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I’d expected her to keep arguing with me but she instead asked, “Really? You don’t think you could do that?”

“Have you ever seen me do the splits, Ava?”

“No, but…I don’t think that’s a requirement.”

“And those cheerleaders get frickin’ cold out on the football field in November.”

“Who cares? They look amazing.”

“So you’re definitely thinking about doing it?”

I could see then in Ava’s eyes that she’d gone beyond thinking about it.

Like most goals Ava set, she already pictured victory in her mind.

For a few seconds, I thought she was going to give me more hemming and hawing, trying to persuade me to try out.

My failure and humiliation would have been just one more way she could keep me clinging to her begging for approval—and the more I’d been hanging out with Zack, the more I could see it for what it was.

Reaching in her binder, Ava pulled out two sheets of paper stuck together.

“I’m doing it.” It wasn’t until that moment that I realized Ava had felt she needed me as much as I’d felt I needed her.

I was still in shock at that revelation as she handed me an extra set of forms. “I just thought you might want to do it with me.”

That she wasn’t demanding led me to believe that she was actually getting brave enough to do it without me—and I felt like that kind of growth was good for both of us.

“Sorry, Ava. I just don’t think I could.

” I flipped through the form which seemed pretty simple but also outlined what an audition should consist of.

I could maybe pull it off, but I really didn’t want to.

And when I saw the price tag, my jaw nearly hit the floor of the bus.

“Holy cow! What will your parents say when they see how much it costs?”

“You know Stan and Barbara. They always do whatever I ask.” What the hell? Now she was speaking about her parents using their first names? This was a new one—and I wondered what her Christian parents who often said the Bible demanded that she honor them would think if they knew.

But I wasn’t going to ask her about it.

“I guess it’s a good thing I don’t want to do it. My mom couldn’t afford it.” Ava, of course, already knew that. “It’s hundreds of dollars!”

“Oh, Dani. Your grandma and grandpa would send the money if they knew how important to you it was.”

But it wasn’t—and I still doubted she really wanted me in on this. I had the weirdest feeling, realizing for certain that hanging with Zack once a week really had improved my little self-esteem problem. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“I think what I’d be most worried about is how your arms and butt would look in the suit.”

My butt ? That was a new one. Many a time she’d told me my belly wasn’t flat enough, my neck and legs not long enough, my breasts too small—and she’d already tackled my arms a few moments earlier. “Why? What’s there to worry about?”

“Dani,” she said, lowering her voice with a tone that sounded like she was about to scold me, “why do I always have to make you aware of things you should already be paying attention to?” A frown creased my brow but I was stricken mute by the gall.

But Ava had gotten away with this for so long because I’d simply let her.

Why would she stop now? As if resigned to gently breaking some bad news to me, she let out a loud sigh.

“Your butt is flat. There’s no way it’ll look cute.

Or maybe it would with the flares and frills of the suit.

But your upper arms are too chunky. They have no definition—and they would be so obvious with the sleeveless shirts they wear sometimes.

” I almost laughed, remembering Braden’s invitation to take weightlifting next year.

“ Chunky? ” Maybe I did have a self-image that was off kilter, but my arms were not chunky.

“Yes. Look in the mirror. Get a handheld mirror and back up to a full-length mirror. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

I was pretty sure she’d completely lost her mind but, once again, she had me doubting my abilities, questioning my self-perception.

But her words that afternoon sealed the deal.

It was all the more reason to go with my plan of pairing up with Zack.

Now that we were choosing classes for our sophomore year, we could submit our class requests online.

Our computer at home was a slow, outdated laptop, but I’d do it tonight.

Later, if Ava asked, I’d tell her I hadn’t thought to compare schedules with her before submitting my requests.

But she never did.

My unpredictable summer didn’t bore me like so many in the past had. Because my mom started working nights, she wanted me to spend those few months with my grandparents, and I always loved staying with them. Mom hoped her shifts would be closer to normal when I had to return for school.

I figured my lack of menses made her think I was too young to be trusted, too.

But then, that magical summer, it arrived on the fourteenth day of June.

I felt miserable that day, but I didn’t think it was the period to blame.

Rather, the smells of the new concentrated cow farm just one mile east of my grandparents’ home likely had something to do with it, not to mention the heat.

Fortunately, Grandma had been prepared with all kinds of feminine products under the bathroom sink.

On another note, Grandpa noticed my improved chess skills.

Even though there was nothing to do at their place, it wasn’t like the nothing to do in Nopal, because first there were my grandparents.

Grandma didn’t cook as much as she had when I was little, but because she knew how much I loved her cooking, every day at lunch, she’d make a big meal with vegetables from her garden the previous year that had been preserved in bags in her freezer, until we could eat fresh ones.

We were eating lettuce from the garden almost immediately, though, until it got so hot, the plants went to seed.

Grandma even spoiled me by baking cookies once a week.

And I played a lot of games with grandpa—not just chess but card games and backgammon.

He wasn’t about to let me get bored on his watch.

Until, of course, he enjoyed an afternoon nap.

There was also a public pool in their town, not even a mile away from their house, and they still had a bicycle I could ride, so two or three days a week, I’d head in and swim until they closed.

The first couple of times, I had to leave when my skin started showing signs of turning pink, because I’d burn if I wasn’t careful.

But after a while, my skin tanned enough to be able to take hours of sunlight, even in the water.

Nopal didn’t have anything like it.

The best part about that summer, though, was that I was able to maintain better contact with Zack than I might have been had I been home.

I found that funny, because back in Nopal, I was about seven miles away from Dalton.

Here, I was over seventy miles away but I wasn’t limited by a sludgy computer or crappy phone.

Grandma and grandpa had a nice desktop computer they hardly ever used.

Grandpa checked his email once or twice a week while grandma only checked hers if she had something else to do, like shopping or paying a bill online.

The first week I was there, I joked about “making their computer feel loved,” and grandpa said I could use it to my heart’s content, just so long as I didn’t keep them up at night with noisy videos or anything like that.

During the second week of June, I logged onto Facebook first. Even though I’d already exchanged a couple of texts with Ava and Zack, there was nothing earth-shattering about them.

Ava was already working on all the things her cheerleading group had told her to practice over the summer and she informed me that she could now do the splits comfortably.

That was impressive, even if I didn’t want to admit it.

Facebook, however, had bigger stories to tell.

Ava had posted pictures not only of her athletic feats but also of her new cheerleading friends.

While she would be getting her driver’s permit in July, the older cheerleaders were driving them all around doing fun things, and Ava got a part-time job at the café in town.

Very part-time, by the looks of it, because she seemed to already be spending every waking moment with the cheer squad, if the pics on Facebook were any indication.

Having our own interests and pursuits…that was what I’d wanted for both me and my friend so that she wouldn’t have such a stranglehold on me—so why was I feeling a little sad and maybe even a little jealous?

Zack hadn’t posted much online, but it looked like he’d been interacting some. I sent him a message, just letting him know a little about my summer and asking him how his was going—and it was less than a minute before he asked if I could chat live.

If he’d been Ava, I would have informed him that I was still having my first period, but that wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to talk to Zack about .

“I didn’t think about it till now, Dani, but you and me never talk music.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I wondered if he was going to tell me about playing drums for band. Here I was enjoying an actual vacation while my friends did school stuff all year round.

But I was wrong.

“What do you listen to?”

Honestly? “Whatever Ava’s into.” She liked a lot of pop and some hip hop.

While I’d liked a couple of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé tunes and sang to a lot of the songs Ava played at her house, I wasn’t into music.

It didn’t make me want to dance like it did Ava—but that might have been due to how awkward I felt in my body.

I caught myself singing a lot of the songs when no one was around.

“Have you ever heard of a band called Shock Treatment?”

“No. Should I?”