BeeBee stood up.
“No. Wait,” I said. “Remember what I said before BeeBee started choking—that I’d pick you for friends out of everybody in the world. Being popular was wonderful, but having you as friends was the best part.”
Nina rolled her eyes, but BeeBee nodded. “We had fun at my sleepover. I couldn’t believe you brought your dog with you.”
“The thing is, if I met the old lady tomorrow, I wouldn’t ask to be popular again, I’d ask for us to go on being friends.” I’d finally said it. I’d finally told them what mattered to me now: not being popular, but being friends with them. Now they’d understand. It was true.
“You’d do it again,” Ardis said. “You don’t get it.”
“What? Do what again?”
“You’d still wish for us to be forced to like you.”
Oh.
She was right. That is what I was saying. But they should have a choice about liking me or not. After all, I had a choice about them.
“You don’t need magic for me,” Daphne said.
“Before today,” Ardis said, “if somebody had asked me my name, I’d have said, ‘Ardis Lundy and I like Wilma Sturtz.’” She sat down on my bed. “Now I don’t know. I mean, I think we had fun together, but I’m not sure anymore. Yesterday, you felt like one of my lungs, but now, the friendship seems like an illusion.”
“It’s not an illusion on my side. I wasn’t pretending.”
“She didn’t have to pretend,” Daphne said. “You had to like her anyway, even if she was mean.”
Ardis smoothed out a wrinkle in my comforter and didn’t say anything.
“And why would she pretend to be my friend?” Daphne added.
“I keep thinking about you,” Ardis said, nodding. “And about the caricature, and bringing Reggie to a sleepover, which nobody would do if they were faking to get in with us. And I get mixed up.”
“I was being myself, spell or no spell,” I said. “Look, Ardis, I liked you before the spell. You were nice to me after Ms. Hannah—”
Reggie started barking, and then the doorbell rang. I went to get it, closing the bedroom door behind me. Stay till we finish talking. Please stay.
I opened the door. Suzanne stood in the hall.