Sasha Preston piece of advice: Take a second to
think before answering a question. It will prevent
you saying something you may regret.

I’m going to the movies in a few hours, and my dad is still sleeping. It’s after ten a.m. I hate when he does this. This is bad. This is a sign that he’s really depressed and things have gotten worse and nobody is telling me what’s going on. I can’t tell if I want to know or if I don’t want to know. When things reach a really bad point, they won’t want to tell me; they’ll feel like they need to protect me like I’m some little kid.

My mom is at the orthodontist with Alexa, and I’m dreading what happens when she comes home. And isn’t fourth grade, like, really early to need braces? Why does Alexa have to have such bad teeth?

Braces are so expensive, and I know my mom’s going to show the bill to my dad and he’s going to get weird. He’ll try to act like he has everything under control, but I’ll know the truth. I can always tell what’s happening, even if people aren’t saying it.

I hope Kendall’s mom picks me up before they get home. But then I feel bad leaving Alexa to deal with the chaos all alone. She’s only nine, after all.

As I’m waiting for Kendall’s mom to arrive, I look at one of the yearbooks a little more closely.

When Mr. Singer told us we could take home the year-books, Dina was really excited about it. Like, crazy excited—like when Molly got the jeans excited.

She asked me what I was doing this weekend, and I swear she had this look in her eyes, like she wanted me to invite her to do something. She didn’t say anything, though. It was just a feeling I got.

But there was no way in the world I was inviting her to hang out. For one thing, Molly and Kendall already think she’s weird, and after that whole accidentally read text-message thing, I doubt they’d all get along. It was never going to happen.

The thing about my friends is that we were all paired up at birth to be friends. Before birth, really. Our moms all traveled in the same circle after college and then all moved to Rockwood Hills after living in Manhattan during their single and newly married days.

Sometimes I feel like the only reason I’m the way I am is because of my parents. But I guess that’s true for everyone in some way.

The yearbook I’m looking at now is from 2006, from when Sasha Preston was in seventh grade.

That year, all the students got a little section to write messages to their friends and they were printed along with candid photos.

Hers says:

To Lulu and Fi, thanks for being the bestest of the best. Never forget midnight swims, taco charlies, and the red racer scooter. Next year, 8^th grade! It will be totally radically amazing. Love and tacos, ha ha. xo Sash

It’s so funny to read other people’s private jokes. What in the world is taco charlies? And why didn’t she put an apostrophe? It sounds like she has like an obsession with tacos. And the red racer scooter? Huh? It’s probably pointless to wonder and try to figure this out.

In the yearbook last year, Molly, Kendall, and I wrote “BEEP BEEP BEEP” to each other because we were obsessed with the sound of Kendall’s mom’s car alarm. It was such a stupid thing, and no one else would ever get it or find it funny. But we found it totally hilarious. We were so immature.

Maybe there’s something to that, something that would be good to add to the video. I mean, everyone has private jokes. Even the weirdos at school have private jokes with each other, right?

I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about this video outside of school. What’s happening to me? Is Dina’s weirdness rubbing off on me?

I hear a honk and look outside to see Kendall’s Range Rover in my driveway. I quickly shove the yearbook under one of the couch cushions, grab my jacket, and head outside.

Molly gives me a halfhearted smile as I get into the car.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Kendall’s mom says. “Did you cut your hair?”

“Nope.” I shake my head.

“New shampoo?”

“I don’t think so.” I smile. “Guess it’s just a good hair day.” Kendall’s mom is kind of obsessed with knowing every little detail about people, especially Kendall’s friends and her friends. It’s like she has an imaginary Excel spreadsheet in her brain that she’s constantly updating.

“Well, you girls sure are heading out early today. I didn’t even know they showed movies this early,” Kendall’s mom says. “But I guess that’s what happens when you’re teenagers.”

She’s also kind of obsessed with the fact that we’re teenagers.

Kendall turns around to look at us in the backseat and makes a face like her mom is a total imbecile. “Mom. I told you, we’re not going to the movies until one. We’re just meeting the guys at the mall before. Why are you so dense?”

“God. Sorry,” Kendall’s mom says. She doesn’t even get mad when Kendall or her sisters talk to her like that. She cares so much that they like her that she’ll basically let them do whatever they want.

“Is Grunner coming?” Molly asks me. “He didn’t text Kendall back.”

Kendall turns around and snorts.

“Yeah, he texted me this morning. He said he’d meet us by the smoothie place in the food court,” I say. I push the window button down and open the window as far as it goes. It suddenly feels like a million degrees in here. I pull my hair up off the back of my neck to cool it.

“He texted you? Grunner texted you and you didn’t even tell us?” Kendall’s yelling, but her mom doesn’t seem to mind.

“I just told you now, didn’t I?”

“Chels.” Molly leans her head on my shoulder. “What has gotten into you? If Ross Grunner ever texted you in the past, you always told us immediately. Why do you not even care? Don’t even tell me you’re over him already.”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t seem so cute this year. I feel like his head and nose are growing faster than the rest of his body.” Everyone laughs, and I take my phone out of my jacket pocket and see another text from him. I don’t know why I can’t just admit that I don’t really like him or that I do like him as a friend, but not like that. Maybe they know what that library kid’s name is, but I’d never ask them. They’d just make fun of me.

“Of course he texts you back and he doesn’t text me back,” Kendall says. No one responds. We’re pretty much used to the fact that Kendall is in a constant competition with anyone and everyone, most of all Molly and me. So now that there’s talk of Ross Grunner liking me, Kendall needs him to like her, too. She could have her own reality show: The Kendall Competition, but they could make the C in competition into a K to be funny.

Kendall’s mom drops us off right in front of Nordstrom, and then we walk to the food court. I try as hard as I can not to be jealous of Kendall’s jeans and Molly’s new silver flats. I’m still wearing my old black shoes and they’re a little scuffed. I wouldn’t have chosen silver, I’d have chosen gold, but I’m still jealous that hers are so new and shiny and perfect.

Ross is waiting for us with the rest of the guys. They’re all wearing polos and dark jeans, like a uniform.

“Hey, Chelsea,” he says as soon as he sees me, and Molly pinches the top of my arm.

“Hey.” I smile. Everyone’s standing around us. It’s the first time I’ve really hung out with them since I’ve been back at school, and it seems okay so far, but I feel like I have a running list in my brain of things I shouldn’t bring up: parents, the fiftieth anniversary, Dina. If I can keep my secret throughout today, then I’ll know for sure I can do it for a while.

“So, how’s your new BFF?” Marcus asks me.

“Huh?” I notice Kendall pulling Ross over to the side like they’re conferencing about something. I’m trying to keep an eye on them and pay attention to whatever Marcus is saying at the same time.

“Y’know, that girl you’re always hanging out with.” Marcus smiles. “She’s been chipped, like, ten times already.”

“I’m not ‘always’ hanging out with her,” I declare, and then feel bad about saying it like she’s a disease or something. “Who chipped her? You?”

“Only once by me.”

I roll my eyes. “Okay, can we just stop talking about her? I’m forced to work with her and you know that.”

Thankfully, Molly interrupts before I have to talk more about Dina. “Can we please discuss who is wearing what to Cami Feldman’s bat mitzvah?”

“Yes, can we please, please, please discuss?” Eric mocks her. “I have no idea what to wear. My black suit or my other black suit or my other black suit.”

Molly hits him on the arm, hard. And he laughs. But you don’t want to get into a fight with Molly, physical or emotional. Either way, it’ll hurt.

To distract myself from the things I’m not supposed to talk about, I spend the rest of the day trying to figure out if Ross really likes me or not. Even though I don’t like him that way, it’s still important that he likes me. Does that make me like Kendall, always competing?

There are signs that he does: he sits next to me in the movies, he buys me a box of Sour Patch Kids (my absolute favorite candy), and he asks me how things are going at school like he really actually cares and isn’t just trying to be annoying about me working with Dina, the way everyone else is.

But there are also signs that he’s just being like every other boy, the way he stops a conversation midsentence to say some dumb line from The Simpsons to Marcus and Eric even though it has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re talking about. And he spends as much time talking to me as he does whispering with Kendall off to the side.

And I could be imagining it, but it seems like when they’re talking, they’re always looking at me. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I spend the whole day on pins and needles instead of having fun.

It didn’t used to be like this. I used to be the one in the middle of conversations, the one people were off to the side with.

If I were on Sasha Says So and I could ask Sasha Preston for advice, that’s what I’d ask: how to keep things the same, how to make things go back to normal, how to keep a secret without freaking out.

Maybe if Dina really does find her, I can ask her that. Maybe Sasha’s just the person who can help me sort things out. Just the thought of that makes me feel better—like thinking about it will actually make it happen. Yeah, right. But I get so excited anyway. I guess being excited can’t really hurt anything.

On the way home in Molly’s mom’s car, Molly turns around in the front seat. “Hey, Chels, you gotta see this.” She hands me her phone, and it’s on the video camera screen. “Just hit Play,” she says.

So I do and it opens up into a video of our school cafeteria. Kendall and Molly are laughing in the background, and then it turns into a shot of Dina at her lunch table. No one’s talking, and Dina’s eating a bag of mini-carrots, crunching and crunching, staring into space. Then the video ends, and I hand Molly back her phone.

“What do you think?” Molly asks.

I say, “Um … it’s a video of Dina eating carrots?”

Molly’s mom stays silent during this whole thing, clicking her nails on her fancy wooden steering wheel.

“Isn’t it funny?” Kendall screeches. “See, we can take videos, too!”

Molly and Kendall crack up, and I guess it is kind of funny, actually, and it’s not really mean or anything—it’s just a video of her eating carrots. Everyone eats carrots.

“We’re so putting it on Facebook,” Molly says. “It’ll be really funny.”

“No, come on,” I say. “Really?”

“Don’t be lame, Chelsea,” Molly says. “Or I’m telling Ross.”

I don’t know what to say, so I just say nothing and hope that they forget about this.