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“Well,” Phoebe says, putting the Monopoly box down, “just so you know. It’s already working for me.”

  Delia and I exchange confused looks. It can’t be working—it’s way too early. “What are you talking about, Pheeb?” I ask.

  It’s one of those rare moments where she looks almost happy. Not smiling, really, but close. “I’ve been asked to the dance,” Phoebe announces. She quickly glances around for our reactions, then starts rooting through the Monopoly box for the little shoe game piece.

  She’s talking about the Fall Ball, which takes place in six weeks. None of us has ever gone to anything like this. None of us has ever been invited to anything like this.

  “By who?” Joey asks, suspiciously.

  “By Brant Farad,” she says.

  I shoot a panicked look to Delia, who returns it with even more alarm. This has to be a prank that Phoebe’s fallen for.

  “Brant Farad?” I ask. “Are you sure?”

  Phoebe nods.

  Delia just looks terrified.

  “No way,” Mandy says.

  “I know,” Phoebe adds, another almost-smile flickering on her face. “I can barely believe it!”

  Neither can we.

  Seriously.

  “But Pheeb,” Delia says, looking around at us for support. “You can’t be thinking of actually going.”

  “Well, duh. It’s Brant Farad. Of course I’m going.” Her forehead starts to crinkle up. “Why? What’s the problem?”

  “Brant Farad is, like, so out of our league,” Mandy says.

  “You ever seen the movie Carrie?” Joey asks. “Might sound familiar. You know, loser girl gets asked to the prom and ends up soaked in pig blood. It’s a classic.”

  “Just shut up!” Phoebe yells. She pushes back from the table, throws the little shoe back toward the box—and misses—and storms out of the room.

  Ms. Greenwood glances up from her papers. “Anyone hurt?” she asks. When we say no, she adjusts her glasses and goes back to her reading.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have said anything,” Delia says, her voice quiet, her body stiff. “It’s got to be some kind of joke. Maybe she’ll figure it out.”

  “Maybe,” I mumble. Mandy is as still as a statue.

  “Cool. I wanted the shoe,” Joey says, and begins to set up for Monopoly.

  A few minutes later, Phoebe comes back in. She grabs the shoe from Joey and stuffs the wheelbarrow into his hand. Then they start arguing about who lost the dog game piece, which has been missing since last year.

  Phoebe: “You lost it!”

  Joey: “No I didn’t, you did!”

  Phoebe: “You did! You’re an idiot!”

  Joey: “Your boyfriend’s an idiot!”

  “I can’t listen to this,” Delia says, over the yelling.

  “Me either,” I agree.

  Mandy stands up. “Come on, you guys,” she says to me and Delia. We leave Phoebe and Joey to their spat and follow Mandy to the bathroom. She opens her backpack and takes out a pencil pouch. “I’ve got a ton of makeup. Let’s cover up that volleyball bruise,” she tells me. I get a little nervous, because I start to wonder if by “cover” it up, she means scribble over it with her beloved Sharpie.

  But she unzips the pouch and pulls out a little tube of concealer. “Is that going to work?” I ask. Mandy has me sit down on the radiator and dabs the little spongy tip of the stick on my forehead. As she rubs it over the bruise, being extra gentle, Delia stares at me with big eyes.

  “It’s a little lighter than your skin tone, so it’s not perfect,” Mandy explains. “But it’s like way better than it was. And if you just part your hair on the side and sweep it over a little, you can’t even really see it.”

  I get up and look in the mirror. She’s right. Under the bright buzzing fluorescent lights of the bathroom, where every flaw can enjoy its own very special moment in the spotlight, I only see a slightly raised, slightly pink circle. “That’s pretty incredible,” I say.

  “I want some,” Delia says. She grabs the concealer—almost hungrily—from Mandy and starts dabbing little spots all over her zits before Mandy can stop her. In the seconds it takes her to finish, she looks like she’s got a reverse case of chicken pox.

  “Uh, Dee…” Mandy starts.

  Delia is now rubbing the dots in frantically, making little chalky spots over her cheeks and forehead. The faster she goes, the worse it looks.

  “Uh, it’s really not the right color for you,” Mandy tells her. “If you want some, we’ll go shopping this weekend.”

  Delia stops and sighs. “You’re right. I look like crap,” she says into the mirror. Then she bends over the sink and begins washing it off.

  “Just be glad you don’t need any of the rest of this stuff,” Mandy says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a little yellow tube of mascara. I watch her put it on. She blinks in the mirror, wipes away a few specks, and then sees me watching her. “Want to try some?” she offers.

  I’ve only worn mascara once in my life, and that was when my ex-best-friend Rachel and I went through her mother’s makeup drawer. That day, I wound up with a black gooey mess that cemented my upper and lower eyelids together, and three days after that, I wound up on antibiotics. My mom didn’t get mad or anything, but something about it seemed to make her a little sad. I still remember what she said to me. You don’t really want to grow up, Olivia. Believe me, you don’t.

  “I’m not sure how to do it,” I admit now, to Mandy.

  Thankfully, she doesn’t laugh. Instead she sits me back down and puts it on my lashes herself, and when I get up again to see myself in the mirror, I say it’s an improvement. Inside, however, I’m shocked. I had no idea my eyes could look so good.

  “You look so pretty, Liv!” Delia says. “Your eyes—they’re so green.”

  “They are,” Mandy agrees. “They’re kind of bluish-green. Like that really pretty ocean.”

  “Oooh! Yeah!” Delia says. “Like the Caribbean!”

  “That’s it! Caribbean green!” Mandy smiles proudly. I guess I’m not going on and on enough about how wonderful my eyes look, not out loud, at least, because she says, “Don’t you like it?”

  “Well, yeah,” I say. I’m actually embarrassed by how much I do. It catches me a little off guard. I don’t even look like myself, not really. “It’s just weird.”

  “What else do you have in that bag?” Delia asks her.

  “Oh, the usual. Eyeliner, lip gloss. Sharpie,” she tells her. To me, she says, “You know, if you don’t like it, just wash it off.”

  I steal another glance at myself in the mirror. I look so different. I don’t look quite like the butt of Brynne Shawnson’s jokes. In fact, if you didn’t look below the neck or above the hairline, I could almost pass for one of them. I mean, my eyes—am I even allowed to think this?—are nearly as pretty as Brynne’s. Nearly. I get a secret little thrill, just for a second. But reality sets in quickly. I must look as uncomfortable as I feel. I probably couldn’t pull off “pretty” if you paid me.

  So even though a huge part of me doesn’t want to, I do wash it off.

  By the time we get back to the Bored Game Club, Phoebe and Joey are in opposite corners, playing separate games of solitaire. Monopoly sits high on a shelf behind Ms. Greenwood.

  The bell rings and we leave the room together. Joey peels off as soon as we’re out the door. “Bye, everyone except Phoebe,” he says.

  “What was up with him?” I ask, once he’s gone.

  “He was kind of a basket case today. Can boys get PMS?” Mandy jokes.

  “Well, no, I don’t think they can,” Phoebe says, as if it were a real question. The rest of us hide our smirks. “But, yes, I agree. He was worse than usual.”

  “Oh well, he’ll get over it, whatever it is,” Delia says.

  “Yeah, he’s usually such a joy,” Mandy adds. We all start heading in different directions, making our ways to our lockers and buses; and even though everything seems to be business as
usual, I think about what I saw in that mirror, and I start to feel anything but usual inside.

  When she’s bored with everything going on around her, Brynne gets everyone on the bus to bark at me. So I guess today she’s bored. The barking starts the minute I step on. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but instead I feel my heart sink into my bowels and perhaps even embed itself in my small intestine. When the bus driver is good and sick of the noise, she hoists herself around, twists her face into a mask of anger, and screams, “Shut up, everyone!” It’s like something you’d see on Supernanny—one of those bad moms whaling on her children—but it’s like beautiful music to me.

  The bus is full, so again I sit next to the booger kid, who, as usual, is too involved in his Car and Driver to acknowledge the world around him. I’m a little envious. I close my eyes and try to zone out, too.

  And when I open them, I see Brynne Shawnson kiss fart-breath Danny Pritchard on the lips. As grossed out as I am, I’m still a little envious. Could I ever be the girl that someone wants to kiss?

  If I really was that girl I saw in the mirror, maybe the answer would be yes.

  AFTER SCHOOL, I’m lying on the couch, petting patterns into Oomlot’s coat. I give him racing stripes by raking my fingers through his fur, then pet them out and go for a wave pattern. Bella waddles in, sniffs Oomlot’s head, and lowers, sighing, to the floor next to him. Her coat is too short and smooth for patterns, so I just pet her with my bare foot.

  I know it doesn’t look like I’m doing much, but I’m also thinking. I’m thinking that being the girl in the mirror takes more than just a swipe or two of mascara. It takes guts. And I’m not just talking about your run-of-the-mill liver or garden-variety gland. I mean the kind of guts that make you feel the very opposite of hollow.

  I guess I don’t look busy enough, though, because Corny walks in and asks, “Wanna go for a ride?” Oomlot’s ears perk up, and he brings himself to a hopeful sitting position. Queso, having heard one of the magic dog words, comes bolting into the room, skidding to a stop in front of Corny. Even lazy Bella lifts her head and gets out a couple of interested tail thumps.

  I’m not nearly as excited.

  “Unfortunately, she’s talking to me,” I tell the dogs.

  She smiles. “I’ve got an appointment with Kisses and I could use your help.”

  “Can’t I just stay here?” I ask.

  “Oh, come on,” she says. “We’ll have sundaes after.”

  Although I’m disgusted with myself for being so easily lured, I lift my hand so she can pull me up off the couch. Oomlot follows, practically dancing. “You’re staying here, pup,” Corny tells him. He sighs loudly, his brown eyes dark with disappointment, and he flattens with a thud to the floor. Bella lays her head back down. Queso just stares at us with those big Chihuahua eyes, like she can’t believe we’re really not taking her with us. It’s like she’s saying, You’re really going to leave me here with the dogs? But I’m so portable!

  Corny must see it too, because she laughs and says, “Not this time, Queso. We can’t give Kisses another reason to misbehave.”

  I give Queso a little scratch of apology behind the ears as Corny calls for Tess. Tess is sort of our babysitter. While we’re away, the monstrous Ferrill stays in his favorite spot on the porch and keeps an eye on things outside, while Tess keeps watch inside. She makes sure that Oomlot stays away from food in the kitchen and Bella isn’t tempted by a delicious-looking sofa leg.

  I put on my shoes and get in the car with Corny, but I’m exhausted. Corny notices. As soon as we pull out onto the narrow road in front of our house, she asks, “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t really have the energy for Kisses,” I tell her.

  “Are you sure it’s just that? You’re not worrying about those elections, are you?”

  I just shrug. I’m afraid of what will come out of my mouth at this point. I told her about the elections, of course, but she can’t know about our plan. She’d either be delighted and tell everyone, thus ruining the plan, or she’d call it unethical and then triple my pooper-scooper duties and lecture me.

  She pats me on the leg. “You know, I’ve got a lot of confidence in you. If you start to feel overwhelmed, just think about what you’re capable of. And how far you’ve come.” She gives me another closed-mouth smile. “I think you can pretty much do anything you want to do.”

  She’s referring again to last year, when I first got here and had to get over my fear of the dogs. Corny likes to say I came way out of my “comfort zone” with everything. And I guess I did, but that doesn’t make me a superhero or anything, no matter what Corny thinks.

  “I’m just not sure I feel like a pack leader right now,” I tell her.

  “Well, you’re out of practice,” she says, as we continue down the road. “Everything takes practice, even once you’re good at it. It’s all up here, remember.” She taps her temple.

  I guess she’s right. When you’re training dogs—or people, as the case may be—you kind of have to change the way you think. It doesn’t sound so hard—I mean, it’s not like you have to solve some horrible word problem, or lift a thousand pounds, or learn Chinese, or something like that.

  But your own head—and everything that’s in there—can be harder to change than anything else in the world. And that’s exactly what I need to do now. I think this has been the problem at school; I’ve been going through the motions without changing what’s been going through my mind, and it’s been obvious.

  So now, instead of just adjusting my shoulders and my spine, I’m moving things around in my brain. I’m putting the words pack leader and alpha dog toward the front, and stuffing words like mother and crazy down into the butt-end of my brain, into that weird little round thing that helps you with balance. I don’t remember what that part’s called, but in my science class, we learned that thoughts don’t really happen there, so those words should pretty much just stay there and leave the rest of my head alone.

  By the time we get to Kisses’s house, I’m starting to feel a little bit more like I’m in control. My body snaps into a confident position almost on its own.

  “Ready?” Corny asks, as we pull in front of the row of tightly packed identical houses, surrounded by flat, treeless land. It’s kind of like middle school—people crowding together even when there’s room to branch out. I guess even in the grown-up world, people are a little afraid to be all on their own. Pack mentality, they call this kind of thing in the dog world.

  “I think so,” I say. Kisses sees us and busts through the screen door, howling and jumping as usual. Mr. Dewey comes running out after her, with her leash in hand. He appears to be trying to lasso her.

  “Oh, no,” Corny says. She steps out of the truck, and Kisses charges toward her. Corny doesn’t flinch—just stands there, quiet, looking as calm as if she were waiting in line at the grocery store. The dog stops a few feet in front of Corny and lets out a howl. Corny ignores her still. Kisses lowers her head a little, her howls becoming more like whines, and starts to scoot away.

  “What’s she doing?” Mr. Dewey asks, looking worried. “Kisses, are you okay?”

  Corny touches her fingers to her lips, signaling for him to be quiet. Then she turns to look at me. It’s my turn.

  I take a big breath, remind myself that this dog is scared to death of helpless, harmless blades of grass, of all things, and open my door. Kisses starts acting like a predator again, and lunges toward me, but there’s one thing giving her away. Her little back legs are trembling. She’s afraid.

  She starts growling at me. Mr. Dewey opens his mouth, but Corny shakes her head no before he can call out to Kisses. A lot of people think that yelling at a dog or shouting its name will make the dog calm down, but all that noise and excitement can make things worse. Sometimes standing your ground and keeping quiet and calm—basically ignoring the dog—is the best thing to do. I guess it also doesn’t hurt to know I can always jump over to the grass, where Ki
sses doesn’t have the guts to go, if this ignoring thing doesn’t work out.

  Which, eventually, it does. Kisses’s growls turn into whimpers and she runs toward the weak spot—Mr. Dewey. He starts to bend down to pet her, but Corny stops him right there. “You can’t pet her now, not when she’s fearful,” she tells him. “That just reinforces her feelings.”

  He stands back up, but doesn’t seem happy about it. “What am I supposed to do? Just ignore her?”

  “Exactly,” she says. “We’ll show you how it’s done. Right, Olivia?” Corny smiles at me.

  Even though we’re light-years away from our goal of getting this insane little dog out on the grass, it seems like we’ve already made a couple of big steps. The fear that I had is nicely tucked away. In fact, I feel like all the fears I have—like craziness and being terminally weird—are being nicely tucked away in that brain-trunk. I imagine them stored away in a vacuum-sealed Space Bag, out of the way of important and powerful new thoughts.

  Such as the thought that, today, after sundaes, we’re stopping by CVS. I’m buying that mascara. I’ve made a decision. I do have the guts to be the kind of person who looks like I did, earlier today, in the mirror.

  “Right,” I say, and smile back.

  And besides, what’s a layer or two of mascara anyway, if not good body language?

  PHOEBE HAS BROUGHT a package of poster board to the Bored Game Club and is standing over us, distributing markers and insisting we come up with a slogan for Mandy’s campaign.

  “But I’m still working on standing up straight,” Mandy whines.

  “Don’t write that down!” Delia yells at Joey, who has already started writing it out on the poster board with an orange marker.

  Joey smirks.

  “That’s not funny, Joey,” Phoebe tells him, and grabs the marker out of his hands. She starts to hand it to me, but stops and squints. “I still can’t believe you’re wearing makeup.” She has been acting slightly betrayed since lunch.

  “Oh,” I say, and shrug like it’s no big deal. “It’s just a little mascara.”