6

By the end of the day, Jane had made three new entries for her Unfair Life book. In a black-bordered box on its own special page, she wrote:

Monday, 27. Jane Waleski was assigned Lucy Adams as her partner in Peer-Teaching.

From gym class she had:

Monday, 27. Jane missed more baskets than anyone in the class except Emily Zuckerman. Coach Jim said, "Sometimes I find it hard to believe that you and Caroline Waleski are really sisters."

As soon as Coach Jim had said it, Jane could tell that the coach felt sorry for letting the words slip out.

"Just kidding, Jane," the coach said. "Come on now, concentrate!"

This was not the first incredibly stupid thing that a grown up had said, comparing Jane to Caroline. One of these days Jane was going to get a T-shirt printed that said, "Yes, I'm Caroline Waleski's sister. No, the perfect DNA wasn't passed down to me. Thank you very much."

From English class, Jane had:

Monday, 27. Mary came up to Jane again and said, "Lucy wrote poems about you all through social studies. Did you know that your name rhymes with grand and sane?"

There was nothing grand about Jane, and she doubted whatever poems Lucy wrote was sane either.

After school, Jane and Emily rode the bus through the snow to Emily's house. They ate one large bowl of chocolate ice cream and then dished themselves out another. It had been a two-bowl of ice cream kind of day.

"Our hypothesis could be that fat-free ice cream tastes the same as regular ice cream," Emily said. "Or that it tastes different. Which do you think it is?"

"I think it tastes different," Jane said with a questioning look.

"We should probably test other people, too," Emily went on. "In case our tastes are strange or something. We could test Caroline and your family and mine and some of the girls and guys at school. That'd run up our ice cream bill a bit, but our parents'd probably pay if it's for a school's project. If it's for the sake of science."

"Listen," Jane said. If she was going to have a chance at doing a special, award-winning science fair project for Ms. Anderson, she had to speak up now. "I was thinking..."

"Don't think!" Emily said.

"No, honestly, I was thinking that maybe...I mean, the ice cream idea sounds like a lot of fun, but..."

"You want to do it on something else?"

Jane nodded miserably. She wanted to do it on something else by herself, or with someone else. She didn't want to be a loser this time—like Emily. The thought was so disloyal that she felt terrible for even thinking it. Of course, the Loser Club was just a joke, but now it didn't feel like a joke anymore. It made her feel like she was betraying her best friend.

"That's okay," Emily said. "It doesn't have to be ice cream. It could be potato chips - or anything. I made up that idea in two minutes. I don't care what we do. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. But..." Just say it! "We could still help each other with our projects. We could still help each other a lot. But maybe this time...it might be a good idea, just this once, to do our own projects."

There. She had said it. Maybe Emily would understand. Maybe she wouldn't stare at her with a hurt look in her eyes.

Jane made herself look at Emily. Emily was staring at her with a hurt look in her eyes.

"Like I said, we could still help each other with our projects. Like, I'll still eat all the ice cream you want."

Jane tried to make it sound like a joke, but Emily didn't laugh.

"Sure," she said. "We can do our own projects. Whatever you say."

"Just this once," Jane said lamely.

"It's okay. I understand," Emily said in a tone that made Jane wonder whether Emily didn't understand or whether Emily understood too well.

~*~

"How was school today?" Jane's mother asked that night at dinner.

"Fine," Caroline said.

"Okay," Jane said.

"Did anything interesting happen to either of you?"

"No," Caroline said with a shrug as she took a mouthful of salad.

"Nothing," Jane said. But she felt a little sorry for her mother, making doomed efforts every night to generate some family dinner conversation. Family dinners were important to her —real dinners where everyone ate the same thing, instead of foraging in the fridge for food. And where people talked to each other instead of gobbling in silence or gluing their eyes to their phones.

"We got a student teacher in science," Jane said. Her mother gave her a grateful smile.

"What's he —she? — like?" Her father looked up from his plate. Jane's dad wasn't much of a talker, but he was always a good listener.

"It's a she. She's nice."

"Long hair?" Caroline asked. Jane nodded and sort of blushed a bit. "I saw her in the principal's room. Has Emily declared her love for her yet?"

Emily's woman crushes had become a family joke. Not that they were being disrespectful or anything, it was just that Emily never hid about her crushes. And everyone knew she was into girls. Jane was also into girls, but she'd never been vocal about it. She was the type of people who kept it to herself and would rather die than let anyone know who she liked.

"Uh-huh." Jane felt her own cheeks flushing harder and hoped no one else noticed.

"What about you, Caroline?" her mother asked. "Did you tell your homeroom teacher about your congratulation letter from the senator?"

"No," Caroline said. She ate another forkful of casserole. Then she relented, too. "But my coach invited someone from the university to see us play this Friday."

"You mean to see you play," her mother said, refilling Caroline's milk glass from the pitcher on the table.

"Well, he didn't say that. But I think...I know he hopes I'll do my best."

"Of course, you will, darling!"

"Just do your things," her father added. "That's all anyone can ever ask of you."

Caroline smiled back. Jane noticed that the only way to get her father to comment on anything was to make some noticeable efforts, and which she obviously lacked.

"I got a new child in my class today, by the way," Jane's mother said then. Since she was the only member of the family who liked to talk, most of the Waleski dinner conversations centered on the activities of three-year-olds at her preschool. Jane couldn't remember her father ever telling a story from his roofing company.

"Addison," her mom went on. "That's her name. Addison Blue. Very disagreeable. Her mother couldn't get her to come inside this afternoon when she was dropping her off. 'You'll be all cold and soaked,' she said to her. 'I want to be all cold and soaked,' she said. When she finally carried her in, kicking and screaming, she ran right back outside again and stood in the exact same spot where she had been standing before."

"What did you do?" Jane's dad asked. "I'd have no clue how to handle that."

"Well, I finally got her mother to go. You can't do anything with them when their mothers are there. And then she came in after a while when she saw that I wasn't overly impressed by her little tantrum. But I can tell that Addison Blue is going to be an interesting member. Do you girls have much homework to do?"

"Not tonight," Caroline said. "I have done it on my way home. I'd get started on the science fair."

"Me too," Jane said. She hoped she didn't sound too enthusiastic about school work, because it was out of her character. Quickly she began to clear the table. All the while, she was thinking about Emily's hurt look, Lucy Adams's love poems, and Ms. Anderson's golden hair.