CHAPTER FIVE 
On Monday morning, Kenzie waited outside of her classroom. Shelly bounced around the corner and collided into Kenzie’s hip.
“Incoming!” Shelly cried.
Kenzie laughed and held out her hand. They bumped fists and pretended to spit (since actual spitting wasn’t allowed in the hallway), then ducked into their M&M morning hideout, the bathroom.
“Do you think I could pull off a fauxhawk at derby practice?” Shelly asked, looking in the mirror.
“If most of your hair was gone, sure,” Kenzie said. She pulled her own hair tight at the sides and pushed the middle up until she looked like a horse with a mane. “Like this,” she said.
Shelly laughed and pushed her own hair up. “Hey! That could be our team name. The Fauxhawks.”
“I’m not sure Tomoko would go for that,” Kenzie said.
A muffled sound came from one of the stalls. Shelly let go of her hair.
“Tomoko?”
The door squeaked open. Tomoko peered out nervously.
“Hey!” Shelly said. “We were just talking about you! Come hang out with us at lunch today.”
Shelly tapped Tomoko’s elbow with her knuckle, but Kenzie noticed Tomoko dip away. Tomoko seemed a lot quieter now that they were back at school. They would need to work on pulling out her derby attitude.
At lunch, Kenzie and Shelly showed Tomoko how to press your finger over the water spout and squirt people. At recess, they showed her their invisible hopscotch obstacle-course game. After school as they walked downtown, Shelly demonstrated how to play hot lava on the sidewalk.
“You have to use stuff like bike racks and light poles. Watch this!” Shelly cried. She swung around and hopped onto a sewer grate.
“Uh-huh,” Tomoko said.
Kenzie watched Tomoko carefully. She hid under her backpack like a turtle. Where was all the star power from the basketball court? Kenzie was starting to worry that Tomoko had changed her mind about joining the team.
“This is my block,” Tomoko said. She hitched her thumb toward a side street.
“Bye!” Shelly called. She flapped her arm back and forth. “Don’t step on the lava!”
Tomoko hardly waved back as she turned around the corner.
Kenzie looked at Shelly.
“We have to do something,” Kenzie said. “Tomoko seems so shy around us.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Shelly asked.
The girls closed their eyes. Sometimes, when Kenzie and Shelly really focused, they could leave their regular brains behind and jump into one brain, the M&M brain.
“We were shy when we were little—” Shelly began.
“Because we didn’t have each other,” Kenzie added.
“Right,” Shelly said. She paused. “Tomoko needs a friend. Like, a good friend.”
Kenzie nodded. It wasn’t easy having three people in a Dynamic Duo. But maybe once another person joined the team, she could be Tomoko’s friend. She could even be her best friend! Then there would be two Dynamic Duos.
“It’s a plan,” Kenzie said. She opened her eyes. Shelly was already looking back at her.
Operation Double Dynamic Duo.
The girls bumped fists and spit into the lava.
The next day, Kenzie walked to school alongside Verona. Kenzie scrunched her mouth in concentration. She was hard at work coming up with plans to help Tomoko with her own Dynamic Duo.
Verona skipped ahead. “Greetings and salutations!” she sang out.
She waved at everyone they passed on South Congress between their apartment and school. She waved at the manager of the fancy hotel. She waved at the hostess of the café that had “the best bagels in Austin,” according to their dad. She waved at the man who owned the flower shop, and the couple who ran a shop that only sold cowboy shirts and miniature cat paintings.
“Greetings and salutations!”
“Greetings and salutations!”
“Greetings and salutations!”
“Would you cut it out already?” Kenzie said. Her brain was twisted in knots from imagining how to find their next player for the team. She kicked a rock that bounced back on her toe.
Verona gripped her backpack straps and stuck her nose in the air.
“Everyone is my friend,” she said. “And you always say hello to your friends.”
“Just say hello then,” Kenzie said. “No one says ‘Greetings and salutations.’”
Verona looked at Kenzie very seriously. “They do in the book Ms. Sigler is reading to us,” she said.
Kenzie rolled her eyes and followed Verona the rest of the way down the block. The girls hopped up the school steps and made their way to the kindergarten wing. Verona hugged Kenzie’s waist.
“Greetings and salutations,” she said. “That means goodbye too.” She turned and ran to a group of kids inside her classroom. Kenzie sighed. Even though Verona could be annoying, she was really good at making friends. Kenzie was so used to being an M&M that she had almost forgotten how to make new friends. She needed some of Verona’s skills if she was going to help Tomoko form her own duo. Or maybe even trio, since they needed two more players.
At lunch, Kenzie, Shelly, and Tomoko sat together. The cafeteria was filled with smells of garlic bread and spaghetti sauce. Tomoko poked at the pile of spaghetti on her tray. Shelly shoved half a meatball sub into her mouth. Kenzie munched on her own sub and peered around the lunchroom. She snuck looks up and down the lunch line and over the tables. There had to be someone else to add to the team.
“Have you ever roller-skated before?” Shelly asked Tomoko. She finished the last of her sandwich and licked her thumbs.
Tomoko looked up from her spaghetti.
“I think so,” she said. “But it was a long time ago. Is that OK?”
“Of course!” Shelly said. “We just need to find a couple people who have skated a lot. To make things even. Like a certain person at the park . . .”
Shelly looked at Kenzie and wiggled her eyebrows.
“What person at the park?” Tomoko asked.
“Oh, just this girl Kenzie doesn’t like,” Shelly said.
“That’s not true,” Kenzie said. “I like Bree. I just don’t like her as a friend.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kenzie froze. Her heart raced behind her sandwich. Did she just say what she thought she said? She looked across the table. Shelly was busy inhaling her dessert. But Tomoko was looking right back at Kenzie.
“What does that mean?” Tomoko asked.
“Nothing,” Kenzie said quickly. She wasn’t going to explain the jitters she felt every time she looked at Bree. Tomoko didn’t even know Bree.
“It doesn’t mean anything.” Kenzie forced herself to take another bite. “We need to get looking for more people,” she said between chews. “I was thinking we could try—”
The lights flicked off and then on again. The chatter in the room died down.
“Draw if you be men!”
Two girls stood up in the middle of the cafeteria, each holding a wooden ruler toward the other. They tapped their rulers back and forth, as if they were sword fighting.
“What’s going on?” Kenzie whispered.
“I think it’s the drama club,” Tomoko said. She pointed to the doors, where the drama teacher stood with her arms folded, smiling.
Kenzie nodded. She watched the girls wave the rulers around.
One of the girls had long, shiny brown hair. She held her ruler lightly. The other girl was small, with frizzy blond hair that hovered over her like a tumbleweed. The smaller girl jumped and dove across the tables.
“Hi-yah!” she yelled with each move.
A boy suddenly stepped between the outstretched rulers. He opened his arms wide.
“Part fools! Put up your swords. You know not what you do.”
The girl with long hair let her ruler fall at her side, but the shorter girl lunged across the boy, her ruler outstretched.
“En garde!” she yelled.
“Jules, that’s not the line,” the boy said.
“How dare you insult the Montagues?” the small girl cried. “Fight or be a coward!” She prodded her opponent with the end of her ruler.
The other girl turned to the drama teacher. “Miss Moss, she’s changing it again!”
“Cut,” Miss Moss called hurriedly. She clapped her hands together like she wanted everyone to join in, but only a few kids applauded. “Look out for our upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,” she announced to the room. Her voice dropped to a low growl as she turned to Jules. “My office. Now.”
The cafeteria had gone completely quiet. Kenzie watched wide-eyed as Jules strode to the doors. She didn’t even seem embarrassed.
“This Shakespeare dude’s got it all wrong,” Jules said. “What’s the point of putting a sword fight in the play and calling it off after two seconds?”
No one got to hear the drama teacher’s answer. She whisked Jules out into the hall. The doors flapped back and forth behind them. After a moment, the room exploded in voices. Pairs of kids picked up their stale chunks of garlic bread and thwacked them together.
“Draw if you be men!”
“Can you imagine if she had a real sword?”
“Miss Moss would have to call an ambulance!”
“Whoa,” Shelly said, turning back to the table. “That kid was nuts.”
“Are you kidding?” Kenzie grinned and set down her sandwich. “That kid is going to be our next team member!”