Chez Packenbush is packed,” Maude says as we make our way up the walk to Piper’s front steps. When we get to the top step, I pause before reaching for the doorbell.
I turn to Maude and Zooey. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“It’ll work,” they say in unison. Zooey reaches around me and rings the doorbell.
“I want you to know,” I say, “that if I, like, somehow forget everything that’s happened, I just want you guys to know how much I love that you helped me.”
“You’re not going to, like, disappear or something,” Zooey says.
“You don’t know that!” I say. “What if I do this wrong and I vanish and there’s just a steaming baked potato or something in my place?”
Maude wrinkles her nose. “Starchy.”
From inside Piper’s house, there is an argument going on about who will answer the door, and the sounds of some sort of struggle. Finally, the door creaks open half an inch before being slammed shut and Piper’s voice is saying, “Peanut! You can’t open the door without a grown-up or at least me.”
The door opens again. Piper and Peanut are both in pajamas, wearing sparkly glasses in the shape of next year’s number. Beyond them, I see Fee and Celeste sitting at the kitchen island.
“Hi!” Piper says. She looks beyond me at Zooey and Maude. “Oh, hey, Zooey. And Maude! Oh my gosh!” She hollers over her shoulder, “PAOLA, Maude Faem’s here!”
“She has something to tell you,” Zooey says to Piper, nudging me.
“Oh, cool, are you like selling something? Come in!”
We follow her into the kitchen.
“I want to tell you who I—”
“Do you want hot chocolate?”
“Oh, sure … ”
“Okay, wait, you were saying?”
“I want to tell you who I—”
“Marshmallows?”
“Sure. I want to tell you who I—”
“I didn’t have to work at the farm stand yesterday!” Fee bursts out, her voice loud and thick with emotion.
“What?” Celeste and Piper say at the same time.
Fee’s mouth wavers. “I was at Teagan’s house!”
“Why?” Celeste asks.
“The ‘After-Christmas Gift Swap’?” Zooey asks ruefully.
Fee nods, her face now streaming with tears.
“What the heck is an after-Christmas gift swap?” Piper asks.
“It’s … it’s … ” Fee can’t get out the sentence.
Zooey clears her throat. “It’s when Teagan and Tess”—she pauses—“and me. At least it used to be … It’s when they invite you over with your favorite Christmas presents and trick you into trading them for something crappy.”
“That is awful!” Celeste says, and I can tell she’s angry at Fee for lying about where she’d been, but she pulls her into a hug anyway.
“That’s really a thing?” Piper says in shock. “Like they … YOU … actually do that? I’ve never even heard of it!” She grabs a Santa Claus dish towel off the counter and hands it to Fee, who blows her nose.
“I don’t. Not anymore,” says Zooey. “And the reason you never heard of it is because we usually would choose someone who was Upper Popular, someone who thought they had an actual chance of getting with us. We’d swear them to secrecy.”
“After you stole their stuff ?” I ask angrily, looking hard at Zooey. How could she have been a part of something like that?
“Yes,” she answered. “They … we thought it was a funny joke.”
“Some joke,” Celeste says. “I can’t believe you ever hung out with them.”
Fee nods and gulps. “That’s why they invited me. They said now that Zooey is out of the picture, they need a third person.”
Zooey’s face clouds at this, and I wonder if she really did still hope they would take her back. But then she says, “I knew they were messing with Fee. I tried to stop them.” She turns to me, a person I realize they don’t even know. “That’s what I was doing that day out on the common, when I told you to go away.”
Fee continues her story. “They said I can sit with them at lunch when school starts again. But I don’t even want to sit with them! I want to sit with you guys!”
“Good,” Zooey says, “because they’ll text you the morning of the first day of school and say they take it back.”
“You were going to ditch us?” Celeste asks quietly.
Piper’s eyes widen. “Seriously, Fee, you don’t want to be friends with us anymore?”
“Of course I do!” Fee wails. “I just … I just wanted to see what it was like. You know”—she twists the Santa towel miserably—“to have the popular kids like me.”
“Wait a minute!” Celeste practically yells, staring at Fee, who immediately looks down at the twisted towel in her hands. “You have been acting weird for weeks. Is that what this is all about? Have you been, like, trying out for them?”
Zooey’s face changes, like a dawn of recognition. “That’s why you chopped your bangs.”
Fee nods. “They said I had to.”
Piper gasps. “And why you’ve barely been eating at lunch!”
“They said I was fat.”
Celeste looks so angry she might pop. “I would never say that to you,” she growls quietly.
“I know,” Fee says.
“You’re not fat!” Piper says.
“I know,” Fee says again.
“Then why would you go along with it?” Celeste asks.
“Because they said it was the one thing keeping me out of their group,” Fee says, starting to cry again. “I’m just embarrassed.”
“Fee, you’re not—”
“I KNOW I’m not fat!” she says loudly, angrily. “But I don’t have the same body you guys do, and I know that’s fine, I know I’m strong and that I’m healthy and I’m pretty. I just … I’m just embarrassed I let them make me forget.”
Celeste and Piper are quiet at this, and I’m so caught up in the drama that it takes a nudge from Zooey to remind me of why I’m here.
“My name is Hattie. I’m twelve. And I … I like T-shirts with cats on them. And I like this book series called Tilde’s Realm. And I hate field hockey. I mean, like, I really hate it. It’s just an awful game.”
Zooey mouths the words Move on.
“Um. Okay, also. I like—”
I’m interrupted by loud voices from the living room, where Peanut and her mom are shouting, “TEN! NINE!”
I look in terror at Zooey.
“Keep going!” she says.
“And, um, even though I like happy songs, really I like sad songs better and, um, I hate the way corduroys make a zippy sound when I walk … ” Why isn’t anything changing? I’ve said everything I was supposed to say! So I just keep babbling. “And, um, I wear my socks inside out because I don’t like the way the seams feel, and when I’m in the shower, I catch water in my mouth and then spit it out like I’m a fountain and … ” Zooey looks pretty much horrified at this point.
“FOUR! THREE!”
I remember something.
“TWO!”
“I! HATE! APPLE! PIE!”
“HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
There is instant noise and color, then happy shouts from outside on the common, from the television, from everyone in the crowded kitchen. Squeals as Peanut runs into the kitchen, scrambles up onto the island, and throws handfuls of confetti. Somebody—or many somebodies—bangs on pots and pans with wooden spoons; music starts, and there’s jumping and dancing, kids, adults, everyone.
Zooey looks questioningly at me through the people and the showers of confetti flying through the air. Did it work? her face asks. I shrug. I don’t know!
Then Piper is right in front of me, a huge smile on her face. “I’ve been holding on to this for months!” she shouts above the din. She pushes a small, silver-wrapped present into my hands. I tug the present open, and I find the gyrgone I admired at the Harvest Festival, before everything went bananas. Piper jumps up and down. “I went back and bought it because I could TELL you wanted it! Do you like it?” she asks.
“I LOVE IT!” I practically scream, and then she has my wrists, and she’s pulling me and laughing, swinging me in a circle, around and around and around. The colors blur; the sounds do, too; my heart lifts in joy. As we turn, Fee and Celeste bounce around us, doing their ice-skating routine and cracking up. Through the blur, I see Zooey across the kitchen, standing next to Maude, wry grins on their faces. I close my eyes and enjoy the spin.