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together.
    We kept our arms outstretched like zombies until someone found the first cord and pulled it— click! Once one of the lightbulbs was switched on, you could usually find the others and fill our end of the basement with enough light to work by. If we got desperate, we could always use the light from our laptop to guide us.
    â€œIt’s times like these I really miss our fancy desk chairs and the fresh flowers,” Kate said.
    â€œAnd the snacks,” Piper said.
    Piper opened our pink laptop on a desk-high stack of boxes that contained the scratchy restroom towels that filled every dispenser in the school. We pulled aluminum folding chairs around her in a circle. Being secreted away like this in our subterranean hideaway made us speak softly. Though we had been getting away with it for weeks, we were still an unofficial, unauthorized group meeting in a completely prohibited way.
    â€œQuestion 1: ‘I don’t have my period yet, but I am worried about using pads. Won’t people hear them crunching and rustling when I walk?’ ”
    â€œGood question,” I said.
    â€œHmmm,” Piper said, “I never think about that.”
    â€œWell, they do make noise, but it’s such a soft noise, I don’t think anyone would notice,” Kate said. “I’ll take that one.”
    I had decided that I wanted to take Queen Quitter on as a special project. She really seemed to need help, and I was tired of answering questions about embarrassing stuff. This was a chance for me to do more than answer questions about see-through shirts or inconvenient burps. I pounced as soon as Piper said, “Next question: ‘Dear PLS, I am sad, sad, sad…’ ”
    I said “I’ll take it” so quickly that Kate asked if I thought this was a game show. I wondered if Kate or Piper would be able to figure out who Queen Quitter was.
    â€œQuestion 3,” Piper continued. “Well, this isn’t a question. It’s another one of those threats.”
    Then she flipped the laptop around for us all to see:
    Girls, please don’t ignore this request. Shut down the site, or you could get in big trouble.
    A Pink Friend
    â€œMaybe we should tell someone,” I said.
    â€œThat’d the end of the PLS then. For real, this time. We’d never be able to restart it again,” Piper said.
    Kate agreed that it was too risky to tell anyone. I didn’t agree, but I wasn’t going to be the only one.
    â€œLet’s get back to business,” Kate said.
    â€œQuestion 4 … Wait a minute. I have something to say,” Piper said.
    We stopped and looked up from our notepads. I hoped she was going to reconsider and say we should tell someone about the threats, or maybe just shut the PLS down for a little while.
    â€œForrest and me—I mean, Forrest and I … well, we aren’t going out or anything.”
    Piper let that hang in the air for a moment.
    â€œIt’s over,” she said. “Like, it never really started in the first place.”
    Then she looked at me.
    â€œHe’s weird, Jemma. Cute, but weird.”
    I had a rush of feelings that I couldn’t express. I was relieved that she and Forrest weren’t a couple. I was insulted that she called him weird. And I was a strange kind of happy, like when something big and scary threatens but doesn’t actually occur.
    Remember a while back, when a big asteroid was supposed to hit the Earth? People—my dad, for instance—were calculating the odds of where and when it might hit. But then it ended up landing in the ocean or breaking up into a million unthreatening bits or something. That’s what I was feeling, down in the school basement, looking at Piper.
    But in that moment, when we should have hugged, or at least shared a slight smile, I couldn’t do it. I felt a plume of anger that Piper had gone after Forrest in the first place, and I wasn’t