and Sam. Sometimes they’re dreadful, like when they call Katie-Rose “shrimp” or say, “Leave, Katie-Rose,” when their friends are over and they’re having stupid video-game bonanzas. But other times, they are the best brothers in the world. Like the time Katie-Rose, Charlie, and Sam were hanging out at their neighborhood park, and another boy called Katie-Rose a shrimp. Katie-Rose didn’t even know the boy, and the boy sure didn’t know her. He was just a random jerk.

The random jerk’s Frisbee whacked Katie-Rose in the head, and while Katie-Rose was still reeling from the blow, he sneered and called out, “Hey, shrimp. Give me back my Frisbee.”

Well. Charlie strode right over to that jerk and shoved him in the chest. Sam followed on Charlie’s heels and shoved him again, for good measure.

“Dudes,” the bully said, pissed and baffled. “What’s your problem?”

“Shut it,” Charlie said.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Don’t call her that, and if you’re going to come out here with your Frisbee, then learn how to throw it.”

“What the …?” the bully said. He wore a striped rugby shirt and a face full of arrogance. He was thicker than Charlie, but Charlie was taller. He was meaner looking than Sam, but Sam’s eyes were narrow and his jaw cut a sharp line in the bright sunlight.

The bully glanced from Charlie to Sam, from Sam to Charlie. “What’s it to you?”

“She’s our sister, ****head,” Charlie said. (The bad word Charlie said thrilled Katie-Rose, but it was bad bad, so no way is she repeating it.) He shoved the bully again, and the bully faltered.

“Dude. Chill,” he said, backing away with his palms out.

“Make him apologize!” Katie-Rose told Charlie, tugging on his sleeve. He shrugged her off and gave her a scornful look, as if to say, Don’t push it, squirt. He and Sam returned to playing basketball with their buddies, and Katie-Rose watched them, her heart bursting with pride.

“Those are my brothers,” she whispered.

Before school this morning, as Charlie and Sam roughhoused their way through breakfast, Sam elbowed Charlie in the ribs in order to wrest the box of Frosted Flakes from him.

“Ow, you ****head!” Charlie cried, dropping the Frosted Flakes onto the floor. The liner bag burst, and Frosted Flakes scattered everywhere. Snow in November! Crunchy, sugary snow!

Sam laughed triumphantly, and Charlie scowled. He went to the junk drawer by the telephone, yanked it open, and grabbed a fine-point black Sharpie. He did something mysterious with said Sharpie, turning his back to Sam (and by default to Katie-Rose) and muttering under his breath. He chucked the Sharpie into the drawer and took two big steps toward Sam, Frosted Flakes crunching beneath his oversize sneakers.

“You mess with me, you mess with this!” he said, clenching his right hand into a fist and thrusting it two inches in front of Sam’s nose.

“With what? With what?” Katie-Rose said, scrambling out of her chair at the kitchen table.

Sam pushed Charlie’s fist away—Charlie would never hit Sam for real, or their mom would have his hide—but not before Katie-Rose saw what Charlie had done. He’d used the Sharpie to write the letters “T,” “H,” “I,” and “S” on his knuckles. Katie-Rose giggled helplessly. You mess with me, you mess with THIS, with Charlie’s knuckles actually spelling out the word “this.”

“Geez-o-criminy,” Sam said. “And you’re the older, more mature brother? Really?”

Charmed in equal measure by Charlie’s THIS fist and Sam’s use of “geez-o-criminy,” Katie-Rose vowed then and there to use both bits of clevernesses as often as she could during the school day.

With “geez-o-criminy,” she’s had huge success, sprinkling the phrase into practically every sentence that comes out of her mouth. When Ms. Perez calls Yaz up front and asks her to go on yet another note-running errand, Katie-Rose mutters, “Geez-o-criminy. Enough with the notes already!” When Natalia Totenburg asks what set of math problems they’re supposed to be working on, Katie-Rose flings her hands into the air. “Geez-o-criminy, Natalia!” she cries. “You expect me to know? What am I, a game-show host?”

The THIS fist is proving to be a tougher nut to crack. The “T,” the “H,” the “I,” and the “S” are ready and waiting. Katie-Rose inked them onto her knuckles on the way to school. She hasn’t been able to use them, however. It isn’t Katie-Rose’s fault. It’s just that violence isn’t allowed at Rivendell. Not even fake violence. Not even mock and ironic fake violence.

I *will* find a way, she thinks, drumming her fingers on her desk. “Mwahaha!” she says, trying to sound like a hardened criminal. And then again for good measure: “Mwahahahaha!”

“Do you need a lozenge?” Natalia whispers, only it comes out lothenge because of her lisp.

“What?” Katie-Rose says. She glances around the room, startled to find that she’s not in a smoky café at all. Nor is she dressed in all black; nor is her face cloaked in the shadow of a wide-brimmed fedora.

“A lothenge,” Natalia repeats. “For your thore throat. Another exthellent tip ith to uthe a neti pot. Do you have a neti pot? Neti potth are awethome for loothening phlegm.”

Preston turns around from his desk. He cracks up. “Yeah, Katie-Rose. For your phlegm.”

Katie-Rose sticks her tongue out at him.

“I do not have phlegm,” she informs Natalia.

“Then why were you clearing your throat?” Natalia asks.

“I wasn’t. It was my—” She breaks off. One can’t say “It was my evil laugh” to a girl like Natalia. She would never understand.

Preston now clears his throat repeatedly and with enthusiasm. He sounds as if he’s hocking up a dead frog.

“Shut it,” Katie-Rose tells him.

Preston draws back as if he’s scared. “Ooo. Prickly, prickly.” He leans toward Natalia and pretends to be whispering to her, but it’s clear his words are for Katie-Rose. “So much phlegm,” he says with a sigh. “Maybe that’s why she’s so grumpy, do you think? Or … maybe she’s so phlegmy because she’s such a grump!”

Katie-Rose narrows her eyes. Natalia just looks confused.

“No,” Natalia says. “Phlegm ith a liquid thecreted by our mucuth membraneth. It cometh from the lungth. It’th in the thame family as thputum, if you mutht know.”

“Ah,” Preston says. “Thputum. I mean, sputum. So Katie-Rose is full of sputum?”

“I said shut it!” Katie-Rose growls.

Preston grins, and Katie-Rose glares. Then she gets an idea, and she grins, but sneakily, keeping her grin on the inside. She clenches her hand into a fist.

“If your phlegm ith green or dark yellow, you need to thee a doctor, Katie-Rothe,” Natalia says.

“Truer words were never spoken,” Preston says. “Is it, Katie-Rose? Green or dark yellow?”

“Stop messing with me, Preston,” Katie-Rose warns, hoping he doesn’t. If only she knew how to crack her knuckles. Cracking her knuckles would be an excellent gesture to throw in about now.

“I don’t think I can, because now I’m really curious,” Preston says. “Let’s talk about its consistency. Would you describe it as gelatinous or more like Cream of Wheat?” He waggles his eyebrows. “Or Cream of Sputum. Mmmm.”

All right. That’s it. Katie-Rose crosses from her desk to his and says, “I told you to shut it, Preston, and you didn’t listen, and now you have to face the music. You mess with me”—she thrusts her Sharpie-decorated fist in front of his face—“and you mess with this!”

Preston’s brow furrows, and then clears. And then he cracks up, starting with a chuckle, which builds to a chortle, which crescendos into the full-out, desk-slapping laugh that only fifth-grade boys with the most obnoxious personalities can pull off.

“‘SIHT’? You want me to mess with ‘SIHT’?” he says. “I’m sorry, Katie-Rose, but I don’t know what that means.”

Other kids in the class turn to see what’s so funny, and Katie-Rose feels her cheeks heat up. Yaz still isn’t back from Mr. Emerson’s room, and Katie-Rose feels very alone. She’s been the kid that others have laughed at far too many times.

She tries to hold her head high. “You mess with me, you mess with this,” she says in a low voice. She shakes her fist at him so that he can read the word. It’s only four letters long. It’s not that hard. “Stop trying to make me look stupid.”

“Stop trying to make yourself look stupid,” Preston says, pushing her fist out of his face. “Read it and weep, hotcakes.”

Katie-Rose reads the word written on her hand. The word she herself wrote on her hand. She frowns, because her knuckles do spell “SIHT,” only with an upside-down “T.” “SIH.”

Oh, crud. She thinks back to this morning’s car ride, when she carefully sketched and darkened the letters “T,” “H,” “I,” and “S” on her knuckles, all capitalized for easier reading. It looked right at the time, with her fingers flat on her jeans. THIS, her knuckles spelled, with the “T” on her pinky and the “S” on her forefinger.

But in fist form, with the fist in Preston’s face …

She slinks to her seat, shoves her hand beneath her opposite bicep, and buries her head in her arms. Kids are still laughing. They’re laughing enough that Ms. Perez is telling the class to settle down, not that anyone’s listening.

“Hey,” Preston says. “Katie-Rose. Hey.”

She ignores him. He’s a jerk, just like that bully at the park, and she’s an idiot for ever, ever thinking anything else.

“It’s funny,” Preston insists.

“You mess with me, you mess with SIHT!” Preston’s friend Chance says in a gangster accent.

“Dude, shut up,” Preston tells him.

“Preston!” Ms. Perez says. Judging by her tone, she’s been trying to get his attention for a while. “Do I need to come back there? What is going on?”

“Nothing,” Preston says. “Everything’s cool.” He drops his voice. “But geez, Katie-Rose, you really are prickly. Learn to take a joke, will you?”

A tear squeezes out of Katie-Rose’s tightly shut eyes. Prickly girls don’t cry, she tells herself, but it does no good. Maybe because prickly girls also lie.