Oscar gasps. “You don’t think it was the episode on Mackinac Island, do you? When he fell down that rocky hill?”
Greg thinks about that for a minute and then nods. “Totally possible! I mean, it sounds unbelievable, but if you look at the evidence—”
“Hey!” says Cooper, clearly annoyed. “What about Kiera’s party at Trampoline Zone this Sunday? That’s going to be awesome. I can’t believe her dad got them to let her have a party there two whole weeks before they open.”
Kiera’s having a birthday party? I feel queasy. “Yeah,” I squeak. “I think I’ve got something else going on that weekend.”
Greg whispers something to Cooper, and all I can makeout is the wordinvited. I shrink back a little, completely mortified. The only thing worse than realizing you’ve been left out is when other people know you’ve been left out.
Last year, Kiera went on a big trip to New York City for her birthday, and the year before that she had a slumber party with her other friends, Sarah Beth, Kassidy, and Claire, so this is the first year I’ve had to face the reality of her having a big birthday party and not inviting me. I feel sick to my stomach, and I hate that I care so much, because that means, somewhere deep down, Kiera still has the power to hurt my feelings.
What else did I expect, though? And of course she’s having it at Trampoline Zone, the place everyone in Valentine under the age of fourteen has been waiting months for. Oscar and I watched with eyes bigger than avocados as they started doing construction on the Valentine Mini Mall Shopping Center months ago.
Oscar looks at me, his face ashen with embarrassment, and I don’t have to be a detective to know that even he got an invite. I bite my lips together, keeping my anger bottled up. He could’ve at least warned me!
I eat the rest of my lunch in silence while Greg and Cooper talk about our end-of-year field day and all the ridiculous pranks Coop wants to play on the sixth graders before we leave this place behind for secondary school.
If I could get over my own little pity party, I would talk to them about how weird it is that at Valentine Primary School, we’re treated like royalty, because we’re finally the oldest.
Honestly, the secondary school is just across the street, but I still don’t like to think about graduating, since we’re basically the seniors of primary school right now. In secondary school we’re just going to be starting at the bottom of the food chain all over again. And by the looks of it, I’ll be at the bottom of the bottom all by myself.
That afternoon, as I’m walking to my bus, Oscar calls out to me. “Sweet Pea! Wait up!”
I don’t turn around. I’m trying to decide if I’m still mad at him. It sure feels like it.
“Come on! You know I hate running,” he says in between pants as he skids to a stop a few feet behind me.
I finally turn around. “You could have told me about Kiera’s party.”
His shoulders slump. “It’s not like I would go without you. Even if I would sell my baby cousin for a chance to go to Trampoline Zone a whole two weeks before it opens.”
“So youwereinvited?” I squawk.
“I found the invitation in my mailbox last Tuesday,” he admits.
I cross my arms over my chest and blink back any stray tears. Valentine Primary School has a rule that if you’re going to hand out birthday-party invitations, you have to invite the whole class, so of course Kiera would be clever enough to get around that rule by mailing invites to her guest list. And no offense, but if she invited Oscar, she invited basically everyone. Except me.
I don’t even want to open my mouth, because I’m scared that if I do, I might cry. So I just shrug and wave to Oscar to follow me to the bus.
“You’re not even friends with Kiera,” I remind him.
“She probably just invited me to annoy you.”
“That doesn’t help,” I say through gritted teeth.
“We’ll have our own dang party,” he says. “Me, you, Cheese, and some R-rated movies from my brother’s stash.”
Oscar’s my best friend, and I think I would actually die without him, but part of me will always miss Kiera and our Saturday mornings in the bowling alley arcade.
My earliest memories of hanging out with Kiera are from the bowling alley. Our dads would meet for bowling league, and Kiera and I would find ourselves lumped together. It wasn’t friendship at first sight or anything. She liked sitting there on her dad’s knee when it wasn’t his turn, and I preferred to get lost in the arcade while I checked every crane machine to make sure someone hadn’t accidentally left their prize behind or maybe even a few spare tokens.
It was pure luck when the only time someone actually forgot their crane-machine prize, Kiera was passing through the arcade on her way to the bathroom. I gasped so loudly, she froze right there on the black carpet with neon geometric shapes.
“Is your hand caught?” she asked immediately. Her nose wrinkled up. “Or is it something gross? It’s something gross, isn’t it? The one time I stuck my hand in one of these things, I found a half-eaten hot dog.”
“What do you call a hot-dog competition?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but are you ever going to pull your hand out of that crane machine?”
