There are only a handful of seventh grade classes that require entrance exams, including advanced math and honors English: and I decide to take both.

I put on my favorite outfit, ask my mom to start the car cooling, and somehow make it into the classroom where the test is being held in a cloud of anticipation and uneasiness. Once I sit down in a cold, hard chair I feel better, however. But the comfort only lasts until about half-way through the test, when I lose track of what's going on. I can't bear the thought of putting down my pencil in defeat, so I continue to tinker with the equation until the teacher says the time is up, but I have no idea what in the crap I'm doing, which puts me in a mood that I stay in throughout the drive back home.

My mom knows how it is when I brood, so she's wise enough not to ask how the exams went until after we're safely in the door of the house.

"The honors English went fine," I snap, hoping she gets the gist not to bring up the math exam in the slightest. I hole myself up in our room and she doesn't bother me until dinner.

We share a room because there isn't enough space in my grandma-in-law's house for us all to have separate rooms, what with my two step sisters and our aunt in the basement. Plus, my mom can't afford the rent for two rooms. My grandma-in-law agreed to let us stay for a while if we pay rent, after all.

Ex-grandma-in-law, I remind myself, wondering if the "ex" is a bit harsh. But while The Ex might be gone, he still seems to haunt the very walls in this house, and I can't help but think the horrible-ness of the exam is his fault.

Sure, I probably did fine on the honors English exam, despite my test anxiety. But on the advanced math exam, I had no clue. The only reasonable conclusion I can reach regarding this is that I simply wasn't taught how to solve the equations mid-way through.

Screw Elementary School, I think bitterly. This is the problem with the track system, I think, angry again at The Ex: a single teacher decides whether you should advance with the rest of your grade or get bumped a track and get even further behind.

I'm sure this is what's happened as I scream into my pillow, a coping mechanism I've developed recently.

I'm not sure why I care so much, I just know it's unjust. It's this weird glitch in me: beating myself up when I don't excel where I can before the places I don't stand a chance become a dark pit in me that I'm sure will eventually eat me up inside.

As I venture deeper into the cloud of gloom I've created, I become sure that I'll screw up my part in the Shakespeare play this week. Every day this week: that's how many times we have to perform the stupid thing. They can't just have us perform it in the gymnasium, of course, so all the grades can watch it at once. They make us perform it in the small classroom, one grade, one parent, at a time.

I regret getting the part of Hermia now. How could I have been so stupid?

My mom's cell phone rings (the one she lets me use on occasion) distracting me. I see that it's Sally's number and answer immediately.

"There's going to be a meeting at my house this Saturday. You'll see why at school tomorrow," she says ominously into the receiver, and then she hangs up.

I'm left to wonder about that for the rest of the night until school next morning, when I have to drag myself out of bed.

At least the play performance takes place before recess so I don't have to wait too long in suspense (suspense is what kills my anxiety). It's easier than I thought to regurgitate the lines we've rehearsed so many times and as I look out at all the faces, I'm suddenly glad the classroom can only fit so many.

Sally, "the group's" new self-appointed leader, it seems, gathers us all together immediately once we're dismissed for lunch.

"Mary has a boyfriend," she says in that ominous voice of hers. And no one questions her authority as she eyes us all to be sure we know she means business.

There is almost an immediate reaction from Alex, Sal and Melanie but I stay quiet sensing there's more to tell.

After carefully concocted exclamations of "what?!" and "why didn't she tell us?!" Sally gets to the second, juicy twist to the surprise announcement .

"Her boyfriend is Kennith." And we all know what comes next.

"OUR Kennith?!" Sal's normally enthusiastic chirp is edged with a lilt that reveals how hurt she is by this.

Sally nods, eying us all again in that uncomfortable way, at least for me. I hate feeling pressured to feel a certain way. I usually wind up feeling the opposite. But the other girls eat up her words as she proclaims somberly: "I think it's best that Eva and Mary don't attend our 'group meeting'."

She's never called our hangouts "meetings" before but the finality of it seems etched in the phrase which I'm sure she used for years to come. I never find out though, because the phrase just doesn't sit well with me and I can't shake the exclusion of it from my brain. "Group Meeting" ugh.

I run into Mary and Eva outside, wanting to avoid them today. But they don't know any different.

They're expressions are so heartwarming and unassuming it's not more than thirty seconds before my obtuse voice blurts out: "Sally knows you're dating Kennith."

The only one more surprised than Mary is Eva. But she recovers quickly, Sally's disapproval evidenced by the unease which has crawled deep into my being throughout the past half hour of torturous secrecy.

Things escalate rather quickly after that, at least amongst us three girlhood friends. It only takes a minute or two before Mary is deeply offended on a level that puts Sal's embarrassment to shame and Eva is actively cursing Sally's name.

"I really don't care all that much if you date Kennith," I assure Mary, trying to soothe the tyranny which has only gotten worse inside me. "I knew I really didn't stand a chance. I never know what to say to him."

"He's kind of a bad boy type," Mary agrees, putting her own embarrassment on hold to soothe me as I'm ironically the most torn of us all, it seems.

"I just don't understand why it's any of Sally's business," Eva seethes. "In fact, it isn't any of her business!" she answers her own question, overcome by hysterics from being blindsided, on the wrong side of a seeming competition we had unwittingly entered by graduating to sixth grade.

By the end of recess she's swearing up and down that she'll confront Sally for "backstabbing" us tomorrow at lunch.

This whole development makes me feel uneasy and I imagine cat claws and food flying through the air like in the movies.

I try not to make eye contact with Sally or any of the others for the rest of the day, afraid they might be able to see in them what I've done.

I'm so absorbed in this fear that I barely feel nervous at all for our second production of A Midsummer Night's Dream the next day. In fact, I wish the play could have lasted longer as I slowly make my way to lunch afterward.

But, as life sometimes dictates, something unexpected happens. Something that makes us all feel naive, chasing elusive boyfriends and fighting over it. It was called "sexual harrassment," a phrase that had all our parents lamenting that such a phrase was being introduced to us "too young" behind closed doors.

Not one of us had considered the possibility that maybe, sometimes, attention from the opposite sex wasn't wanted nor intended. Everyone except Alex.

She seems a little deflated when we ask her about it as though she's put-out from having already described it to so many adults.

"Sexual harassment," she repeats from where we all sit around her at the lunch table, listening intently. "That's what the lawyer is calling it. My mom's really upset ," she seems saddened by this.

"What do you mean?"

Alex looks up like I normally might do, probably less to avoid eye contact but more to retrieve the phrasing she's likely repeated numerous times by now. "I told him no, but he kept persisting."

We look at her like deer in headlights, trying to process all the possible implications of this rudimentary break down of events.

"Persisting?" Sal asks.

"Dude, you don't know what persisting means?"

"I know what it means!" she squeals, but Alex knows what she's getting at, putting down her adulting shield a bit.

"I told him I wasn't interested but then he started touching me," she stops herself as though weary if she continues we might break down in sobs like her mother had been seen doing in the principal's office earlier. The 'he' in question was an obnoxiously rich boy in the 'popular kids' track (as we called it) with those parents who looked like they never outgrew tanning beds or college sports.

"Like how?" Sal asks obtrusively.

"In the car he grabbed my knee and... His parents didn't say anything and... that's why he hasn't been to school all week."

We all look appropriately shocked.

"There's going to be a trial and everything," she breaks the subject line and we accept the new direction of the conversation.

"Wow."

No one says anything more until Mary suddenly pipes in, surprising us all because she only ever talked when there were two of us at a time. "Sexual harassment is a form of abuse. My biological dad physically abused me and my mom. That's why I got adopted."

We all knew that Mary was adopted, but I hadn't known why until now.

Alex looks to Mary appreciatively and this gets the rest of us to finally quiet.

Alex and Mary become an unlikely alliance for the short rest of that school year, dashing Sally's plans of revenge. They shared an emotional connection now that the rest of us shied away from, running close but not too close with tails between our legs. But that's where we were lucky, for now. And there wasn't another word about Kennith that wasn't immediately dismissed disgustedly, at least, not for a while.