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“CAN I ASK
you a question?” I bring myself to say to Brynne. It's Monday, after school, and we are at my house, sitting at the kitchen table, being stalked by Oomlot and Queso since we are making peanut butter and sugar sandwiches. I'm only slightly ashamed that I don't have real Nutter Butters to offer.

“You just did,” she says. But then she flashes a smile. “What's your question?”

I hesitate. I almost don't want to go down this route with the M-word. I think about chickening out and asking her about her shampoo or her favorite character on
Full House
, now that she's seen a marathon with me over the past weekend and seemed to really like it.

“Um, Ryan Stoles,” she says.

“Huh?”

“My secret crush.” She laughs. “Isn't that what you were going to ask?”

I laugh. “Well, no, but
really
?” I think about Ryan, Caleb's co–campaign manager. He's sort of wiry and boyish. If you put a thick pair of glasses of him he would be a Classic Geek. But then I think about Danny and I realize Brynne has a definite type.

“A little, I guess,” she says. “Your turn. Let me guess. Caleb Austin.”

An electric bolt of panic shoots through me. I stammer, “I don't…I mean…he's…I mean—”

She laughs loudly. “It's okay, Olivia. Seriously. He's a flirt. Everyone kind of likes him.”

I smile with embarrassment.

“Anyway, sorry.” She laughs. “What did you really want to ask me?”

Even though it's a lot more fun to talk about Caleb, I take a breath and ask the question that's been on my mind a lot lately. “When you found out about—about, you know, my
mom
”—I swallow—“did you tell anyone?”

Her smile fades. “Sometimes I wanted to. But, no.”

“Thank you,” I finally breathe.

“I mean, I wouldn't want anyone knowing too much about
my
mom. Plus,” she says, “what could I say about your mom that people couldn't say about mine?”

“Yours doesn't sound too bad, though. At least she still—” I start. I can't believe I'm having this discussion with anyone, let alone Brynne. Moncherie would be
so
jealous. “She still lives with you.”

She laughs. “Oh, lucky, lucky me. She totally babies my brother and treats me like a felon.”

“Is it really that bad?” I ask, beginning to feel a little sorry for her.

“When she takes her medicine, no. I mean, it's not horrible. But then after she takes it for a while, she starts feeling normal, so she goes off the pills and then everything sucks all over again.” Her eyes soften. “So, is your mom like, in like—sorry, I don't know what to call them—one of those loony bin places?”

“Yeah,” I admit.

“Oh. That's got to be weird. But now do you believe me that my mom is crazy?” She starts to smile.

“Okay, I do.”

I wonder how she feels about carrying around her own little personal crazy gene. If she worries about it rising up and taking over too—if it's not starting to already. I imagine us old and graying together, in some white-walled institution somewhere, weaving brightly colored pot holders even though neither one of us is allowed near kitchen knives or a hot stove.

“You know what?” she says. “You're a way better BFF than Carolyn ever was.”

BFF.
The letters swell in my head, both thrilling me and making me want to run at the same time. All I can choke out is, “Really?”

“Yeah. I can't really talk to her about this stuff. You know, the deepest conversation I ever had with her was about hair products.” Then she stops abruptly. I notice she is staring at my hair. “I mean, sure, sometimes there's a
need
to talk about hair products—” She sees me watching her, gives me an apologetic smile, and continues. “But not like every single second, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I say, embarrassed. Ugh. My hair. I can change my posture, my walk, my clothes, even intensify the color of my eyes, but I seem to be stuck with this clownlike hair. I could use all the Georgie Girl in the world, and
still
. I decide to change the subject. I look over at her flattened PB&S sandwich. “Sorry I don't have anything better to eat. Unless you like lentils.”

“Oh, that's okay,” she says. She takes another bite and smiles. “I think my EpiPen's in my backpack, so it's fine.”

“EpiPen?” I ask.

“Oh, that's just a shot I have to give myself. Peanut allergies.”

Peanut allergies. I've heard all about peanut allergies. In fourth grade, I watched as Kipper Moore's face swelled to the size of a watermelon after he picked up an empty dry-roasted peanut wrapper during lunch duty.

I look at her. She's waiting for a reaction. So I say, “You're joking, right?”

“See?” She laughs. “I'm
so
not funny anymore! People used to think I was funny, and now they don't. They act like they don't even like me!”

That's because they've been trained not to.
I feel a little jolt of guilt, but I brush it off and make myself laugh instead. “You're still funny,” I say.

“No, I'm not.” She pinches off another piece of her sandwich and flattens it between her fingers. She lifts her gaze to me for a second, before lowering it again. Her voice gets kind of wobbly—just a little—and she asks, “Will you still be my friend even if no one else thinks I'm funny anymore?”

For a second, I forget to breathe. “Sure,” I finally say.

She looks up and smirks. “See what I mean? I was totally
kidding
!”

“Oh,” I say, reddening again. She laughs, and then I do too. And she seems relieved. And I wonder, is this what you find when you socially dissect a popular girl? When you get to the center, are they really this insecure?

ALL WEEK LONG,
Brynne and I have been pretty inseparable. We eat lunch together, we walk to our classes together, we hang out together at my house after school. She's all I talked about this week with Moncherie—and guess what? I got to talk about Brynne's mother instead of finding excuses not to talk about mine.
Score.

It's Friday night, the night of Erin Monroe's party, and Brynne has stayed for dinner. Corny makes stewed beef, which she unfortunately declares “the perfect dog/man meal,” but Brynne doesn't seem as revolted as I would have expected.

“What time will your mother be picking you up?” Corny asks.

Brynne dismisses herself to call her mom as I help Corny fill the dog bowls. When Brynne comes back, she says, “My mom says I can spend the night if it's okay with you.”

Brynne Shawnson. Spending the night. Here. My anxiety level starts to rise. What if she sees that I have a whole drawer
full
of granny panties? What
then
? Or what if I talk in my sleep and reveal
all
? Assuming I can even sleep!

“Oh, well, then,” Corny says, and looks over at me, eyebrows raised. “Liv? How's your room? Clean?”

“It's—” I start to answer but find myself grasping for words. “It's fine. We were up there earlier.”

“Yeah, and it's much cleaner than my room,” Brynne says. She starts to smile, but it falls away as she looks between Corny and me. “I'm—I'm sorry. You know what? You probably have plans. I should probably just have my mom pick me up. We haven't really—” She looks at me, slightly panicked. “We haven't really been friends long enough for me to just invite myself to spend the night. I'm sorry.”

Corny and I stand there. My body is frozen but my mind is racing. My heart feels like it's gotten trapped in one of my lungs or something. Then Brynne gives a humble smile and turns back down the hall toward the phone.

“No!”
I shout. She turns around, eyes wide. “No, don't,” I continue. “You can spend the night here, can't she, Grandma?”

Corny blinks and relaxes. “Well, of course. You're welcome to stay, um, B—Brah—”

While Brynne's head is turned toward Corny, I stand where Corny can see me and begin to silently shape Brynne's name with my mouth in an exaggerated, slow-motion movement. It's like doing the breaststroke with lips.

“—Brynne!” Corny says. Then she smiles in that way that makes me want to hug her, despite her grayish teeth.

“You sure?” Brynne asks.

“Positive,” I say. “We insist.”

She looks at me with a little doubt.

So I finally say it.

“Come on, we're BFFs now, aren't we?”

And then she breaks into a big smile and says, “That we are.”

IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT.
Nine p.m. Brynne is still here.

And there are four reasons why.

The first is that I have glossy hair.

Turns out Brynne has a big secret—that she actually looks a little like a pretty-faced version of that comedian Carrot Top when she's not using
product
. That's what she calls it. Not
a
product. Not
the
product. Just
product
. And I guess it really doesn't matter, because
I
call it sweet, sweet magic. Last night, after dinner, she handed me this tube of stuff and told me her hair would look exactly like mine if she didn't use it. And when I smeared some over my frizz poof, my hair practically became silk. It's a pretty big deal—I mean, it's like my hair was a disease and
product
was the cure. Brynne even told me I looked a little like Jessica Alba, so I've been sneaking peeks in the mirror to see if she is right.

The second reason is that last night, when we went up to bed, she said, “I guess I need to borrow something to sleep in,” which nearly sent me into a panic, because what on earth do I have that she would actually wear? I apologetically handed her some sweatpants (my favorites) and a “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt. She went to change in the bathroom, and came back, hair in a lumpy ponytail, face scrubbed of all its makeup, swimming in my sweats. And at that point she looked like she could be a
real
friend of mine, not just an artificially induced one.

The third reason is, after she sat down on the foam pad that's served as Delia's bed many times before, she said, “I've got a surprise for you.” Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a little black case, which she unzipped to reveal Travel Scrabble.
Travel Scrabble!

“So you really
do
like board games?” I asked.

She looked up at me and smirked and said, “Yeah, actually. I really do.” Then she broke into a smile. A really nice one. “I'm a geek. Scrabble's one of my favorites. I've just been in the closet for like, the last three years.”

And she won with the word
toxic
.

And the fourth reason she's here, is that today, when we went with Corny to the Food Lion, my grandmother let us hang out at the coffee shop in the strip mall near the store. And when we were sitting there sucking down our vanilla cream caffe lattes, Carolyn and Tamberlin walked in. For a few minutes we went unnoticed—just two sloppy thirteen-year-olds in flip-flops and rolled-up sweatpants. (Okay,
one
with glossy hair!) But then it happened—the second glance. “Oh. My. God. Is that Brynne?” Tamberlin asked. And then Carolyn said, “It's either her or her homeless cousin.” Then they both laughed. Brynne looked down into her shake and stirred her straw around. They got their mochas, and as they walked toward the door, one of them said, just loud enough for us to hear, “God, she's really let herself go.”

“Bet Danny's glad he's not going to the dance with
that
,” the other one said.

I looked over at Brynne—with her head low, and her naked face glowing red, and her gem-blue eyes starting to turn muddy—and cringed to think how I would have rewarded their behavior just a couple of weeks ago.

And then I heard myself say, “You know, I think you should stay over again tonight.”

So now, at nine o'clock on Saturday night, while everyone else is at the Fall Ball, Brynne and I are here. She contemplates the dance from a reclined position on the floor, and snaps photos of Oomlot with her cell phone. I eat plain M&M's one at a time, eyes shut, trying to guess which color is in my mouth. Oomlot is sitting at attention, hoping I'll be a truly awful owner and give him an M&M, which I won't because they're poison for dogs.

“I don't even care about it anymore. I'm glad I'm not there tonight. Is that weird?”

“I don't know. Maybe,” I say. I crunch.
Green?

“Well, Olivia, if you wanted to go, why didn't you go with Max Marshall? He's not bad.”

“I know. I waited too long, I guess.”

She looks over at me. “I mean he's a lot hotter than Danny even.” I don't tell her that most of the school is, except for maybe Joey. It's at this moment that I truly start to believe the old saying that love can be pretty blind. She crunches into an M&M without even trying to close her eyes and guess the color.

“Want the truth?” I ask.

She looks up at me, her eyes wide.

I take a small handful of M&M's. “I was kind of holding out for Caleb.”

“I thought so!” She laughs.

“Well, he kept trying to ask me something,” I say in my defense.

“Oh, he does that with everyone. He just wanted to ask if you could change one thing about the school, what it would be. It's part of his campaign strategy. You know, people feel like they're being listened to.”

Oh. Crap. I'm such. A sucker.

She continues. “You know he's there tonight with Audrey Sharif ?”

Audrey Sharif. Tall, pretty. A former friend of Brynne's, but more recently, a Caleb Austin campaigner. It figures.

“Don't worry; it was a total last minute thing. I kind of
do
think he likes you, though.”

“Yeah, that's
likely
.” I close my eyes and bite an M&M in half. I chew and guess red. I open my eyes. Wrong again. Brown.

Brynne gets up on her elbow. “Honestly, Olivia. Haven't you seen yourself lately? But you know what? Even if he was madly in love with you or something, he would have had to be stupid to ask you to Fall Ball.”

“What do you mean?”

“Um,
hello
? Elections, maybe? He's Mandy's main competition. You were Mandy's campaign manager. Remember? Don't you think that would have been really weird? Haven't you ever heard of ‘conflict of interest'?”

Oh. Right. All that waiting and hoping, and there it was, plain as day. So maybe she's right. Maybe he
does
like me! I feel a twinge of appreciation for my new friend for pointing that out.

She lies back down with a huge sigh. “Oh, God. Why'd I bring up elections?” she whines. “No one's going to vote for me.” She takes a picture of herself and then frowns at the image.

“Sure they will,” I say. I want to be nice back. I close my eyes and take another M&M.

“
Seriously
, Olivia,” she says.

“I
am
serious,” I lie. I crunch a couple of times and then stick out my tongue. “What color? Blue?”

“Gross,” she says, and twists up her face. “No. Yellow.” Then she snaps a picture of me.

“No more pictures,” I say. “You've been doing that all day.”

“Just one more of us.”

“Last one,” I say. I stick my face next to hers, and we mug for the camera and laugh like we've always been best friends. Oomlot gives up on begging for the candy, sighs, and lowers himself to the floor. Bella—a.k.a. the Dog Formerly Obsessed With Wood—rolls over onto her back and puts her paws in the air. I pat her belly.

Then Brynne yawns and stretches out on the floor, accidentally exposing her belly button. Like Bella, she's gotten so trusting. Here I am, in a room with two of my training success stories. What does it matter if one of them is human? Even if it didn't turn out exactly as planned, it was for a good cause, wasn't it?

Despite the fact that I'm starting to feel a little sick to my stomach, I cram a handful of M&M's into my mouth. I've given up—all the colors taste exactly the same, just like they always have.

“Maybe I should drop out,” she says.

“Nah, don't do that,” I say, through my full mouth, although I start to wonder if maybe it is a good idea. I like her better this way. A little dorky. A little Marcie-like. Kind of like my old friends. I think of them, and for a second I feel their absence before I remind myself of Delia's betrayal, and push it all away. “Anyway, you can't. You need that social studies credit.”

“You'll vote for me, won't you?”

“Of course,” I say, swallowing. It's just one vote. One vote Mandy doesn't even need.