Yasaman, hot and dry and needle sharp.

She’s mad that Modessa and her Evil Chick followers are trying to cozy up to the new girl. Though “cozy” is the last word she would use to describe Modessa or Quin or—it’s sad to say—Elena.

There was a time when Yaz would have said that Elena was cozy, or had cozy potential. Elena used to be just a nice, normal girl. She and her parents live on a small farm, and Elena used to tell Yaz about the llamas they raised. How cute they were, and how one llama in particular would make a funny wuffling sound when Elena fed him. His name was Henry, Yaz remembers, and he always tried to eat Elena’s shirt.

Yaz never met Henry—she’s never been to Elena’s farm—but an image of Henry pops into Yasaman’s mind nonetheless. Henry the Imaginary Llama has huge dark eyes with lashes that curl up at the ends. Henry the Imaginary Llama has soft brown skin … or fur …? Yes, fur. Soft brown fur with a few white spots and a wet nose and adorable ears with foldy-over tips.

Henry the Imaginary Llama blinks at Yasaman in her daydream and communicates with her telepathically: I miss the real Elena. She never lets me nibble her shirt anymore. What happened to her? What happened to my friend?

Yaz shakes her head. I don’t know, she responds silently. Just that Modessa got to her, that’s all. She weaseled her way into Elena’s brain. First at recess—far too many places to get a girl alone. Then during lunch one day, and then the next and the next—except “skipping” days every so often with no rhyme or reason, just to mess with Elena’s mind. Flattery sometimes. Other times, cruelty, like Modessa saying how lucky it was that Elena goes to a private school where bullying isn’t allowed, or she’d be spending most of her time shoved in a locker. “Ha ha, kidding. I’d beat up anyone who tried that, dummy.”

Yaz’s muscles tighten. She’ll never know the full ins and outs of Elena’s transformation. All that matters is that Modessa got to her—bullied her, despite Rivendell’s anti-bully policy!—and changed her.

What if the new girl has coziness potential, and Modessa snuffs it out just like she snuffed it out in Elena? What if the new girl has a pet—not a llama, probably, but maybe a kitten or a goldfish—and the new girl stops giving it attention, and it falls into a kitten-goldfish depression and stops eating, and its fur-slash-scales fall out in clumps?

Thinking about it makes Yasaman grip the book she’s supposed to be reading more tightly than she needs to. It makes Yaz want to fling her book onto the floor, even, and Yaz is not a book-flinging sort of girl.

The new girl and her soon-to-be-depressed kitten-goldfish aren’t the only things making Yasaman mad, however. She’s also mad at Natalia Totenburg, a perfectly nice girl who’s in Ms. Perez’s class with her. Why? Because it’s silent reading time, and Natalia is not being silent. Natalia has a head cold, and she keeps sniffling. Every five seconds, she sniffs, and there’s a dampness to the sniffs that makes Yaz’s toes curl. If Natalia needs a Kleenex, Yaz thinks, then she should slide out of her desk and go get one. There’s a box on Ms. Perez’s desk, just like always. The tissue sticking out of the box is white and soft looking, its corner flopping over in a totally nonthreatening way. It reminds Yaz of something … but what? Oh! It reminds her of Henry the Imaginary Llama’s sweet foldy-over ear, that’s what.

Yaz shakes her head, grumpy at all the weird thoughts running through her head. She’s mad at them, too, and she wants them to leave. But they don’t, that’s the thing. The weird thoughts are the sandstorm whirling beneath her skin. The weird thoughts and the grumpy thoughts and the mad thoughts—they’ve clustered together and are poking her from the inside.

What makes it worse is that Yaz is not, by nature, an angry person. That means she doesn’t know how to handle these foreign emotions. Nobody’s ever taught her. Nobody’s ever needed to teach her.

Yesterday, I was the bubble-gum queen, she thinks, and today I’m a stupid sandstorm. What is wrong with me? Is it growing pains? Are my bones growing too fast and making my nerves and cells and muscles go haywire?

She drums her fingers against her desk without realizing it. She hears the annoying barump barump barump of fingertips against wood, but it’s not until she scowls and searches for the source of that ANNOYING NOISE that she realizes it’s coming from her. She’s making the annoying noise, and it’s even more annoying than Natalia’s constant sniffing.

Whoa. Yaz has to get a grip on herself, because Yasaman is Yasaman, and Yasaman does not make annoying noises.

She straightens her spine and tries to focus on her book. That’s what the unsandy Yaz would do. The unsandy Yaz likes to read, and the unsandy Yaz likes to please her teacher, Ms. Perez, who is one of her favorite people in the world. The unsandy Yaz would never want to disappoint Ms. Perez by not being perfect, never ever ever.

Ms. Perez lifts her head and smiles at Yaz, almost as if she knows what Yaz is thinking. Does she? Could she?

No. People can’t read other people’s minds, not unless they’re on TV shows.

Yaz smiles shakily back at her teacher. Ms. Perez is wearing a snazzy black top today, and she looks super cute. Some kids—cough cough Modessa and Quin cough cough—say Ms. Perez is fat, but she’s not. She’s huggable. She has curves. And she has shiny butterscotch highlights in her dark hair, which bring out the glow of her brown skin. She’s beautiful, that’s what she is, and Yaz suspects that the other fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Emerson, is secretly in love with her. If he’s not, he should be.

Yaz is having no luck focusing on her novel, so she gets out her vocabulary book and decides to get a head start on the next lesson. Books, you have to focus fully on. Vocabulary? Not so much.

She opens her workbook:

1.  Come up with a word that rhymes with “trod” and use it in a sentence.

Easy enough. My flower power pod has never trod on anyone. (Well, mainly. Maybe Modessa. Maybe a little.)

2.  Using the dictionary in the back of your workbook, look up the definition of the word “enigmatic.” Use “enigmatic” in an original sentence.

Okeydoke. “Enigmatic. Adjective. Perplexing or mysterious.” A person could be enigmatic, and maybe other people won’t know what to make of that person; nonetheless, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions, because that person could be nice or mean, and you just won’t know until you see how she acts later. Yaz is proud of her use of the semicolon, which she had to use in order to keep her sentence a single sentence. She hopes Ms. Perez appreciates it.

Yaz puffs her chest with air, then blows it all out. She’s feeling less sandy. She’s feeling better, and feeling better makes her feel … better. She giggles, and Ms. Perez regards her inquisitively.

“Yaz?” she asks. “Everything all right?”

“Absolutely. Um, yes.” She blushes. “Sorry for laughing.”

“No worries. But since you’ve put away your free reading book, will you run an errand for me, honey?”

“I will!” Preston calls.

“I will!” Chance yells. “I can put away my free reading book, too!” He holds it up, waggles it, and thrusts it in his desk. “See? Here I am, putting it away!”

Yaz pays no attention to them, and neither does Ms. Perez. They know that Preston and Chance just want to get out of class.

Yaz slips out of her desk and goes to her teacher. “What do you need me to do?” she asks.

Ms. Perez scribbles some sentences onto a piece of notebook paper, folds the paper four times, and holds it out to Yasaman. “Would you deliver this to Mr. Emerson, please?”

Yaz accepts the note. She trips over Modessa’s feet on her way to the door, and Modessa says, “Oops, sorry.”

Yaz doesn’t respond.

Quin snickers, and so does Elena. Yaz ignores Quin, just as she ignored Modessa. But she shocks herself by looking straight at Elena.

Don’t you remember Henry the Llama? Yaz says to Elena silently. Don’t you want to be nice again instead of mean?

Elena’s snickers die off. Her expression wobbles.

Yaz bows her head, because it’s too raw and too wrong. Her gaze lands on Elena’s spiral notebook, which is filled with a back-and-forth conversation.

so? new girl?

That’s Modessa’s handwriting. After years of going to school with Modessa, Yaz knows her handwriting.

I dunno. She seems cool, I guess. Or not. Um, what do you think?

That’s Elena. Even if Yaz didn’t recognize Elena’s handwriting, the “what do you think?” would give it away. Because Modessa doesn’t ask. Modessa tells.

I think it’s interesting how interested other people are in her. Did you see Violet staring during lunch? Violet and her posse of mud worms?

Mud worms? Yaz thinks. The Evil Chicks call Yaz and her flower friends “mud worms”???

She keeps reading, skimming as much as she can as fast as she can. Luckily, Chance and Preston have started a loudly whispered round of “the game,” which involves trading remarks like, “You just lost the game!” “No, you did, turd-breath!” Everyone, including Ms. Perez and also Elena, turn to look. It buys Yaz some time.

But listen, E. We are NOT going to let the mud worms have Hayley. NO. WAY.

Have her? What do you mean?

Really, E? Really?!!

I just meant— Do you want her to be an Evil Chick, then?

Yet to be determined. Her hair’s a nightmare, but she could always wear a hat. Or a paper bag.

“Nosy much?” Modessa says, making Yaz jump. But at least it unfreezes her legs. Clutching the folded-over note Ms. Perez asked her to deliver to Mr. Emerson, Yaz hurries out of the room. Her heart is a trapped animal, heavy and thumping. Drumming out a message: no, no, no.

Yasaman doesn’t know Hayley any better than Modessa does. In fact, she knows her less well, having yet to exchange a single word with her. But it doesn’t matter. Yaz does know Modessa, and Modessa will invite Hayley to be Evil Chick number four.

It will be up to the flower friends to make sure Hayley says no.