the playground for afternoon break—and “storm” is the right word for it, given the chaotic flood of whoops and leaps and near-stumbles as kids hurry outside. “Storm” is the right word for Violet, too, although Violet’s “storm” is a noun instead of a verb. Violet’s storm is internal, and she stays inside the building as the others rush out.

Violet’s storm is a dark gray tornado whirling in the place her lungs live. It whirls and sucks the breath out of her, and without breath, she can’t speak. Without breath, she can’t breathe, but okay, it’s not that fierce of a tornado, or she’d be dead. Thwonk.

Losing the power of speech is bad enough, though.

Violet, without words, isn’t Violet.

Violet, without words, is … anti-Violet. The opposite of Violet. A Violet-shaped husk, with a tornado inside instead of a girl.

“Violet?” someone says tentatively.

Violet is slow to respond. She knows that in reality, she still is Violet. Der. But she’s Violet-in-a-whirling-daze, and it takes her a moment to pull the pieces of herself together.

“Yaz,” she finally says. She feels spacey. She imagines two Violets, both of them paper-doll cutouts. One is the surface Violet. The other is the real Violet, if there is such a thing. The two Violets are stacked on top of each other, but their alignment is a hair’s breadth off.

By now, Violet and Yasaman are alone in the commons. Violet, Yaz, and some crumpled lunch bags that didn’t make it into the trash bag. Yasaman plays with the end of her hijab, a nervous habit that comes out when she’s worried, and Violet has the ungenerous thought that Yaz has already yelled at Violet once today (not that she actually yelled). But is Violet going to have to hear about it all over again, how she’s a bad friend for abandoning Yaz when Yaz needed her?

They stand there. They’re within feet of each other, but the distance between them feels huge.

“It’s Preston who gave Katie-Rose all those hedgehogs,” Yasaman says.

Violet takes this in. Maybe she should care more, but right now, she doesn’t. “Okay.”

Yaz swallows. Violet can hear it.

Then Yaz sighs, and Violet can hear that, too. She also hears a rushing in her ears, and it’s the gray tornado saying wrong, wrong, wrong. The rushing sound builds, and it hurts. Violet doesn’t want to disappoint Yasaman, she doesn’t want to let her friend down, but the rushing keeps getting louder until—whoosh.

It’s gone.

Silence and clarity and the two Violets come together. She doesn’t want to let Yasaman down, but there is a right thing that needs to be done, and she, Violet, has to do it.

“Yaz—”

“Violet—”

They both break off. Violet smiles. It’s a sad smile, but at least it’s not fake.

“You first,” she says.

“No, you,” Yaz says. “Please.”

Violet takes a breath, then lets it out in a fast flow of words, the tail end of a spent tornado. “I can’t not be friends with Hayley. I can’t ignore her. I can’t tell her not to sit with us. You’re my best friend, Yaz—you and Milla and Katie-Rose—but Hayley might end up being my friend, too.”

“Okay, but Violet—”

“No. Wait. It’s just, I can’t treat her like Modessa treated me. Like Modessa still treats me. And I know, I know, Hayley’s her own person. She’s a big girl, and she can take care of herself. But can she? Or is that just something people like to say?”

“Well, what I was going to say—”

“Only I’m not sure it even matters,” Violet goes on, “because if I turn my back on Hayley, then I’m no better than Modessa. And I’m sorry, Yaz, but I am. I’m better than Modessa. So are you. So are all of us.”

“I know,” Yaz says.

“And Hayley’s new, and she’s had, like, a hard life, and maybe she isn’t perfect, but she isn’t an Evil Chick, either. Only what if she turns into one, and it’s our fault?”

“Well, it wouldn’t exactly be our fault,” Yaz says. “Like you said, Hayley’s her own person … so wouldn’t it be her fault if she chooses to be an Evil Chick?”

Violet narrows her eyes a little.

Yaz says, “But … that’s not really what I meant to say. I mean … go on. Sorry.”

“Take, for example, lunch today,” Violet says. “We told Hayley to go away, and she did, and she ended up with Modessa and Quin. She ended up with them, and Elena got left out. And sure, Modessa made that happen—she kicked Elena out or whatever—but we helped. We were part of it.”

“Kind of, I guess,” Yaz says.

“And that made me … it made me feel sick. I’m not saying she has to be a flower friend. But she’s still a person, Yaz, and I think she needs friends. I think she needs us.”

Yasaman closes the distance between Violet and herself. “I know,” she says. “I don’t agree with everything you said, not totally. But I do think that we should be kind to her, and that’s what I wanted to say, too.”

“You … you did?”

Yaz puts her hands on Violet’s shoulders. She steers her to a chair and makes her sit. She pulls over a second chair and sits beside her.

“I was wrong,” Yaz says. “I said you had to pick me or Hayley, but that’s not who you are. That’s never been who you are.”

“Huh?”

“You’re not someone who sits back and stays quiet when bad things happen,” Yaz says. Her voice is thick with shame. “And I made you. And I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Three minutes ago, Violet’s words were stuck inside of her. Then they came whooshing out. Now all she’s got left are the single-syllable ones, like huh and oh.

“And I’m not the sort of person who looks away when someone needs help,” Yaz says. “Or … I don’t want to be.”

“You’re not,” Violet says. “You’re really and truly not.”

Tears well up in Yasaman’s eyes.

“Don’t cry!” Violet exclaims. Tears fill her eyes, and she laughs and swipes them away with the back of her hand. “Don’t you dare cry, Yasaman! You are the nicest girl I know, I swear to God. Or Allah. Or Bob, as Katie-Rose would say.”

Violet makes a silly face, and Yaz manages a choky laugh, too.

“Okay. Stopping.” Yaz presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. She drops her hands and blinks several times in a row. “So, um, I think we should tell Hayley sorry for sending her away.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

Warmth fills Violet’s chest. “All right. Yeah.”

“We should keep trying to help Elena, too,” Yasaman says. “Don’t you think? Even if it’s hopeless?”

Violet scrunches her nose. “Elena might be hopeless, but I guess we never know.” She pauses. “Oh, gosh. Does that mean we have to help Quin? And Modessa?”

“Um … I’m going to hold off on answering that one,” Yaz says. “Anyway, first things first, right?” She stands and holds out her hand to Violet. “Come on, let’s go find Hayley.”