and texts Max, who is both a boy and her friend, and who is even her semi-boyfriend. Okay, her real live boyfriend, if she’s being totally honest and not blushingly embarrassed. Max is her boyfriend, and Milla is Max’s girlfriend, and the reason she knows this is because she knows her heart well enough to be able to say, Yes, this is something, and it’s not one-sided. It’s both-sided. We like each other, Max and I, and … yay!!!!

What Milla doesn’t know is what it means, exactly, to be in the fifth grade and have a boyfriend. Should she hold his hand one day? Kiss him? No way, too scary. (But what if he kisses her, or tries to? Eeek!)

For now? Texting is enough. It’s super a lot of fun, especially with all the emoji that can be added to the texts. Big happy grins! Hearts! Octopi! Strange balls of food on sticks!

Oh, and Max has his very own iPhone, that lucky boy. He calls it his “portable computer that has phone functionality built in.” Tee-hee, so adorkable.

Milla’s Mom Abigail is calling Milla, too. Milla’s been pretending that she didn’t hear, but now she wanders into the kitchen and gives Mom Abigail her phone back—after carefully deleting all the texts between her and Max.

“Okeydoke, Mill-the-Pill,” Mom Abigail says. “Homework? Lunch? Do you have everything you need before heading to the car?”

“Yes, ma’am, Mom-ma’am,” Milla says.

Her mom smiles and tousles her hair. “Great. So who were you talking to just now?”

“No one. Max. But we weren’t talking. We were texting.”

“Ah,” her mom says. She likes Max. Everyone likes Max. “Anything exciting going on?”

“No, not really. He, um, gave me the weather report, that’s all.” He didn’t, but Milla isn’t ready to bring up the Olive Garden yet. “It’s going to be on the chilly side, so you better take a jacket, because don’t you have that picnic thing today?”

Milla’s Mom Abigail is a caterer, and last night she told Milla and Milla’s Mom Joyce about a “Cupcakes, Coffee, and Koi” event that’s she’s throwing this morning. The lady who hired Mom Abigail wants the food served in her backyard even though it’s November, because she has a new fishpond she wants to show off. Hence the “Cupcakes, Coffee, and Koi” theme (though the koi will not be served as food).

“I do,” Mom Abigail says. “Hey, thanks for the reminder.”

“I’ll go get your cute pink jacket,” Milla says. “That fluffy marshmallow one.”

She skips off to the coat closet. Pizza! Burgers! Maybe ice cream, and definitely Max!

First she’ll tell her besties. Yaz will be wide-eyed and full of awe. Katie-Rose will either scowl or tease her and make smoochie-smoochie sounds. As for Violet, she’ll help Milla pick out the perfect-o outfit, cute and chic and just exactly right.

Except, wait. She stops skipping all at once, realizing that if she tells her FFFs, then that makes her date with Max real. If it even is a “date.” Is it a date?

Maybe she won’t tell her besties about the … whatever-it-is that Max has suggested quite yet after all. Eventually she will, of course!

Well, probably.

Maybe.

But honestly, it makes more sense to find out more from Max about when he’s imagining this … thing … will actually happen. Then she’ll check in with her moms, who might say “yes” but might say “no.” If they say “no,” there’s not much reason to tell her besties anyway, is there?

But if they say “yes” … ?

Milla shivers.

It will be epic.