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tall.”
    “Maybe you should shut up, actually,” Zoe suggested.
    I handed her a paper towel. “Think about it?”
    “Shut up.” She pointed at me, but she was smiling.
    “Fine.”
    “No, actually, that’ll be great, since you can’t come apple picking,” she said, rubbing each finger dry with the paper towel. “Yeah. Me and Lou, we’ll be hay-stacking next week while you pirouette, or whatever. Great.”
    I slumped back down. “You’re gonna have so much fun.”
    “I am NOT hay-stacking Lou Hochstetter. Hello! Joke!”
    “No,” I said. “I don’t even, no, I just, you’re all gonna be, even if nobody hay-stacks at all, it’s like, OK, I can’t play soccer, but now . . . Everybody will be, unifying, while I sit outside the principal’s office, waiting to be picked up for dance. No way. Forget it. I quit.”
    “Quit what?”
    “Ballet,” I said. “Last year I was happy to be a bug, this year I want to be normal.”
    “A bug?” Zoe asked. “What?”
    I shook my head. “Nothing. Just, I’m quitting ballet.”
    She crumpled the paper towel and leaned against the wall. “Maybe you could just get out of Monday. You don’t have to be so drastic.”
    “No, she’ll never let me,” I tried to explain. “And anyway it’s not just Monday. It’s like, what I really want, I mean, I explained it to you. Remember?” It’s what I had confided to her, at our sleepover.
    Zoe nodded. “You want to hang around at the pizza place.”
    “You make it sound idiotic,” I complained. “It’s not about pizza, it’s just, like . . .” I grabbed my foot and stretched it over my head. Stretching helps me think.
    “Youch,” she said. She grabbed her foot and tried to pull it up, but it only got about up to her waist before she lost her balance.
    I smiled and put my foot down. “It’s not just apple picking either. It’s the whole, I want to slouch. I want to watch TV all day on Saturday.”
    “There’s nothing on.”
    “I want to be on the soccer team.”
    “That would be fun,” Zoe admitted.
    “Wouldn’t it? I mean, I like performing but, I don’t know.” I pictured crossing the stage in a series of leaps, my legs long and straight, graceful as a swan. I shook my head. “I like it OK, but maybe not as much as like, being part of everybody. Going out for pizza after games.”
    “Bunch of lunatics smooshed in a booth, rehashing the game, grabbing slices”—Zoe nodded—“that’s the best.”
    “It is. And she’s the one—my mom, she’s like—‘You have to do what’s right for you.’”
    Zoe pitched the paper towel into the wastebasket. “Well, that’s true.”
    “Yes. Definitely. So too bad on my mother. When she wanted something different, she just, she was buying apple butter, but she didn’t, she j-j-j-j . . .”
    “What?”
    I took a deep breath. I rarely stutter, anymore—only when I get really nervous or upset, or if I have to say my name in front of people. That’s still hard. In first grade I got stuck on the S sound every morning; it was dreadful. Some kids teased me about it, called me C-C-C instead of CJ. The only ones who didn’t were Morgan, Zoe, and Olivia—which I’ll never forget.
    I looked up at Zoe. She was watching me, playing with her friendship ring. She smiled, then. She really uses her whole face, doing it. I don’t know anybody else who smiles so big like that. “You really want to do soccer?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound sure. “I’m gonna quit.”
    “That’s great,” Zoe said, picking up her bag.
    I picked up mine and asked, “Is it?”
    “So great.” Zoe pushed the bathroom door open. “We can go for pizza after practice tomorrow.”
    “That’d be excellent.”
    “And we can sit together on the bus to apple picking,” Zoe offered, holding open the cafeteria door.
    “Great,” I said. The smell-combination of mashed potatoes and chocolate pudding was nauseating. “Listen, Zoe? Can you come to dance