Maybe I should have given another thought to wearing my hair in pigtails. Valerie gave me a distinctly amused chortle that made me feel even more self-conscious as I hefted my bag higher on my shoulder. The shirt fit, if just barely, and I couldn’t see not wearing something I genuinely liked because it wasn’t cool. So what if I looked like an eighteen-year-old trying to be a six-year-old. It was either that or the other way around. “Dari, there you are. How are you doing? When your mother called and asked me to get your homework for Monday and Tuesday, I couldn’t believe that you’d had another bout of the flu,” Snowy said brightly for the world to hear as she came up to me with a smile. I watched her smile falter as she took in my shirt and hair. “Yeah, the flu positively paralyzed me for days, and you know, the hallucinations weren’t the greatest thing either.” “Hallucinations? Like, you’re hallucinating that you’re still in the second grade, or that I’m hallucinating because you wouldn’t actually be caught dead wearing a shirt eight sizes too small to school?”
