Page 4 of Advice from a Sunflower

I shake my head and set my controller down on the floor, abandoning the game. Eli doesn’t notice until I’ve gotten up and started down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” he yells.

I see his mom look up from the TV as I pass her chair to head out the front door.

The kids at school were meaner this past year, mocking me for being so quiet and reading my books instead of taking part in their silly games. They started excluding me at recess and gym, then poking fun when they would see me reading instead. Sometimes Marnie even joined in on their mocking, especially when Denise had a bad day and took it out on her. Eli is the only person who isn’t mean but now that seems to be changing, too.

When I make it to my house and up the stairs into my room, Emma and Marnie are sitting on the floor with the house phone wedged between their heads as they laugh hysterically at whatever’s on the other side of the line.

“What are you doing?” I ask, falling down onto my bed.

“Get out, Mouse,” Marnie demands once she hangs up the phone, jabbing her finger toward the door I just entered from.

Emma giggles even more, her nose scrunching up like a crow’s beak.

“No, it’s my room too.”

“Well, we don’t want you here,” Emma says, all traces of a smile gone from her sour face.

I look to Marnie to defend me, but she reinforces Emma’s words with a tight grimace on her lips. I want to argue with them. I want to kick them both out for being so rude, and then I want to run to Denise and tell on Marnie for being such a snake in front of her ugly friends. Instead, I push out a dramatic sigh and grab a random book from my shelf, stomping down the stairs. It’s cooler in the living room, anyway.

Hours later, I’m shaken awake on the couch as my name is whispered into my ear. When I manage to pry my eyes open, I see Eli on his knees before me, his face only inches from mine. I sit up, my book sliding down to the floor.

“What do you want?” I try to spit; the way Marnie always does to me. Only, my tone comes out sweeter than I had intended. I can’t even be mean the right way.

“I’m sorry I called you weird,” Eli whispers, leaning back onto his feet.

I look around him at the clock, noting that it’s been four hours since I left his house. The room has darkened and cooled off as the sun begins to set.

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t like when other kids say you’re weird, either. I tell them to stop so you don’t hear them. I shouldn’t have told you about it in the first place.”

“Okay.”

He hesitates, comfortable silence falling between us before he admits, “I saw Marnie and Emma. You were right, they don’t want to play with me.” He looks down at his hands, embarrassed.

“Who needs them, anyway? They’re boring. Besides, they’ll be in another fight next week and Marnie will come crawling back to us.”

That’s usually how it happens with her.

Eli’s face lifts in a smile. He reaches over and grabs the book that fell off my lap, reading the cover with a look of approval.

“I don’t want to fight again. Let’s agree to not let anyone get in the way of our friendship ever again. From now on, it’s just you and me—Eli and Mouse.”

He holds his pinky up between us, and I hook mine with it in agreement.

“Okay. Eli and Mouse forever,” I whisper.

Chapter 3

Lyla

14 years old

“What are you looking at, freak?” Marnie’s voice rasps from the other side of the room as she swings her left leg into the window before soundlessly closing it.

“Where were you?”

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