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Wheeler will say something big and inspirational and then maybe I’ll stop feeling so blah about all of this. Mr. Wheeler, do you
want
me to feel uninspired?
    “Good work, guys! See you tomorrow.”
    I guess he does.

CHAPTER THREE
    Mom’s already at home when I get there, but both dogs fling themselves at me like they’ve been without human interaction for decades. Since I know I’m probably too old to fling myself at Mom with the same panic-slash-relief, I sit down on the floor of the front room and focus on petting Peanut and Daisy.
    Mom walks into the room with her hands behind her back, which is strange and suspicious. “Hey, how’d it go?” she asks.
    “Um, it was okay.” I shrug like this year’s goals and dreams don’t all feel like a letdown. “What are you hiding?”
    Mom presents a cupcake to me with a little flourish of her hands. I wonder if I missed a memo that the fate of a school newspaper decision can only be managed via cupcakes.
    “Thanks,” I say because it’s not her fault Sadie’s cupcake arrived first. “I’m editor.”
    “Oh my god, Jules! Congratulations!”
    “It doesn’t mean anything.” I stand up quickly becausePeanut has his eyes on my cupcake. I wouldn’t share it with a dog anyway, but I can tell from the candy disc decoration that it’s from Sprinkles, and they do have the best cupcakes in all of LA. “Natalie quit the paper or something. So Mr. Wheeler basically said I got it because he didn’t have to pick.”
    “Aw, I can’t believe he would say it like that,” Mom says, because, again,
my parents adore Mr. Wheeler
. “And of course it means something.”
    “It doesn’t feel like anything,” I say. “I didn’t even get to make a speech.”
    “You can make your speech for us.”
    I choose to suggest starting on the meatballs instead of giving my slaved-over speech to my mom and two dogs.
    Daisy and Peanut trail us as we walk into the kitchen, and as Mom’s getting everything out of the refrigerator, I think to grab my phone. I have a bunch of texts. Sadie wants to know how it went, Em knows how it went because of Thatcher and is congratulating me, and then Sadie—
    Well, then Sadie has sent a second message containing something completely crazy, and I do not want to deal with that right now.
    “I went to McCall’s for the meat,” Mom tells me as she’s taking ingredients out of the refrigerator. “So it is
very
freshly ground.”
    “That’s exciting,” I say, because to Mom it is, and on a good day I guess it would be for me too. But I can’t get my mind offsomething, and now, thanks to Sadie, it isn’t the sadness of the way I became editor.
    So can we talk about the fact that Alex freaking Powell is clearly into you?
    Okay, I can’t just
not think
about the fact that Sadie’s texted me this bit of insanity.
    “Is Darcy going to be home on time tonight?” I ask, even though I don’t know why
on time
is something I say. It’s as normal for Darcy to rush in at the tail end of the meal, calling out apologies as she throws a plate of leftovers in the microwave as it is for her to be here before I set the table. But Mom doesn’t usually plan anything too elaborate unless she’s pretty sure it’ll be one of those latter nights and not the former.
    When I was little, I didn’t think there was anything strange about having two moms. And, anyway, I never really thought I had two moms. I had Mom, and I had Darcy, and they were as individual as any mom and dad were from each other. Back then we had Rochester, a beagle-shepherd mix, and we lived in our cozy house in Eagle Rock, and until I went off to kindergarten it had never really occurred to me that my family wasn’t like most. Yeah, Sadie had a mom and a dad, but back then odds were to me that she was the weird one.
    “Supposedly, yes. We’ll see.” Mom stops dumping meats into the mixing bowl and steps closer to touch my face. I hopeshe hasn’t touched the raw meats yet. “Jules, it