Something kind of shifts after Halloween. It’s not that I, like, embrace being jinxed or something, but I start to feel a little okay about it. It’s two weeks until Thanksgiving, and then five more weeks until New Year’s, and then the jinx will break and I’ll be free.

And now that I’ve discovered that Zooey isn’t the coal-hearted witch I’d thought she was, the next seven weeks aren’t going to be totally terrible. I mean, it still totally stinks that my friends don’t remember me, but there is nothing I can do about it, so why spend the next two months yearning after them and choking on panic whenever we happen to talk to each other?

I mean, seriously, that’s no way to live.

So I just sort of relax about it all. And I actually start to look forward to talking to my old friends, even though they never remember our conversations the next day. Piper especially. I get into the habit of being late to first period so I can be by my locker when she comes hurrying into school. If it’s raining out, she’ll fall like a baby deer on ice when she skids to a stop at her locker. If it’s dry, her skinny fingers are twirling the combination before her body even comes to a full stop.

“Hi!” I’ll say, happy just to be chatting with her. “I’m Hattie. I’m new here.”

“Oh, hi!” she always says, breathless from her run inside. Sometimes she’ll say, “I’m Piper, and I am l-a-t-e!” Or sometimes she’ll say, “Oh, hey! Where are you from?” And then when I tell her, she’ll tell me all about Fee and how she’s obsessed with Brooklyn.

And Celeste is the friendliest to me she’s ever been when she meets me for the first time every day. I’ll always ask about her skating sweatshirt, and she’ll always get super excited telling me about her team and the rink. One day, though, she’s actually kind of grumpy when I meet her again for the first time. “Are you okay?” I ask. I know it’s forward, but she won’t remember it tomorrow anyway, so who cares. Celeste nods and focuses her gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my little half brother. But I sometimes wish my mom hadn’t just dropped him in my lap and assumed we’d get along. I would have liked some choice in the matter.” She laughs, then says, “Not sure what choice I had, though. No thank you, please put him back in your belly?” She shakes off what, for her, passes as a melancholy mood and asks, “So where’d you move here from?”

As for Fee, I just can’t figure her out. She’s acting more and more strangely every day, and I barely ever see her with Celeste and Piper. She’s always wearing weird clothes and garish makeup, and she seems really, really nervous. I wish so much I could ask Piper and Celeste what’s going on. Because, honestly, I’m getting worried. I wish there was something I could do.