My mom let me stay home sick from school the next two days. She told the office that I had a bit of a temperature. I told her I was suicidal.

“You shouldn’t joke about things like that, Boo,” she said. “You’re a very special, very talented person, and one day this is all going to seem like small potatoes.”

“Mom,” I said, looking her straight in the eyes. “The Chunky Chick Does the Peanut-Butter-and-Mango-Marmalade Big Butt Dance is never going to seem like small potatoes. Never, ever, ever.”

“Just wait, Boo, you’ll see,” she answered. “‘Sometimes in life, if you want to have rainbows, you gotta have rain.’”

I rolled my eyes. This is exactly why my dad had divorced her. While everyone else saw reality, my mom saw bright, cheery, positive stuff—all the time. And what could be more annoying than someone who always saw the bright side of things when you were crazy depressed?

“Come on, Mom,” I said, heading to the cupboard, “give it a break.”

“You watch,” she replied.

Six cookies should do it, I thought. For a start.

“How ’bout an apple, Boo?” she suggested as she saw me fill up my hands with deliciousness.

“Mom, this situation calls for chocolate,” I answered. “It’s what I like to call a double fudger.”

Mom watched as I plopped some dark brown love into my face hole. The world might have been cruel and rude and mean and hurtful, but chocolate understood me.

Chocolate loved me.

“Oh, Boo…” said my mom in an uplifting, supportive tone. “No need to catastrophize.”

Catastrophize? Where did she come up with these words?

“Sometimes,” she added, “what seems like the worst actually brings about the best. You just never know.”

I rolled my eyes and plunked another cookie into my mouth.

“You just never know,” she repeated, to make her point.

And then, to make my point, I repeated my cookie plunking. Twice more.

Despite all of this repetition, my mom still would not let me repeat my “please call the school, and tell them I am sick” routine. I argued, but she wouldn’t budge on a third day home.

“But I have scientific proof I am suffering from the Indonesian mumps,” I said.

Silence.

“Combined with vertigo.”

Still nothing. I upped the odds.

“Complicated by symptoms of Africanized bacterial meningitis,” I argued. “I swear. I found it on the Internet.”

Mom gently patted me on the shoulder, told me I’d be fine, and not to trust everything I saw on the World Wide Web.

I sulked my way back to my room.

The entire night was spent biting my fingernails and freaking out about my return to school the next day. Well, not just my fingernails. I bit some chocolate-covered graham crackers too. A person’s gotta do what they gotta do to make it through the night, right?

The next day, when the car stopped to drop me off, I felt tears forming in my eyes. I didn’t want to get out of the minivan. Like, I really, really didn’t want to get out of the minivan. And how sad is that when you don’t want to get out of a minvan?

“Gimme two minutes before you come out, Maureen. I don’t want anyone to see me with you.”

“Ash-leee,” warned my mother in another one of her disapproving tones. Oh yeah, I’m sure after that kind of scolding, my sister would never dare ridicule me again.

“Just kidding, Mom,” said Ashley with a fake smile as she slid open the door. Then she held up two fingers and mouthed the words “Two minutes.” After all, she had a social life to think about.

I guess I couldn’t blame her.

I remained where I was, stuck to the seat. Mom being mom, she smiled warmly, and then told me that when you fall off the horse, you gotta get back on.

Really, those were her exact words.

“When you fall off the horse, you gotta get back on.”

“But the horse broke my butt,” I answered. “And no one sits in a saddle with a broken butt.”

“Well, now your butt matches your face,” said Ashley, reaching back into the car. “Sorry, Mom, forgot my lunch.”

Mom, once again disapprovingly rolled her eyes. Really, I’m not sure how Ashley handled such ferocious motherly fury.

“Two minutes,” Ashley mouthed again, and then she disappeared.

My mom looked at me with a cheerful, encouraging smile. However, as soft as she was on the outside, I knew there was no way in the world she was going to let me stay home from school another day. It wasn’t fair. With me, Mom was always the toughest.

I slumped out of the car, didn’t say good-bye, and moped toward class. And if I’d thought I was a loser/loner/nerd/geek/ dorkasaurus before I’d done the Chunky Chick Does the PeanutButter-and-Mango-Marmalade Big Butt Dance, now I felt like one of those contagious kids that could give the whole school head lice.

And no one wants head lice. Not even your best friend.

My two best friends were, of course, nothing but a distant memory these days anyway. They had both moved away last summer because their dads worked for the same company, and they had both lost their jobs in the bad economy. Go figure.

Cyndy went to Texas, Rachel went to Idaho, and though the Web allowed the three of us to keep in touch, it just wasn’t the same through texting and stuff and all. And now there wasn’t a respectable person on my campus that was ever going to talk to me again.

At least not without laughing in my face.

I hung my head as I shuffled sadly through the halls. Earth was nothing more than a cold, bitter rock floating aimlessly in outer space.

A cold, bitter rock with homework. How depressing is that?

I was alone on a lonely planet. Until lunch, that is.

Of course I sat at a table all by myself. Of course I never expected anyone to approach me unless they planned on making fun of me. And of course I packed cupcakes. Three of them. The world may have hated me, but baked goods were the last of my loyal comrades, and despite the fact that my mother had put asparagus spears and a no-skin chicken breast into my lunch bag, I was able to sneak in my own private triple play: chocolate, vanilla, and Mr. Lemon.

No, there weren’t many good things about Grover Park Middle School, but at least it had Paradise Palace right across the street. Paradise Palace was a convenience store that specialized in the cheapest kind of junk food sold on the planet. They had honey buns filled with brown ooze, doughnuts dunked in green sludge, and pieces of pink cake that looked so artificial they must have been baked in an oven in a nuclear waste dump.

Truly, there wasn’t a piece of real fruit anywhere in the store. Not even an overripe banana. Just junk food. Adults might have hated it, but for a kid like me, the place across the street was truly paradise.

Hey, maybe that’s where they got their name, Paradise Palace?

“Ahhh,” I said staring at the day’s only joy.

Sitting all by myself, I chomped into life’s last remaining bliss. Mrs. Marks was wrong about the clarinet. Music couldn’t take your problems away—but cupcakes stuffed with synthetic yellow cream could.

Mmmm. The lemon drenched my tongue. Then, as I went in for heavenly bite number two, out of the corner of my eye I saw Beanpole Barbara approaching my table.

Beanpole Barbara?

At first she didn’t say anything. Not a word. All she did was sit down at the far end of my table and try to act casual.

I stared at her. She avoided eye contact with me and tried to look relaxed and innocent.

Then, a moment later, she slid over. Just an inch. I continued to stare. Beanpole Barbara looked up at the sky as if she were watching the clouds roll by or something, just another regular ol’ day in a regular ol’ world with regular ol’ birds flying through the air. I waited, wondering, What in the world is Beanpole Barbara, the klutz of the century, doing right now?”

She moved a little closer.

Then a little closer.

All the while, Beanpole Barbara looked at the clouds. Soon enough she had slid all the way down to the end of the bench so that she was sitting right across from me. However, since she was pretending to be watching the clouds instead of watching where she was going, Beanpole Barbara took another slide and then fell right off the end of the seat, and she crashed to the ground with a gigantic thud!

“Ouch,” she said, rolling in dirt.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.

Beanpole Barbara didn’t answer. Instead, she nodded her head and waved to someone who was hiding behind a tree.

“C’mon,” Beanpole Barbara whispered, with another nod. “C’mon.”

Suddenly, Allergy Alice appeared from behind a thick tree trunk. After shuffling her feet for a moment, she walked over. Barbara got up from the ground, and they both sat down across from me.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“G’head” said Beanpole Barbara, trying to get Allergy Alice to speak. “G’head.”

Allergy Alice paused, then opened her mouth. But she didn’t speak. Instead she raised an inhaler the size of a scuba tank to her lips and took such a big wheeze off of the thing it sounded like she was the daughter of Darth Vader.

Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

I stared at her like she was a freak.

“G’head,” said Beanpole Barbara one more time.

Allergy Alice raised her eyes and looked at me. “Why’d you stand up for me?” she asked.

There was a pause. They both stared and waited. I shook my head.

“’Cause I’m stupid, that’s why,” I said. And that was the truth. I mean, why a plumpy person like me would choose to stand up for a walking immunization clinic like Alice by eating a picnic basket’s worth of peanut butter sandwiches in front of the entire school remains a mystery to me.

“’Cause I’m stupid,” I said again.

“Well, I didn’t think it was stupid,” said Beanpole Barbara. “I…” Beanpole paused. “Thought it was brave.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not the 1,043rd hit on YouTube either, now, are you?” I replied.

“5,468.”

“Huh?”

“5,468,” Allergy Alice repeated. “It’s getting kinda popular.”

“Great. Thanks for the update.”

“Accurate statistics, they’re important to me.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she just nodded her head and raised her scuba tank again.

Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

The three of us sat there for a moment in silence. Suddenly, Beanpole Barbara tried to throw something perky into the conversation.

“You know, you’re not stupid, you’re…” she blurted out, trying very hard to be uplifting. “You’re big boned.”

I glared.

“Please, never say that again.”

“Okay,” she answered, then she smiled with extra perkiness as if we were really getting somewhere.

I shook my head. More silence followed. The awkward kind.

A bird chirped.

“We should be friends,” Beanpole Barbara suddenly declared.

“Excuse me?” I answered.

“You know, friends. The three of use should be friends.”

I looked over at Allergy Alice. She took another slurp.

Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

The stupid bird chirped again.

“We can’t be friends,” I answered. “The best we can be is associates. Look around. We’re like the leftover grapes in the bottom of the bowl. Nobody wants us.”

I scanned the groups of kids in the lunch area, chatting together, eating together, laughing together. All the real friends, the people who had chosen to be with one another because they wanted to, not because there was no one else to spend their time with.

“Naw,” I repeated. “The best we could ever be is associated grapes.”

“Sometimes I like to smell my belly button lint.”

“What?” I said, fairly horrified.

“Sometimes I like to smell my…”

“I heard you the first time, Beanpole,” I snapped. “But why would you say such a thing?”

“Because friends,” she answered, “they share secrets.”

“I hate secrets,” I said. “And I am terrible at keeping them.”

There was another awkward pause.

“And to think,” I added with a groan, “these are supposed to be the good years in my life.”

“You’re funny,” said Allergy Alice, looking at me with a goofy grin.

I raised my eyes and stared, waiting for another wheeeshwhooosh, but it didn’t come.

Then it did.

Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

I knew it. I just knew it.

“Well, look who it is, the Three Little Doofuses,” said a voice from behind me. I felt a surge of terror crawl up my spine. I had known it would only be a matter of time before the ThreePees showed up to make us low people feel even lower.

“Beanpole Barbara, Big-Boned Maureen, and Allergy Alice Applebee,” said Kiki Masters as she wiggled over and took a seat. Of course her two pet donkeys were with her, Brittany-Brattany Johnston and Sofes O’Reilly. “So, what’s the four-oneone, nerd-o-las?”

“Yeah, like, been on YouTube lately, Maureen?” asked Brittany-Brattany with a smirk.

I stared at the ground.

“Leave her alone, Kiki,” said Beanpole Barbara with some fight in her voice. “Maybe she likes being on the Internet, huh? Maybe she likes being famous, huh? Maybe she likes that the entire world saw her do her fat little Mrmphh Mrmphh dance with sandwiches? Ever think of that? Huh? Did ya? Did ya?”

I raised my eyes. Was that supposed to be some kind of defense of me?

“Oh, right,” said Sofes O’Reilly. “Just like when that kangaroo totally took a bath in the river.”

Kiki and Brittany slowly turned to Sofes and crinkled their foreheads.

“Excuse me?”

Sofes tried to backtrack. “Maybe it was on the History Channel,” she added, as if that made any sense at all.

Just then, the bell to end lunch rang. And thank goodness, too. Time to go back to class. I gathered up my stuff and rose from the table.

“Have a good afternoon, loser,” said Kiki, with bite in her voice.

“You too, Kiki. See you after math.”

“Not you, Sofes!” snapped Kiki. “I was talking to Big-Boned Maureen and her dork squad.”

“Oh…” answered Sofes. “Yeah. Have a good afternoon, dork squadders.”

The ThreePees stood, grabbed their fancy backpacks, and began to wiggle away. But before they were gone, Sofes turned around and fired another dart in our direction.

“And we mean it!” she shot.

“Uh, mean what, Sofes?” asked Brittany-Brattany.

“Um ... you know ... that,” answered Sofes, looking back at the three of us. Hand lotion probably had a higher IQ than Sofes O’Reilly.

Then they were gone.

Beanpole Barbara stood and immediately began to mock the ThreePees by trying to wiggle like them when she walked.

“Have a good afternoon, dork squadders,” she said in a high-pitched voice. However—Bam!—she crashed into a tree.

“Ouch!”

Beanpole Barbara, not having seen the stationary tree, which had probably been in the same spot for, oh, about a hundred years or so, then walked back over with a large red welt on her forehead. “Don’t worry, I’m okay. I’m okay.”

“Who’s worried?” I said. Her bump began to swell.

“Really. I’m okay,” she said, then Bang! Beanpole bent down to reach for her backpack and smashed her head into the table. “Ouch!” she yelped again. “Don’t worry, I’m okay. I’m okay.” She raised her head. Now there were two red bumps. Her wounds made her look like some kind of baby goat that was starting to grow horns. Suddenly, Allergy Alice spoke. Actually, it was more of a mumble. “What’s that?” I asked, turning around. “I didn’t hear you.” Allergy Alice stared into the distance like some kind of Wild West gunfighter. “Girls like them, you gotta hit ’em where it hurts.” Then, still staring into the distance with a dangerous squint in her eye, Allergy Alice raised her scuba tank.

Wheeesh-whooosh. Wheeesh-whooosh.

“Hit ’em where it hurts ’em bad.”

Who were these freak-a-zoids?