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“Don’t—” Mom had begun to say, but I was already out of the car, rushing toward Tress. I’d wrapped my arms around her, squeezing tight.

“I thought you were gone,” I’d said.

And Tress, stiff and unresponsive in my arms, simply said, “I am.”

“So, your friend”—behind me, Dr. Gabriella turns a page of her notes—“Gretchen.”

“Gretchen’s not my friend,” I say. It just pops out, like how sometimes I accidentally belch and Mom makes me leave the table. But this is worse. These are words I didn’t know were in me. There’s a pause.

Dr. Gabriella put me on the couch after our second appointment. “You’re always looking at me for a reaction,” she’d said. “You worry so much about saying the wrong thing that I can hardly get you to say anything.”

So she put me on the couch, facing the wall, with her sitting behind me. It had felt weird, at first, but once I got used to it, I found out she was right. It was a lot easier to just say what I thought if I wasn’t checking for someone else’s reaction before continuing.

When I admitted as much she told me I should try it in real life sometime.

Now Dr. Gabriella asks, “If Gretchen isn’t your friend why was she at your birthday party?”

I look at my hands, pick at a hangnail there. “I don’t know . . . can you have friends you don’t actually like sometimes?”

“Yes,” she says. “Friendship is complicated. So Gretchen said something that upset Tress?”

“Yeah.” I reach up, scratch my itching scalp. “She said she stole my tamp—”

“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop you.” Behind me, Dr. Gabriella gets up, her high heels clicking across the wooden floor of her office. She calls my mom in from the waiting room, and I sit up, worried.

What did I do? Did I say something wrong?

“April,” Dr. Gabriella says. “Did you know that Felicity has lice?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have her in my house again, that’s all I’m saying,” Jill Astor says as she makes a face, primly pinching two fingers together as she slides a nit off a strand of Gretchen’s hair.

We’re having a post-birthday-party party.

Mom had driven home from my appointment with red cheeks, her voice cracking as she yelled at Dad over the phone. “Dr. Gabriella has to fumigate her couch. And I have to call all the other moms. I have to tell them their children got lice at my daughter’s birthday party.”

She ordered in food and invited the girls and their moms for what she called a “nit-picking” party. The other moms brought bottles of wine with them, making a joke out of it. Brynn, Gretchen, Maddie, and I had lined up as our moms poured stinky stuff on our heads, told us to keep ourselves busy on our phones, and started drinking.

They’re blaming Tress. And they’re not being quiet about it.

“First she runs off, scaring everyone half to death,” Jill goes on. “And now this!” She waves one gloved hand at the four of us, heads bowed, wet hair hanging in curtains over our faces as we lean forward around the card table Mom had set up.

“Where is Tress?” Brynn’s mom, Angela, asks. On my head, I feel my mom’s hands stiffen.

“You didn’t really expect April to invite her here, did you?” Jill asks, refilling her wineglass.

“How else is the poor girl supposed to get clean?” Angela says, keeping her eyes on the back of Brynn’s head. “Do you really think that old man is going to look after her?”

“Well, he obviously doesn’t,” Jill says. “Gretchen’s head was just crawling—”

“Felicity isn’t too bad,” my mom pipes up.

“Neither is Maddie,” adds Kira Anho, who had been quiet until now and has hardly taken a drink. Mom had to push her to take a glass at all, saying that she wasn’t our principal yet.

“Brynn hardly has any,” her mom says.

“Well, Black kids don’t really get lice, though, do they?” Jill says, quaffing the rest of her wine.

“Jill!” my mom says. “Maybe you should lay off the wine.”