Sophie knew this song too well. “My dad’s band,” she said, dismissing it and grabbing her phone to change it. How embarrassing.

“I love it!” Eve repeated.

Sophie changed it to a Top 40 playlist. “Don’t.”

“But it’s so—”

“He’s a jerk,” Sophie cut Eve off.

Sophie kind of couldn’t believe she was saying this to Eve Hoffman. She didn’t talk about her dad. Ever. But there they were, doing that.

Eve didn’t speak for a second, and she stopped dancing. Then she looked back into the mirror as she said to Sophie, “Nessa and I call jerks ‘Malfoys.’ And if they’re really bad, then ‘Voldemorts.’”

“Sooo nerdy.” Sophie cringed, but laughed. She turned up the new song as if to drown out the sound of her dad and erase it from the room.

The door burst open, and their little sisters danced their way inside, both dressed up in Eve’s mom’s clothes.

“I THINK HANNAH IS MY BEST FRIEND!” Bella yelled to Eve as the music pounded.

Sophie gave in and danced, too. She grabbed her little sister’s hands, and they spun around together. Eve continued her goofy moves, her fingers snapping and her knees wobbling side to side. Maybe this was the Eve Hoffman that Nessa got to see.

As the song ended, they turned to the door and saw Eve’s mom standing in its frame, a bemused look on her face.

“How’s that school project going?” she asked, but not in a stressed-out way. More like she actually knew they weren’t doing one and didn’t care.

But when she took in Eve’s face and hair, her smile disappeared.

“Oh, honey,” she said as Sophie went over to her phone to turn off the music. “You look … so different.”

Sophie knew in that moment that Eve’s mom was judging her. She probably thought Sophie was a “bad influence.” Maybe Eve’s mom could tell that Sophie’s clothes looked fancy, but were really used. Some of them homemade, sewed on her grandma’s old sewing machine. Her mom had taught her how. Maybe Eve’s mom saw the smudges all over Sophie’s makeup bag, sitting next to Eve’s chair, and wondered why her stuff was so dirty. Maybe she’d even figured out that Sophie wasn’t from their neighborhood. Did parents know about other kids’ parents in town? Maybe Eve’s mom knew that the Kanes lived in Silver Ledge Apartments, or that her mom served people at a diner on the side of Greer Road. And even though there was nothing wrong with that, a lawyer or a doctor or something, which Eve’s parents totally must have been, might think there was.

“We should go,” Sophie said to the rich girls and their mom as she grabbed her stuff and threw it into her backpack. Bella came to her side.

“Oh.” Eve’s mom sounded surprised.

“Oh,” Eve parroted in the same way.

“You need a ride home, honey?” Eve’s mom asked.

“No, it’s so close,” Sophie answered, and she headed off from the huge, happy Hoffman home with Bella, still bopping around and singing, unaware that she would never be in the same world as someone like Hannah Hoffman.