Lucy’s tip for surviving eighth grade:

Compliment others.

Each makeup treatment is better than the one before it, and the day flies by. Everyone is thrilled with how they look.

Soon parents are coming to pick up their kids and take them over to school for the Masquerade. A lot of the kids brought costumes and changed at the spa, so Mom and Grandma take pictures of everyone and e-mail them out right away.

We get to school, and there’s a giant banner on the building that reads EIGHTH-GRADE MASQUERADE: PINK & GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK.

“You made that sign?” I ask Erica as we’re walking in.

“Well, Sunny helped. Her dad too.”

“Ramal Printing’s finest!” Sunny laughs.

We walk inside, and the gym is decorated like I’ve never seen before—balloons and streamers and tables with pink-and-green polka-dot tablecloths.

“You did all of this?” I turn to Erica and Zoe.

“We did. Our labor of love,” Zoe says.

We walk over to admire the table that’s set up with all the old medicine bottles and little slips of paper for advice seekers and advice givers.

“I love this idea,” Zoe says. “I’m so glad you thought of it.”

“It was all Evan,” I tell them. “I mean, I had the bottles; I found them in the basement of the pharmacy. But it was his idea. He saw it at a crafts fair.” I go on and on about this because it proves one very important thing: sometimes boys can be very helpful.

The teachers are wearing either all pink or all green, and they look great. People come in and the DJ starts playing music—everything from the Beatles to Justin Timberlake—and everyone is dancing.

I look around at my class and I can’t believe this is it. Our Eighth-Grade Masquerade is here.

And soon it will be over. In a few months we’ll all be moving on from Old Mill Middle School. We’ll be leaving behind the disgusting tuna sandwiches. And Mrs. Deleccio and Earth Club. We’ll be going to Old Mill High School with kids we don’t know—kids from Waterside Middle School and Stratfield Middle School.

“Having fun?” Sunny asks, putting her arm around me.

“Yeah. Just taking it all in.”

“Pretty great, right?”

“Where’s your ‘toe fungus boy’?” I ask her, and laugh.

“Who knows,” she says. “You know, having a boyfriend isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“It’s not?” I ask.

“I mean, it’s great sometimes. But you know how everyone looked at you like your life was perfect just because you had a boyfriend? That whole thing kind of annoys me. It’s really fun and all, but it doesn’t mean everything is perfect in your life all the time. I mean, I still worry about my grandma getting older, and how many times I’ll get to see her since she lives in India. I worry about grades and tests. Life isn’t perfect just because you have a boyfriend.”

“True.”

To be honest, I wasn’t even thinking that much about having a boyfriend. I was thinking about how grateful I am that Erica Crane turned a tiny drop nicer, that I stopped worrying about grown-up problems, and that I had time to focus on eighth-grade problems.

Maybe things aren’t perfect, or how I imagined they’d be. But they’re still pretty great.

“Travis keeps staring at you, by the way.”

“He does not,” I declare, because I really want it to be true.

“He does.” She points over to where he’s standing. “Poor kid.”

“Oh, he’s fine,” I tell her. “Half the girls here would be happy to dance with him.”

“If the DJ ever plays a slow song,” Sunny says. “Maybe Erica gave him specific instructions not to.”

“Very possible,” I say.

We walk over to the drinks table and pour ourselves glasses of strawberry punch.

Mr. Marblane stands up on the temporary stage and thanks everyone for all their hard work. He brings Erica up, and everyone applauds her and she curtsies. It’s clear she was waiting for this, and she’s enjoying every second. And she deserves it. It’s a great dance.

Then Mr. Marblane thanks Pink & Green: The Spa at Old Mill Pharmacy for all the awesome makeup work, and he thanks me for coordinating it. He thanks Sunny and Ramal Printing for the great sign. And then he tells everyone to go back to having fun and to continue behaving.

And then the DJ finally puts on a slow song, and Travis walks over to me, and I want to sink into the floor.