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  “I think we can do it,” I say. And then I add, “If we stick together.”

  “You’ll be my campaign manager, right?” Mandy asks me.

  “Me?” I ask.

  “Well, this is your idea. Plus you’re the only one who knows how to train anything. I mean, yet.”

  She looks so excited, so utterly un-emo (despite the gray she recently dyed into her hair), that I can’t say no. “Sure.”

  “Seriously, guys,” Joey says. “My stomach’s aching from hunger.” Then he spots something under the dresser and reaches for it. It’s an old Mento. “Ooh,” he says. “Can I have it?”

  “Go ahead,” I say, like a quiet dare. Delia, Mandy, and Phoebe start screaming about how gross it is. The dogs look up with interest. Joey pops it into his mouth and smiles, apparently thrilled with his power to disgust everyone around him.

  Corny knocks on the door and pops her head in. “Well, I’ve been calling you all, but you can’t hear me,” she says. “Johnny’s mom’s here.”

  Delia, Mandy, and I laugh. But Joey just looks confused.

  “She’s not any good with names,” Delia tells him quietly.

  “It’s Joey, Grandma,” I correct her. I roll my eyes and tell her we’ll be right down.

  Mandy waits for the door to close. “You haven’t said what type of dog Brynne is.” Then she smiles. “Besides the obvious, I mean.”

  “I bet Brynne’s a sporter,” Joey says. “Spiritleader and all.” He makes this little snooty look when he says this. I know the word Spiritleader sounds all Native American and mystical, but it’s nothing like that. Spirit leaders are the Hubert C. Frost Middle School version of cheerleaders, if you take away the short pleated skirts and replace them with blue spandex unitards, and if you also take away competitive sports and replace them with safer, seated activities.

  Spiritleaders serve two purposes. One is to cheer on the major clubs at our school, such as the Anime Club and the Mathalicious Team, and of course the Chess Club. To be considered “major” you have to have an enrollment of ten or more students, so the Bored Game Club isn’t considered major in any way. The second purpose is to try to make everyone feel some vague emotion called “school spirit,” which someone high up and suffering from dementia must think is best achieved by sending Spiritleaders through the halls chanting and attempting acrobatic stunts named after things that are cold. Get it? Hubert C. Frost equals just frost, which equals snow and ice and winter, and is best represented by blue. Blue spandex unitards, that is.

  “She’s definitely competitive, but I don’t think she’s attentive or loyal enough to be a sporter,” I say. I reach down to pet my own little loyal and attentive sporter, Oomlot. I mean, he’s no athlete, but put some food in front of him—any kind of food—and you get the idea that he’d make a really great competitive eater.

  “So what is Brynne, then?” Delia asks. “A toy?”

  “Toys are too sweet. They live for affection, like Queso there,” I say. Queso has inched her way into Delia’s lap. “I’d say Brynne’s a hound, like me and Tess. Just a poorly trained one.”

  “You’re nothing like her,” Delia says, trying to comfort me. I give her a thank-you smile, although a little part of me wonders what it would be like to be. You know, to be popular, accepted. Beautiful. Well, our plan may not make me any prettier, but hopefully it will put an end to the teasing, at least.

  “When do we start?” Phoebe asks.

  “Tomorrow,” I tell them. “Remember, we’ve got to keep this secret. Not a word to anyone.”

  They start making cross gestures over their hearts (and Joey mimics sticking a needle in his eye, along with the accompanying pain), and we file downstairs to wait for the other moms.

  “You all look a little hungry,” Corny says, and starts offering around snacks—“special crackers,” as she calls them. I spot Tess gnawing on one in the corner, so before anyone can accept, even Joey, I tell Corny we’re all fine. (“Stale,” I mouth to them.) The fact that Corny doesn’t really do a good job of differentiating between dog and people food—well, that’s just another embarrassing thing about my family that my friends don’t need to know.

  IT’S THE NEXT day—day one of the plan—and I’m carrying my tray to the lunch table, concentrating on walking with dignity. I set my tray down and find Mandy staring at me. “Why are you walking like you’re squeezing a quarter between your butt cheeks?” she asks.

  “Shhh,” I say, and feel myself slacken a little, ashamed. I slump into my seat and open my milk carton. But my friends are still looking at me, waiting for an explanation. “Is that really how it looked?” I finally ask.

  Delia nods like it hurts. Joey asks if I’m wearing a thong or something.

  My earlobes start to burn a little. “Okay, okay, I’ll work on it,” I say, already feeling like a balloon with a slow leak. Deflated. And these are my friends! “I was kind of working some body language there. It’s the first part of the plan,” I explain. I get confused stares. “Don’t you guys understand what body language is?”

  “I totally understand the concept of body language,” Phoebe says. “But what that walk just said was bathroom emergency.”

  “Yeah, I totally understand the concept of body language too,” says Joey. He raises his eyebrows, cocks his head, holds up an index finger, and says, in a fake foreign accent, “Please to witness.” Then his eyes roll toward the ceiling and he slowly pushes a table- shaking, Dorito-scented, foghornlike belch through his gaping mouth.

  “Joey!” Delia whisper-yells, hiding her face from the disgusted glares of onlookers, who act like such a thing is so far beneath them—onlookers who are only slightly higher up from us on the Hubert C. Frost Middle School food chain. Onlookers who have loogie-hocking contests.

  “Oh, good Lord,” Mandy says, and really does seem to be making a plea to God.

  “I can’t live this way,” says Phoebe. She also seems to mean it.

  “Are you done?” I ask him.

  “Here, give me another one—you’re right, it could be better,” he says, but I grab the Dorito bag away from him and basketball-throw it into the overly stuffed mouth of the massive, sour-milk-scented trash can at the end of our table.

  “Keep it up and I’ll have some more body language for you,” Mandy warns him. “My fist may want to say hello to your face.”

  Joey laughs. “Good one,” he says to her. She fights back a proud smile.

  “We’ve gotten off track, guys. Way off track,” Delia says. “If we’re going to do this, we need to focus. Olivia was trying to explain something.” I’m starting to realize this is one of the wonderful things about having a herder as a best friend.

  “One of the first things you learn when you’re training dogs is that you have to have good body language,” I tell them. “No dog’s going to give you any respect if you don’t. And if you think about it, people are the same way. I mean, look around. You can tell who’s an alpha dog just by their body language.”

  Max Marshall walks in our direction. He looks completely at ease with himself even though he is carrying a container of green Jell-O, which is the most made-fun-of food in middle school history. He eats a spoonful while walking, and doesn’t even look stupid doing it. “Alpha.” I nod my head in his direction.

  Across the cafeteria, Brynne and the rest of the Spirit leaders swarm their table, wearing pajamas. Instead of their standard-issue tight-fitting jeans and camis, they’re covered in pink fleece and striped flannel and long cottony robes—and there’s nothing weird about it. It’s just another Spirit Dress-Up Day, one of those days when the Spiritleaders all dress up in some sort of outlandish theme to try to bring even more attention to themselves.

  I hear a peal of laughter come out of Brynne. She’s showing her friends pictures on her digital camera, and they’re all laughing too. “Also alpha,” I say. “Unfortunately.”

  “You know who else is an alpha?” Phoebe says. You can almost hear her heartbeat quic
kening. “Him.” She is staring a hole through the Robert Pattinson of Hubert C. Frost Middle School, Brant Farad. “Just look at him. He moves like the ocean,” she says.

  “Someone kill me now,” Joey pleads.

  “What? All I’m saying is that he’s got good body language. The way he walks, the way he talks. He eats very nicely too. Like a gentleman.” She turns to Joey and narrows her eyes at him pointedly, before continuing. “And he keeps his locker very neat, which is a plus. And have you ever seen him comb—” Joey’s booming “POW,” a sound he makes while pulling the trigger of his finger, which is pressed up next to his temple, interrupts her. He closes his eyes and lets the side of his head fall to the table in slow motion. His tongue, Dorito-orange, hangs out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Anyway,” Phoebe says, stiffening, as the rest of us try to hold back our laughs. We have a hard time doing this. Finally, Phoebe, who has become a color best described as salmon, says huffily, “Are we going to get anything done today or are we just going to sit around acting like idiots?”

  Joey raises his hand.

  “Yes, Mr. Spagnoli?” Mandy says. It just makes us laugh more.

  “I’m voting,” he says, “for sitting around and acting like idiots.”

  Phoebe flares her nostrils and vacuums a full lungful of air through them, her pinkish color reddening. “I’ve had enough!” she yells, and starts to stand.

  With her usual calm, Delia reaches for her wrist and pulls her back to sitting. “We’re sorry, Pheeb,” she says. “Aren’t we, guys?” We nod and murmur apologies. “Let’s finish talking about body language,” Delia says to me.

  “Yes, please. We don’t have all day,” Phoebe says.

  “Okay, you’re right,” I say. I think about Kisses, and Mr. Dewey, and everything I’ve learned from Corny. “Basically, the way you walk and stand and talk tells everyone how you feel about yourself. It can say that you’re in charge and you know what you’re doing, or it can say ‘loser.’”

  “Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m fine…” Joey drops his gaze and starts to draw circles in the unnaturally orange crumbs on the table in front of him. “You know, with myself.”

  “No you aren’t. You can barely even say it,” Mandy tells him.

  “Well, you’re all hunched over,” he says back to her.

  “That’s because I have a condition,” she says. At one point in her life she was told she had a mild spine disorder, but the only time you hear about it is when she’s getting out of something in P.E.

  “Yeah, your condition’s called being a Marcie,” he says.

  “Stop!” Delia shouts. “That’s not helping. How are we supposed to start acting like we have any confidence at all when we keep taking it away from each other? And anyway, if anyone has a ‘condition’ at this table, it’s me. Cystic acne.”

  “All right, look,” I say, trying to rein them all in. “We all have stuff wrong with us. So does everyone else in this cafeteria. Brynne Shawnson included.”

  “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, though,” Phoebe says quietly.

  “Who cares if she’s pretty?” Mandy says. “I’d rather have a smart friend like you any day, Pheeb.” It’s not really the comfort Phoebe’s looking for.

  “Okay, this sucks,” Joey says. “I’m going for a Nutty Buddy.”

  “Sit down, please, Joey,” Delia pleads. “Everyone, let’s just listen to Olivia, okay?”

  I look at the clock. Lunch is almost over. And I’m starting to wonder if the plan might as well be too. But I take a deep breath and continue, as hard as it is. I’d expected a little more enthusiasm. Right now, the whole thing just seems a little impossible. It’s so much easier to stay on the bottom of the ladder. We only have four more years of school ahead of us anyway. That’s not so bad. And I always hear that Marcies like us do so much better socially in college anyway.

  But Delia nods at me. “Go ahead, Olivia.”

  “Yeah,” Mandy says, and sweeps her hair back from her face. “Sorry. We’re listening.”

  And Phoebe says, “We really do want to do this.” Her light blue eyes go round with sincerity, and I feel a pang of appreciation for her.

  Even Joey’s looking at me. Which probably means some of my Hot Pocket is stuck in my teeth, but at least I’ve got everyone’s attention.

  “Okay, okay.” I take a breath. “The thing with dogs is that they have to have a pack leader. And if you look around at all the cliques here, it’s pretty obvious they do too. But before we can become pack leaders, we have to think like pack leaders, act like pack leaders. Become alpha dogs.”

  “But I’m still waiting on the how,” Phoebe says.

  “At first you’ll probably have to fake it. That means you walk tall, you hold your head up high, you make sure your shoulders don’t slump and your feet don’t shuffle on the ground. When you talk, you talk clearly—not too loud, but loud enough so people can hear you.”

  “Yes, hello there, Mrs. Appleton. How, may I ask, are you today?” Joey says, in his finest impersonation of a complete fool.

  I ignore him. “Delia, you can’t hide your face any longer,” I tell her. “Start wearing your hair back.”

  Her eyes go wide with alarm.

  “So you have a few zits. Big deal,” I say.

  “It is a big deal—it’s gross and humiliating and ugly.”

  “And you tell yourself that every day, don’t you?” I ask.

  She looks away. I feel smart.

  “Fine,” she says. “But that means you have to stop wearing a hat.”

  She reaches over and pulls it off of my head. My hair springs free. I’m sure I look like I’ve been electrocuted. But I say, “Okay. Fine.”

  I turn to Mandy. “No more slumping.”

  “I’ll try not to, okay?” She sounds a little annoyed.

  “Pheeb—” I start.

  She cuts me off. “I don’t have a problem with confidence.”

  Mandy jumps in. “Yes, you do. That’s why you act like you’re smarter than everyone.”

  “Who are you?” Phoebe says to Mandy. “Dr. Phil?”

  “Your mom’s Dr. Phil,” Joey says, to anyone within earshot.

  “Joey, you need to learn to zip it,” Mandy says.

  “If you were just half the gentleman that Brant is—” Phoebe starts.

  But the bell rings, which means lunch is officially over, and everyone slinks away to fourth period all wrong. Mandy’s remembered the shoulders-back part, but forgotten to stand up straight, so her neck tilts forward like a giraffe’s. Phoebe is not shuffling her feet, which would be good if she wasn’t marching like some sort of robot soldier. Delia is walking like her spine was replaced with a metal rod. And Joey just looks like he sat on a tack—I can’t explain that one.

  I, on the other hand, am walking with maturity and dignity. My shoulders are back, my head high, and my buttocks completely unclenched. This last part I make sure of.

  Me and my very confident body language walk into fourth period English.

  “Olivia?” Mr. Renaldi says as I pass his desk. “Are you okay?”

  Everyone in the class stops talking. Their stares burn into me. I try not to let my posture slip. “I’m fine,” I say, and tall-walk to my desk.

  Alpha dog Max Marshall, who sits in front of me, twists around. “Did you get in an accident or something?” Max, who has never spoken to me before in the full year that I have been at this school, actually looks interested.

  I try to smile at him. “No, but thanks for—” I don’t finish, because he’s clearly disappointed and has already turned back around. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Janie Lindy, who sits to my right, looking at me. I turn toward her and she gives me a sympathetic smile. Then she slowly pulls up the back of her shirt to reveal some type of flat brace on her back. “Gymnastics injury,” she whispers. Her smile broadens like we have something in common.

  Okay, I get it. More practice needed.

&nb
sp; AFTER WALKING OOMLOT, and then Tess, and then Ferrill up and down our road again and again over the weekend, I feel like I’ve almost got it down by Monday. My walk is more of a stride, I’ve decided. I try to pretend like I’m proud of my height, and I glide down the hall with my shoulders back and gaze ahead of me. I start to feel so much less invisible. Maybe it’s because I actually am a couple of inches taller. I usually think grown-ups are just trying to be nice when they tell me being tall is a good thing, but today it’s starting to feel like it could really be true.

  But it all falls apart in P.E. My group is playing volleyball, and over in the corner of the monstrous gym, another group is forming teams for a relay. Brynne is in that group, and I watch with envy as she is one of the first people snatched up by a team. And then she watches with amusement as I get a volleyball assault to the forehead for being so extra tall now that I’m actually an obstruction to the game.

  My forehead turns magenta. In between sixth and seventh periods, Delia tells me it doesn’t look that bad, but fishes a Steelers cap out of the bowels of her locker anyway. It feels good to have something on my head again—I’ve really missed that. So I don’t say anything to Delia when she lets her hair fall down over her face. She looks like she’s got a bad breakout coming on anyway.

  Phoebe asks who’s up for Monopoly. Joey moans. Delia asks, “Do we still play games in this club?”

  Phoebe glances around at the group of us and says, “Maybe Brynne’s right. Maybe you guys are hopeless.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” I ask, annoyed.

  “Me? What’s the matter with you guys? Olivia, you’re the one who thought this whole dog-training thing up, and you’re probably the worst off right now.” She reaches over and rips the cap from my head.

  “But my forehead,” I hear myself whine.

  “No excuses,” Phoebe says. Then she turns to Delia. “And you.”

  Delia says nothing, but starts gathering her hair back into a ponytail. Mandy pulls a rubber band out of her backpack and hands it to her.