face with chips on a daily basis, and he was a champion belcher. But smile? I couldnât recall.
Emma paused to eat a pretzel stick and then continued. âExcept he had another girlfriend until last week.â
âHe did?â I asked.
âSure, he was going out with Jesse,â Rachel told me. âYou know, one of the Three Terrors.â
I nodded, glancing toward Taylorâs table and wondering how I missed this. Jesse was the fourth girl in Taylorâs 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. Seriouslyâlike she was always celebrating St. Patrickâs Day. No one knew why, and she wasnât 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. âAnyway, I never knew if he liked me, so I finally asked Yumi to ask Phil.â
Iâd never heard of any boy named Phil. âIs he one of the Corn Dog Boys?â I asked, peeking toward the boy side of our table.
âNo, he and Joe are in Spanish with Yumi,â Claire said.
âHeâs got scruffy dark hair and an earring,â said Rachel.
âOh, okay.â I nodded, still a bit unsure of who he was, but hoping it wouldnât matter.
Yumi cut in. âSo 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 didnât know, but then the next day, I got this note.â
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 Emmaâ 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, heâd used a whole sheet of paper.
âItâs so romantic,â Rachel said.
I studied the note carefully, in search of the romantic part. I wasnât positive, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that he used a red pen?
âThatâs cool,â I said.
âMy first boyfriend.â 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.
âYouâre sure thatâs clean?â asked Yumi.
Emma nodded. âIt just held my pretzels and I dumped out all the crumbs.â
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 didnât exactly work together in the same sentence. I wondered if I should start calling him Joe. But that didnât sound right, either.
âYouâre so lucky youâll have a boyfriend for Valentineâs Day,â said Claire.
âIf theyâre still together by then,â said Yumi. âFebruary is months away.â
Emma gasped. âHow can you say that? Of course weâll still be together then. I mean I hope we are.â She frowned. âI hope I didnât just jinx it.â
âDonât worry,â said Rachel. âHeâs into long-term relationships. Didnât he and Jesse go out for a whole month?â
âThree and a half weeks,â Emma said. âAnd then she dumped him for Oliver.â
âOliver Banks, whoâs in my lab group?â I
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