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Chapter One
AN UNFORTUNATE GURGLE
Some “scientists” claim that everybody poops.
Which might be true, but I have a hard time believing it.
I’m not saying I want to see some proof, because that would be disgusting. But if everybody poops . . . how come no one talks about it?
And even if everybody does poop—which, as I mentioned, I don’t believe—I’m pretty sure no one on Earththinks about pooping as much as me. Not because I want to think about it—I don’t. I’d rather think about anything else, such as being mauled by a walrus or having my face eaten by a bunch of tiny cute mice.
But the problem is, my body makes me think about it. My stomach hurtsall the time—at home, at school—and especially during gym class.
I wish that my brain didn’t have to be attached to my body. Having flesh and bones and arms and legs and intestines is the cause of almost all my problems. If I were just a brain in a jar connected to a supercomputer, I’d never worry about having stomach pain or pooping or doing something embarrassing. No one would be able to tell if I was a kid or an adult or someone with a messed-up stomach or a normal one. No one would be able to tell if I was a girl or a boy or maybe something else.
But I’m not a supercomputer, so I have to run laps.
“Do you think the Addisons sweat at all?” That’s Leo. He’s not a fan of gym either.
We’ve been walking around the track for like fifteen minutes, and at this point my pit stains have pit stains.
All the other gym classes got to stay inside today, but Mr. DiMeglio used to be a professional wrestler, so he’s really hard on us. He doesn’t care that it’s a hundred million degrees on the track.
“No, definitely not,” I whisper to Leo, watching as the Addisons—Madison and Addison—lap us for the second time. “They’re robots.”
Madison and Addison (yes, those are really their names, and yes, it’s annoying) are best friends, and they’re both super athletic. They never post pictures on IG without each other, and all their posts get a ton more likes than everyone else in seventh grade, and sometimes more than people in eighth.
Leo and I are not friends with the Addisons. We’re pretty much only friends with each other.
“Wanna know what my Italian teacher told us last period?” Leo asks as we walk to the outermost lane of the track to let everyone pass us.
“That you should’ve taken Spanish with me?”
He rolls his eyes. “No, he said it’s the language of opera.” Leo turns to me and grins, and then, when he’s sure no one’s listening, he imitates an opera singer, arms outstretched. “CIAO, MI CHIAMO LEOOOOOO.”He sings it so that only I can hear, and I can’t help but laugh.
“What does that even mean?”
He slips his hands into his khaki shorts’ pockets. He never changes for gym if he can help it, and I don’t blame him. I always wear shorts or sweatpants and a T-shirt on gym days and then swap whatever shirt I wore to school for a baggier, dirtier one that hides my body.
“It means ‘Hi, my name is Leo,’” he tells me. “It’s the only thing I know how to say in Italian so far.”
We both lose it at that, giggling so hard that we have to stop walking.
“Leonard! Alison! This isn’t the mall! I want to see you jog!” Mr. DiMeglio shouts at us from his lawn chair. Yup, hislawn chair.
Leo and I cringe. Neither of us likes our real first names—we’re Leo and Al, thank you very much, but Mr. DiMeglio never calls us that.
I swing my arms a little so it looks like I’m jogging, but Leo actuallystarts jogging, so I run to catch up.
“I hate him,” he mutters. “ ‘This isn’t the mall’? Who says that? What does that evenmean?”
“Don’t listen to him,” I tell Leo. “Remember when they fired him from Positive Youth Development for being too negative?”
Leo shrugs, but he keeps jogging. After a minute he asks, “So, did your mom make you that doctor’s appointment yet?”
I look behind us to check that no one heard. “Not here,” I whisper, then run ahead, even though the bouncing makes my stomach clench. Because we can’t talk about this in public.
I’ve had stomach problems for a while, but they got really bad last winter. I tried to hide them from my mom, except she saw how often I was in the bathroom, and now I have to go to the most embarrassing doctor to ever exist (apoop doctor—yup, you read that right) even though I’m basically fine. I didn’t want Leo to find out, but my mom told his mom, and now he knows, through the mom-gossip grapevine.
After a minute of running in silence, we somehow get lapped by the Addisonsagain. And that’s when it hits me.
First, there’s the gurgle. Next, there’s that feeling, the one where all I can think about is what’s happening in my intestines. I want to stop jogging, or maybe scream, or just not be on this horrible, too-hot track in the first place.
I try to hold it in. I try, I try, I try. But I don’t think I can. I skid to a halt and dig my fingers into my hands and groan because what am I even supposed to do? I don’t have time to run inside the school to get to a bathroom.
Leo turns to me, his eyes wide. “Do you need me to do anything?” He must realize what’s happening even though I’ve done my best to hide my emergencies from him.
DiMeglio blows his whistle and shouts something at me as I shake my head at Leo, because I’m beyond help.
Then I see it: a porta potty off in the distance.
I take off. The only thing that exists in the whole world is the porta potty on the other side of the track and my messed-up stomach on this side. I’m sprinting, running faster than I ever have in my life.
I fling the porta potty door open. It smells like rotting garbage, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I rush to put toilet paper over the seat the way my mom taught me when I was little.
Then: relief.
Pure relief.
For, like, two seconds.
Before I realize what just happened.
My entire gym class watched me run into a porta potty. A PORTA POTTY.
I have to drop out of school. That’s my only option.
I guess I could say I threw up, because for some reason vomiting is less embarrassing than pooping. I bend over and put my head between my knees as a particularly painful bout ofyou-know-what happens.
I wish I could jump into the porta potty.
But I know it’ll get worse the longer I stay in here, so as soon as I’m done, I pump some of the gross old soap residue onto my palm and walk out into the bright September day.
Everyone’s huddled together by the edge of the track. I walk over as quietly as I can, hoping no one will notice me, but as I make my way to the edge of the group, Mr. DiMeglio looks up and says, “Glad to have you back, Alison,” and the Addisons whisper to each other and start giggling.
Gym class should be illegal. I wish I had hopped into the porta potty when I had the chance.
Mr. DiMeglio tells us that we’re running the mile next week, and Leo leans over and whispers, “You all right?”
I stare at the yellowing grass.
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Chapter Two
MY KISHKES
“You sure you’re okay?” Leo asks as we walk home from school later that day.
Gym is the only class we have together, so he hasn’t seen me since The Incident.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. I’m really not, but he doesn’t need to know that. It’s bad enough that he knows about my stomach problems in the first place. “But can youpromise not to say anything to either of our moms?”
He looks up at me—and he has to look waaay up, because I’m a full head taller than him—and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Yeah,” he says. “Promise.”
I smile at him, relieved. At least Leo has my back, even if my mom doesn’t. She’s convinced I have a “real problem,” when the cold hard truth is I’m just a kid who poops a lot. It’s fine. I’ll go to this special doctor and she’ll fix me up and I’ll never have a porta potty emergency ever again.
Leo and I only live a few blocks from school, but my back’s already sticky with sweat from carrying all the giant books we need for seventh grade.
I’m debating just letting my backpack crush me so that I never have to set foot in our school again when Leo asks, “Did you see the club flyers in the hallway?”
I snort. Leo and I aren’t club people. “Yeah, I saw,” I tell him. “Who would want to be in theIce Cream Crew? What do they even do?”
“Maybe they go out for ice cream?”
“This is why we don’t need stuff like that,” I say, putting a clammy hand on his shoulder. “We can get ice cream on our own, just the two of us, and we don’t have to deal with other kids or the teacher advisors. I bet they don’t even let you get sprinkles.”
“I guess.” Leo shrugs. “But maybe we could join something. I’m sure not all the club people are like the Addisons.”
“No, some of them are like Duke Waters, who’s even worse.”
(Duke set the boys’ bathroom on fire last year during a Model UN competition.)
Leo shakes his head. “I don’t know, maybe there’s a club that could be fun for us to join together.”
“We have a club,” I tell him. “It’s the Al and Leo Club, and it meets daily in your bedroom.”
I should probably mention that Leo and I live together. Not, like, together together. But we live on the same floor of the same building. Which is kind of incredible, because I’m like ten feet away from him at all times.
But the best part of living in the same building as him is that our apartments are directly above his mom’s bakery, so it smells amazingall the time.
“I like our club,” Leo admits.
“See?” I tell him, hiking my brick-filled backpack farther up on my shoulders. “That’s the only group we need.”
We arrive at our building and open the door to Klein’s Kosher Bakery, and we’re blasted with cold air and the scent of Jewish desserts.
“Well, look who it is!” Leo’s mom, Beth, says from behind the counter.
She washes her hands and runs over to give Leo a hug and a kiss, and then she pulls me in for a hug too.
People in the store always mistake me for Beth’s daughter, probably because we’re both white and Jewish and tall and lanky and have light-ish brown hair. (Honestly, sometimes I wish shewere my mom. She’s funny, she bakes, and she doesn’t ask me about my stomach.)
But people never randomly guess that Leo is Beth’s kid, which makes all of us super mad, and no one more than Leo. He looks more like his dad, who is Filipino and lives in New Jersey—he’s short and chubby and has light-brown skin.
“Can I interest you two in the challah nub?” Beth asks.
Leo turns to me and grins, and I fake a grin back. Normally, I’d be super excited about the challah nub—the end of the challah that she doesn’t turn into French toast or sandwiches—but today my stomach hurts too much to even think about eating.
“Yes please,” Leo says, and Beth brings it out for us on a paper plate.
“But save your appetites, okay?” she says before she hands it to us. “We’re having dinner together tonight.”
“All of us?” Leo and I exchange glances. We usually have dinner in our own apartments with our own moms. Sometimes we’ll light Shabbat candles and have dessert together, but, yeah. Dinner is separate.
“Yup!” Beth says, and her smile gets too big.
“Why are you being weird?” Leo asks.
“Not weird,” she says quickly. “We just thought it might be fun! Celebrate the first few weeks of the school year, that kind of thing.”
“Okay . . .”
Luckily, a customer walks in, and we’re spared any more of whatever that was. Leo perches on a stool at a small café table with the plate, but I tug on his shirt and usher him over to the stairwell before he gets too comfortable.
The fire door slams shut and drowns out the bakery sounds and smells, and we plop down on the concrete stairs.
“Why can’t we sit down there and eat?”
I look at the plate of food, and my stomach makes an audible gurgle.
His eyebrows scrunch up. “Are your kishkes still hurting?”
“A little,” I say, but my kishkes betray me by gurgling again. Leo calls them that because it’s what Beth says; it means “guts” in Yiddish. “But it’s fine, you eat it. I’m not hungry.”
He gives me another look as he takes a bite of the nub. I wish I could eat it. Leo’s mom’s challah is my favorite food. It’s fluffy on the inside and salty on the outside and it melts on my tongue (well, it does when I can eat it without needing to run straight to the bathroom).
“Why do you think we’re having dinner together?” Leo asks.
“Maybe the landlord raised the rent again?” That’s happened before, but it’s not usually a group discussion. I don’t tell Leo that I think it’s because of my stomach. That maybe my mom is going to try to have an apartment-wide talk about how sick I am and how everyone should try to be extra careful around me. She’ll tell them they need to make sure I’m eating the “right” things, like you’d do with a baby when they have too much mush and spit up all over themselves.