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her. She’d only feel worse if I got the lavender one.”
    Nikki’s mom looks surprised; then she smiles. “Good thinking,” she says. And they’re off to the shoe department.
    â€œBut I’m still mad at her,” Nikki adds. She feels she has to get that in.
    Â 
    As they’re heading for their car in the parking lot, Nikki holding the bag with her new shoes, and her mother holding the garment bag with the new dress in it and the bag with the panini grill, they run into Deja and her aunt heading to their car. Deja is holding a bag with L U A NN F ABRICS written on it.
    â€œLook who’s here!” Nikki’s mom says, smiling down at Deja. Nikki knows she’s acting extra happy on purpose. Nikki’s mom and Auntie Dee give each other a quick hug.
Why do women do that all the time,
Nikki wonders,
when they see each other unexpectedly?
    She, on the other hand, gives Deja as tiny a “hello” as possible.
    Deja returns a tiny “hello”; then her eyes settle on the garment bag and quickly move to the bag in Nikki’s hand. She looks down. While the grownups gush and talk about the usual things women talk about—Nikki isn’t really listening—she and Deja just stand there, not speaking.
    Finally Deja breaks the silence with “Are those your new shoes?” The question makes Nikki feel a little bit guilty.
    â€œYeah,” she says.
    Deja’s eyes go to the garment bag again. But she doesn’t need to ask, it seems. She says nothing.
    After they part, each walking her own way, Nikki wishes she’d remembered to say to Deja about her new dress, “It’s not
lavender!
”

9
Cool Days
Deja

    Â 
    On Tuesday morning Deja is sitting in the back of Auntie Dee’s car, staring out of her window. Nikki is sitting beside her, but not very close. She’s staring out of the opposite window, again. As usual, Nikki has almost nothing to say to Deja. Yesterday, Deja noticed that Nikki was sidling up to ChiChi at morning and lunch recess, and they’d gone off on their own to the jump rope area. In response, Deja purposely brought out her SSR book so she could read on the bench and not pay any attention to Nikki and her new friends.
Who cares?
Deja thinks. She isn’t about to show that she notices that Nikki’s been hanging around with someone else.
    She thinks about Saturday morning at LuAnn Fabrics. Suddenly she feels a little scared. She and Auntie found a pattern for her dress for Ms. Shelby’s wedding. They found beautiful satin and chiffon material. The word
chiffon
makes Deja think of pie heaped with whipped cream. There was lavender chiffon, and peach chiffon as well. Deja chose the peach because she suspected that Nikki had gotten her dress in lavender, even though she knew it was Deja’s favorite color. Deja was determined not to be twins with Nikki.
    â€œNot lavender?” Auntie had asked, holding up the lavender chiffon.
    â€œNo, I want the peach,” Deja said.
    She thinks about Miss Ida now, wondering if she’ll really be able to follow the pattern’s directions and make her dress look
exactly
like the picture on the front of the envelope. What if she can’t? What if she makes it real sloppy and Deja has to wear it anyway?
    Â 
    At morning recess, Deja brings out her SSR book again and settles onto the bench to read it.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?”
    Deja looks up, surprised to see Nikki standing before her.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œThen why are you sitting over here by yourself?”
    Deja supposes Nikki is just rubbing it in—that she has people to play with and Deja doesn’t. “I feel like reading my book, that’s all,” Deja replies.
    â€œWhatever,” Nikki says, turning to get back to her friends in the jump rope area.
    Deja sits there stewing. Nikki’s probably happy that Auntie Dee lost her job. No, she probably doesn’t