“Anybody seen or talked to Kyra yet this morning?” Tig asked when she joined her friends in the gym before school. She’d filled them in last night via text that she’d given Kyra the boot and that it hadn’t gone well. At all. But of course, she’d kept her promise and hadn’t told them about the divorce.
“Talked to? No,” Robbie said. “Seen? Yes.”
“Uh-oh,” said Tig.
“Yeah,” said Robbie.
“We said hi to her this morning, but she just walked right past us,” Olivia said.
“Wouldn’t even look at us,” added Claire. “She acted like we didn’t exist.”
Tig sighed. “She’ll have to forgive us eventually. Everybody else is already cliqued up for the year. There’s nowhere for her to go, right?”
“Not exactly,” said Robbie. She nodded toward the place in the gym where the popular girls sat.
Tig looked. “Oh no,” she said. “Kyra’s trying to sit in the Bot Spot?”
“Trying is the operative word, obvs,” said Robbie. Kyra was tentatively perched on the end of a bleacher, one hip on and one hip off. She seemed to be working extra hard to steady herself so as not to fall. None of the popular girls were looking at Kyra or talking to her. It was clear to anyone observing that Kyra was not an invited guest but an interloper.
“Why does she keep trying to join the Bots?” Tig said. “Doesn’t she see that they don’t want her? Why does she keep humiliating herself?”
“I suppose she thought this might be an opportunity,” Robbie said.
“An opportunity? How?” Tig asked.
“Let’s see . . . last year, when we kicked Haley out of the band as lead singer, she and the other Bots did everything they could to destroy us. Or have you forgotten all that unpleasantness?”
Tig absolutely had not forgotten. The Bots had been vicious in their attempts to drag her reputation through the mud and put her on the level of pond scum in the social hierarchy. “Of course I remember,” Tig said. “But it’s weird. Regan’s in my math class, and she’s been pretty human to me so far this year.”
“Three words,” said Robbie. “It’s. A. Trap!”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Tig. “I just can’t figure out her game.”
“But you can be sure there is one,” Robbie said.
“I’ve hardly had time to give Regan a passing thought in the last few weeks, what with worrying about Kyra.” Then Tig quickly added, “And the band, I mean.”
“I’m still waiting for one of you to explain how kicking Kyra out of the band is an opportunity for her to become a Bot,” said Olivia. “What’s she going to say, ‘I stink at the bass so don’t you want to be my friend’?”
“More like, ‘Oh, Haley, we have so much in common because mean old Tig kicked me out of her stupid band too,’” said Robbie.
“Oh,” Olivia said. “Gotcha.”
“It doesn’t appear to be working,” Claire said. “Is it just me, or are they going out of their way to freeze her out?”
The girls watched the scene playing out in the Bot Spot. The back of the popular girl right next to Kyra seemed to be inching closer to her. Now only about a third of Kyra’s butt was still on the seat. And the Bots still weren’t looking at or talking to her.
Tig’s heart couldn’t help but go out to Kyra, in spite of the way she’d acted last night. First her parents, then the band, now this fresh embarrassment. Poor Kyra. “This is unfortunate,” Tig said. “Just very, very unfortunate.”
“What’s unfortunate?” asked Will as he and his friend LaDarius walked up to the girls. “You mean Kyra over at the Bot Spot, looking desperate?”
“You noticed too?” Olivia said, making room for the boys to sit.
“Girl drama in a gymnasium,” LaDarius said. “It’s hard to miss.”
“I hate girl drama,” said Olivia.
“It’s really ridiculous,” Will said. “At least with guys, we know where we stand. A wedgie here and there or they ‘accidentally’ slam you in PE or sports practice, and then everybody gets on with real life.”
“Oh, is that why you always get owned in PE?” LaDarius said. “And here all this time, I thought it was because you stink.”
Will shoved LaDarius, who laughed.
“Will’s right, though,” LaDarius continued. “Girls just take it to an extreme. If one girl hates another girl, she’s got to make all her friends hate her too. It must be exhausting.”
“Pretty much,” said Tig.
“I guess it’s funny, in a sad way,” said Claire.
“What?” asked Tig.
“We finally solve the problem of Kyra and the bass, and now we’ve got a new Kyra problem altogether.”
The girls nodded. The two boys were no longer listening, though. They had already lost interest in the whole thing and were discussing a video game. Tig couldn’t help but envy them. Boys’ friendships seemed so much easier.
“How do we solve this one?” Robbie asked.
“I was hoping,” Tig said, “that you could tell me.”