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I thought about it. Ashley had a point, kind of.

"Give her another name, even. Call her Darlene or J.J. or..." She frowned to herself. I mean, name-wise Darlene and Joyce and Schwenk are all pretty pathetic starting points. "Darly or Darey or Doyce—"

I held up my hand. "What did you just say?"

"Doyce? Darey?"

I frowned. "Did you hear me? When we were practicing?"

"Hear what?" She started to look hopeful. "When?"

"Nothing. That's weird. Darey..."

All of a sudden the teacher was right there in front of us. "Excuse me. Do you two have something to say?"

"We were just wondering about homogenization," Ashley answered, not missing a beat.

"What?" the teacher asked.
What?
I thought.

"Because of the reported health risks of homogenized milk." Ashley made this
You didn't know that?
face. Gosh, she was smart to think so fast.

"But if you didn't homogenize milk, you'd get tuberculosis," the teacher said smugly.

"No, it's pasteurization that prevents TB," Ashley said. Without adding
You stupid moron
like she could have.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I know my dairy."

Only there were a couple other kids in the class who knew homogenization from pasteurization for crying out loud, and they started arguing with her until she went to a textbook to prove her point and then had to argue about why the book was wrong as well, and in the end she made Ashley move her seat, which was probably the first time in her whole life that Ashley got in trouble just for being right.

I barely noticed, though, because I was too busy thinking about what Ashley had just said.

Remember way back when the two of us first started working together, when I told her most people have a little thing, a ritual, they do for free throws? Well, ever since I started playing ball, when I'm standing at the line I say to myself—which you'll probably understand given that I learned to play from Win and Bill—I say: "Dare me? I dare you. Dare me? I dare you. Dare me? I dare you." And then I shoot. Every time. Six bounces, six little sentences, swish. (Well,
hopefully
swish.) And that word Darey, the way Ashley said it, just struck me as being awfully close to Dare Me. It was like,
Snap!
I'd say it was an omen only I hate that word because I saw that movie on TV once and had nightmares for years afterward, how can any omen be good after a creep like Damien takes it over?

Anyway, now that Ashley had described it like that to me, now that I had a
name
and everything, I couldn't get Darey out of my mind. What would it feel like to be playing, but not as D.J.? Sitting in A&P—which usually I love, but today Mr. Larson might as well have been speaking in Chinese, I was so not paying attention—I kept picturing myself on the court as point guard. Each time my stomach would clench just like it always does. But then I'd say to myself it wasn't
D.J.
out there; it was just this other person I was playing, like an actor playing a part, the part of someone who's really good at shouting instructions and showing leadership because that's just who she is.

Sometimes it didn't work. No matter what I told myself, my gut would clench and my hands would sweat, my heart would start hammering away ... And if that's how I responded, just sitting in A&P, to the
idea
of point guard, what would I be like in a game? And I'd decide that this whole Darey thing was an extremely ridiculous idea.

But then I'd try again. And sometimes, you know, sometimes I could actually get my head there, into Darey's mind-set, pretending for a minute to be someone who was actually confident.

I really,
really
wished I could talk to Brian. See what he thought about it. After all, just on Sunday he'd been telling me how I needed to let myself be the person I needed to become, however it was he'd phrased it—he'd said it a lot better than that. And isn't this exactly what the whole Darey business would accomplish? Darey could be that person!

But of course I couldn't talk to him. For one thing, you can't make cell calls during school—it's like an automatic detention. I even thought about cutting lunch and driving over to Hawley just to track him down. Which was an even worse idea because cutting wouldn't just get me detention; it would get me benched. Plus walking into Hawley's cafeteria—no matter how much Brian said he'd changed, that's really not fair. That's like taking off a little kid's training wheels and telling him to bike a marathon.

But I still wanted to do it. Because I really needed Brian, of course. But I also very, very much did not want to eat in the Red Bend cafeteria.

Oh, Beaner. Every time I thought about him, I felt sick. He hadn't yelled at me or anything! Or cried or something—I mean,
I
cried, which I was very embarrassed about, but he'd just sat there like a stone. Like it hadn't even hit him. Which meant that later it probably hit him twice as much.

I would have skipped lunch altogether, but I was starving. And there was no place else to go because I'd stopped those Spanish reviews sessions with Mrs. LeVoir once it was clear I was as good as I was ever going to get, which I now really regretted—stopping, I mean; I don't regret sucking at Spanish, because that's just a waste of energy. But it wasn't like I could sit at Beaner's table anymore; I'd get juice dumped on me at the very least.

So I went through the line like always, not looking at anyone while at the same time trying to spot an empty table somewhere, a corner or something, where I could gulp down enough food to get me through the game.

Only just as I was paying, I heard my name.

"Over here," Amber called, pointing to a space across from her.

Oh, it was so awesome to see her! Like catching sight of Santa Claus after you've stopping believing.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, trying not to look as relieved as I felt. "You're never here!"

She shrugged. "I figured today you probably needed some girl power. You gonna eat that fruit salad?"

She'd heard. She heard about Beaner and she made sure to be here, just for me. For a moment I couldn't speak or I'd have started crying. "Um ... just the pineapple. You want the rest?"

And that's how our conversation went, because when you're sitting in a high school cafeteria trying not to blubber in front of your best friend, it's best to focus on canned tropical fruits. And then Kari of all people asked if she could join us, like
we
were the popular ones and she wasn't. And Amber said only if she wasn't stingy with
her
fruit salad, which Kari promised not to be.

"It's, like, so loud over there," Kari said, nodding toward the guys' table on the other side of the room. "You can't even hear yourself think."

"I don't think they do much thinking," I put in. Not meaning to be mean about it, though we couldn't help laughing.

But then right in the middle of our laughter we heard "Yo, wassup, dudes?" and there was Beaner. He had a girl with him too, a freshman who wouldn't look me in the eye.

"Hey, Beaner," Kari said. "We're going to hang here today. Just some girl time."

"Hey," I managed.

Beaner nodded. "That's cool." He looked at me. "Hey. Have a great game tonight. Okay?"

"Um, you too," I said. I even managed a smile.

Beaner grinned back, and then he was off, trailed by that little freshman.

"What the heck was that all about?" Amber asked. She sounded disappointed.

"You okay?" Kari asked me.

I shrugged. "Yeah, fine. Whatever."

Kari watched me for a minute—they both did—and then they started talking about this big scandal with this actor and a car or something. They both seemed to know every single detail, but I'd never even heard of the guy. And even if I had I wouldn't have cared, because my brain was too busy trying to figure out what had just happened.

Beaner wasn't upset. Or if he was upset, he hid it really, really well. Here it was only three days after our breakup and he was already seeing someone, going on with his life. Not even mad at me. Which meant, I guess, that he was a really mature kind of guy.

Or ... it meant our relationship hadn't mattered. Which, much as I hated to think it, was probably a lot closer to the truth. It's not that Beaner didn't
care
about me. He cared enough to wish me a good game, after all. To say hello. But if it had been me and Brian—when it
had
been me and Brian—we couldn't have been in the same room together. The same building. And the fact that Beaner and I were still okay, well, what did that say about what the two of us had had together?

You know what it said? It said we didn't have much. All those times I'd had a pang because I didn't feel that spark ... well, I guess Beaner didn't feel a spark either. Maybe we'd just gone out because we were such good friends that we thought we could take it further. Take it further kissing-wise (although nothing more than kissing, which tells you something), and further emotionally too. Although not much further that way either, it turned out. Which is too bad, because I'd like to think I'm worth more than that. That Beaner and I both are.

That night we played Bonnelac. The boys did too, of course. It was going to be a really rough game for them because Bonnelac has this super hotshot sophomore who's already being scouted by a bunch of schools, and I tried to send good thoughts Beaner's way, get him a boost somehow; it was the least I could do. But it was a pretty rough game for us as well, especially for me because I was working so hard with Darey.

I sat alone on the bus the whole ride over, trying to get my head there. It's really hard for me to get my head anywhere, especially when it comes, you know, to even thinking about expressing myself. And once we were playing, with Kari as point as always and me at center, I tried to keep my eyes extra open for things that a good leadership-type player might want to note, like how Bonnelac's 40 couldn't pass to her left. Then I'd panic like always and think that Kari should say something, and then that I should say something to Kari so she'd speak up, and then I'd think,
Wait a minute. Darey can do that!
And I'd remind myself that I was playing the part of an amazing girl basketball player and that this character needed to
lead.
And then Darey, using my mouth—it was crazy, it was like I was outside my body observing this person do stuff—she'd tell Kayla to stay all over 40's right side so that 40 would blow her passes.

As you can see, this was an extremely complicated and roundabout way of conveying one little piece of information, so it didn't happen all that frequently. Most of the time I blew it like I always do. But at least I didn't spend the whole game wishing I could put a paper bag over my head and hide in the boys' locker room. And afterward Coach K mentioned how much more assertive I'd been. Which was a stretch, the "much more" part, but I wasn't going to argue.

I worked on Darey at practice too, for the rest of the week, trying over and over to get my head into hers. I started whispering to myself, things like "Come on, Darey, step up!" Just like Coach K does, which I didn't even realize for a while, duh. And then more than whispering, like when we were practicing this new play with Jess, and three times in a row she got herself boxed in. If she couldn't keep herself open with a freshman guarding her, how the heck would she manage against Hawley? Which Darey pointed out, getting kind of sharp with her, even.

Jess stared at me like I'd lost my mind, but Kari and Kayla let out this huge whoop and started applauding. Even the freshmen were cheering, and Coach K came over and felt my forehead, making this big show about how I must be sick and maybe we should call an ambulance, while I stood there wishing I could melt through the floor.

Ashley was sitting in the bleachers, laughing her head off. Since our UW–Oshkosh talk, she'd come to every practice, doing her homework in the bleachers but watching us too. Figuring out how to be a short little genius student manager. "Way to go, Darey!" she called out now.

Kari looked over at her. "What are you talking about?"

Ashley stopped laughing and bit her lip. She looked totally embarrassed.

I sighed. "It's okay. You can tell them."

So Ashley, after asking me four or five more times if it was really okay to spill the beans like this, finally described
Psychology Today
and her brother's orthodontist appointment, that article about shyness and how pretending that you're someone else, the way actors do, can actually help you overcome it. "And so that's what D.J.'s doing. She's acting, well, like..."

"Like a real basketball player," I put in.

Coach K was nodding to himself. "You know, that's not a bad idea there."

"But who
are
you?" Kari asked. "I mean, if you're pretending to be someone, who is it?"

I shrugged. "No one in particular. I just think of this person and have her act, you know, the way a real ballplayer would."

"What's her name?" Kayla asked.

I hesitated. What harm could it do? Heck, it might even help things. I swallowed. "Darey."

"Oh!" Kari clapped her hands. "That is so cool! You're—you're—you're Dairy Queen!"

W
IN DIDN'T CALL HOME FOR
the rest of the week. Or if he did call home, he didn't ask for me. Or if he did ask for me, Mom didn't put him through. That's probably what happened, that third one. Whatever the explanation was, I sure wasn't complaining. Even though it had only been a week since I'd met those two coaches, Win made it sound like I was holding up the coronation of a president or something. But I couldn't answer, because ... well, because of a lot of things.

I was talking to Brian now, talking a lot. Every night doing homework—which we did get finished sometimes, just so you know—we'd gab away for hours. I told him about Darey and Ashley and
Psychology Today,
and the two of us busted a gut about how I hadn't even noticed Darey and Dairy sound the same. And he agreed it was totally logical that I'd be able to open my mouth as someone else a lot more easily than as plain old D.J.