"Ha, ha," said Olivia, inspecting a patch of paint on the wall.

"I think the paint fumes have gone to your head. For your information, I"m not going out with some random kid. It"s so completely and totally embarra.s.sing. I mean, parents would have to drive us! And what if he tried to hold hands or something? People would see."

"Okay. I get it. All I"m saying is . . . you should talk to that kid. If you don"t know what to talk about, just tell him you need help with your cloud identification project."

"But I don"t need help."

"I know you don"t need help. But he doesn"t know you don"t need help. Anyway, it doesn"t matter if you need help or not. The point is, you pretend you need help."

"You need help," I said. I couldn"t help laughing a little.

"Just talk to him. Be a friend. You said yourself he needs a friend."

"h.e.l.lo! What have I been saying? He"s a boy! In case you hadn"t noticed, I have all sisters. No brothers. I don"t know the first thing when it comes to boys."

"What"s to know?" Olivia starts ticking stuff off on her fingers. "They like sports and UFOs and pulling wings off bugs and taking stuff apart."

"And you left out the part about how boys can be pretty annoying."

"At first he was kind of annoying, but then he was pretty funny, don"t you think?"

Silence. I concentrated on my doodling. I drew a sky full of stars and swirly clouds to rival Van Gogh"s. Doodling gave me a chance to half think my own thoughts while Olivia talked her head off, rehashing the conversation from the a.s.sembly.

" . . . and you"re all, "My friends call me Stevie," and laughing and batting your eyelashes," she teased.

I looked up. "I was not batting my eyelashes. A person has to blink!" I protested.

"Whatever . . ."

When I looked back down at my night sky, I"d drawn squiggles, peace signs, a b.u.t.terfly, a moth, and an owl. The owl had two round Os for eyes, and, without thinking, I"d made them into a pair of gla.s.ses.

I closed my notebook with a snap. "I better go. Dad"s making his famous curry, and he"ll freak if I"m late for dinner."

The next day, I was tiptoeing into Alex"s room, trying not to make noise, when Joey popped up from behind the bed. "AAAGH!" I screeched. "Jo-ey! Stop scaring me like that. What are you doing in here, anyway?"

"What are you doing in here?" she asked.

"I asked you first," I said.

"Okay, okay. I didn"t want to tell you, but when I got home from school, Sir Croaks-a-Lot was not in his tank. He escaped! I don"t know how he got out, and I know I"m not supposed to be in here when Alex isn"t home, but I thought I heard him in here and he might be hiding."

"I"ll help you look, Duck. Alex will freak if she finds a frog in her room."

I crawled around on hands and knees, helping Joey look for her frog. We looked under the bed, behind the desk, even under the rug. "How come frogs never croak when you"re looking for them?" I asked.

"I don"t know," said Joey. "Maybe if we stop looking, he"ll start croaking."

"Here froggy, froggy," I called.

"So, what were you coming in here for?" Joey asked.

"None of your beeswax. I was looking for my . . . poetry book I"m using for Language Arts, if you must know."

"It"s on your bed in our room."

"Oh, I guess it was my Earth Science book -"

"In your backpack. Also on the bed."

"Whatever, Miss Snoopy Pants." The truth is, I didn"t want to admit to Joey I was looking for one of Alex"s magazines or a book - anything that might help me with The Truth About Boys.

I stood up and ran my finger across the spines of books on Alex"s shelf. Speak. Cut. Crush. Gla.s.s. Sold. Feed. Fade. Flipped. Prom. Prep. Peeled. Sleep. Wake. Beige. Lost. Gone. Sheesh! No wonder teenagers grunt and speak in one-syllable words.

Twisted. Trouble. Loser. Lucky. I Was a Teenage Fairy. What do you know? Seven whole syllables.

"I don"t think a frog would be hiding inside a book," said Joey. "Unless he"s an origami frog."

I returned Lucky to the shelf and straightened the spines of the books, lining them back up the way they were.

Joey peered into Alex"s closet. "Hey, I know. Maybe Sir Croaks-a-Lot is hiding with Alex"s journal, you know, in the s...o...b..x in the closet under the fleece blanket she made in Girl Scouts one time."

"So, he"s not hiding in a book, but he can read Alex"s journal?"

Joey shrugged. "I"m just saying."

"Did you try her dresser?" I asked.

"Are you kidding? She"ll kill me if I go in there."

"Well, she"ll kill you worse for going in her closet and reading her journal. Besides, how do we know he"s even in here?"

"C"mon, Stevie. Help! What if Alex comes home any second and catches us?"

"Us?"

"Please?"

"Shh. Quiet," I whispered, holding my finger up to my lips. Creck-eck. Creck-eck.

Joey"s eyes got as round as marbles. The sound was coming from the direction of the dresser. I pointed and motioned for Joey to check it out.

Joey and I started opening drawers and rummaging through stuff. The top drawer was just one big tangle of junk - from heart-shaped rocks to headbands to h.e.l.lo Kitty key chains.

Joey pawed through Alex"s underwear drawer.

"Joey, not in there!"

"How do you know?"

"Hey, look at this!" Joey held up a pair of light blue undies. "They have writing on them. What"s Vendredi mean?"

"How should I know? Sounds like some kind of sports car to me." Joey and I peered more closely at the words - Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi . . .

"It"s the days of the week in French!" I proclaimed, too loudly.

"But Alex takes Spanish," said Joey. I shrugged my shoulders.

"Keep looking."

"Maybe he"s in here," said Joey. "Maybe he"s hiding in Alex"s T-shirts because they"re all soft and cozy."

Joey flipped through a stack of folded tank tops and T-shirts. "Hey, all these shirts have words."

TROUBLEMAKER. VERY IMPORTANT PRINCESS. RARE BIRD. FREAK OF NATURE.

"Geez," I said to Joey. "Who knew Alex had so many tanks, huh?"

"Every single one has writing. She could wear them all at one time and be a walking encyclopedia."

I couldn"t help cracking up as I looked through a drawer full of jeans.

Joey was still in the T-shirt drawer, and she kept reading them off. BRAT. HIP CHICK. OREGON. PEACE. ACT UP. "Where"d she get all these, anyway? I"ve never seen her wear half of them. Why is she hiding them?"

"She probably layers and wears them under stuff. And she doesn"t want us to know because then we"ll want to wear them too.

"Not me," said Joey. "Well, maybe the PEACE shirt."

She dug down to the bottom of the pile. "BAD APPLE, BAD TO THE BONE, B -" Suddenly Joey screeched "Ahhh!" and let the shirt go like it was hot.

"What? What"s wrong?"

"I almost said a swear!" Joey slapped her hand to her mouth, covering it as if trying to push the word back in.

"What? What do you mean?"

"Mom gets really mad if we swear and we"re not even supposed to swear in Shakespeare too much, you know, like how Alex calls us milk-livered maggot-pies and stuff." Joey stabbed her finger at the bottom drawer. "In there. See for yourself. At the bottom of the pile." She spat out the words. "Alex has a shirt with the B word on it!"

"She does not."

"Wanna bet? A hundred dollars."

I was sure Joey was wrong. I was sure that the shirt probably just said Witch. But when I yanked the shirt out from the bottom of the pile, there it was: the B word, emblazoned across the shirt in fancy cursive!

"See? What did I tell you? Give it. I"m telling Mom!"

My heart was pounding, like I"d discovered some deep, dark secret of Alex"s that I wasn"t supposed to know. I don"t know why, but I didn"t hand over the shirt to Joey. I hurriedly stuffed it way down deep in the bottom of the drawer.

"C"mon, Joey," I said, yanking her by the arm. "Let"s get out of here. Now. Before Alex finds out." My voice sounded wobbly. "We shouldn"t be snooping." I stared at my trembling hand. I felt far away, like I didn"t know my own hand anymore.

Really, it was my sister I didn"t know anymore. Alex. Who was the Alex who would wear that shirt?

"But what about Sir Croaks-a-Lot? You said Alex would freak if -"

"Never mind what I said," I told my little sister. For some reason, I couldn"t stay there another minute. I had to get away from that shirt.

SECOND MUSHROOM FROM THE LEFT.

Starring Alex Me: Sock Monkey, O Sock Monkey. Wherefore art thou, Sock Monkey?

Sock Monkey: I"m right here. So? How"d the audition go? Are you Juliet?

Me: Don"t ask. I so totally blew it.

Sock Monkey: I thought you weren"t going to know till tomorrow.

Me: Trust me. I know.

Sock Monkey: Is this like one of those times when you pretend you blew it but really you aced it? I don"t want to hear it. I"d cover my ears, if I had any.

Me: Thou art a villain.

Sock Monkey: A villain made of socks? I hardly think so.

Me: Okay, I know when it comes to auditions, I always say I blew it, but what if I told you this time, it"s really, truly, actually true? Sorry to have to break it to you, my friend, but they will be writing about this one in "sour misfortune"s book."

Sock Monkey: But you"ve wanted this your whole life. You know Juliet"s lines backward and forward. How could anybody else get the part? You don"t even have to read from the script for the balcony scene, and n.o.body has died more times than you. Besides, you look great dead.

Me: See, everybody knows when you try out for Juliet, you can"t just get up there and do Juliet. Because the director has seen the same thing a thousand times.

Sock Monkey: Really? That"s weird to try out for Juliet and not be Juliet.

Me: That"s just it. You do something else to show them you can do Juliet.

Sock Monkey: So, what"d you do?

Me: Promise you won"t tell anybody? Especially Stevie. And Joey.

Sock Monkey: (Holds up a sock paw.) Sock Monkey"s honor.

Me: (Hangs head.) I sang.

Sock Monkey: You what? You sang? As in a song? That"s Stevie"s thing. You know you"re horrible at singing. Why would you do that?

Me: I didn"t mean to! See, I rewrote this one Juliet scene, you know, in my own words. To make sure I really had the meaning down. So I actually did that for my monologue, thinking it would be super unique.

Sock Monkey: That sounds kind of cool.

Me: Yeah, except it wasn"t. And Mr. Cannon kept crinkling his eyebrows. Then I said the words "innocent as a rose," and it made me think of that song from Sound of Music, so I just started singing "Sixteen Going on Seventeen."