“Hi, girls.” Lindy’s mom smiled over her shoulder as though Jillian walked through their door every day. In fact it was the first time Jillian had ever stepped inside the Coxes’ house. Lindy had been saying hi to her in the halls for the past couple of days, ever since the Halloween festival. Then, today, she’d come up to Jillian when Jillian was opening her locker at the end of the school day and said, “D’yawannacomeoverandworkonthesocialstudiesthing?”

Jillian had to take the sentence apart—slowing down the words, peeling off the southern accent—to understand her. Lindy wanted her to come over? She felt flattered for a few seconds, until she remembered that they were the only people in third-period social studies signed up to make a model of a Greek temple for the Ancient Greece unit. “I can’t today,” she said.

“Why?”

“I . . . have Recycling Club,” she said, but that wasn’t the only reason. The main reason was that her dad would kill her if she went to the Coxes’.

Someone was cutting down little trees around town. Her father was convinced it was Lindy’s dad.

“Recycling Club? That’s a thing?” Lindy laughed. “That’s so lame. Recycling Club,” she said again, inspiring a new round of laughter in herself.

It was lame. Jillian couldn’t deny it. All they did was talk about the different kinds of plastics that could be recycled and make posters urging kids to use the recycling bins in the cafeteria.

“Skip it. You can skip it once, right? Next time you could pick up a bunch more cups or something.”

In the end, Jillian had agreed. The environment wasn’t going to get that much worse if she skipped one day of Recycling Club. Her parents didn’t have to know.

Lindy kicked her shoes into the mud room by the kitchen. One bounced off the back wall and landed on the dryer. The other just missed the window. Jillian set hers side by side on the mat by the door. The dog came over to sniff the insides.

“Off!” Lindy said, her face up close to his. “Watch out or he’ll hump you.”

Jillian stood still, ready to push the dog down, but he just sniffed her ankle. He tipped his head sideways when she scratched his chin.

“Soooooo?” Lindy’s mom slid the grilled cheese sandwich onto a Barbie-pink plate.

“He said, ‘Hi,’” Lindy said.

“That’s good!”

“I said hi first. My mom is pimping me,” Lindy said. “She’s trying to get Mark to like me. Jillian likes him, too, Mom.”

“I do not!” Jillian said. She leaned back on her stool at the Coxes’ counter, in case her mom happened to be looking out the window.

“Boys!” Lindy’s mom said.

“Yeah boys. Boy oh boy oh boys,” Lindy said.

“Do you want some grilled cheese, Jillian?”

“I’m okay.” She did. Badly.

“Share with her, Lin.”