I nod, impressed. “Good choice.”

She curtsies. “Thank you.”

She pops the movie in, and I reach over Amanda for the bottle of nail polish. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all,” she says. She throws her body against the bottom of the sofa while the opening credits play. “I can never do my right hand. Do you think you can learn ambidexterity, or are you just born that way?”

I shrug. “Who knows? But I give a pretty bitchin’ manicure. Let me.”

“Oh.” She tentatively holds out her hand for me, like she’s deciding whether or not to trust me. “Cool. Thanks.”

If I’m going to infiltrate this group for the night, I definitely chose the right girl to sit next to.

Ellen steps over me with a bag of Doritos hugged to her chest. She spreads out behind us on the couch, with Willowdean sitting on the last cushion with Ellen’s head in her lap. Willowdean lets out a long sigh, and I can’t tell if it’s contentment at sitting with her BFF or exasperation at my presence. Probably both.

Millie takes up residence on a plush-looking armchair as I reach for a coffee-table book and a napkin to use as a flat surface to paint Amanda’s right hand in the neon-yellow polish she already used on her left hand.

We watch the opening scenes of Clueless, and we all laugh along at all the jokes that hold up to this day and of course the nineties fashions that I secretly love. My dad is actually the one who first shared this movie with me. He says it was one of the first dates he took my mom on, and that after she went out and bought a plaid skirt just like Cher’s and wore it for two weeks straight.

Outside, the sun slips down beyond the horizon and the room grows darker, almost like a movie theater. For my nail polish, I choose a fluorescent orange. One of my favorite polish colors, despite my mother’s insistence that it makes me look like I dipped my fingers and toes in a bag of Cheetos.

By the time we’ve made it to my favorite scene, where Cher is giving a classroom presentation, I’m blowing on my fingers, waiting for them to dry. I don’t even realize I’m quoting along with Millie when Cher, with her long, perfect blond hair and her gum wrapped around her pointer finger, says, “And in conclusion, may I please remind you that it does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty?”

On the screen, the classroom erupts in applause as Cher puts her gum back in her mouth. In the TV room, Millie lets out a giddy squeal. “I just love that part. I want a cross- stitch with that quote on it!”

“Okay,” says Hannah. “That was pretty badass. But just so we’re clear, that brunette girl doesn’t even need a makeover.”

Maybe if the whole night is just movies and no talking, I’ll survive.

Halfway through the movie, I notice Hannah struggling with her right hand as she tries to apply her purple polish. She’s holding her hand up in the air the way I used to before my mom taught me how to paint my nails properly.

I lean forward and say, “The trick is to lay your hand down on a flat surface and paint a strip down the center of the nail and then thin strips on either side.”

At first she just gives me this how-dare-you-speak-to-me look, and maybe after what I said to her at first, that’s fair. But she doesn’t reject me when I hand her the napkins and coffee-table book I used for Amanda and myself.

After the movie, we turn on a few lights, and Millie pulls out all the stops to try to get everyone to indulge in some girl talk, but no one’s really interested in divulging any personal secrets, and truthfully, it’s probably due to my presence.

So Millie takes her own bait and tells us all about that boy Malik, who everyone else already seems to be aware of. She blushes when she recaps the long stream of embarrassing text messages they exchanged when she was on painkillers last weekend, and she swoons when she relays the story of their first real kiss last night. She’s even charitable enough to say that I’m one of the people who encouraged her to make a move—and I think she’s actually serious.

“Was he your first kiss?” asks Willowdean, her voice so warm that I think she might have forgotten I’m even in the room.

Millie blushes but shakes her head. “No.”

“What?” Willowdean sounds genuinely shocked, and I am, too. “Millie Michalchuk, a woman of the world!”

“I kissed a few guys at Daisy Ranch, that weight-loss camp my mom used to send me to.”

Fat camp? If Millie’s gone to fat camp, why is she still . . . fat?

“A few?” says Amanda. “I thought it was just that one.”

“Well, he was the only memorable one,” says Millie. “But it was nothing like kissing Malik. And most of those guys at Daisy Ranch acted like I should be so lucky to kiss them. Like they were doing me a favor.”

“I totally get that.” Willowdean rolls her eyes. “It’s like people get it in their heads that fat people can only date fat people, which is so annoying.”

“Yes! Most guys treated me like they were my only shot at love. It didn’t help that the guy-to-girl ratio was like one to ten.”

It’s so weird to hear both Millie and Willowdean use the word fat so flippantly. I don’t like to admit it, but I do sort of feel like it makes sense for fat people to date each other.

“That’s how it felt with Mitch sometimes,” says Willowdean.

I perk up at the mention of his name but try my best to hide my interest—interest I didn’t even know I had. I’m quick to brush it off. He’s the one semipopular person who’s not going out of his way to ignore me or ditch me. Of course his name would pique my interest.

“It’s like, if I date a guy like him,” she continues, “people will think, ‘Oh, of course, two fatties together. At least they’re not contaminating the gene pool with their fatness.’ And that just pisses me off. Then people see me with Bo, and they’re like, ‘Well, what kind of favor does he owe her to pretend he’s her boyfriend?’”

Ellen groans, throwing her hands up in the air. “Why can’t you just date whoever the hell you want—or no one!—without people making assumptions?”

Willowdean sighs. “I don’t know, but I appreciate your rage.”

Ellen lays a fat kiss on her cheek. “Anytime.”

I actually have to avert my eyes, because I can’t tell if they annoy me or if I’m jealous. I just cannot fathom how this constant finishing-each-other’s-sentences type of affection isn’t somehow fake. No one clicks with anyone else like that. Not in a real way.

Later that night, Willowdean and Ellen sleep in her room, Hannah and Amanda take the guest room, and I take the loveseat while Millie takes the sofa.

As we’re lying in the dark, slipping in and out of sleep, she says, “You survived.”

And she’s right. I did.

Instead of feeling proud, all that shrouds me is a deep sense of betrayal. There was a time when I thought that what I had with Sam, Melissa, and the rest of the Shamrocks was real. Dysfunctional, but real. But now the only thing I know is that they’re all living my dream without me, and not a single one of them seems to care.

Millie

Nineteen

Callie hasn’t said much about Saturday night since I dropped her off at home on Sunday morning, but I actually take that as a good sign.

In Mom’s craft room, she used to have a cross-stitch hanging above her sewing machine that said IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING NICE TO SAY, IT’S BEST YOU NOT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL. And I know that’s one of those quotes that people just throw around, but when I was a girl, Mom and Grandma would watch this movie called Steel Magnolias over and over again. There was this one line that always made Grandma chuckle. “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.”

I think Callie is probably the kind of person that only knows how to tell you what’s wrong and not what’s right. So Callie’s silence? Yeah, I can take that as a good thing. And even if she didn’t have a good time, I wouldn’t care. I’m still riding the high from my night with Malik. Yesterday at school, we didn’t talk more necessarily, but there was just something different. Maybe in the way he smiled at me or how his fingers lingered when he passed me my worksheet.