Free Girls Acting Catty by Leslie Margolis Page A

face with chips on a daily basis, and he was a champion belcher. But smile? I couldn’t recall.
    Emma paused to eat a pretzel stick and then continued. “Except he had another girlfriend until last week.”
    â€œHe did?” I asked.
    â€œSure, he was going out with Jesse,” Rachel told me. “You know, one of the Three Terrors.”
    I nodded, glancing toward Taylor’s table and wondering how I missed this. Jesse was the fourth girl in Taylor’s crowd. Not Hannah, of course, and not the one with dark curly hair and braces with purple rubber bands. That was Nikki. Jesse had long, straight brown hair with chunky white-blond streaks. Usually she wore her hair in a high ponytail. Even though she was tiny, shorter than me, even, we called her Jesse the Jolly Green Giant, because she wore something green every single day. Seriously—like she was always celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. No one knew why, and she wasn’t even Irish. The weirdest thing about her, though, was that she always ate green food, too: seaweed salad, lime Jell-O, or long stalks of celery.
    Emma went on. “Anyway, I never knew if he liked me, so I finally asked Yumi to ask Phil.”
    I’d never heard of any boy named Phil. “Is he one of the Corn Dog Boys?” I asked, peeking toward the boy side of our table.
    â€œNo, he and Joe are in Spanish with Yumi,” Claire said.
    â€œHe’s got scruffy dark hair and an earring,” said Rachel.
    â€œOh, okay.” I nodded, still a bit unsure of who he was, but hoping it wouldn’t matter.
    Yumi cut in. “So I asked Phil after school. His baseball team practices next to my softball field, so we see each other all the time. Anyway, Phil said he didn’t know, but then the next day, I got this note.”
    Emma dug around in her backpack and pulled out a piece of paper. It was folded into a tiny triangle, like a miniature football. She wiped the tabletop in front of her with her lunch sack, then unfolded and smoothed out the page.
    Hey Emma— Wanna go out? Sincerely, Joe.
P.S.: Did you do the math homework? What did you get for number 7?
(Joe, again.)
    His handwriting was tiny and boxlike. Even though the entire note was only three lines long, he’d used a whole sheet of paper.
    â€œIt’s so romantic,” Rachel said.
    I studied the note carefully, in search of the romantic part. I wasn’t positive, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that he used a red pen?
    â€œThat’s cool,” I said.
    â€œMy first boyfriend.” Emma refolded the note and carefully placed it in a Ziploc baggie. She pressed out all the air, sealed the bag, and then put it inside her French book.
    â€œYou’re sure that’s clean?” asked Yumi.
    Emma nodded. “It just held my pretzels and I dumped out all the crumbs.”
    I had so many questions: Were they going to hang out after school? Or on weekends? Or both? Was she just breaking the news to us today and having lunch with us one more time, before ditching us to have romantic meals with Corn Dog Joe?
    Somehow, Corn Dog Joe and romantic didn’t exactly work together in the same sentence. I wondered if I should start calling him Joe. But that didn’t sound right, either.
    â€œYou’re so lucky you’ll have a boyfriend for Valentine’s Day,” said Claire.
    â€œIf they’re still together by then,” said Yumi. “February is months away.”
    Emma gasped. “How can you say that? Of course we’ll still be together then. I mean I hope we are.” She frowned. “I hope I didn’t just jinx it.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Rachel. “He’s into long-term relationships. Didn’t he and Jesse go out for a whole month?”
    â€œThree and a half weeks,” Emma said. “And then she dumped him for Oliver.”
    â€œOliver Banks, who’s in my lab group?” I