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I AM MAKING
my way to first period on Monday morning when I hear the word “Holy,” right behind me. I turn around and see Mandy staring at my new jeans. “Cow,” she finishes.

I disregard the Hubert C. Frost “Rules of the Road,” which are posted every twenty feet in every hallway, and pull her across the hall to where a line of lockers ends, providing a small bunker. “Delia and I went shopping,” I explain.

“You look so
different
in them,” she says, but with a little shock.

“Thanks,” I say. But she stands there kind of wide-eyed, looking me over. “What? Don't you like them?”

“Well, yeah,” she says. I expect her to smile, but she doesn't. “I mean, they work.”

My own smile starts to fade. “But?”

“But nothing,” she says, and then adds, “Just don't change too much, okay?”

I give her a bewildered laugh. “The only thing that's changed is I have a couple of pairs of new jeans.”

“And a shirt,” she says. “Which, I have to say, is cute.”

It is. It's a button-up with little pinstripes, and it goes in at the waist so I look a lot less pointy. “I borrowed it from Delia. Her aunt sent it, but it's like eighteen sizes too big for her.”

“And mascara,” she continues.

“Um,
hello
? Your idea.”

“I know, but.” She pauses. “I thought that was just mascara. But now the clothes, and I don't even know what else. You just look so different.”

“Do I have to remind you? I
have
been working on my posture. Like you're supposed to be doing.” I do a few shoulder slumps (before) and squarings (after) to demonstrate.

“I know and you're probably right,” she says. “It's just, I don't know, every day you look less and less like my strange little buddy.”

I snort out a laugh. “Oh, and by ‘little,' you mean ‘freakishly tall,' right?”

She shrugs. “So you've got a couple of inches on the rest of us. Big deal. In some cultures, that's a good thing.”

“Yeah, well, so are bound feet,” I say.

She laughs. I do too.

“Anyway.” I bring my hands to my mess of hair. “Does the fact that my hair is still a big poof of frizz bring you any comfort?”

“Actually,” she says, smiling, “yes. I think it does.”

“Gee, thanks.” I was kind of hoping she'd say that
it
looks different too, because I put some “all-day control” spray on it this morning—some stuff I found in the back of my grandma's bathroom cabinet. The label was yellowed and peeling, and it had a name like Georgie Girl, but I thought it was worth a shot. Apparently not.

I'm giving up. It's just going into a ponytail.

“Just so you know,” Mandy says, “
I'm
not going mainstream.”

“I'm not either,” I argue. I mean, I doubt I'll ever be able to pull that off. Seriously. “I'm just trying to look halfway normal.”

“Whatever you say,” she answers. “Just don't become one of
them
.” But then she gives me a soft punch in the upper arm, so I know she wants me to think that she's kidding. And I give her a soft arm-punch back, because I want her to think I am, too.

MR. DEWEY WAVES
from his front stoop as we pull up after school. Kisses is next to him, on a leash. “Would you just look at that?” Corny beams.

But when we pull into the driveway, Kisses runs toward the car—as far as her leash will let her. She doesn't make the usual scene, but she looks like she's thinking about it. When she starts to lower her head and pull her lip back just a bit, Corny taps on the horn. Kisses startles, jumping away from the car. “Now, that's an easy distraction.” She laughs.

We open our doors and I go around to the back of the truck. It was Corny's idea to bring sod today. It's like little squares of lawn. She thinks if Kisses can handle walking on a small strip of grass, it may be the stepping stone to bigger things, like backyards and parks.

“How's it been going?” Corny asks Mr. Dewey.

“Better,” he says. Kisses starts to mash up her face. As her sharp teeth start to show, a low growl comes out of her. “Except she still acts like this whenever we have company.”

“All that growling and teeth-baring is telling you that she feels anxious. When you see these cues, you've got to distract her immediately, before she can start acting on those feelings. Watch,” Corny says, and claps her hands together just once. Kisses's lip drops a little and she tucks her head back.

“So when you tapped your horn…?”

“Right. That was a distraction too. Sometimes you have to get creative.”

We follow Mr. Dewey through the house and out to the back patio—a little stone surface surrounded by grass. I place the sod down on the stone. Then Corny hands Kisses's leash to me.

There's not much room out here, but I need to get her used to me handling the leash, so I walk her around in a loop until she seems comfortable. Then I walk her up to the square of sod. She growls and pulls back.

“That's a cue,” Corny says. “So you need to distract her. Give a little tug on the leash. Gentle, but firm.”

I pull upward on the leash, and her growling stops.

“Now, have her sit,” Corny continues. “She needs to relax.”

Luckily, Kisses listens to me. She sits down, still two feet from the sod.

“Good. Now try again,” Corny says. This time Kisses takes two steps forward and one step back, pulling again. We do it all over again.

On the third try, Kisses gets close to the grass, even sets a tiny foot on it for a brief second, and then starts pulling and growling. Corny takes her leash. “Just a second too late on the distraction, Olivia,” she tells me.

I'm ready to try again—I mean, her paw made contact with grass!—but she tells me it's time to give it a break, that we'll be back soon to try again.

“Ah, well,” Mr. Dewey says. “At least she's going on the paper now.” He's talking about her potty habits. “I couldn't even get her to do that before.”

“That's better,” Corny says. “But we'll get her going back out here again. Just not today.”

Later, on the way out to the pickup, she says, “Don't worry. It's okay. You did really well with her. In cases like these, it's always baby steps.”

I'm already thinking. Cues and distractions. The next step in our plan.

BETWEEN FIRST AND
second periods the next morning, I see Phoebe engulfed in the herd making its way down the hall in front of me. “Hey, wait up!” I call to her.

She shoots a panicked look over her shoulder at me and slows down. The other kids move like liquid around her. “I'm stressed,” she says as I catch up. “I've got a quiz this period.”

“You always get A's,” I remind her. “You're lucky.”

“It's not luck,” she says, eyeing me.

“
Hiii Phoeee-bee
,” we hear, in a booming, slow, and extra-syrupy boy-voice. It's coming from the gorgeous-toothed, sweepy-haired Brant, who happens to be traveling in the crowd moving toward us.

“Oh hi, Brant,” she says, with a wave of her hand. “Can't talk!”

He gives her an exaggerated frown and floats away in the human river. For a second I am speechless. I'm wondering if maybe she's finally getting it—that maybe she knows, or at least suspects, that he's mocking her.

But I'm wrong again. “I
told
him I had a vocab quiz third period,” she says, shaking her head. “Who has time to talk when you've got a quiz?”

Over near the doorway of a classroom, the little kid from the bus, my silent seatmate, is trying to get across the hall. He eyes the traffic hesitantly, like a chicken trying to cross a busy road. He jerks his body forward, and then quickly back—a false start. I wonder if we should stop and help him or if that would make him feel worse, when we hear the chanting.

“S-P-I!” Pause. “R-I-T!” Suddenly the human waters part clumsily, and a blue spandexed line of about fifteen Spiritleaders starts snaking down the hall toward us. And—

Blam!

Little Kid has chosen the wrong moment to cross, and now both he and Head Spiritleader Brynne Shawnson are on the hallway floor. For a second they both flop around like fishes. Except for the flopping, the hall is pretty quiet—just a few sharp intakes of breath, a stray “Oh. My. God.” Or two. But then the laughing begins.

Brynne makes it to her feet first, dusting off her unitard. “I'm okay,” she says, neither sounding nor looking it. Her head starts to tilt back, and I quickly nudge Phoebe.

“Watch this,” I whisper.

“What?” she whispers back.

“What she's doing! See?”

Brynne's lip starts to curl and her shoulders start to square as she eyes the kid. And then a stream of cruelty spews from her mouth. “You
idiot
! What were you thinking!? Are you blind or just
stupid
?!”

Little Kid gets up, blinking, and picks up his books. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and shuffles quickly across the hall.

“God, Brynne, calm down. He was like,
eight
,” Corinne d'Abo, one of the other Spiritleaders, says to her.

“So? I was just
kidding
,” Brynne says back. “Let's go!”

The Spiritleaders shuffle back behind Brynne. “ARCTIC WIND!” she calls out. They organize themselves in a single-file line, facing sideways. “Let's get ready to
bloooowww
!” People start bumping into each other, scurrying for safety, as the Spiritleaders cartwheel down the hall like whirling blue death stars, the kind you see in ninja movies.

I turn back to Phoebe. “So did you see what she was doing?”

“Didn't
everybody
?”

“I'm not talking about the obvious stuff, Pheeb. I'm talking about the way she moved her head, the way she curled her lip—the stuff she did right before she started yelling at that kid?”

“Oh. I guess so. Why?”

“
Why
? Only because it's one of the most important parts of this plan.”

“Liv, I've really got to go,” Phoebe says. “That quiz—”

And then she's off. Thanks to the Spiritleaders, the crowd in the halls has thinned, but the floors are littered with wreckage—loose papers thrown about, full binders splayed open, even a random but seriously unfashionable clog. I'm sure somewhere in the school, a Teen Life teacher is walking lopsided, mourning its loss, but thanking her lucky stars that she escaped the hallway with all limbs intact.

I'm almost to my classroom when I slip on someone's algebra homework. My foot shoots forward, and I wind up on the ground in what a P.E. teacher would call a hurdle stretch. Luckily I scramble to my feet before I hear “You okay?”

I turn around and see Uncle Jesse. From
Full House
. Only much younger and much more three-dimensional. This version also has a better haircut. I try to speak but can't. And then the Young Uncle Jesse smiles, and you can almost hear the roar of blood rushing to my face, prickling every nerve from my belly button to my sagging ponytail. I mean, the way he looks at me makes me feel like I'm some type of fancy show dog.

The bell rings, making us both officially late, but neither one of us moves. Me, because I'm physically paralyzed. Him, because—well, that part I can't figure out. Maybe my crazy gene has kicked in and I'm seeing things? Maybe I have a concussion from my fall? Maybe I'm actually dead and in heaven?

Finally, I get it out. “I'm fine.” And then, before I can stop that stubborn inner dweeb, I hear myself say, “I'm Olivia.”

“Oh. Well, I'm Caleb. I'm new.”

New
? So he doesn't know about my reputation as a Marcie? The misfit? The outcast? The smelly dog-girl? He's never seen me with too-short—and irregular—jeans? Or with anything
but
long, lush lashes and Caribbean green eyes?

I laugh. But nothing's funny, and now I've just made it even more awkward. But instead of getting all squirmy, he laughs a little too. And then I notice a little red patch on his chin—zits!—and I feel a flurry of hope. Because maybe wherever he came from everyone looked like the salespeople in the jeans store, and just having oily skin demoted you to Marciedom. Maybe he doesn't realize how out of my league he is here, where standards are so much lower!

And then, my heart quickening all over again, I start to wonder—could he actually, just maybe, perhaps, I mean, I know it's a crazy thought, but could he actually…? Just a little…? You know, be
liking
me?

But then he says, “This is probably a stupid question since I see you've got two on your feet, but any chance you lost a shoe back there?” And he dashes my dreams. He brings me back to cold, hard middle school life. Did I really think I could put on a new pair of jeans and suddenly stop being a Marcie? Because anyone who could possibly think I'm dorkish enough to own a clog can't possibly like me like
that
.

I realize I still haven't answered his question, and he's starting to look a little dismayed. He's probably wishing he could think of a polite way to end this conversation. So I help him out.

“No,” I say, and turn away, starting toward my class.

“Well, nice to meet you,” he calls to my back.

“You too,” I mumble. But then I turn around just one more time. “Thanks,” I say. I mean, sure, I'm mortified, but what does it hurt to get a second glance? And then I'll never think about him again.

Really.