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terrible for everyone.”
    Michael sat down beside me. “I was like that too with a lot of my friends—like Katy, I mean. After my father, you know, died. I didn’t want to see anyone. I don’t know . . . it just made it worse, everyone trying to comfort me. I told my friends to just get lost.”
    “Did you call them dumb and stupid too?”
    “Yeah, I did. I told Billy Tisch to take a hike. I told him he was an idiot, all happy and laughing all the time.”
    “That’s what Katy thinks about me. That my life is so great that I couldn’t understand
her
life even if I wanted to—which she doesn’t think I do.”
    “When bad things happen, everyone says stuff like that.”
    “How did you and your friends make up?”
    Michael looked down at the toes of his dirty sneakers. “I don’t know. It just sort of happened naturally. I went away and time went by, and when I came back everything was better. I guess it just takes time.”
    “Yeah, I guess,” I told him. That was the same thing Tom had said. But I didn’t want to wait. Katy wasn’t going to New Jersey. I’d be seeing her in school every day, and seeing the back of her head and her braid hanging down and wanting to touch it, and I couldn’t wait for time to pass. I needed her to be my friend—right away. Like
now.

Chapter Thirteen
    Two nights later my mom came home with our graduation dresses. All pressed and clean, sealed in the plastic dry cleaner bags, they looked brand-new and special. She hung them up on the outside of my closet the way Kendra’s mom had hung her big fancy dress from France. And in her cheery, high-energy voice she said, “They both look lovely. Yours is really sweet, you know.”
    “Great,” I said, the way you talk when you’re totally bored. I was doing my homework on my bed, surrounded by my animals.
    “What’s wrong?” she said.
    “Nothing.”
    “Come on, Anna. Tell me.” She pushed my legs over, making room for herself at the edge of my bed.
    “Nothing’s wrong. Except Katy doesn’t want the dress.”
    “Doesn’t want it?”
    “No. She told me so on Saturday.”
    “But you didn’t see her on Saturday.”
    “When I called to find out why she wasn’t here, she told me she didn’t want it. She said her mom was taking her to Macy’s to buy the most expensive one.” I stopped talking then, because my voice sounded weird and cracky and I didn’t feel like crying again. My mom reached out and touched my hair.
    “Have you spoken to Katy since Saturday?”
    I swallowed hard. “She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
    “You mean not at all?”
    “She told me I was stupid and don’t understand what her life is like. She thinks my life’s so perfect, but she never thinks that
my
brother’s also going away, and yes, I know, it isn’t the same, but he won’t be here like he used to be and no one can say he will!” It was hopeless trying not to cry, and I guess I just gave into it. It was going to happen anyway. My mom slid closer and took me in her arms. I let her do it. I needed someone to hold me awhile.
    For a couple of minutes she didn’t talk, except for saying “Poor little Katy” against my hair. Her mouth felt warm and I kind of wished she’d keep it there. But after a while she pulled away. She reached for a tissue from the box on the table next to my bed and started to dab my tears.
    “Katy’s not angry at you,” she said. “She’s angry at life. At the terrible things that happen. That her brother is ill. That her family can’t take care of him. That they had to put him in a home.”
    “But why is she taking it out on me?”
    My mom seemed to think this over. Then she said, “Maybe she’s taking things out on you because she knows she can. She has to lash out at someone, and she’s chosen you because she knows you’ll forgive her in the end. She trusts you with her anger, knowing that you’ll still be her friend.”
    I looked at my mom. What she’d said didn’t make much sense to