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human lint. That’s definitely not Dairy Queen talk.
    More than once Denise has said to me, “Trust me honey, your father left the best part of himself behind here with your Mama.” Then she pats my knee and winks at me so I’ll get that she means me.
    Unfortunately, Denise is my mother’s best friend. She is taller than any other woman I know and has red hair that she gets touched up at the salon every four weeks. She has big feet and big hands and a horsey face, and she probably wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but she makes up for it by wearing a lot of makeup and tight clothes. Denise doesn’t have any kids of her own and so she thinks we’re pretty dumb, which is why she goes out of her way to make sure I get her point.
    If you ask me, she spends way too much time at our house. A few weeks ago she started turning up in the mornings before heading off to work. Now I wake up to the sound of her honking at something my mom said over coffee in the kitchen. The first time it happened it woke me up, and for a second I thought maybe a Canada goose had landed in ourbackyard. She’s that bad. But sometimes she brings those little white powdery doughnuts. Like this morning. I stuff one in my mouth and take two more for lunch. Mom frowns.
    “Isn’t three doughnuts a little much?” she asks.
    “One is for Benji,” I lie.
    “Oh, to be young and have such a metabolism,” Denise sighs.
    I roll my eyes, shout goodbye to anyone who is listening, then run over to pick up Benji. The first day of the rest of my life has begun!
    ***
    “Your hair is different,” Benji says. He’s sitting on his porch picking invisible lint off his jeans. They’re the same jeans he wore all last year, and yet they’re not even a little bit too short. I had to buy all new things because somehow I got too long for everything over the summer. I’ll probably be the second-tallest person in my class now.
    I glare at him. “Good different or bad different?”
    “Good different. You look,” Benji thinks about it for a second, “pretty.”
    “Oh, great. So before I was not pretty.”
    “No, no, before you didn’t care if you looked pretty; now it’s like you care.”
    “Well, I don’t care. I’m just trying something new.”
    Benji changes the subject.
    “I thought you were wearing the blue shirt,” he says.
    “Changed my mind,” I say, shrugging my shoulders like it’s no big deal.
    Benji scrutinizes my tree-shirt. “I get it. Because Miss Ross loves the environment—”
    “Not
just
because of that,” I protest. “I also think it’s a cool shirt. You said it was a cool shirt, remember?” I feel alittle embarrassed. I wonder if Miss Ross will think it’s too obvious. “Besides, it’s my
tree
-shirt,” I finish lamely.
    Benji breaks out into a smile and laughs. “A tree-shirt! That’s a good one!”
    I feel much better. If something is even a little bit funny, Benji will laugh out loud and he doesn’t care who hears him. It doesn’t matter if he’s in a movie theatre, a classroom or just walking down the street. If it’s funny, he laughs. He should start a business where comedians pay him to come and sit at their shows. He’d make a fortune.
    “Come on, I don’t want to be late!”
    “We’ve got ages,” Benji points out.
    “If we stay any longer Denise will come out and go on and on about her feet.”
    Benji perks up a little. “Denise is over?”
    I forgot that for some reason Benji is not bothered by Denise’s honking laugh or the fact that she can’t open her mouth without telling you too much information. I swing my backpack over my shoulder and start walking. “I’m leaving!” I call.
    “I’m coming, I’m coming!”
    ***
    “Hi, Clarissa! Hi, Benji!”
    Mattie Cohen pulls herself away from a knot of people and runs in our direction. She is the only person I know who still wears a dress on the first day of school. This one is navy-blue and forest-green plaid with buttons all the way down the