Bibi is this complicated combination of cruel and charming. She likes to make up funny dances and do them behind teachers’ backs (charming). She gives the people she likes little presents constantly—scented erasers, squishy soft pencil cases, special candy from her trips to Portugal to visit her grandparents (also charming). Once, in third grade, she even handed out lemons to a select few third graders, setting in motion a trend of lemon-giving that lasted several months and worked its way down to the kindergartners. She is the kind of person who can make you want lemons for no reason at all.

On the other hand, she loves to talk about people behind their backs (cruel). And she has a way of finding out people’s secrets and using the resulting information like money in the bank.

But recently Bibi—and seemingly everyone else in the sixth grade—has decided she wants to be friends with Germ.

Germ holds funerals for her lunches every day. She likes to run laps around the playground at recess to see if she can beat her previous time. She is blond and freckled and fleshy and restless, proud of her large, round, powerful body when some people seem to think she shouldn’t be.

But it feels like she came back from summer vacation with a new kind of air around her, or at least everybody else came back different. Because now the loud self-confidence that used to put kids off is something people admire. Kids who used to tease her have started seeking her out. Even the name “Germ” sounds suddenly cool in people’s mouths.

The new air has definitely not extended to me. I’m so small and quiet that sometimes people forget I’m there (although, I do have a bit of a kicking-biting streak). I’m ridiculously clumsy and unathletic and always get picked last for teams. I cut my own hair, so my head is kind of a disaster, and that doesn’t even come close to my clothes, which are a combination of Mom’s old oversize things and the results of a yearly shopping trip I talk my mom into, where she stares into space while I fail at figuring out the rules of coordinating. I barely talk to people I don’t know. Even when I make the effort (which is rare), my tongue just freezes in my mouth. Long story short, I tend to fade next to Germ. Although, Germ says that if I’d just share the contents of my brain with the rest of the world, they’d see it’s like the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz in there.