then blow my stuffed-up nose.
I’ve now cried twice in one day.
I’m on a roll.
I toss the towel in the trash and stare at my reflection in the mirror for a long hard minute. My lips are still absurdly enormous. I contort them this way and that, puckering them like a fish and flapping them like a horse. Anything I can do to try to encourage the blood to flow back out. I guess I should be grateful. I could have been born with a deadly nut allergy. I could be in an ambulance right now on my way to the hospital.
I really do look like a cartoon character. And here I thought guys liked girls with big lips. Maybe just not this big.
I purse my lips in the mirror, giving my best sultry bedroom eyes. “Well, hello there,” I say breathily to my reflection. “Come here often? What’s that? You think I’m sexy?” I make a kissing sound and then quickly wipe the drool that dribbles out as a result.
I lean forward, pretending to give the stranger in the mirror a big, slobbery, swollen kiss. But my romantic moment is cut short when I hear footsteps outside the bathroom door.
Is the assembly over already?
Panicked, I glance into one of the stalls, searching desperately for help. The porcelain toilet stares unsupportively back at me, as if to say “So what’s your brilliant plan now, genius?”
Since I don’t live in a Harry Potter movie, I suppose in is out of the question. And that means there’s really no place left to go but up. Cringing, I climb onto the questionably clean seat, perching on my tiptoes along the rim and bending myself awkwardly into a crouch.
Classy, Ellie. Really, really classy.
I silence my thoughts with a grit of my teeth. Right now I just have to concentrate on not falling in. This isn’t as easy as they make it look in the movies.
The door opens and someone walks in. I hold my breath. The footsteps pause for a moment, then shuffle hesitantly before pausing again.
What is this girl doing? Is she checking each individual stall for the cleanest one? Get on with it already! This is a public high school. There are no clean stalls!
I bite my tongue against the slight quiver in my upper legs. How much longer can I realistically keep this up? But it’s not like I can come down now, because then whoever’s in here will know that I’ve been squatting atop a toilet seat.
“Ellie? Are you in here?”
I blink in surprise at the sound of the distinctly male voice. “Owen?”
“What are you doing?”
I hop down from the toilet seat, my thighs screaming with relief, and open the stall. There’s Owen, all gangly six-foot-one of him, standing in the middle of the girls’ bathroom. I remember the summer that he sprouted. It was when we were counselors in training at Camp Awahili. I didn’t notice the growth spurt because I was with him every day, but when his parents came to pick him up at the end of the summer his mother nearly fainted when she saw him.
“What are you doing in here?” I ask.
“Looking for you,” he says, as though it’s obvious.
I awkwardly massage my thighs as I hobble out of the stall.
“Hiding out in the bathroom?” He raises an eyebrow. “A little cliché, isn’t it?”
I run the faucet and scrub my hands. “It’s only cliché because there’s nowhere else to hide in a high school.”
“Janitor’s closet, theater dressing rooms, that weird little patch of trees behind the track.”
I pull a paper towel from the dispenser. “You’ve spent way too much time thinking about this.”
“So,” he begins, changing the subject. “I looked up the most popular recipe for banana bread on my phone.”
“And?”
He cringes. “And it has almond extract in it.”
I slump. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”
“Put almond extract in her banana bread on the off chance that Ellison Sparks comes to buy something from the cheerleader bake sale right before her election speech? Now you’re sounding like a paranoid politician.”
I slap his arm. “No, I mean, do you think she deliberately lied to me about there being almonds in the bread?”
“Honestly? No. I think she probably didn’t know.”
I sigh. He might be right.
“Anyway”—he pulls a small pill from his back pocket—“I got this in the nurse’s office. Benadryl. It’ll help with the swelling.”
Gratefully I lunge for the capsule, popping it in my mouth and swallowing it dry. “Thank you!” I croak.
“I know what you