“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, he’s having a sleepover?” I said to my mom on Saturday morning. She’d insisted I go with her to a fashion show fund-raiser the night before, saying we needed some “mother-daughter bonding time.” It wound up being really fun, and in fact we bonded so much that I even asked her sweetly on the way home if she’d reconsider giving me my allowance. She said no. That led to another heated argument, and by the time she pulled up out front, we were crabby at each other all over again.

And now I had crabbiness on top of crabbiness. “I’m having a sleepover!” I protested. Lauren and I have sleepovers about once a month. We take turns between houses, but we both know that my house is better, since my bedroom is bigger, my music’s better, my makeup is better, and I have better low-fat snacks.

Mom was making brunch, still in her bathrobe. There was a pile of dirty dishes on the counter with bits of food crusted all over them, left there by Lenny and Squiggy the night before. “All they had to do was rinse them and put them in the dishwasher,” Mom muttered to herself. “Is that so hard?”

“Mom! Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

She sighed. “Yes. I heard you. So you’ll both have sleepovers. So what?”

I put my hands on my hips. “I just want to state for the record that I feel like I and my wishes are being seriously taken for granite lately.”

“For granted,” she replied just as the doorbell rang. I followed Mom into the foyer. A dark-skinned but equally geeky-looking version of Stewart stood at the door, a duffel bag in his hands. “Hello, I’m Alistair Singh. You must be Caroline and Ashley. Pleasure to meet you.”

“You too, Alistair. Stewart’s in his room. You can go on up. It’s on the left at the end of the hall.”

“Thanks.” Alistair slipped off his shoes, then nodded toward the living room. “I see you’ve found a home for Janice’s painting.”

“Janice?” I said.

“Stewart’s mom,” he said before he took off upstairs. Mom and I looked at each other, puzzled. We peered into the living room.

I almost screamed. And totally one hundred percent no joke, my mom almost screamed, too.

A massive oil painting hung over the fireplace. The space had been empty since Dad moved out; he took very little with him, but he did take the painting that used to hang there, because he’d bought it before he and Mom were married. It was an abstract, meaning it looked like a kindergarten kid had thrown paint at a canvas.

This thing was not abstract. It was very, very lifelike. And it was unmistakably Stewart’s dead mother, breastfeeding her baby. Who was unmistakably Stewart. And the breasts were bare!

“Did you know about this?” I asked.

Mom looked pale. “No. I mean, yes—I’ve seen it at their old house. But no, I didn’t realize they’d brought it here. I thought it had gone into storage.” She pulled her bathrobe tight, hugging herself. “They must have hung it up last night. I don’t know how we missed it when we came in.”

“Mom, it can’t stay. You know it can’t stay! It’s practically pornography!”

“Ashley, breastfeeding is perfectly natural—”

“WhatEVER! It doesn’t mean we should have to look at it twenty-four-seven in our own house!”

Mom was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “It’s not to my taste, either. I’ll talk to Leonard when he’s back from his fencing class.”

Yup. Uh-huh. Lenny fences. Honestly, I sometimes wonder if, after my dad left and before she started dating her boss, my mother had a mini-stroke, something that affected the “who I’ll be attracted to” part of her brain. Then again, she married a guy who turned out to be gay, so maybe the “who I’ll be attracted to” part of her brain never worked all that well.

Before we’d even left the foyer, the doorbell rang again. It had to be Lauren. “Oh, no,” I groaned. “If Lauren sees this painting, I might as well never go back to school ever again.”

“Sweetheart, she’s your best friend. I don’t think you give her enough credit. I’m sure she’ll understand, just like she’d understand if you told her about your dad.”

I shook my head. Honestly, it’s been centuries since my mom was a teenager, so she’s totally forgotten about the Social Ladder.

See, I’m pretty much at the top of the Social Ladder in my grade. It wasn’t always this way; back in elementary school, we were all the same—kind of dorky, but happy. Then, in the summer before seventh grade, everything changed for me. I got my period and went from being this flat-chested, goofy twelve-year-old to a twelve-year-old with a woman’s body. I hated it. I’d walk down the street and guys would stare at me, and not just guys my age, but guys who were my dad’s age. It was super-creepy, and I just wanted to go back to being that flat-chested little girl again.

But when seventh grade started, I learned pretty fast that my new look gave me a strange kind of power. It was like both the boys and the girls were a little bit in awe of the new me. So after a while, I did what anyone would do: I used it to my advantage. And practically one hundred percent immediately, I was perched right on top of that ladder.

Lauren is just underneath me, along with Yoko. Amira and Lindsay are a rung lower, and Claudia is a bit lower still. (People like Stewart don’t even count. They don’t even have a foot on the ladder. They can’t even touch the ladder. They are forbidden to go anywhere near the ladder.) Contrary to what I heard my math teacher say one day under his breath, I’m no dummy. I know that the people directly beneath me on the ladder—meaning people like Lauren—would love to see me lose my footing so they can take my place. Which means I can never appear weak or vulnerable, or people like Lauren will go in for the kill.

If I am one hundred percent totally honest, I sometimes long for the olden days, when we were all just little dorks. Things are so much more complicated now.

“I’ll take Lauren downtown,” I said to my mom, grabbing my cute puffy blue jacket. “Please, I beg of you, make it be gone by the time we get back.” I opened the front door. Lauren stood there with her overnight bag. “Let’s get out of here. The troll’s in his room with his troll friend.” I stepped outside.

“Can I just use your bathroom—”

“We’ll find one downtown.” I grabbed her overnight bag and tossed it into the foyer before slamming the door behind me.

We took the bus to Granville Street and wandered around the Pacific Centre mall. I showed Lauren the skirt I was dying to get at H&M. “I thought you were going to have enough money to get it this weekend,” she said.

“Nope, my mom canceled this week’s allowance ’cause I was rude to the nerd-bot.”

Lauren giggled. “Ugh, who wouldn’t be rude to him? He’s such a Tragic!” Tragic is our word for super-geeks and super-losers. There is a whole army of Tragics at our school.

I giggled, too, and for the next hour or so, we bonded over ridiculing Stewart and other Tragics in our grade, like Lardy, whose real name is Larry, and Sam, who could be a boy or could be a girl—we honestly have no idea. Then we wandered down Robson Street and went into Forever 21. Lauren tried on pants and I tried on some stuff just for fun.

“You won’t believe who talked to me in history yesterday,” she said while we were in side-by-side dressing rooms.

“Who?”

“Jared!”

My stomach lurched. Lauren’s lucky; she has three classes with Jared. I don’t have any.

“What did he want?”

“He was wondering if I knew of any parties this weekend. I had to say no, because I don’t. But for a minute I actually thought he was going to ask me out! Then the teacher told us to be quiet.”

We stepped out to show each other what we’d tried on. Lauren was wearing a pair of red skinny jeans.

“What do you think?” she asked. “I like them.”

“Twirl around,” I said. She did. They looked good on her. Really good. But I had to remember the Social Ladder. “They’re a great color,” I said, “but they kind of make your ass look fat.”

She didn’t buy the pants. I felt a twinge of guilt. But then I reminded myself: high school is a doggy-dog world.

—

ON THE BUS BACK home, I texted Mom.

Is it gone?

It felt like it took forever to get her reply.

Yes.

Better still, when we got back, the troll was out with his troll friend. Mom and Leonard were out, too.

“Can I see the cat?” Lauren asked. I’d told her about Shoe Box and how fugly he was.

For the second time in a week, I went into Stewart’s room. Shoe Box darted under the bed, and none of Lauren’s coaxing would get him to come out.

Then we spotted the thing on his desk.

It was made of spaghetti and marshmallows, and it was huge. Clearly Stewart and his nerd-ball friend had spent the day building it. It looked kind of like the Eiffel Tower.

Lauren and I locked eyes. “Dare you,” she whispered.

It was a no-brainer. I picked up Stewart’s math book. I held it over the tower.

I let go.