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position trying to concentrate on just that, just turn-out, when Zoe tapped me on the forehead. I opened my eyes.
    “Hey,” she said, smiling at me.
    I buried my face in my hands.
    “Come on,” she said and dragged me to the bathroom.
    “What am I going to do?” I sank down along the wall onto the cold bathroom floor. “Morgan hates me. She’s so hurt and it’s my fault, with all she’s going through at home, I should never, I-I feel so terrible.”
    Zoe twisted the friendship ring on her finger so the knot part was hidden in her palm and asked, “What did she say?”
    “Nothing. ‘I don’t care.’ ‘What are you talking about?’ You know.” I bent over my legs and buried my face in my calves. “Argh.”
    “Did she say something or did you?” Zoe asked.
    “I did.” I looked up at her. “I just, I felt like, I mean it was obvious that she, so . . . What? Was that really stupid of me? I mean, what, I should just, what? Ignore it?”
    “I don’t know.” Zoe sat down next to me.
    “My mother said don’t say anything, just, you know. Don’t make a big, but, I-I-I how can I just, I mean . . .”
    “Maybe you don’t need to keep apologizing to her, though.”
    I shrugged. “But . . .”
    “It just might, you know, make her feel worse. Maybe.”
    “Maybe,” I said, closing my eyes.
    Zoe pulled at her shoelace, unraveling it. “I don’t know.”
    “No,” I agreed. “You’re probably right.”
    “I don’t know,” Zoe said again. “I just know, the longer I can avoid a conflict, the better.”
    “Yeah,” I said, wiping my nose with my palm. “Me, too.”
    We sat there for a second, not talking. An eighth-grade girl came in and almost tripped on us, going to the stall. We both pulled our legs in close to our bodies and smiled at each other. “I feel like we live here,” Zoe whispered. Last week she was crying in the bathroom; now it was me. She picked at a callus on her hand while the eighth grader flushed, came out, and left without washing her hands. We made faces at each other like, gross! Then we laughed.
    “You OK?” Zoe asked.
    I nodded and put my chin down on my knees. The bathroom floor was so hard and cold and probably full of gross germs. “Much better,” I said. “Thanks.”
    She half-shrugged, one shoulder only. So what if she’s a little big in the rear? She has a very pretty face, very photogenic. Morgan was saying last week that Zoe has such nice blue eyes, it’s too bad she’s a little big in the rear. Maybe boys think that—Morgan said boys like really little butts—but I think they should notice Zoe’s eyes and her sense of humor. I worried, actually, last week that maybe Zoe and Tommy liked each other. There were strange silences between them. But I guess not, because she got him to ask me out.
    “Tommy barely said hello to me,” I whispered.
    Zoe went over to the sink and turned on the water. “He wouldn’t have asked you out if he didn’t like you.”
    “I guess. Hey!” I stood up, excited. “Maybe Morgan will feel better if you get Jonas to ask her out. What do you think? Because she’s been saying wouldn’t it be fun, the four of us could—”
    “Fun,” Zoe said, pressing up on the soap dispenser so many times the pink ooze overflowed her palm.
    “I am such a jerk.” I turned around and banged my head against the wall. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should just shut up like my mother says to.”
    “No,” Zoe said, scrubbing. “It’s just like, wa-hoo, that would be really fun for me, you four.”
    “What about if we fix you up with somebody, too?”
    “Yeah,” she said, rinsing. “Like who?”
    I thought for a sec. “Lou.”
    “Lou?” she asked. “Lou Hochstetter?”
    “What’s wrong with Lou? He’s in my homeroom.”
    “Lou.” She kept rinsing her hands. No wonder her fingernails are so clean. “Lou?”
    I started to laugh, how she was saying that. “What?”
    “Mr. World War Two.”
    “He’s