When I step into the school gym, I can’t believe we ever played volleyball and badminton in here. The overhead lights are off, but Christmas lights are strung across the walls, and there’s a disco ball turning above the center of the room, making the floor sparkle. Red and white streamers—Hitchcock Elementary’s colors—stretch from the bleachers up to the ceiling. How did they even get them up there?

“Maddie!”

Over by the snacks, Kiersten is waving at me. She’s standing with the new girl, Gabriella, but she looks so dressed up, so different from how she looks in school, that I have to do a double take. My shoes won’t let me run, so instead I walk over, very ladylike.

“I love your dress,” I say. Kiersten is wearing a sparkly green dress that stops at her knees, and her long blond hair is up in a bun. It looks like her mom let her wear makeup. Thick mascara, blush, and lipstick. I rub my lips together. All I have on is ChapStick.

Gabriella’s wearing a short black skirt, a tank top, a jean jacket, a really cool jade-and-orange necklace. Didn’t she know we were getting dressed up for this dance? That it’s something special? I feel almost bad for her, but she doesn’t seem freaked out about us all being fancier than her.

“Your hair looks pretty,” Gabriella says.

I touch it to make sure it’s all still up. “Can you believe my mom did this?”

Kiersten shakes her head. “I’m surprised she let you get dressed up. Didn’t she say you weren’t supposed to care about how you look?”

I shrug.

“Well, at least she didn’t try to have a talk with you about the dance,” Kiersten says.

“What kind of talk?” Gabriella asks, munching on a potato chip.

“My mom said that I need to stay an arm’s length away from whoever I dance with.” Kiersten reaches out her arm to demonstrate. “A whole arm? Come on, Mom. You get closer than that dancing in a group.”

“I’m definitely planning to get a lot closer than an arm.” Gabriella nods.

A hand, then? I still don’t know Gabriella that well and I don’t want to sound dumb by asking. I wonder who she wants to dance with. Maybe Kiersten knows.

“Me too,” Kiersten says. “Anyway, it’s not like my mom sent someone here to spy on me. She’ll never know.”

I nibble on a cookie while Kiersten tells us all about this tiny vintage shop in Northampton where her mom helped her find her dress.

The wall behind the snack table is lined with photos from every year we’ve been at the elementary school. There’s one of me and Kiersten from kindergarten. She’s missing her two front teeth, and I’m rocking some seriously curly pigtails and an Elmo shirt. And another of me and Kiersten in the third-grade holiday concert in our matching red sequined sweaters. Man, were we dorky.

One picture looks like it was tacked on at the last minute. Like they realized they didn’t have any picture of Gabby and didn’t want her to feel left out. Gabriella, Kiersten, and the other kids from Kiersten’s street waiting for the bus together. Probably taken a week ago.

I spot a picture of me and Avery as cows in the school play in third grade. Gregg kept trying to milk him, and Avery told Mrs. Whitman that a guy cow isn’t supposed to have udders, and then Mrs. Whitman got flustered and said all cows have udders, even bulls. Turns out she was wrong. Avery’s always been so smart, even in third grade. He’s been the smartest one in our grade for as long as I can remember.

It’s hard to believe that Avery and I were in day care together at the house of that one lady whose name I can’t remember who had bedsheets covering her sofas. Or that two years ago, Kiersten and I would play around in the woods behind Avery’s house, trying to spy on him and Gregg in their fort. He was just Avery then. Just my neighbor Avery. And now he isn’t.

Now he’s the one whose head I stare at the back of during social studies when I’m supposed to be writing my essay about Roanoke Colony, but instead I’m imagining what it would be like to kiss him. The one who I try to sit near—but not next to—on the bus every day. The one who I write about a little—okay, a lot—in my diary.

I keep looking toward the door, waiting for Avery to walk through, watching as kids from my class slowly fill up the room. There are seventy kids in my grade, which always felt like a ton, but in the fall, there will be five times as many. That many people wouldn’t even fit in this gym.

Finally, I see him. He’s dressed up in a pale blue shirt and khakis. No tie, though. Some of the other boys have on ties. He comes in with Gregg and Naveen, and they head straight toward the snack table, toward us.

All of a sudden I’m not ready for him to see me. What if he thinks my hair is crazy? Maybe Kiersten and Gabriella were only pretending they like it. And what if my breath stinks? I try to breathe it in, but all I can smell is chocolate chip cookie. I chuck the rest of my cookie behind the table, hoping no one sees, and grab Kiersten and Gabriella. There’s no way the boys are coming out on the dance floor right away. That’ll buy me some time. “You ready to dance?” I pull them toward the center of the gym.

The DJ—the librarian’s husband, who also works at the post office—switches to a faster song. I’m glad I didn’t go with the first dress I tried on. Mom was right—it really would have been too tight to dance in. I raise my hands in the air and bob my head, shifting my feet from side to side. It’s not so different from dancing around Kiersten’s basement with the music turned way up.

The dance floor is filled with mostly girls until Gregg pushes his way through. Some of the guys follow him, though they don’t really look like they want to be dancing. Gregg starts jumping up and down, flailing his arms in the air. Classic Gregg.

I peek over at Avery. He’s moving a little bit, but I wouldn’t call what he’s doing dancing. It’s hard to keep track of him with everyone dancing and laughing and the lights so dim.

When the music switches to a hip-hop song, the crowd forms a circle and people take turns dancing in the center. I try to stay behind someone so I don’t get pushed in. Dancing at Kiersten’s house is one thing, but I’m not ready to put on a show for the entire sixth grade.

The girls in gymnastics and dance are the first ones to take turns. They dance and bend in ways I’m pretty sure my body can’t. Gregg sneaks in and flops around on the floor like a worm. He has his tie wrapped around his head like he’s a ninja, even though we’ve only been here for twenty minutes.

“Gregg’s ridiculous,” Gabriella says, laughing.

Yeah, Gregg’s something special, all right.

Gregg freestyles in the center for a minute and then yells for Mr. C. to come into the circle.

Mr. C. is popping and locking, but it isn’t until he gets down on the floor that we pretty much flip.

“I didn’t know Mr. C. could do the windmill,” Kiersten shouts over the music.

“Me neither! He’s good.”

We all chant, “Mr. C., Mr. C., Mr. C.!” And the next thing I know, Kiersten isn’t standing next to me anymore. Avery is.

“Guess this is what he does when he’s not grading math tests,” Avery says.

“Probably practicing in his basement.”

Avery smiles. His short brown hair looks a little bit slick, like he put gel in it for the dance. But there’s still those freckles on his nose, and his eyes are that sharp, crisp blue like that shirt Mom makes Dad wear when they go on dates—the one she calls his handsome shirt.

I’ve sat next to Avery about a million times since kindergarten, in school or on the bus, but standing next to him, both of us dressed up like we’re trying to be someone else, someone more grown-up—it’s different. I don’t know what to say. The million random ideas and thoughts that float around my head all day have flown away.

“How’d you do on the math final?” he asks.

“One-oh-four. How about you?”

“One-oh-two. How’d you get the second bonus question? It was impossible. I looked in the book after, and I still couldn’t figure it out.”

“It’s all in here.” I tap the side of my head.

The DJ changes to a slow song by Taylor Swift and I can feel it. This is it.

My mouth goes all cottony and I look at Avery, who’s staring right back at me. Everything happens in slow motion. He opens his mouth. He doesn’t even have to ask; I’ll say yes.

But then he turns around.

And asks Gabriella.