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“Thanks.” She puts the glasses on and immediately freezes, staring at me.

Right away, I recognize the big brown eyes. They catch me off guard, and I have to do a double take. “Margo?”

“Annie,” she whispers. “Margo’s sister.”

“Oh.” I help her up and hand her the books.

“Thank . . . you,” she says, eyes still ginormous.

There’s a long and awkward pause where I try to figure out what to do next.

“Sorry again,” I say.

She nods.

I stagger back, and I swear she watches me walk out.

I head to my locker to put my hoodie away since the school finally decided to turn on the heat, and for some reason they can’t figure out how to keep it from turning into a sauna. I pull it over my head and hang it on the hook inside. Then, I close my locker.

Big brown eyes stare directly at me again. “Miss me?”

I jump back, and it takes everything in my power not to yelp.

This time it is Margo. I’m sure of it. Her hair is short, and she has massive cherry earrings. She stands in front of me in a blue dress, flashing a smile from ear to ear.

“No.” Why should I?

Her smile twitches. “Oh, well, I guess the feeling is mutual.”

And yet she doesn’t appear to be leaving anytime soon.

“What’s your problem?”

She stands up straighter, smiles brighter, and takes a deep breath. “I have a question for you.”

“Which is?” The sooner I answer it, the sooner she’ll leave me alone.

“If you could have anything you want right now, what would it be?” she asks.

My answer should be obvious. “For you to leave me alone.”

Her nose scrunches up. “Anything... ,” she says, holding up a finger, “butthat.”

This girl is something else. Why does she care what I want? I want to crawl away into some dark hole in the middle of nowhere. I want to go the rest of the day without having anyone talk to me.

I walk away, ignoring her.

She hurries to catch up, running in front of me to block me from walking. “I’m really good at finding things. If there’s a baseball card you want to find, I’m your girl. Or if you want me to carry your bag for a week in between classes, I wouldn’t mind. I could even bring you homemade lunches. Name it, anything, and I’ll do it.”

“Go away.”

She glares at me, which is hard to take seriously with her ridiculous earrings. She takes a deep breath and goes right back to where she was before. “I could even do your homework for you. That’s not something I’d normally do, but I’d make an exception for you this one time.”

She’s harder to drown out than Laura. I didn’t know that was possible.

“I don’t want anything.”

She crosses her arms. “Everyone wants something.”