That night at bedtime, I get into my pj’s without even being asked, and go to say good night to Dad, who’s reading in the living room. This reminds me that it’s been a long time since I opened Quantum Physics, Biocentrism, and the Universe as We Know It…but right now, I have more important things to think about. Like the necklace I’m holding for Dad behind my back.

He smiles and puts his book down. “Did you have a good day with your friends?”

I tell him I did and thank him for letting them come over. I could ask him if he had a good day with Paige, but I don’t really want to know the answer. At least she was gone by the time we got back to the house. “I’m going to bed,” I tell him. “But I wanted to give you something first.”

“Something good?” he asks.

“Only if you think something your most darling daughter made for you is something good.”

“In that case, yes!” Dad pats the spot next to him on the couch, so I sit down. “What is it?”

I tell him to close his eyes and he does. When I tell him to open them, my hands are dangling the necklace in front of him.

His expression is blank for a second; then he smiles. “A shell!” he says. I can’t tell if the enthusiasm is real or not. He takes it from me and looks at it more carefully. “That’s a nice one.”

“It’s not just a shell,” I tell him. “It’s a necklace. See, I’ve got one too!” I pull mine out from underneath my pajama shirt and show him.

He smiles, but he’s touching the string, which, as I know already, is going to be scratchy against his neck. “Hmmm,” he finally says. “I never thought of myself as a necklace kind of guy.”

“That’s why I thought it’d be great. New glasses, new necklace. Let me put it on you!” Without waiting for him to say yes, I stand up on the couch, push him forward, and point his head down so I can tie the string at the back of his neck.

“Give me a little more space,” he says, bringing his hand to his neck.

Jeez, adults and their “space.” But there’s a slight cough in Dad’s voice, so I loosen it a little and tie a knot, noticing the parts where I thinned out the string with the scissors. This necklace won’t last long. Good.

I step away and sit back down on the couch. Dad arranges the shell against his neck. “How does it look?”

“Great!” I say, though maybe I’m exaggerating. I could picture this necklace on a dad who has shaggy blond hair and lives on the beach and drives a convertible, but my dad wears glasses and sits at a computer and drinks iced Americanos at a coffeehouse. It doesn’t look bad; it just doesn’t look like him.

“Let me see.” Dad gets up and walks to the bathroom, with me right behind him. He looks in the mirror and smiles. “I like it,” he says, and this time I believe him. “You know, your mom collected shells like this.”

“Really?” I don’t remember any shells in Ohio. “Did they have them at the lake where you met?”

“No, not there. But her parents were from the East Coast, and whenever she went to the beach in New Jersey, she’d pick a favorite shell and save it. I wish I knew where they were now. You could make more necklaces with them.” He touches the shell on his neck and looks at it closely in the mirror. “Yep, she would’ve loved this one.”

I’m not sad, but what Dad is saying almost makes me feel like I am. So I change my attitude. I have to keep my final goal in mind. “Does Terri love shells too?” I ask.

Dad turns away from the mirror and looks at me. “I’m not sure. She likes the beach, though, remember?”

“Yeah. Maybe we can all go to the beach again sometime.” Worried I might sound too eager, I add, “You know, as friends.”

Dad sighs. “Maybe. We’ll see. Now, come on, it’s late.”

“I know, I know,” I say, sighing like he did. “Bedtime.”

Dad thanks me again, and I head to my room without complaining. I go to sleep with a smile. The shell reminds him of someone he loved. So we’re moving in the right direction.

Now the necklace just needs to fall off.

—

On Monday morning, my necklace is still in place. It was hard to sleep with it on, and when I finally drag myself out of bed, I look in the mirror and see a thin red line around my neck—a scratchy-looking rash from the string.

Yesterday the necklace made me feel like a unique girl Ryder Landry could love, but today I realize it could be something for people like Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae to make fun of. So I put on a T-shirt with a high-enough collar that the necklace is mostly hidden below.

At breakfast I see a red line around Dad’s neck too, but he’s being a good dad and not complaining. Oh well, if I’m lucky, the universe will spring into action soon and Dad won’t be wearing that necklace anymore—and neither will I.

—

“Cool necklace!” is the first thing I hear when I walk into Kevin’s classroom, and to my shock, the words are coming from Lisa Lee!

The strange thing is that she’s not saying it in a mean, sarcastic way. I put my hand to my neck, and sure enough, my necklace has popped out of my T-shirt a little. Maybe my life is changing already.

Then I see that she’s talking to Madison, not me. Of course. I shove the shell back under my T-shirt and take my seat.

“Oh, thanks. I made it over the weekend.” Madison lightly touches the string around her neck. If she’s got a rash, I can’t see it from my chair.

“Wow, if you made more, I bet you could sell them. They’re so, like, back to nature; stores in Beverly Hills would pay a ton for them. You’d be an awesome jewelry designer!”

“Yeah,” echoes Kylie Mae.

Come on! If Lisa Lee had seen the necklace on me first, it’d be dorky and loserish. But because it’s on Madison, it’s cool.

Sixth grade is so unfair.

—

For the first time in days, I don’t avoid Larry at lunch. He’s already sitting by himself when I get to the lunchroom with the turkey, lettuce, and butter sandwich my dad packed. I plop myself down, and he looks at me with eyes that are so happy, I feel terrible—for avoiding him, for lying so he’d give me his Costa Rican treasure, and most of all, for almost throwing Mono in the lake! But what other choice did I have when he decided to declare his love for me? It’d be way too embarrassing and uncomfortable to talk to him about how I really feel.

“Hey,” I say, unzipping my backpack.

“Hey,” he says back. “I thought maybe we weren’t eating lunch together anymore.” The way he says it makes me want to cry. Thank goodness I don’t have to tell him that I “lost” his monkey.

“Nah, I’ve just had a lot of things to do, a lot of things on my mind,” I say. “But today I have a little friend who wants to say hello to you!” I pull out the monkey and, with a flourish, place him on the table. “Ta-da!”

Larry gets a big smile on his face. “Oh, great, thanks! Did your uncle like him?”

“Huh?” I ask.

“Your uncle.”

“What?”

“The one going to Costa Rica.”

Oh, right! I was so proud of myself for doing the right thing and returning the monkey, I forgot exactly what I said to take him away in the first place. “Right, yeah,” I reply. “He said he can’t wait to see monkeys in the wild. And if he sees one like this at a gift shop or the airport, he’ll buy me one.”

“He doesn’t have to do that,” Larry says. “You could have mine.”

His? This cute little monkey sitting right in front of us? The monkey that has been by his side for weeks and has only been away from him for the two days I took him home? If that’s not a sign of love, I don’t know what is! Maybe I should have thrown it in the lake….

“No, no, no,” I say. “You told me how important he is to you.”

With his mouth full of sloppy joe, Larry nods for a moment. Then, after a swallow, he says, “He is. But my mom was really proud of me for giving him up for the weekend. And I didn’t feel too nervous or jumpy or anything without him. That’s what I was afraid of. I could fall asleep and everything.”

So Larry, without his monkey, slept better this weekend than I did with this shell necklace around my neck!

“Plus, if you have him,” Larry continues, “I’ll always know where he is!”

“No, I can’t,” I say. “I shouldn’t.” I’m squirming like my whole body is covered with scratchy necklaces, feeling like I shouldn’t have sat down here. Larry’s offer is way too meaningful, and it comes with a lot of responsibility—responsibility I don’t want.

“Hey, anybody sitting here?”

Oh boy, it’s Samantha. If she wanted to, she could tell Larry what I did—or almost did—with Mono. My whole body tenses up…waiting.

“Nice necklace,” Larry says as Sam takes the seat across from him.

“Thanks,” Samantha says, taking a bite of her sloppy joe. With serious eyes, she looks at me. Can she see in my eyes how much I’m hoping that she doesn’t say anything?

Maybe she does, because she smiles toward Larry and says, “Hey, your monkey’s back!” Then she looks at me and raises her eyebrows knowingly. Sam’s not going to bust me. My muscles unsqueeze.

“Yeah, but I’ve decided I don’t need him so much anymore,” Larry tells her. “You want him?”

Sam doesn’t think it over for a second. “Sure!” she says, picking him up. “He’s cute!”

Well, that’s not what I expected. Why isn’t Larry begging me, his one true love, to be the keeper of his special memento? Doesn’t he want us linked for the rest of our lives, now and forever? Instead, Sam is now making Mono bounce along the table as she makes “ooh ooh ahh ahh” monkey noises!

Madison has also gotten a sloppy joe today, and I see her walking toward us from the lunch line. As she gets closer I say, “Hey”…but she doesn’t slow down.

In a low voice, almost a whisper, she says, “I’m…uh…going to…” She nods her head toward the other side of the lunchroom—and keeps walking. When I look in the direction she nodded, I see the opposite of what I wished for at the lake—she’s walking straight over to Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae’s table! They greet her with a squeal of excitement while Ronnie and Lonnie Cheseboro grunt and say, “Yo.”

“Well, that’s not super cool,” Sam says.

I don’t say anything. My insides have gotten gray and sad and mushy all of a sudden. It’s only lunchtime on Monday, and I’m already afraid that all the hard work we put in on our Siren Call—the string, the shells, the offerings, running away from Red Shorts—was a total waste of time.

—

I don’t want to see anyone during outdoor break, so I go to the last place anyone would want to spend a significant amount of time—the girls’ bathroom. I sit on the toilet, and despite how terrible I feel, I’m smart enough to put the lid down while I play a Pig Mania game on my phone. No loud noises or other surprises are going to cause me to drop my phone in the toilet. As upset as I am, I still have enough focus to avoid that. If I could ever tell her this story, Roberta would be proud.

I hear voices come and go—some I recognize and some I don’t. I hear a bunch of people pee and a couple of people poop, and almost everyone washes their hands. If anyone wants to use my stall, they just pull on the door and give up when they realize someone’s inside.

Until Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae make their entrance.

“He wants to kiss,” Lisa Lee says with an icked-out tone to her voice, “but I just want him to hang out with me at outdoor break and maybe hold hands. Is Lonnie like that?”

“Yeah,” Kylie Mae says.

“He’d better not think I’m going to kiss him at the Bling Bling. He probably thinks I’ll be so scared on the rides I’ll jump into his arms or something. If that’s his plan, he’s barking up the wrong girl!”

I laugh on the inside because I think she means “barking up the wrong tree.” For that second I’m not concentrating on my video game, and when one of them pulls at the stall door, I’m surprised.

CRASH! My phone drops to the floor.

Dad was smart enough to put a thick plastic case on it, so it doesn’t break, but it bounces underneath the door and out into the bathroom. Oh no.

“Hey, I got your phone,” Lisa Lee calls, not knowing I’m the one behind the door.

I disguise my voice, making it low and grumbly. “Leave it on the sink; I’m busy.”

Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae both laugh. “Who is that? Do we know you?” Lisa Lee asks.

Ugh, I do not want to have this conversation! “No,” I say, mumbly and scratchy. “I’m new here.”

“Hmmm,” says Lisa Lee, who’s followed by Kylie Mae with a similar “Hmmm.” Lisa Lee picks up where Kylie Mae left off. “That’s funny. I haven’t heard of any new girls here. Especially none that wear Cleo Nelson’s unattractive sneakers.”

There’s nothing I can do now, so I respond in my own voice. “They’re not unattractive—they’re unique!” They really are. They’re bright pink and I’ve drawn my animated characters all over them. I may not be proud of many things, but I’m proud of these sneakers. I open the door to find Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae standing side by side.

“Ewww, she didn’t flush,” says Kylie Mae.

“I was sitting on the lid!”

“Still,” says Kylie Mae.

“Are you gonna give me my phone?” I ask. I have visions of them tossing it in the trash can or, even worse, throwing it in the toilet.

“I don’t want your dumb phone,” Lisa Lee says, handing it back to me. “You probably don’t have any good apps or games anyway.”

“Thanks,” I say, not meaning it. I head toward the door.

“Hey, we’re sorry about the Bling Bling Summer Fling,” Lisa Lee’s voice says behind me.

I turn around. “What about it?”

“She doesn’t know,” Kylie Mae whispers to Lisa Lee, though I’m standing right there and can hear her.

“Madison’s coming with us,” Lisa Lee says.

“To the Bling Bling?” I ask.

“Duh,” says Kylie Mae, and I don’t blame her. Of course that’s what she meant.

I try to cover up my surprise and sadness with a forced smile. “That’s okay,” I say. “I’ve got other plans anyway.” I open the door, thinking that if what Lisa Lee just told me is true, my other plans will be to not go to the Bling Bling at all. I’ll stay home and start convincing Dad to move back to Ohio.

As the door closes behind me, I think I hear Kylie Mae say one more thing. “Her necklace isn’t as cute as Madison’s.”