JEREMY CUT THROUGH THE STRAGGLY bits of brush at the rear of their property and around the neat fence surrounding Emily’s and let himself into the yard. He walked into the kitchen without knocking, as usual, and, with a wave at Emily’s mother, hidden behind her laptop, went upstairs to Emily’s room. Emily’s house was larger than his, with a couple of bedrooms on the second floor and a real dining room and a den for watching movies downstairs, even though it was just for Emily and her parents.
Her house was always a little too warm. There was a bowl of hard candy on the coffee table no one ever ate, and the sofa’s slipcovers shifted awkwardly when you moved. But the two of them would sit there for hours with an afghan on their knees, sharing a bowl of microwave popcorn and watching TV after their homework was done. It was a ritual they’d engaged in since kindergarten, since before Jeremy ever thought of Emily as a girl.
When they were younger, he and Emily used to play with her dog, Princess Di, trying to figure out if there was anything a dog wouldn’t eat. They didn’t feed her anything poisonous or that she could choke on, just unusual things. This was how they learned that Princess Di liked dill pickles, peanut brittle, cherry Jell-O, raspberry limeade, and figs stuffed with cream cheese. On the no list were jalapeño peppers, sliced lemons, and saltwater taffy. They hadn’t played that game in over a year, but Princess Di still greeted him eagerly at the top of the stairs, waiting for treats.
Most people who saw Emily’s room would probably agree with Claudia’s assessment of her dorkiness. The walls were covered with posters of TV shows for little kids, and she had way too many stuffed animals for someone who was twelve. Especially since they all had names.
But she was also into interesting anime movies and collected tiny toys from Japan. Those were the sorts of things Claudia and Delaney and Tabitha would have thought were cool if it was anybody other than Emily who liked them.
Tonight she was sitting at her desk looking at a textbook, but she glanced up with a smile when he walked in. He sat on the edge of her desk and began flipping through a stack of DVDs for lack of anything better to do.
Emily was always trying to get him more interested in her anime movies, but he found them too obscure, with whole casts of characters he didn’t understand, and he liked teasing her. “What is this thing?” he asked with wonder, pointing at a saucer-eyed pink animal on one of the DVD covers. “Why does it have to look like its eyes are going to pop out of its head?”
“Because people like characters that look a lot, but not too much, like humans,” Emily said patiently. “The people who make those movies have actually studied this. They call it the uncanny valley.”
“The what?”
“The uncanny valley,” she repeated. “It’s a graph that shows how people respond to characters or robots better the more human they look, but once they become too much like humans, people get grossed out because they look like dead bodies or something. That’s why people like this stuff”—she waved at the DVD he was holding—“more than they like, say, the people in that movie The Polar Express.”
“Well, I still think they’re crazy-looking,” he said, putting the DVD back on her desk.
“You play video games,” she replied. “Like those aren’t filled with completely random characters.”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to care about them; you just shoot them.”
“You’re such a guy,” she said, and laughed.
“How can you say that? I’m pretty much the only guy you know.”
“That’s not true.” She put her book down.
“Name one other guy you hang out with regularly. One.”
“Nick,” she shot back.
“He’s your cousin!”
“So what? He’s still a guy.”
“Also, he’s nine.”
“And even more so what? He plays video games and rides his bike around just like you do. You’re practically the same person.” She laughed again.
“Okay, fine, you win,” he said, laughing too. “I’ll give you your nine-year-old cousin Nick whom you see twice a year when his family visits from Virginia. Name another.”
She paused. “Well . . . there’s Aidan.”
“Who’s that?”
She dropped her eyes and fussed with the DVDs on the desk, aligning them neatly. “He works at the stationery store in Red Mill.”
“Oh.”
Emily waited, like she expected him to say something else. When he didn’t, she stood suddenly.
“Actually I don’t even know his last name,” she said. She dumped the pile of DVDs messily into a box next to her bed and went back to her chair with a frosty stiffness.
“So, how about Andrew Marks leaving?” he asked, to change the subject.
“I’m glad he’s gone,” she said. “Totally obnoxious.”
“I know, but you realize what that means?”
“You knew it would happen eventually, right? I mean, everybody else left,” she said. “But I guess it must be weird to be the last boy.”
Jeremy sank onto her bed. “It’s more than weird; it’s a disaster. It’s only the beginning of seventh grade. I’ve got two more years of this! That’s . . . three hundred seventeen days,” he said. “Three hundred seventeen days, three hundred seventeen million opportunities for total humiliation.”
“Wait, did you just do the math in your head?” she asked. “Dork.”
He ignored her. “Three hundred seventeen days, give or take a sick day. Maybe I’ll get lucky with the flu and be out for a week.” He flopped back on the bed.
“You could get mono,” Emily offered. “I hear it takes you out for like a month.”
“Great! So I’m supposed to be wishing for a month sick in bed?” he said. “I hate my life.”
“Don’t say stuff like that.” Emily turned around in her chair and looked at him, her tone serious. “It’s not that big of a deal unless you make it one.”
“How would you like to be the only girl in a school full of boys?”
“That would be different.”
“How?”
“Because boys are . . . gross,” she said. “Besides, you’ve been going to this school since kindergarten, you have plenty of friends, and you get really good grades. And it’s a prestigious school. Not to mention your mother would never let you switch.”
“My mother would never be able to pay for me to switch—that’s the problem,” he said.
“It’s more than that. I think she likes having all of you kids together. It makes her feel safe.”
“Thanks, Dr. Phil.”
“I’m serious!” Emily said. “Anyway, you can’t do anything about it; you just said so yourself. So stop, like, focusing on how horrible it is. That’s my advice.”
“So, basically, suck it up and deal?” He sighed, but he knew she was only attempting to help. At least Emily tried, in her way, to listen to his point of view.
“No, not exactly. But you could stop complaining all the time and try to be happy.”
“Well, maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’m tired of complaining, and I want to do something to make myself happy instead of just going along with what everybody else wants.”
Emily peered at him. “You’re not planning on doing anything . . . bad . . . are you?”
“What, like running away?”
“No. Something stupid that will ruin your whole entire life, like flunking out.”
“Why would that be stupid?” he asked as innocently as possible. “If I went to a place like Harding I’d get straight As without even trying.”
“But straight As at Harding don’t mean the same thing as straight As at St. Edith’s. At least not to prep schools. Besides, your mom would kill you.” She got up and walked over to the bed but didn’t sit down. “Let me guess, Claudia Hoffmann and those other girls in the Film Club are putting you up to something? I wouldn’t put it past them to convince you to get kicked out for laughs.”
When she talked about Claudia and her friends, Emily’s voice sounded more like a teacher than a kid their own age.
“They didn’t put me up to anything. I haven’t even talked to Claudia about any of this yet except for five seconds on the bus. And I’m not planning anything, anyway.” He stood up. “I just came over to ask what we were supposed to read for social studies. I forgot to write it down.”
“Okay,” she said, giving him an injured look. “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not mad!” But the way it came out sounded like he was. “Sorry, I’m really not. I have a lot on my mind.”
Emily pulled out her Hello Kitty day planner and consulted a page, then wrote something down on a heart-shaped sticky note and handed it to him. “Those are the chapters.”
“Great,” he said.
She didn’t reply, and he was about to get up and leave, but then she said, “Hey, do you want to watch a movie or something Friday?”
“Oh, I can’t. Claudia’s having people over, I think. You should come,” he added unconvincingly.
Emily snorted and said in her most prudish voice—the one the other girls liked to imitate—“I don’t think so.”
“It’s just a bunch of people watching a movie. It’ll be fun.”
But she’d turned back to her book. He suddenly had the sensation he was supposed to say or do something else, but he didn’t have the first clue what. So he edged toward the door.
“I gotta go. My mom’s making dinner, and she’ll be mad if I’m late. See you tomorrow.”