said it!”