“What are you doing here?” Nev’s soft voice tiptoes into my ears.
I shift my attention back to her. “They ran out of food in the high school cafeteria.”
She blinks. “They did?”
I smile. “No.”
“So why did you come?” she asks a tad louder. Which isn’t saying much. The sound of her friend crunching on his chips largely overpowers her voice.
“I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“You came here to seeme?”
“That’s what friends do. They check up on each other.”
Emotion ripples across her features.
“Also, I might’ve heard you were giving Ten the cold shoulder.”
She knots her skinny arms in front of her, bones jutting against her shirtsleeves. “He doesn’t deserve to be talked to.”
“Boys are clueless.”
Muncher looks up from his textbook, then licks his fingers before dipping them back into his extra-large bag.
Even though I’m still angry at Ten, I don’t want a rift to form between sister and brother. “I was thinking we could go shopping on Saturday.WithTen.” I wasn’t thinking this at all. “That way, you’ll get to pick your own clothes, but both he and I have to approve of your choices. Does that sound fair?”
Nev’s eyes light up like the QB-sized blow-up ghost my neighbors always stick by their front door on Halloween. “Yes!”
I don’t want to talk to Ten, but here I am suggesting shopping with him? “Great.”
She nibbles on her lower lip. “He probably won’t approve of anything I choose…”
“He can’t bethatpigheaded.”
She lets out a little giggle. “Yeah. He can.” Her cheeks have become all rosy.
I lean over the table. “So, which ones made fun of you?”
The color in her cheeks spreads to the rest of her face. “Uh…” She picks at the label on her juice bottle. “It doesn’t matter. I’m over it.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Angie, it’s okay. I promise.”
“I’m not going to make a scene.” I might, though.
She tears off a piece of the plasticky paper and rolls it between her fingers, flicking it onto her tray.
Her “friend,” whose nose is still wedged in his book, surprisingly denounces them—or perhaps unsurprisingly… he doesn’t seem to care about school politics at all. “Jenny and Crystal,” he says, jutting his chin toward the table of glammed-up girls.
“Mark,” Nev hisses.
“What? It’s not a secret. Even I saw that snap of you in the locker room, and I don’t even have Snapchat.”
Nev has gone so pale that she matches the laminated tabletop.
“I didn’t like it or anything,” he reassures her.
