Free Ava XOX by Carol Weston Page A

until it’s not hot anymore, then draining out the water, turning the hot water back on, and taking an even longer bath.
    But I already did that! I took the world’s longest bath! By the time I got out, my fingers and toes were crinkly. (I’m lucky Pip didn’t want to shower right after me, because when I use up all the hot water, she loses all perspective.)
    The thing is, it’s upsetting to have people upset with me. I wish I could wash away the bad feelings!
    And it’s hard to have “perspective,” because I mostly see things through my own two eyes. Doesn’t everyone?
    Yesterday at school, it felt like all eyes were on me. Like I was at the eye of a storm.
    A-V-A, E-Y-E?

2/21
LATE AFTERNOON
    DEAR DIARY,
    Dad made his famous Irish breakfast, and Pip told us she dreamed that Z Is for Zinnia won an award. I said I dreamed that some big kids were about to beat me up.
    â€œOh, honey,” Mom said.
    Later I went to Maybelle’s, and we watched a Disney movie. That helped take my mind off my troubles—except for the part in Beauty and the Beast when the whole town just assumes that Beast is terrible when he isn’t.
    I decided to ask Maybelle about her sleepover with Kelli and Zara.
    She said it was fun. At least she didn’t say, “It was sooooo much fun!” Maybelle knows it hasn’t been easy for me to watch her become friends with Zara, and now with Zara’s friend Kelli—a.k.a. my…enemy? My riva l ?
    â€œWhat did you guys do?” I asked.
    â€œWe watched a movie and went to the Great Wall,” she said. (That made me extra glad that my family didn’t go!) Maybelle looked up and added, “I will say this: Kelli’s mom is a little—”
    â€œA little what?”
    Maybelle hesitated. “Well, let’s just say she let us watch a movie that our parents and Zara’s grandparents would never have let us watch. It was about a teenage girl who likes a boy who is a bad influence. And Kelli’s mother, Candi—”
    â€œCandy?”
    â€œCandi with an i !”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œShe watched part of it with us and acted…inappropriate.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? You have to tell me!”
    â€œShe said when she was our age, she wanted to be bigger, you know, up top. And she showed us this exercise she used to do with her friends. They’d kick back their arms and chant, ‘We must, we must, we must build up the bust. The bigger, the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys will look at us!’”
    â€œOmigod!”
    â€œI know!”
    â€œWhat did you and Zara do?”
    â€œWhat could we do?”
    â€œDidn’t Kelli make her stop? Or tell her she was being, I don’t know, sexist and sizist and…weird?”
    â€œI don’t think Kelli realized how weird it was. All she said was, ‘Did it work?’”
    â€œWhat did her mom say?”
    â€œOf course not.”
    â€œDo you call her Candi?”
    â€œOf course not!” Maybelle repeated.
    I nodded and thought, My mom may not be the huggiest mom in the world, but at least she’s not embarrassing with a capital E.
    Back home, Mom was reading in bed and said, “Come in,” so I did. I even got in next to her. She asked me what had caused “all the fuss” at school. So I told her that Tanya got laughed at in assembly, and I got ostracized (spelling word) in the cafeteria. She asked me to show her the Tanya Tips, so I did, explaining that I hadn’t called anyone “fat,” and Rorie had taken everything personally.
    Mom nodded, and for a second, I wished she would give me a big hug and say all the right words like TV moms do. But Mom isn’t like that. Her mom, Nana Ethel, isn’t either.
    Here’s what Mom did say: “People get very sensitive about this subject. It’s a minefield. Even Dr. Gross has to be supercareful when he tells clients that their