Maybe He Just Likes You

The next morning, Mila’s mother tells her she will be attending a Pilates class at the new gym in town, so her boss is making her come in early. The night before, Mila washed and dried her green sweater and hid it in the corner of her closet. She reminds her mother that she promised to take the girls to Old Navy to buy new clothes. She asks her mother if she can borrow one of her shirts, even though it has “paint spatters” all over it, and according to Hadley, it “looks like a tablecloth” (49). Her mother asks if Mila’s friends are making fun of her clothes, and Mila insists that she just wants to wear something different. Reluctantly, her mother agrees.

Mila arrives at school early, and the lunch aide Ms. Wardak scolds her for hanging out in the hallway outside of her homeroom. She threatens to report Mila to the assistant principal if she can’t find somewhere else to hang out before school, and Mila debates her choices. She decides to go to the band room, but only if the band teacher Ms. Fender is there because “no way would [Mila] go in there alone, even if [she] [isn’t] wearing The Sweater” (53).

Mila arrives in the band room and is joined by Samira, another student who witnessed the incident on the bus the day before. Samira tells Mila that if she were in Mila’s position, she “wouldn’t allow” (55) the boys to treat her like that. Mila feels like Samira is blaming her for what happened on the bus. Callum arrives and begins practicing loudly. Mila watches Callum and wonders if maybe he’s not so bad after all. However, as soon as Samira leaves, Callum brushes against Mila’s backside and whispers that her “butt looked nicer in that green sweater” (57).

Mila wants to hide in the library during lunch. Max is suspicious and asks if this has to do with the basketball boys, and he offers to help Mila as she helped him when Hunter was bullying him the year before. Omi and Zara join them, and the four friends head for the blacktop outside. Zara decides that she wants to play basketball with the boys, but when she approaches them, the boys laugh at her and call her tall and “straight, like a stick” (63). Zara is hurt but tries to hide it. The boys try to get Mila to come and play, but she refuses. The boys tease her and ask for hugs to see if her new shirt is lucky too. Zara—who is clearly unhappy about the attention Mila is receiving from the boys—tells her that no one is forcing her to play basketball with them.

Mila heads back into the school building, thinking about how Zara sided with the boys and didn’t stand up for Mila, and she wonders if Zara is jealous of the attention Mila is getting from the boys, especially Leo. Mila goes to find her guidance counselor Ms. Maniscalco but learns that she is out on maternity leave. Instead, Mila talks to a male counselor, Mr. Dolan. She tells him that some boys are teasing her. Mr. Dolan wants to have a conflict resolution meeting, but Mila doesn’t feel comfortable with this idea. Mr. Dolan repeats that he can’t do anything to help her, but he reminds her that “seventh grade boys can be very immature” and will “tease anyone or anything that moves” (71). He encourages Mila to ignore the boys, leaving Mila feeling more hopeless and alone than before.

When Mila takes her seat next to Callum in band, he asks if she is mad at him and his friends. Mila tries to ignore him, and when Dante tells her that she needs to get a sense of humor, Mila tells the boys that she wants them to stop messing with her and leave her alone. For a moment, the boys seem receptive, and Mila gets her hopes up, thinking that “THE WEIRDNESS [IS] OVER” (74). However, Callum moves his seat closer to Mila, and Mila catches Dante with his nose close to her hair. The ruckus gets Ms. Fender’s attention, and she scolds the entire trumpet section for being disrespectful when Samira played her solo. Callum promises Ms. Fender it won’t happen again, but Mila doesn’t believe him.

After band, Mila decides she wasn’t imagining things: Dante had no reason to be that close to her, and Callum was sitting close to her on purpose. She worries that nothing she says or does will stop the boys from messing with her, and the idea of having to ride the bus home with them terrifies her. So she decides to walk home instead, hoping to make it in time to meet Hadley’s bus. She “[gives] [her] old and dirty laces one last retie” and “start[s] walking” (80) the two miles home.

Mila arrives home late and finds Hadley sitting on the front porch with her friend Cherish and her mom, Mrs. Ames. Mila lies and says she was running late because she had to stay to finish a project, but Hadley is still angry with Mila for not being there to meet her when she got off the bus. Mila apologizes and begs Hadley not to tell their mom that she was late because “she’s so stressed about her job these days” and the girls should just “let her relax” (83) when she gets home. Suddenly, Hadley notices that Delilah had an accident.

Mila and Hadley take Delilah to the park, and along the way, Mila is comforted by the normalcy of the world around her. She feels like she has a chance to forget about the “weirdness” that has been going on at school, but when they arrive at the park, Mila sees Tobias and his little sister there. Tobias’s little sister is eager to pet Delilah, and when Tobias recognizes Mila, he seems embarrassed. Mila considers asking him why he and his friends are messing with her, but Tobias’s mom appears with his little brother and scolds her daughter for petting a strange dog because “we keep our hands to ourselves” (89). Mila considers tattling on Tobias to his mom but doesn’t.

As Mila and Hadley sit on a park bench together, Hadley tells Mila that she recognized Tobias’s little brother. Mila thinks about how differently Tobias behaves as a big brother when he isn’t surrounded by his friends at school, and she begins to wonder if “all the basketball boys have non-jerk sides” (91). She is perplexed by the thought of these boys knowing how to be gentle and kind to their siblings and to dogs, but not to her.