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  With a jaunty click of my heels, I walked toward A. Lungren’s cat den. Then my cell vibrated, indicating an incoming text flagged Urgent.

  URGENT

  Stop by tuna cn. Prob. No nd 4 guns. Brad Pitt w%d b nce. Dnt sa NEfin 2 HER.

  Grams

  ---

  A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up—Mae West

  I SAW THE BLOOD BEFORE I SAW GRAMS. ON GRAMS’S PORCH, a silver dollar—size circle of shiny red puddled near a ceramic squirrel sporting an ear-to-ear grin. A tidal wave of nausea rolled over me.

  Grams stumbled out of her trailer, her arm held high. “Thank God you’re here, Poppy, we need to . . . oh holy hell!” She took a wobbly step toward me and pushed my head between my knees. “Deep breath in. Deep breath out. That’s a girl.”

  When the haze cleared, I raised my head. “What happened?”

  “I was trimming the dwarf palm and got my thumb.” She raised her hand, which she’d wrapped in a dish towel. A stream of blood trickled down her wrist.

  I swooned and ducked my head between my knees, where I found myself face-to-face with the grinning ceramic squirrel. “You should have called Mom.”

  “You are not allowed to talk about her in my presence.” Grams huffed out a growl. “And you will not tell her about this.” She jabbed her bloodied hand in the air.

  Another wave of wooziness shook my head. “Let’s, uh, call an ambulance.”

  “Let’s not. Nosy Noreen next door will see and call her.” When Grams spoke next, some of her bluster had faded. “You don’t have to stay. Just drop me off at the ER.”

  I straightened. Grams needed me, and I would be there for her. That was my MO. Need a friend? Call Chloe. How about a laugh? Enter Chloe with joke book in hand. But right now, I needed help. Holding on to the porch railing, I picked up the phone handset near the porch swing. “Why don’t you get your purse while I make a few calls?”

  I dialed Brie and got her message machine. Déjà-bloody-vu. But it was time for best friends to step up to the BF table. “Brie, emergency with Grams. I need to get her to the hospital. Call me ASAP.” How’s that for subtlety?

  Thankfully, Mercedes was home and answered the phone. I wondered if it was because I was calling from Grams’s phone, which wouldn’t come up on her caller ID. “Emergency at the Tuna Can,” I said. “I need someone to drive Grams and me to the ER.”

  Mercedes paused. “I can’t. I’m working on college scholarship essays tonight.”

  Who cared about college? “My grandmother’s bleeding to death.”

  “Stop exaggerating. If that were the case, you would have called 911. Brie’s right, you’re such a drama queen.”

  While Grams was not dying, she was growing paler as the dish towel around her hand grew redder. My fingers tightened around the phone. “Mercedes, I need you.”

  “You don’t need me, you need a driver. Call a cab.”

  “No, I don’t need a cab. I need you.” The porch groaned as I sunk onto the wooden swing hanging from the awning, the full force of the last few days slamming me. Brie and the jellyfish whispers. A. Lungren and my stupid JISP. The battle at home. “The day after the Mistletoe Ball Grams and Mom started World War III, and I’m in the middle of it. Picture Switzerland without the Alps for protection.”

  A low grumble sounded on the other end. “I don’t have time for this today.”

  She didn’t have time for my bleeding grandmother? For me? My mouth felt dry, scratchy, as if filled with sun-soaked beach sand. “What’s going on? Have I broken some kind of best-friend rule? Screwed up the secret BFF handshake?”

  “Life isn’t a big joke.”

  “No, it’s not, but there’s nothing wrong with a little laughter, especially when things are completely out of whack.” That’s what I needed, a little whack to knock some sense into my world, into my best friends. “Why are you and Brie being so . . . so mean?”

  Mean. What an ugly four-letter word.

  Silence, heavy and cold, pressed down on me. I took a breath, forcing air and a calmness I didn’t feel into my chest. “Talk to me, Merce. You owe me an explanation.” I stared at the grinning ceramic squirrel. “Especially after last year.”

  Last year, the year her mother died, had been brutal for Mercedes. I stood at her side through it all: the chemo, the funeral, and the hell of learning how to live without a mother. I offered her Twizzlers when she needed comfort, jokes when she needed laughter, and hugs for everything else. Best friends stood beside you. Always.

  Mercedes didn’t say anything, and for a horrible moment I thought she had hung up. At last she sighed. “Brie’s really upset over the whole Mistletoe Queen thing.”

  I almost fell off the porch swing. “A fungus crown? Is that what this is all about?”

  “You know she was nominated for Mistletoe Queen, too.”

  “Of course Brie was nominated for queen. She’s on every court and has been since the time we were freshmen. She’s royalty. Everyone knows that. Everyone also knows Mistletoe Queen is hardly a popularity contest. The president of the National Honor Society won the crown last year, and before that, I think it was the first-chair violin.”

  “But Brie was counting on it. She bought that new dress.”

  I remembered Brie’s dress. Who wouldn’t? White and wispy with frosty gems, the dress made her look like an enchanted ice queen. I’d worn a slinky red sweater dress with an antler headband.

  “This one was important to her,” Merce went on. “She needed something good in her life that night.”

  “It’s not like I had any control over who won. School clubs nominate nicey-nice people from their ranks, and a committee of teachers looking for do-gooders makes the final selection.”

  Another long pause boomed on the other end. “But you made such a big show of it.”

  The Mistletoe King and I spent the evening knighting royal subjects and creating wacky royal decrees, like anyone caught kissing on the dance floor had to do the Chicken Dance. “We were all having fun. You laughed so hard, you fell off the sleigh.”

  “Not everyone had fun. For crying out loud, Chloe, Brie spent most of the night bawling her eyes out in the bathroom. Don’t you remember, or were you too blinded by your shiny new crown?”

  “Of course I remember. I also remember Brie saying she was upset over her idiotic parents, not me.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” This was not the time for twenty questions. Grams was bleeding, and I needed some support.

  “Don’t you remember what Brie said after that?” Merce didn’t let me answer. “She said she needed us. Me and you. She needed to talk. She needed hugs. And you know what you told her? You said, ‘Give me fifteen minutes, Cheese Girl, and I’ll be here for you.’ But you never came back. You spent the next hour laughing and dancing and shooting fake snowballs through the gym’s basketball hoops. You even went out for the late-night mini-chimi platter at Dos Hermanas with your stupid Mistletoe Court after the dance. You totally abandoned Brie when she needed you. When I needed you. God, Chloe, you know I’m horrible at that kind of stuff.”

  My stomach twisted into a tight, hot knot. Not one of my more brilliant moves. Okay, it was a major friendship fail, but it wasn’t the end of the world. “So slap me with a major BFF violation, but in my defense, I tried to get in touch with her the next day. I contacted you both through OurWorld.”

  “Sure you did. You went on and on about some problems between your mom and grandma. Not once did you ask about Brie’s problems with her family. The weekend of the Mistletoe Ball was horrible. All of winter break was horrible. Brie’s family didn’t go skiing in France because it was so bad.”

  The past few years Brie had her own version of war on the home front, and when her parents’ arguing got too overwhelming, she would escape to my house. “Make me laugh, Chloe,” Brie would say. “Make me forget about how much they hate each other.”

  My parents weren’t perfect—always work
ing, especially my dad, who this year was named dean of the university’s school of podiatric medicine—but my home had always been a happy place filled with laughter and my loud-but-loving brothers.

  When I was four, I remembered crawling onto Mom’s lap after dinner one night and declaring with great seriousness that this would be my last dinner ever with the family.

  “Why’s that?” Mom asked as she stroked my hair.

  “I’m going to Russia to become the star of the Bolshoi.” I’m not sure of my motive back then, but it had something to do with Grams and me starting a mother-granddaughter ballet/tap/jazz class on Saturday mornings.

  “Russia’s a long ways away,” Mom said with a straight face. “We’d miss you very much.”

  Dad nodded. “With you gone, who would make us laugh? Who would slide under the sofa to look for Grams’s remote controls? And who would Zach sneak his lima beans to?”

  “I’m afraid we have a much bigger problem than lima beans,” Jeremy said with a severity that quieted the table. “Poppy can’t go to Russia and join the Bolshoi because they don’t make tutus in her size. Too little.”

  I scrambled up from Mom’s lap and onto the dining room table, balling my hands on my hips. “I’m not too little. Luke, tell Jeremy I’m not too little.”

  Luke, the oldest and in my mind wisest of my brothers, took his fork and used it as a ruler to measure my left foot and right earlobe. “According to my calculations, you’re definitely classified as Too Little to Join the Bolshoi.”

  I placed my hands on my cheeks. “Oh no!”

  “She could wear a tall hat,” Max said, putting a bread bowl on his head.

  “Or Grams’s red high heels,” his twin, Sam, added.

  “Wait! I have a plan!” Zach jumped from his chair. “We’ll stretch her. Luke will take her right arm, Jeremy can take her left. Sam and Max, you grab her feet.”

  Within seconds I was stretched and hovering over the dinner table, then flying around the dining room amid peals of laughter. I remember at one point hanging from the chandelier and Zach laughing so hard he snorted a lima bean he’d hidden up his nose.

  Yes, unlike Brie’s home, mine had rung with laughter for years.

  I sighed into the phone then said to Merce, “I’m sorry. I had no idea things with Brie’s parents were that bad during winter break.”

  “That’s part of the problem. You had no idea. You were too busy basking in your queenliness. Face it, Chloe, you screwed up. Royally.”

  I swallowed the knot that had crept up my throat. Merce was right. I abandoned Brie at the Mistletoe Ball, and Grams’s health issues slammed me over winter break. “I’ll talk to Brie, apologize, and let her know I haven’t jumped the BF boat.”

  “I think you need to give Brie a little space.”

  “Space?” I was tired of space between me and my BFs.

  “Seriously, Chloe, she needs time away from you.”

  “No, she needs—”

  “Me, too.” Merce hung up.

  The phone felt like a brick of ice. Brie and Merce were abandoning me over one lousy night and one stupid mistake. For a very un-Chloe-like moment, I wanted to throw the phone at the grinning squirrel, but then Grams walked out of the Tuna Can, her bloody dish towel held high, a dribble of slick red trickling down her arm and plopping off the tip of her elbow.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  I helped Grams down the porch steps, my shoes clanking on the metal.

  Shoes. My JISP. I needed to call A. Lungren and tell her about my new JISP project, explaining about the medical emergency with Grams and that as soon as I got access to a computer, I’d shoot her all of the wonderful shoe-y details.

  Economics was a required course, and most juniors hated it. Some juniors even slept through it, like Duncan Moore, the tool-belt, faded-jeans guy from KDRS. Only this morning, he was wide awake and scribbling like a maniac on a sheet of lined paper.

  “Finishing the essay on excise taxes that’s due in seven minutes?” I stopped next to his desk as the first-period bell rang. Duncan smelled nice this morning, like soap and an ocean breeze.

  He didn’t look up, but a wave of red crept along the part of his neck not covered by his scarf. “I’m starting the essay on excise taxes that’s due in seven minutes.”

  A page of bright white sat on his desktop. Seriously, he was on the first paragraph of a three-page essay. “Wow, Dunc, you could use some serious time management lessons.”

  He looked at me through the wings of his eyelashes. “That or a few extra hours in the day. If you have some, send them my way.”

  There was something serious in his storm-colored eyes, too serious, and I almost reached out to smooth the sharp line creasing his forehead, but I stopped.

  Eyes were everywhere.

  My feet shifted. Nothing had changed since yesterday. People were still looking at me strangely and whispering behind my back. Touching outsider Duncan Moore’s troubled forehead would send another wave of jellyfish whispers rushing through the turbulent seas of my life. I clasped my hands behind my back. “I’ll see what I can do about rustling up a few extra hours.” I winked at Duncan and headed to my desk, my gold sparkle Socialites with rhinestones, circa i960, making happy, tapping sounds.

  That morning I could do anything. After all, I’d handily taken care of Grams, A. Lungren, and my new JISP.

  Last night after the ER adventures with Grams, I filled out a whole new JISP book, titled Barefoot No More, which included details about childhood poverty in Sonora, Mexico, shoe collection sites, a budget, strategies, and timeline. Then I scanned the masterpiece and e-mailed a copy to A. Lungren. For good measure, I left a second message on her phone at 7:22 p.m. reminding her again of Grams’s medical emergency. That morning I slipped the new and improved JISP notebook into A. Lungren’s slot in the guidance office.

  With my JISP tied in a shiny bow, it was time to tackle Brie, Merce, and the jellyfish whispers. Merce said Brie was upset because I wasn’t there for her the night of the Mistletoe Ball when she was in crisis. But I was now.

  When the bell rang announcing the end of first-period econ, Duncan fell in step beside me. He wore another lumpy scarf, this one black and red with another lopsided red heart stitched into one of the ends. I wondered if he had a novice-knitter girlfriend, someone to smooth the harsh lines on his face. The Del Rey School was huge, more than four thousand students, and we had a few classes together over the past three years, but I’d never seen him at any football games or dances or in the lunchroom.

  Outsider.

  Brie’s word for people who didn’t have a place in our world popped into my head again. Outsiders weren’t bad, but I couldn’t imagine life spent on the outside looking in.

  “Did you get your econ essay finished?” I asked, trying to shake off the image.

  “Turned in with ten seconds to spare.” Duncan didn’t smile, but the line carved in his forehead disappeared.

  “Is it just econ, or are you one of those thrill seekers who likes living on the edge with all your classes?”

  “Thrill seeker? In my dreams.” Up close I could see dark half-moons under his eyes, as if he was not getting enough sleep or having bad dreams. He reached into his back pocket and took out a piece of paper. “Speaking of edges, here’s an emergency memo from Clementine. She e-mailed it last night. All Edge staffers must attend today’s emergency meeting after school.”

  With both hands I waved off the paper. “I’m not a staffer. I’m doing a different JISP.” I flashed him my ankle. “Something to do with shoes.”

  That deep, vertical line divided Duncan’s forehead again. “You should check in with Clem. For some reason she thinks you’re an official staffer.”

  “You had no right!” I slammed the KDRS memo on A. Lungren’s desk. “No right to commit me to a JISP with that radio station.”

  “Your JISP was due last night at seven, and you failed to meet the deadline, which means you would fail your JISP
and put a dark mark on your permanent record. As your guidance counselor, it is my duty to keep that from happening.”

  “I was in the ER with my injured grandmother. You need a doctor’s note?”

  “No, Chloe, I need you to calm down.” A. Lungren’s voice was a low purr. “I’m sorry about your grandmother, and I got your phone messages and e-mail, but your project came in twenty-two minutes after the deadline. This is a perfect example of how the real world doesn’t always go according to our plans. Real-world issues need to be dealt with in real-world ways. Your JISP is a tool to help get you ready for this kind of world.”

  I pictured the dark, gloomy radio station and the crazy staff. “I don’t want to work at the radio station. I want to collect shoes for barefoot children in Mexico. I want to set up collection boxes in the quad and at lunch table fourteen and get donations from shoe manufacturers.”

  “Chloe—”

  “I want to go door-to-door and get pledges to sponsor entire schools of shoeless Mexican children.”

  “Chloe—”

  “I want—”

  “Chloe! Be quiet!” A. Lungren steadied her cat glasses on the bridge of her nose. “The JISP review board has made its decision. For the next few months, you will do promotions work at the school’s radio station.”

  “Do you know anything about the station?” A tremor edged my words. “KDRS is not a good place for me. It’s insane over there. Everyone fighting. Equipment breaking. They have no money and are going off air at the end of the semester.” I had enough disasters with my BFs, and I didn’t need any more with my JISP. “The radio station’s a lost cause.”

  “Not necessarily.” A. Lungren’s feline features grew animated. “I did some research and discovered that, until four years ago, KDRS was a thriving part of the Del Rey School community. During radio classes, students learned about news and feature writing and ran the radio station for credit. Unfortunately, the English teacher who oversaw the program for decades retired. Admin discontinued the radio classes because they couldn’t get a qualified teacher on board. A few die-hard students have held things together as an after-school club, but things are looking bleak.”