THIRTEEN

“YOU DIDN’T NEED TO BE so rude before,” Ari says as we’re eating our ice cream later that afternoon. “In front of Jason, about the yoga . . .”

I pause to think about it. Was I rude? “You made fun of my culinary lameness!”

“I was joking.” She licks around the side of her chocolate cone to even it out.

“I was, too!” I sneer. “Anyway, you still haven’t told me about the Hebrew School trip.” Something crazy must have happened. I never trusted that Tamar girl. “And we have to go over schedules! We have tons to do. We can’t waste time in a fight.”

“We’re not in a fight, Kaylan. Sheesh!” She slurps some dripping ice cream out the bottom of her cone.

“Well, can you just tell me about the trip, already?” I ask, picking a sprinkle off my cone.

“Okay . . . the trip. Well, Jules, Phoebe, Tamar, Cara—those girls over there.” She nudges her head toward the lounges by the diving board. “They were all there. Plus some of the bikini boobage girls! I never realized they went to my temple. But the trip was kids going into sixth through eighth grades, so . . .”

“And?” I take a sip of water. Ice cream always makes me thirsty.

“It was kind of fun. Jules introduced me to all these girls who went to her elementary school but are randomly zoned for our middle school.” My stomach starts to sink thinking about it, but I force it away so I can focus on the rest of the story. “And we hung out with boys. It was, like, kind of normal.”

“What?” I gasp. “You didn’t call me right away and tell me you hung out with boys? You don’t even need Jason as your guy friend anymore.” I flop my head onto the table. I don’t even know if I can finish this cone.

“Kaylan.” She taps my head. “We’re not, like, BFFs. I just hung out with them, and it was fun. That’s it.”

I glare at her; I feel like she’s lying, like she’s leaving stuff out. “So then why are you, like, freaking out about yoga? You’re acting weird!”

Ari starts massaging her sinuses. “Ice cream headache. And I am not acting weird! I just don’t want to be the most uncoordinated one in yoga. Okay?”

“Fine!” I yell, half-kidding, half-serious. “Let’s go back to the lounges and compare schedules.”

“Fine!”

We walk back to the lounges, and the bikini boobage girls are in their usual spot, in the sun, by the diving board.

“Arianna!” one of them calls. “Your song is rising. . . .”

“No!” Ari yells back, laughing. “Your song is rising.”

I look back and forth from the girl to Ari and back again. “Huh?” I ask.

“Oh, just a private joke.” Ari laughs. “From the trip. I could explain it but it’s really long.”

“Oh. Um. That’s okay.” My throat stings.

They think they’re so funny because they have all these jokes from the trip. I mean, who cares? It was five days. They can’t possibly have gotten that close in that short of a time.

It takes us forever to make it back to our lounges because that girl Jules stops us for a hundred years to ask when Ari has math. She thinks her friend Sydney is gonna be in her class. “Sydney’s nice,” she says. “And she’s really smart. She can help you study!” Jules keeps talking, and Ari keeps listening, and it’s like I’m not even standing there.

Thank God Jules is going to the other middle school.

“So,” Ari says, when we’re back on our lounge chairs, close together, comparing schedules. “This sheet is just our first day schedule. See how it says here that it rotates by a period every other day?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ari crinkles up her nose. “But we don’t have any of the same teachers, so I guess we don’t have any classes together.”

My heart sinks like I just lost my favorite ring, the one my grandma gave me for my first communion. “Wait, no. That can’t be.”

I look it over again. “Wait! We have lunch together!”

“Oh!” Ari claps. “You’re right! That is awesome! That’s the period that matters most!”

I reach over and hug her. I don’t care about Jules, or the private jokes from the Hebrew trip, or that she forgot to tell me Jason used to live here, or that she thinks my culinary tastes are pathetic.

We have lunch together. That’s all that matters!

“What’s this lovefest about?” Tyler walks over to us, twirling his whistle around his fingers. “Lovefests aren’t allowed at the pool.”

We pull apart from the hug, and my cheeks feel like they’re on fire. “Um . . . not a lovefest, just looking over class schedules.”

“Let me see,” he says, putting his hands out.

“It’s okay, Tyler, you’re not in our grade,” Ari says.

“Gimme. I’ll tell you what to expect.”

Finally, we hand the papers to him. He looks at each one for two seconds and then says, “Yup, you’re screwed. All these classes are hard.” He hands the sheets back. “Good luck.”

Ari looks at me and shakes her head. “What is his deal?”

“No idea.” I lie back and try not to worry about Tyler. Ari and I have lunch together. I repeat it to myself over and over again.

“That was kind of jerky,” Ari says, but I ignore it.

“Jason!” Ari yells down the row of lounge chairs, zapping me out of my calming thoughts. “Who do you have for science?”

He holds up a finger, goes to get something from his bag, and then comes over to us.

He shows us his phone. Apparently he took a picture of his schedule and has been trying to memorize it.

We compare classes. Jason and Ari have science together, but that’s it. And he’s in our lunch, too.

“I think all sixth graders have lunch at the same time,” he tells us. “That’s what Jules said. She knows, like, tons of kids at West Brookside.”

I throw my head back against the lounge chair.

Jules knows everything, apparently.