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are like bricks. Luckily, Delia remains fairly pliable. She takes the pants from me. “She actually doesn’t need them,” she says, and hands them over to Mrs. Arafata, who blinks and smiles.
    And then Delia pulls me out of there.
    â€œThank you,” I say as we walk down the hall together.
    She puts her arm around my shoulder and gives me a little squeeze.
    Then we spot Tamberlin Ziff and Carolyn Quim standing in the hall in front of us. I stare at the floor and concentrate on keeping my feet walking forward. As we pass through the cloud of Tamberlin’s strawberry-scented perfume, I hear her say, “You think those two are a couple?”
    â€œI know, right ?” Carolyn screeches with laughter—a sound that feels like it will stay with me all day, like an annoying song you can’t get out of your head.

    After school, I summon Delia, Mandy, Joey, and Phoebe to an emergency session of the Bored Game Club.
    Okay, so it’s not actually spelled like that on the Hubert C. Frost Official List of Student Activities. It was just the backfire from one of Phoebe’s brilliant ideas—the one part that stuck.
    Halfway into seventh grade, she decided we needed some new members. We all spent a week designing flyers to advertise the Board Game Club—drawing squares around the borders with things written in them like (her idea), “You made a new friend! Advance three squares,” and other things that make me cringe now. Two days after we got the flyers up, the Chess Club fired back, plastering the walls with their own “The ‘King’ of All Board Games” signs. And then—the nail in the coffin—by the end of the week, the Sudoku Club had managed to produce about two billion of their own full-sized neon-orange posters, which they used to cover every square inch of space in the math and science halls, and even the creative arts alcove, screaming in eight-inch letters, “Who needs BORED Games? Sudoku + U = Fun!”
    The Sudoku Club recruited eleven new members. The Chess Club, a respectable seven. And us, well, we got Joey.
    I’ve started rehashing the scandalous details of the ketchup incident when Mandy sighs and clunks her head down on her desk, revealing the blond roots in her jet-black hair, and says, “We’re all a bunch of Marcies.” This word— Marcie —may be by far the biggest contribution I’ve made to my group of friends. Marcie was the name of the head ribbon dancer of The Great Me! Self-Esteem Tour , which came to my elementary school every fall, so naturally, my then-best friend Rachel and I used this as a code word for “loser.” Last year, I moved away from Rachel and left my old school, so this word is one of the few things left of my former life.
    Joey twists up his face and says, “Shut up, Mandy. Your mom’s a Marcie.” This really has nothing to do with Mandy’s mother at all, it’s just Joey’s way of saying he disagrees.
    Phoebe’s pale little eyes have been blinking wildly since I started talking. Now she turns to Mandy. “Excuse me, Mandy. Olivia just got attacked—in the worst way possible—and you call us all Marcies ?”
    Joey jumps in. “I don’t think it was the worst way possible . It’s not like she got mugged or anything.”
    â€œJoey, you don’t understand. You’re not a girl,” I tell him, and immediately regret it. He is taking this as a compliment.
    â€œWhat I mean,” Mandy says, “is that we might as well all walk around with, like, bull’s-eyes or something across our backs.
    I can’t stand it. Why does stuff like this keep happening? Why do they always make fun of us?”
    â€œWell,” Joey starts. He sucks in a breath like he’s about to spew out a list.
    â€œDon’t answer that,” Delia pleads.
    We all sort of look around the table and answer it for ourselves.
    Take Phoebe,