“How did you get that stuff?” I don’t know why I worried that Ally would ever want to be with this guy. If this was the way he acted, she would avoid him like the plague. This was not her kind of thing at all and people like this generally scared her.

“My doctor prescribed them to me.” His pupils were very dilated and he was looking intently at me. I actually think if Richards and I hadn’t had that talk I would have already swallowed the pills—maybe taken however many he gave himself. I would have felt like whatever he did I had to do more of and I had to do it better. I could actually see how fun it would be to take the stuff and then focus only on skating—just be free to be there all day and night—getting tricks right, not getting bored, being relaxed. But this time the voice that is usually Ally’s in my head—the nitpicking nagging sister’s voice—was my own.

Maybe I’d do it later but not now. Not just to prove something to him.

“Yeah. No thanks, maybe another time.”

He said, “If you ever want to try it, let me know. I have an endless supply. We could take some and go driving in the countryside. It’s really fun to drive on this stuff because you feel so relaxed and capable and you know you can go as fast as you want. I think you’d love it.” He took out his phone and I thought he was texting something but then my phone rang. “That’s my number,” he said when I looked down at the screen.

“How did you get my number?” I asked.

“You gave it to me. Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t remember and it freaked me out. But then I thought maybe I did or maybe Declan did when he was showing him around school. This last theory seemed like it was probably right because the next thing he said was:

“Is Declan your boyfriend?”

I shrugged.

“Sometimes it’s like you guys are joined at the hip and other times he’s not around for like a week.”

I said, “Declan is my friend.”

“I want to be your friend,” he said. “I miss my friend.”

Because I left school early and didn’t have detention, I got home around the same time as Ally. I was excited to talk to her. When I got upstairs she was brushing her hair and listening to this terrible crap. Amber Carrington. Some girl who was on The Voice. She got famous from this sappy song called “Stay.” As usual Ally was singing along. I couldn’t decide if this was better than all the terrible Rihanna she listened to or not. I watched her for a while. She was happy, holding her hairbrush as if it were a mike and singing the song with so much emotion, her head thrown back.

“Hey!” I said.

She turned around and dropped the brush, totally startled. I laughed.

“Argh! How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t sneak up on me!”

She thought I was doing it on purpose and I can’t blame her really because it’s totally the kind of thing I would do on purpose.

“How was school?” I asked.

“Good.”

“Do you have to work?”

“Why? Do you want the room to yourself? Is Declan coming over?”

“No,” I said. “I thought we could hang out.”

She looked at me warily and turned the music down.

“We,” I said. “You and me. I’m serious.”

“What do you want, Syd? I was going to bake muffins later anyway. You don’t have to pretend to want to hang out with me to get some, you know I always give them to you.”

“Hey. I’m serious,” I said.

“Is something wrong?” She frowned and looked at me, worried.

“No!” I said. “Not at all. It’s just . . . I was talking with Richards.”

“I know, I heard you get called down to the office.”

“Right. Whatever. Just listen to me, okay? I was talking with Richards and she had all this stuff to say about how girls think they have to act certain ways, like be good or bad, and I was thinking about us. I thought maybe . . . I thought maybe we should spend some time together. Because maybe we’re making each other the way we are. Maybe we’re not really opposites but we just think we have to be or something. I don’t know.”

“I’ve never thought I was any certain way,” she said. “I’m just being myself.”

“Right right right!” I said. “But when we act like ourselves, we’re acting in some way that is expected of us and there are generally two ways that girls are expected to act, right? I don’t know. I think I finally got it figured out.”

“What out?”

“The way we are!” I said. “Like this.” I grabbed her iPod off the speakers right in the middle of Amber Carrington’s sappy melodic whining, “I want you to staaaaaaaayyyyy.” And I took my iPod out and scrolled down to the Distillers’ song “The Hunger.” Brody Dalle belted out her raspy punk shriek over the screaming guitar and heavy drums. “Don’t goooooooo!” she screamed.

“See?” I said. “It’s the same song.”

She had her finger in her ears, but she started to get a little smile on her face. “That is NOT the same song!” she yelled, laughing a little.

“It is though,” I told her. “It’s the same thing going on. And look around the room,” I said. “The stuff we like is not all that different. We just like it served up in a different way.”

“Are you really high?” she asked.

I turned down the music. “No,” I said. “But I ran into Graham and that kid is on some serious drugs.”

She frowned. “He’s got a prescription for his learning disability,” she said.

“How do you now that?”

“Because I was talking to him about stuff. About moving and Virginia and starting school and all that. If you didn’t have detention every night you might get here when he’s working on his car after school and you could talk to him too.”

“Okay. Well, anyway.” I didn’t want to get distracted by Graham again so I kept on talking about what was important. “What do you think about what I’m saying?” I jumped up on the bed and turned up the Distillers again and grabbed her hairbrush and screamed into it along with Brody Dalle. “Don’t go!”

She laughed. “You sound like you did when we were little and Mom and Dad would go out for the night.”

I nodded and started laughing too. “C’mon, Al, let’s build a fort and get some ice cream. We’re just fine without them.”

She shook her head at me and looked like she was about to cry. Then finally she said, “Syd, you’re nuts,” and got up on the bed with me and we both started jumping and dancing and shouting, “Don’t go!”

And I couldn’t stop laughing. I was having fun with my sister for the first time in years and years. We didn’t need to be apart at all. We could really be like this. I tore my Tony Hawk poster down from my side of the room and went over and hung it over her bed.

“Don’t tell me you don’t think he’s hot!” I yelled over the music.

She rolled her eyes. “Please, Syd,” she said in a mock-sophisticated tone that sounded just like our mom, “I may not skateboard but I’m not blind.” She handed me a thumbtack and pulled the top of the poster up so it would be perfectly straight.

Then she went into her closet and she got out Sparkle Pig. The stuffed animal we used to fight over when we were little. He was a little pig in a T-shirt that had glitter writing on the front that said “Sparkle.” She tossed him to me.

“Seriously?” I asked

“I know you said you hate him now. But, uh . . . actually . . . I know you don’t.”

I made Sparkle Pig dance up to her and scream “Don’t go!” and then flopped down on the bed. “Sparkle Pig, you are mine,” I said to him and set him on my pillow. “Mine and mine alone.”

I tossed him back over to Ally, but he just landed on her bed.

“Ally, listen,” I said. “I think you and I should really be unified. No more fighting. No more attitude. We’ll be stronger that way. Richards is right.”

I remember how she looked at me then; like she was scared and confused. She sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. I thought she would be happy that I had figured some things out. I thought she would be happy I wasn’t acting like a bratty little punk and wanted to hang out with her. But the way she looked . . . it was like I just told her she had a month to live.