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THE NEXT DAY,
Thursday, the five of us are hunkered down at our lunch table, ready to fend off ketchup packets and yearbook committee members, when I ask, “What are you guys doing tonight?”

“I am
not
coming over for another
Full House
marathon,” Phoebe says.

I narrow my eyes at her.

“Yeah, your popcorn sucked,” Joey adds.

“Come on, guys.
Full House
is a classic. I'll bring the popcorn,” Delia offers.

“I can't even
think
about eating popcorn,” Phoebe says, pointing to her braces. “Count me out.”

“This isn't about
Full House
. Or popcorn. This is about us not taking any more crap from anyone.” I look around at them, but no one will meet my eyes. “Aren't you guys sick of being picked on? Aren't you sick of being treated like dorks?”

“I've got karate tonight,” Joey says, pronouncing it
kar-a-TAY
. Mandy karate-chops him on the forearm on behalf of all of us.

“Joey, are you really ever going to be a black belt?”

“
Yeah
,” he says, scrunching his face up like he's offended I asked.

“When?”

“Like next year.” He shrugs and stuffs a Ding Dong into his mouth.

“So one night won't matter,” I tell him.

Now I turn to Mandy. “And
you
,” I say. “Remember what you said to me yesterday?”

“Like what? I'm sure I said a lot of things.”

“
Remember
? In the
hall
? You revealed
something
to me?”

She tenses her forehead. “I was joking, Olivia. There's no such thing as a wedgie that has to be surgically removed. It was just a little uncomfortable.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.” I turn to our friends. “Yesterday, on our way to the buses, our Mandy here—who we all
think
we know so well—said she wanted to be class president.”

“That's right! She did!” Delia jumps in. “I heard her, too!”

Phoebe and Joey turn and give Mandy pop-eyed stares.

She shifts her gaze toward her lap and smirks. “Well, I just meant—okay, they're offering extra credit to anyone who tries. I can always use extra credit. You guys know that.”

“If you need tutoring,” Phoebe offers, “remember, all you have to do is ask.”

“I know, I know,” Mandy says, twirling a strand of her dark hair and studying its split ends. “You always bail me out, Pheeb.”

“You got to be kidding me,” Joey says. “Mandy Freaking Champlain wants to be class president.”

Mandy shrugs. “Okay, so what if I do?” This is a passionate
yes
in emo language. She looks at me. Then her face twists up like it's trying to fight back a smile, and a gust of a laugh escapes through her nose. “Okay, okay,” she finally says. “I know it's stupid and I'll probably regret saying this, but yes. I do.”

I give her a big smile back.

“Okay, everyone,” I tell them. “Tonight. My house. Seven o'clock. No excuses.”

The bell rings and we head to our classes, and I'm already starting to feel a little like a pack leader.

We're all in my room. Delia and Phoebe sit on my bed—well, my mother's bed, really, from when she was about my age—with Queso curled up between them. Joey's on the floor, trying to unbraid the braided rug. Mandy leans her back against the side of my bed, throwing a Raggedy Ann doll from one hand to another (also my mom's; I'm
so
not a doll person!). I'm sitting cross-legged on the rug so I have a lap ready for Oomlot to lay his head on. He keeps trying to come into the room, but every time he shows his face, Delia and Mandy squeal about how cute he is, which scares him off. So for now, my lap is empty.

Phoebe looks around my room slowly. “Does it ever make you feel kind of weird? That she slept here?” She's talking about my mother.

“She's not dead, you idiot,” Mandy says to her. “She's just—you know, traveling.”

That's what I've told people. It's not exactly true, but Mandy doesn't know that. Neither does Phoebe or Joey. In fact, Delia's the only one in school who knows what's
really
happened with my mother—and all the big gut-punching words that go along with it, like
depression
and
abandonment
and
treatment
—and she kind of shushes Mandy, since I get nervous when the subject comes up. They don't think I notice, because I'm leafing through my dog-breed book.

It used to be that I didn't know where my mother was. Some days it was Las Vegas, others it was San Francisco. One time it was Des Moines. But now she's supposedly “stable,” as they call it, which means that she sees her
own
therapist and lives in some special type of place in Spokane, Washington, where they give her drugs. I know, I know. I always thought drugs were bad too, but I guess these are supposed to be helping her somehow. She can't call or e-mail very often, but she does send letters every now and then. That's supposed to be a good thing, but I don't really know. A couple of months ago, she wrote to me about her new
friend
named Darren, so I haven't opened one since. I mean,
yuck
.

They're all looking at me expectantly. “Here it is,” I say, turning to a page in the book Corny gave me when I moved here and started helping her with the training. “‘The seven standard dog-breed groups,'” I read out loud.

“Uh,” Joey interrupts.

“What?” I look up.

“My mom's picking me up in an hour,” he says. “And I really don't want to sit around here for that hour talking about dogs.”

I sigh and look around. They all have these blank looks about them. “I know you guys don't get it right now, but just listen to me,” I tell them. “Okay, Joey. Let's start with you. You're probably a non-sporter.”

“What? I do sports. Hello? I'm a martial artist,” he argues, angling his hands as if to prove it.

“‘In the past, non-sporting dogs were bred to perform specific jobs or tasks, like vermin hunting,'” I read out loud, and then say to him, “Or in your case, kicking.” His father was the most celebrated football kicker in his high school's history, and his grandfather was a kicker in one of the pro football leagues. But the only kicking Joey's good for is the kind that involves a surprise sideways heel into someone's butt cheek, usually Phoebe's. “‘In general, these dogs'—meaning you, Joey—‘can be aimless and difficult to control without proper and consistent training.'” I look up at him. “That's the polite way to say ‘annoying.'”

He rips the book from my hands and looks at one of the pictures next to his breed. “Oh, great. Like a poodle. You're insane.”

Mandy grabs the book from him. She looks at the page and breaks into a laugh. “You know what else is a non-sporter? A bichon frise,” she says, pointing to a photo of a small cottonbally dog. It's supposed to be pronounced like
bee-shon free-zay
, but she doesn't say it that way. At all. She says it in a way that makes Phoebe suck in air and makes the rest of us laugh.

“I'm not a poodle,” says Joey. “And I'm definitely not one of
those
. This is just crap.” He starts kicking at the book in Mandy's hands. She lifts it higher than he can kick, and he gives up easily. She hands the book back to me as Joey says to her, “You're probably a pit bull.”

“Actually, you're kind of right, Joey,” I say. “They're basically terriers, and Mandy probably is too.”

Joey makes a sound like
ooooh
, lifts his right hand, looks around expectantly, and ends up high-fiving himself with his left.

I turn back to the book. “‘Determined but not easily controlled. They can be spirited and courageous, but also combative and aggressive.'”

“Ouch,” Mandy says. “I sound like a delinquent.”

Delia stares down at the book in my lap. “I want to be like that dog.” She points toward a photo of an Australian terrier. “It's so cute.” Phoebe glances down at the book and hums in agreement.

“Well, Delia, I'd say you're more of a herder, like Lassie and those German shepherd police dogs. Very smart, but can be suspicious of strangers and sometimes territorial. But the good news is that herders are usually pretty easy to train.”

“Oh, great. Wonderful,” she says.

“Phoebe, you're in the working group. Totally goal-oriented,” I say, and read from the book. “‘With proper training, they are dignified and devoted companions. Without it, they can be belligerent and high-strung.'”

“Let me see that,” she says, scooping the book out of my hands. She scans the page. “So this says Great Danes are in the working group. Your dog Ferrill is a Great Dane, right?”

“Right.”

She shrugs. “Well, it's just that I've never seen him working.”

“He used to,” I explain to her. “This rich guy bought him when he was a puppy. He was supposed to be a guard dog. But it turned out he wasn't mean enough for the job, so the guy just left him at the pound. So now, I guess you could say he's retired.” I think about our sweet, gigantic dog who is probably asleep in his favorite spot on the porch right now. Even though he wouldn't hurt a fly (I really mean this—they land on him all the time and
I
end up shooing them off ), his humongous size alone is enough to scare some people. So maybe in his mind, he's still working.

“What are you?” Delia asks me.

“Probably a hound. Like Tess.” It's pathetic, but my keen sense of smell and decent eyesight may very well be my strongest character traits. Secretly, I would probably—okay,
gladly
—trade them in for things like popularity and good looks.

“Hey, no fair,” Mandy says. “Wasn't Snoopy also a hound? Hounds are cool.”

Delia leans over toward Phoebe and glances at the book. “Oh, yeah. And those little wiener dogs, too. Dachshunds.”

“You said
wiener
.” Joey laughs. Alone.

“Listen,” Phoebe says, pointing to the description in the book and reading aloud. “‘Hounds can be stubborn, territorially aggressive, and prone to destructive behaviors,'” she says, and points to my hands. “Just look at her cuticles!”

I ball up my hands so no one can see how true it is.

“Look, the point is that we're all like dogs—different kinds of dogs, but still dogs,” I say. “Everyone's got different good points and bad points, and the bad points can get out of control if things aren't right. Which is the case of Brynne Shawnson and Corbin Moon and Tamberlin Ziff and all the others. Bad training!”

The door squeaks open. Oomlot is giving us another chance. “No squealing. You'll scare him away,” I warn my friends. Bella follows Oomlot into the room. The two dogs plop down on the wood floor, which creaks under Bella's weight.

I continue. “And you know what? Any dog can be trained.”

“So what are you saying, Liv?” Delia asks.

“I'm saying that if we use dog training on everyone at school, secretly, of course, we can be the top dogs. Instead of the underdogs.”

They're all quiet for a moment, staring at me, until Mandy says, “I kind of like this idea.”

“I don't know,” Phoebe says. “It sounds complicated. This whole thing would be a lot easier if Brynne had just listened to Delia.” Then Phoebe's eyes go suddenly wide. “Whoops.”

“What?” I turn to Delia. “You talked to Brynne?”

“Yeah, well, I tried,” she says, shrugging and giving me an apologetic smile. She stares at the rug. “I told her the ketchup thing was over the line and I asked her to leave you—all of us, actually—alone. But it was a total waste of time.”

“When did this happen?”

“After school,” Phoebe answers. Delia shoots her an annoyed look.

I feel like I just got socked in the stomach. “So everyone knows but me?”