“Oh, nothing.” Eve turned the laptop away.

Abe came over to sit on the edge of her bed. “This list thing absolutely blows, doesn’t it?”

“It hasn’t been the best week.” Eve shrugged.

“Middle school is the worst,” he said. “You’re gonna love high school.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, everyone is older and, like, chills out a little bit.”

“Cool.”

“And at Rockson they have the best English teacher: Mr. Melby. He’s this dude with Albert Einstein hair who’s always quoting Shakespeare and stuff. You’d go nuts for him.”

“That sounds awesome.” Eve grinned.

“I’m just saying, one year and you’ll be out of Ford.”

If she could even last the year! “Yeah, I know,” she told him.

But that didn’t change the fact that she had to go back to school tomorrow, and be stared at, and pretend to like Brody Dixon, and let Sophie do some weird makeover on her that weekend, and just pray things went back to normal after it was all over.

“I understand your skepticism,” Abe said. “Just don’t let this crap change you, okay?”

It felt odd to have Abe speak to her this way, because she didn’t know what about her he thought might change. He was the one who had changed. They used to race their bicycles in the park and build legendary forts out of shelves and blankets where they would play Slapjack and War for hours at a time. But now he wasn’t around much, and the forts were years behind them. Plus, he was always fighting with their dad about articles and books she’d never read. Sometimes it even seemed as if he liked making their dad angry.

She couldn’t imagine changing as much as he had.

“I won’t,” she answered.

“Okay. Good.” Abe headed out of her room and hollered, “Night!” as the door closed.

Eve called Nessa.

“Is this ‘number one’ calling? Number one? Oh my god.” Nessa fake-hyperventilated.

“Oh, be quiet.”

“Too soon? Sorry.”

“Okay, so…” Eve turned the laptop back around. “What’d I miss?”

“Well, Teeny might get kicked out of the house for the hair pull, but she’s so talented the judges are having a hard time doing that and might give her another chance.”

“’Kay.” Eve snuggled under her covers to watch the final dance numbers.

“So how about that Sophie Kane, huh?” Nessa asked as one of the girls performed. “Do you trust her?”

Eve took a moment before answering. Sophie had been so angry with her, and then so certain that it was Brody mere moments later, like she just wanted someone—anyone—to blame. “I’m not sure.”

The girl who was performing did a triple pirouette.

“Wow,” they both said at the same time.

“I don’t trust her,” Nessa admitted. “She’s smarter than I thought she’d be, though. I’ll give her that. Oh my gosh, first Teeny pulls a ponytail and now she’s yelling at a judge?”

“Wait, why didn’t you think she was smart?” Eve pressed her. “Isn’t she good in classes and stuff?”