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superhero mode. I half expect her eyes to start glowing and little fluorescent whirlwinds to blow up around her. In a nanosecond, she plucks the thing off the floor, stuffs it in her pocket, grabs a fistful of my pants and pulls. That’s all it takes—a Class A wedgie—and I’m on my feet an instant before Anita turns around.
    Unfortunately, Anita’s no fool. She immediately notices that I have the leg of a chair caught in my hair.
    The way she screeches you’d swear she’d just stumbled on the decapitated remains of her entire family. She drops the vacuum, races over and rips the chair out of my hair. (And my hair out of my head, but, like, whatever.) She falls to her knees as if she’s going to start giving the chair CPR or something.
    She flails an arm at us. “Get out! Get out! ”
    We know better than to say anything. We get out.
    Somehow we manage not to laugh until we’re safely in my room.

4
Friday, 4:15 p.m.
    Mimi: The Magazine
    Friends, enemies or frenemies? Find out where you stand. Also, don’t be chicken: ten bold new ways to serve your favourite fowl. Available on newsstands now.
    Selena’s rolling on the floor, killing herself laughing, when all of a sudden she winces. “Yowch! What the…?”
    She gets up, rubbing her hip. She’s annoyed for a second, then her face just, like, blooms. She reaches into her pocket and goes, “The thing!…I forgot about the thing!”
    She jumps onto the bed beside me, all excited. I get this little memory of being about nine and the two of us finding something—I can’t remember what, an old key maybe—and thinking it was magic. We were too old to actually believe that kind of stuff but it didn’t matter. It was our own little world. We could believe whatever we wanted to back then.
    I’m looking at Selena still sort of bouncing on the bed and I suddenly remember the whole concept of “fun.” It’s like I stumbled on a picture of someplace I forgot I ever even visited and, just likethat, all the fabulous things I did on the trip start coming back to me. I get this happy feeling in my stomach. I almost laugh. Life’s so weird. Half an hour ago, I didn’t even want to answer the door. Now, I don’t know, I feel part of something again.
    Selena slumps against the wall and goes, “Damn.” She tosses the thing at me. “I thought it was some big honking sapphire,” she says, “but it’s just some ugly football ring.”
    I smile and shake my head. Who cares what it is? I slip the ring over my thumb and try to read what’s written on it. It’s kind of grubby, as if it’s been through a lot. “‘Port Mutton, N.S.…’”
    “That’s Minton, you moron.” Selena makes this little one-ha laugh. “Port Mutton. Are you nuts? Who’d name a place Port Mutton?” She gives me this squiggly eyebrow look.
    I squiggle my eyebrows right back at her. Old buddies. I say, “Yeah, well, someone named a place Boca Raton. You know, like, Mouth of Zee Rat? Doesn’t stop rich people from going there.”
    “And I guess you’d know about that, wouldn’t you,” she says.
    My face goes hot. Is she pissed off? Does she think I’m bragging? Why would I brag about being rich? Like I need to be anyone else’s target.
    Selena clicks her tongue. “Still doesn’t make it Port Mutton.”
    Relax. She’s okay. She’s just joking.
    I say, “Fine. So it’s Port Minton High School Panthers. Whatever. What’s my mother doing with a high school football ring in her bedroom?”
    She winks. “Do you really want to know?”
    Anita would kill her if she heard her say something like that. I just gag.
    Selena says, “Sorry,” and gags too. We both laugh.
    I stare at the ring. It’s huge, even for me. Mimi could no doubt wear it as a bracelet.
    If I’d found it anywhere else, it would have been yeah, so what? A football ring. Big deal. But finding it in Mom’s room is just plain bizarre. Mimi has nothing in her room. Nothing, I mean, that a decorator or a stylist or an