Aces Wild by Erica S. Perl Page A

diarrhea or “loose stools”? Yes, yes, and yes. Having seizures? That hadn’t occurred to me, but I hadn’t seen him have one, so I guessed that was good.
    We ended up being there until midnight, at which point they brought a very sleepy Ace out to the waiting room, where I had fallen asleep in a chair. He looked tiny, maybe from all the throwing up, but the vet assured me he’d be fine in a few days. We went over some ground rules about not leaving potentially poisonous items where Ace could “access” them, and I got a handout listing all sorts of things that could make him sick.
    I guess the one good thing about the whole experience was it completely took my mind off what had happened at the Cunninghams’ haunted house.
    Allie was waiting for me on our corner the next morning. She greeted me with:
    “Zelly! What happened to you last night? You missed everything!”
    I opened my mouth to tell her the crazy story of my awful night with Ace.
    Then I closed it.
    I wanted to tell her everything, including the part about hearing her telling Hailey about me. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about. Or try to defend what she did with some lame excuse. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her make something up. Or tell me the truth, whatever it might be.
    Instead of waiting for an answer, Allie just kept right on talking. “The haunted house was awesome! And then Scott and some of the boys knew this other house, and they had all these bowls of candy out front, but then there was this hand thing in one of the bowls, and all of a sudden it moved! And Jenny ran to get away, but she wasn’t watching where she was going …”
    Allie kept talking and talking, not even noticing that I hadn’t said a single thing.
Maybe we’d make it all the way to school
, I realized,
without me uttering a single word. Was she always like this? How had I never noticed?
    “… and the whole scene was just so bizarre!” Allie concluded her story. “Seriously, you should have been there. You would have loved it!”
    Great
, I thought.
Now I’m funny and bizarre too
.
    “I tried calling you when I got home,” said Allie.
    “Yeah, sure,” I grumbled.
    Allie looked confused. “What’s wrong? Why are you acting so weird?” she said.
    “I’m not acting,” I said, quickening my pace so she had to sprint to keep up. “That’s just how I am.”
Funny, bizarre, and weird
.
    At school, everyone was talking about Halloween, of course, and swapping candy whenever my English teacher, Mrs. Clements, turned her back to write on the board. When lunchtime rolled around, I got my milk and scanned the room, not sure I wanted to sit at my usual table. But the only other option was with the boys, so I made my way across the room.
    “Hey, Zelly,” said Jenny. She was sitting next to Megan and across from Allie.
    I forced a smile and sat down. Not in the spot next to Allie that she always saved for me, even though seat-saving was not, technically speaking, allowed. Instead, I sat down on the other side of Jenny. “Hey,” I said back.
    If Jenny thought it was strange that I was avoiding my regular seat, she didn’t say so. Instead, she immediately turned her back on me to examine something Megan had in her hand. I leaned over and saw that it was a little piece of paper. At first I thought it was a candy wrapper, but when Jenny saw me peeking, she quickly slipped it into her pocket.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “Oh, nothing. It’s just, you know, for Hailey’s thing.”
    “What thing?” I asked innocently.
    “It’s nothing, just a sleepover,” said Jenny.
    “I’m sure she’ll invite you,” added Allie brightly.
    Yeah, but only because you told her to
, I thought.
    “Hey, what happened to you last night anyway?” asked Megan with a grin. “You just, like, disappeared.”
    “Yeah,” said Jenny. “One minute you were there, and then,
poof
!”
    “I had to go walk Ace,” I