Aces Wild by Erica S. Perl Page B

said.
    “With anyone special?” asked Megan, batting her eyelashes at me. Jenny and Megan looked at each other, then burst out laughing.
Of course
. Allie must have told them that Jeremy went with me. Jenny and Megan remained convinced that Jeremy was secretly my boyfriend, even though I had told them a million times he was just a friend.
    “Yeah, ha-ha,” I said. “For your information, my dog ate tons of chocolate. He had to be rushed to the emergency room. He could have died.”
    I ran out of the lunchroom and spent the rest of lunch hiding in a stall in the girls’ bathroom, waiting for the bell to ring and trying not to cry. I couldn’t believe Allie!
Why did my so-called best friend think I was so funny-weird-bizarre-pathetic I needed someone to beg for invitations for me?
She had made everything worse! I wished we had never moved here. If I were back in Brooklyn, Ace wouldn’t live with us, I would have real friends who saw me for me, and stupid sleepovers would be a nonissue.
    That night, I went up to my room right after dinner. I was exhausted from the night before, so I lay down on my bed with a book and got good and lost in it. So lost, in fact, that when my mom came in to tell me I had a phone call, she startled me awake.
    “It’s Allie,” she said, holding it out to me.
    I shook my head. “Tell her I can’t come to the phone,” I mouthed.
    “O-kay,” she said. She got back on the line, and I heard her walk out saying, “Allie, hon? She’s already in bed. Yes, Ace gave us a scare last night, but he’s going to be fine.…”
    Meanwhile, Ace-the-grandpa had replaced my mom in the doorway. He was wearing the Baxter State, plus his muffler and his ice-fishing hat. In his hand was a leash. Attached to the end of it was Ace-the-dog.
    “YOU READY FOR CLASS?” he asked.
    “No,” I told him.
    “OH? WHY NOT?”
    “I changed my mind. I don’t want a sleepover.”
    “WHAT ABOUT THE DOGGELAH? WHAT ABOUT WHAT HE WANTS?”
    “It doesn’t matter, Grandpa. Ace can go by himself for all I care!” I snapped. “I’m not going.”
    I lay down, turned to face the wall, and braced myself for a lecture on how quitters never win and winners never quit, or something like that. Instead, I heard my door close. Exhausted, I shut my eyes.
    A little later, I sat bolt upright in bed. My room was dark. I felt around in my covers. “Ace?” I said.
    No Ace.
    I ran downstairs. “Ace!” I called. I knocked, then opened the door to Grandpa’s room.
    No Ace. Neither Ace.
    Then it hit me:
    Ace had gone to class. With Ace. And without me.
    But why? I told him I had given up on getting a sleepover. The answer came to me a split second later: Mrs. Wright. Ace loved attention, and Mrs. Wright heaped it on him. “It’s a date,” he had said when she dropped us off, and she had giggled.
    Oh no
, I thought, shuddering.
Don’t tell me he’s up to four girlfriends … that we know of
.
    When I woke up the next morning, Ace-the-dog was snuggled up in my bed next to me, sleeping soundly. Clearly, it didn’t bother him at all that he had snuck off to class without me. My mom came in a couple of times to make sure I was getting up, and I convinced her to drive me on account of the fact that what the weatherman called a “wintry mix” was coming down outside.
    “Should we offer Allie a lift?” she asked.
    “Her dad drives her and Julia when it rains,” I told her. I felt a little guilty for not checking, even though this was usually the case. I thought about the possibility of her standing on the corner waiting for me and I felt bad, but not bad enough to call her.
    I had a lousy day at school. Mr. Tortoni gave us a pop quiz on probabilities, but I couldn’t focus on it. All I could think of was the probabilities of my life:
If one girl is allowed to invite ten friends but ends up inviting eleven girls, one of which is not really a friend, what is the probability that the eleventh girl will ever actually receive