I still have time after racing Piper home to make a quick stop at the Trading Post before I go meet my dad at the Dentist’s House. The Trading Post is as adorable as Mom said it would be. It’s a small place with creaky wooden floors, old tin signs for SODA 5 CENTS up on the walls, and a whole back wall lined with bins of penny candy. I stay true to Dad’s no-candy-on-weekdays rule, and instead reach for the last raspberry Fizzy Fuzz, shivering when the cold air tunnels through the gap in my sweatshirt cuff and chills my whole arm up to my armpit. Just as my fingers are about to slip around the familiar bottle, someone reaches over me and totally brazenly ganks my drink.

Glowering down at me is a severe-looking dark-skinned girl with an enviable chin cleft and cat’s-eye glasses. She has a punk haircut, with blunt bangs cut straight across her forehead, and the rest of her hair cut so short it’s practically shaved. She wears a T-shirt with a painting of a woman who has soft lines of hair above her upper lip. Above the picture is handwritten Unironic Mustache.

“Um … ” I step aside so she can close the cooler door.

“Um what?” she asks. Her voice is lower—and much louder—than I expected. I watch as she uses the hem of her T-shirt to grip the cap on the bottle of Fizzy Fuzz and twist it off. She lifts the bottle to her lips and takes a long drink, keeping her eyes on me.

“Nothing,” I say with a sigh. I look back at the fridge to see what’s left.

“Hold on,” she baritones when she finally pulls the now half-empty bottle away from her mouth. She swallows a fizzy burp. Her voice is strange, like she’s forcing it to be lower than it is. Reflexively, I widen my throat and tuck my chin, trying to imagine what it would feel like to have a voice that low. “Were you reaching for this?” She holds the bottle out to me.

“Yeah, but it’s okay,” I respond.

She shakes her head gravely. “I have tunnel vision when it comes to refreshments. I’m sorry.” She yanks open the refrigerator and pulls out a strawberry Fizzy Fuzz. “Here,” she says, opening it with her shirt hem and handing it to me. “It’s the next-best flavor.”

I look toward the counter at the far end of the store. “Shouldn’t we pay … ”

“It’s on me. I run a tab here.” And then in the same breath, she bellows, “TRUDY!”

I cringe as the strange girl holds up her drink, and the woman behind the counter looks up. “TIMES TWO!” Trudy nods, pulls a pen from behind her ear, scribbles something down on a piece of paper Scotch-taped to the counter, and then goes back to reading her magazine. The girl looks back to me, satisfied.

“Oh. Okay. Thanks,” I say, taking a sip as she watches me and nods.

She just keeps watching and nodding, so I just keep drinking and drinking until I think I might pop, and then I pull the bottle away from my lips, a sickly sweet taste lingering in my mouth. “I’m Hattie,” I say, since she’s still looking at me and nodding.

“I’M MAUDE,” she booms. “Has it left you relatively unscathed, Hattie?”

I don’t know how to answer because I don’t really know what she’s asking. I lift the bottle to my lips but can’t bring myself to take another sip when I already have a half bottle fizzing and popping in my belly.

“It’s taken your tongue,” she growls quietly. “I understand. It stole mine, too.”

“What … what stole your tongue?” I ask, totally confused.

She raises her chin and says gravely, “Childhood.”

The only thing I can think to say is “I’m not a child.”

She nods slowly, like I’m proving her point. “You are, though. In the eyes of the law, you are one of your parents’ extremities. They own you. Until you turn eighteen and can amputate yourself and be free.”

“Gross,” I say, grimacing.

“How old are you?” Maude asks, and I really don’t know how to get out of this conversation, so I answer.

“Twelve.”

“Twelve!” She tsks and asks breathlessly, “Is it awful? It’s awful, isn’t it? How are you holding up?”

“Um, fine, I guess? Probably because I’m Lower Medium Popular.” My jaw drops. Why in the world would I say that out loud?

“Riiiight.” She makes it obvious that she doesn’t believe this is any guarantee of happiness. She stares at me through her cat’s-eye frames. “It’s all sunshine and lollipops and best friends forever.”

Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “Zooey Dutchman Zervos was publicly defriended in front of the whole cafeteria and it was the most terrible thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

Maude sucks in a breath and winces, like what I’ve just said is so sad it physically pains her. “Childhood,” she says gravely, “is a wound.”

My lips fall open in shock and I think, I’m going to laugh. And then I think, Don’t laugh! She’ll eat you alive! But I just might have to laugh because this moment is so weird that if I don’t laugh, I might cry.

“It is a wound,” she growls on, “that you will spend the rest of your life trying to heal. Do your future self a favor and cauterize the damage now. These childhood lacerations … they fester.” She thumps her chest, right on the mustached woman’s face. “Inside of you.”

I don’t feel like laughing anymore. Suddenly being Lower Medium Popular doesn’t seem like much protection against the festering wounds of childhood, especially considering that Zooey was Totally Popular and look what happened to her!

Maude reaches out and, for a second, I think she’s going to either pick my nose or give me a noogie, but instead she gently slides my glasses off my face, which, if you don’t know, is about the most personal-space-invasive thing you can do to a bespectacled person, and proceeds to polish them with her T-shirt while I blink at her. Then she slips my now clean glasses over my ears and says, “Thank you.” Then she turns on her heel and walks toward the back of the store.