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“I—I’m sorry I don’t knohy I said that My social skills blow You’re the first girl e I’ve talked to in a while I , aren’t I? You’re probably going to run away, screa, and ask to sit next to Axle the soon-to-beup now”

Leni hadn’t heard anything after “pretty”

She tried to tell herself itBut when Matthew looked at her, she felt a flutter of possibility She thought: We could be friends And not ride-the-bus or eat-at-the-same-table friends

Friends

The kind who had real things in common Like Sam and Frodo, Anne and Diana, Ponyboy and Johnny She closed her eyes for a split second, ih and talk and—

“Leni?” he said “Leni?”

Oh, my God He’d said her name twice

“Yeah I get it I space out all the time My mom says it’s what happens when you live in your own head with a bunch ofAnother Roadside Attraction since Christmas”

“I do that,” Leni confessed “Sometimes I just … spaz out”

He shrugged, as if to i with her “Hey, have you heard about the barbecue tonight?”

SO WHAT ABOUT THE PARTY? Can you come?

Leni kept replaying it over and over again as she waited for her dad to pick her up from school She’d wanted to say yes andin a while

But her parents weren’t co, really It wasn’t who the Allbrights were The faatherings: backyard barbecues where the dads wore V-necks and drank Scotch and flipped burgers, and the woarettes and sipped martinis and carried trays of bacon-wrapped chicken livers while kids screamed and ran around She knew this because once she’d peered over the neighbors’ fence and seen all of it—hula hoops and Slip ’N Slides and sprinklers

“So, Red, hoas school?” Dad asked when Leni climbed into the VW bus and slammed the door He was the last parent to arrive

“We learned about the US buying Alaska froe”