Of everyone from the pageant, I see Hannah the least. Not because I don’t want to, but because she goes out of her way to be unseen. Plus she has lots of slightly older friends who don’t even live in Clover City. Her elusiveness makes me want to try even harder to be friends with her.
“What the hell?” asks Will.
Hannah rolls her head back, stomping to the table where the rest of us sit. “I signed up for that life-skills class thinking it would be dumb stuff like online banking and applying for jobs, but no. It’s basically a home ec class.” She sits down and slams the doll on the table, triggering sobs from the speaker on the back of its head. “Our final,” she says, like we’re gathered around a campfire telling horror stories, “is a casserole.”
Ellen, Amanda, and Will nearly fall out of their seats in hysterics, and I bite my lip, trying not to laugh along with them.
Hannah gives them all a half-baked dirty look, but it’s the best she can do not to smile herself.
“I’ll dig through my mom’s recipe book if it’ll help,” I offer.
She turns to me. “If you really want to help, you’ll make the damn thing for me.”
Willowdean nudges me with her elbow. “So what’s all this about? Did you gather us all here to corrupt another time-honored Clover City tradition?”
They go quickly silent with all eyes on me. Suddenly I feel very, very dumb. Self-doubt washes over me, and I am immediately positive that I like all of them much more than any of them like me. That’s just the worst feeling. It’s like showing up to a costume party where you’re the only one who dressed up.
But then I look at Amanda, and she nods, and I know that at the very least, I can always count on her.
“I miss y’all,” I finally say. “A lot. And that’s what this emergency meeting is about. I know that we’re all busy with different things and the pageant is long gone.”
“Thank God,” says Hannah, stuffing her baby and sling into her messenger bag.
“But I sort of hate that, ya know? Because I just never see y’all anymore, and, well, a lot of good things came out of the pageant. But the best part was all of us becoming friends.”
Willowdean smiles. “Well, not to be self-centered, but I sort of feel like the best part was when I wore a cardboard Cadillac on stage.”
“Okay,” I say. “Yes, that was pretty great. But back then we saw each other all the time,” I say. “Because we had a reason to, so if we need a reason to get together, I’m creating one.”
Ellen squints at me suspiciously.
“I’m not a big organized-activities person, in case you hadn’t already discerned that about me,” says Hannah.
“What’s your idea?” asks Amanda.
I inhale deeply. “Slumber parties. Every Saturday until the end of the school year. We’ll all take turns hosting.”
It’s so quiet I can hear the cheerleaders practicing in the gym.
Ellen speaks first. “Every. Single. Saturday. Night?”
“Well, sure,” I say, my answer coming out more like a question. “But with slumber parties. We can do face masks. And crafts. And play games. And exchange ideas.”
“Exchange ideas?” asks Hannah. “What? Like the Slumber Party United Nations?”
“It has to be every Saturday night?” asks Willowdean. “That’s prime date-night real estate.”
Amanda shrugs. “The only date I’ve got is with my TV and my cat. I’m in.”
A small bit of relief sparks in my chest, but no one is quick to follow her lead. I nod. “Okay. What about every other Saturday?”
Hannah works diligently at peeling off her dark purple nail polish. “We all have to take turns hosting?”
Ellen turns to Will, and in a quieter voice says, “This is like what we were talking about the other night. More time for us. Without the guys, ya know?”
I can see Will turning this over in her head. She’s the kind of person who is economical with her time and her love, and I can appreciate that. Sharing Ellen is hard for her.
She looks to me. “Let’s try it for a few weeks. But no hard feelings if it gets to be too much, okay? Just with work and school and . . .” Will sighs. “Bo, and trying to be a good friend and not go crazy. It’s a lot.”
“I get it,” I say.
Ellen grins. “You know the deal. We’re a buy-one-get-two kind of thing. I’m in.”
And as a surprise to absolutely no one, Hannah is in no hurry to respond. She picks the polish off her entire thumbnail before speaking. “We’re not, like, having pillow fights or anything, okay? And if anyone tries to give me a makeover, I’ll cut off their hair in the middle of the night.”
I swallow. “Understood.” I force out a laugh to lighten the mood a bit. Laughing on command is something that happens to be my number-one talent, and one of the things that will make me a great news anchor one day.
I volunteer to host first and promise to text everyone more details before the weekend. A part of me is nervous, like somehow they’ll all decide they don’t like me anymore or that this will all turn out to be one big embarrassing disaster. But we only have one year left of high school, and the anxiety inside me tells me that if I don’t solidify our friendship now, the five of us will just drift away from one another eventually.
But mostly I’m just bubbling with excitement.
Callie
Four
After school, I hang back for a little while to try to talk to Vice Principal Benavidez about the dance team’s sponsorship dilemma, but he’s no help. I guess he pretended to be helpful. He promised me stuff I know he won’t deliver on, like that he’d check with the superintendent or ask Principal Armstrong if there’s any room in the budget. When I asked to speak to the principal myself, he fed me some crap about Principal Armstrong being a very busy woman, like she’s the freaking president or something.
My back pocket vibrates, and when I check my phone, I find a text from Bryce.
BRYCE: babe im outside where u at?
Just as I’m about to type a response, I collide with a pastel ball of dough. My whole body bounces back as my phone slips out of my hands and slides across the floor.
“Oh my goodness!” squeaks a voice.
I glance up to see Millie Michalchuk, someone I am very much aware of. To be honest, you can’t miss the girl. Freshman year she was crowned the Nottest of Them All according to the Hottest and Nottest List. Luckily for Millie, her name only popped up on the list one year. I believe this year the honor went to Hannah Perez.
I groan. “That phone better not be broken.”
“Oh gosh, I hope not,” she says as she retrieves the phone from the floor. “Shipshape!”
I hold out my hand. “Lucky you.”
She grins. “You’re right about that!” The phone vibrates in her hand as she gives it back to me. “Sorry,” she says. “I was just in here to give your mom the morning announcements to proofread for tomorrow, but I guess I missed her, huh?”
I shrug. “Yeah, I don’t really keep up with her schedule.” Lie. She’s gone to pick up Kyla and take her to dance class. I glance down at my phone to see another message from Bryce. “Right, well, I gotta go.”
Millie steps forward, blocking my path as if she didn’t even hear me. “What a beautiful necklace,” she says, lightly touching my thirteenth-birthday gift from my dad.
The gold circle pendant with an engraved C hangs from a thin gold chain. It’s something I only take off for dance competitions. Besides the tiny diamond studs Bryce gave me for Christmas, it’s the only piece of real jewelry I own. I clear my throat. “Uh, thanks.”
“Tell your mom I stopped by?”
I squeeze past her. “I’ll try to remember.”
Millie just makes me uncomfortable. It hasn’t always been that way. Before the pageant last fall, she was just some random fat girl who always kept to herself and who . . . okay, yes, me and my friends sometimes made fun of. At least not to her face. At the pageant, especially during the swimwear component . . . I don’t know. It was just, like, hard to look at her. It wasn’t like when I’d made dumb jokes about her in the past. This time I just wanted to cover her up and save her the embarrassment. Except Millie didn’t seem embarrassed. Anyway, I guess the judges pitied her, too, because in the end, she got runner-up.