Free What Are Friends For? by Rachel Vail

happily pushed it toward her. She took a bite and put it back down. I hoped she’d finish it. I get angry when I see girls trying to be so skinny they’re barely there. What kind of culture do we live in?
    CJ opened her lunch bag, looked in, and said casually, “I just decided I’d rather be on the soccer team.”
    “Rather than what?” I asked her.
    “Rather than dance.”
    “You’re quitting dance?”
    “No need to alert the media,” she said in the snottiest voice she’d ever used. I turned to her, surprised. “Or your mother,” she added.
    I felt myself getting angry, as I always do when she tries to humiliate me publicly. I took a deep breath and asked, “Well, what did your mother say? She must be devastated.”
    OK, that was mean, a low blow, since I knew that of course her mother would be devastated. CJ’s ballet career is her mother’s dream come true, and I knew that better than any of the other girls at the table. But I couldn’t help myself from giving CJ that dig, after she was so snide to me.
    CJ shrugged. “It’s my decision.”
    Of course she was right. I took a sip of my soda to avoid having to acknowledge her point.
    “When did you realize that?” Morgan asked her.
    “Yesterday,” CJ said.
    Morgan smiled at CJ. I gulped more soda. I felt totally miserable, with no idea why; like I might start punching somebody if they all weren’t careful.
    “She’s disappointed, of course,” CJ said, opening her yogurt. “She said she wished I felt differently, but that I have to do what’s right for me.”
    CJ turned to me. I had to look her in the eyes, her wide, vulnerable green eyes, which were flicking around my face, begging for approval. “Well,” I said. What could I say? As talented as she is, she was also right—it was her decision. It might not be the choice I’d have made in her position, but I had to respect her for following her own conscience. Sometimes she seems so eager to please her mother she forgets to be a person herself. “Congratulations,” I told her.
    “Thanks,” CJ said gratefully. “And I’m coming apple picking, too.”
    Morgan’s head snapped up to look at CJ. “You are?” she asked.
    I unwrapped my box of pretzel sticks to keep from reminding Morgan she had already asked me to sit with her. Last year when we went to the waste disposal plant, I didn’t care one single bit who I sat with. I think I ended up with Gabriela Shaw one way and Roxanne Luse the other, and I read a book the whole time. It was strange to me that I cared, this year—cared a lot, honestly.
    I shoved the box of pretzels at Morgan, who took some and smiled gently at me. I looked away and offered some pretzels to Zoe, who usually grabs a handful but this time she shook her head. I held the box in front of CJ, who never accepts. This time she did.
    “I handed in my permission slip today,” she told us proudly, and took a loud bite of the three pretzel sticks.
    I felt like I should say something to her. “I was wondering why your name was finally erased from Ms. Cress’s board,” I managed.
    “That’s why,” she answered.
    Morgan blew the bangs away from her eyes. “I guess we won’t be having a class trip to see you in The Nutcracker this year, then,” she said to CJ.
    CJ’s smile sunk a little.
    Morgan crumpled my lunch bag and tossed it over me and CJ into the garbage can. We all watched it arc in perfectly. Then she leaned toward me and whispered, “You ready to go outside?”
    I shoved the last bunch of pretzels into my mouth and nodded as I chewed them and stood up, all at the same time. I tried to think of something else to say to CJ, but nothing came to mind.
    “As if you’d tell your mother,” Morgan muttered to me as I hurried after her, down the hall.
    “My mother probably knows already,” I said. “They talk every day.”
    “Some people,” Morgan started, but then said, “Forget it,” and pushed out the door. She paced around the perimeter of the