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Kristy brought up one of the vocabulary terms, the Spanish word for failure. “What do we say if the word is el fracaso?” she asked.

“Max,” Danielle muttered to herself. When she joked, she did so quietly because she didn’t think people usually got her sense of humor. It was too embarrassing when she said something she thought was funny and no one reacted.

The girls burst out laughing and Kristy gave Danielle a high five.

“You may laugh now, but I’m going to go home and cry,” Max said, mock-hurt.

After their turn, Danielle’s group watched the other students play. They saw the teacher flash “el error” at a student. Max looked at Danielle. “Max!” he said. Kristy and Bree laughed and high-fived Danielle again. The teacher kept glancing at Danielle’s group. Danielle was delighted that, for once, she was part of “that group”—the students who disrupted the class because they couldn’t stop talking.

When the National Honor Society held its vote for club officers, Danielle learned she was running for Webmaster unopposed. She was pleased to get the position, but slightly disappointed to win it automatically. She peeked around the room at students’ ballots. People who didn’t like her hadn’t voted for her, even though she was the only candidate, but she noticed that some people whom she never talked to had voted for her. So that was something.

At the NHS luncheon celebrating the newly elected officers, Danielle was excluded once again. When she walked into the room, students were eating at tables pushed into a large square. Every other student had been on the NHS board since middle school. As they gossiped, seemingly all old friends, Danielle didn’t say a word. She sat at a corner of the table, observed the group, and texted her mom. After lunch, the officers went outside to take photos. The group formed a large circle. Danielle was the only student outside of the circle, leaning against the wall.

One day, Max mentioned to Danielle that he was learning how to play tennis. “We’re playing tennis sometime, okay?” he asked her.

“All right,” she said.

Unsure whether Max was sincere, Danielle was hesitant to ask if he wanted to play at a specific time. Playing tennis would be an easy way to hang out with someone outside of school. I can always make fun of him for sucking, so I won’t have to struggle to think of something to say, she thought. Max talked to her frequently now. Almost daily, he’d ask, “Hey, Danielle, how was your day?” Not even her friends asked her that. Another thing Danielle liked about Max was that he seemed to pay attention to her. She could tell Paige and Mona something fifty times and they still wouldn’t remember. She could tell Max something once, and a week or two later he would bring it up.

The next day in Spanish class, Danielle casually leaned against her desk. She was nervous, even though she had overthought this interaction in advance. “Do you have volleyball today?” she asked Max.

“I have a game,” he answered.

“Man, no one can play tennis today!” Danielle said.

“I might be able to around one,” Max said. “Give me your number.” Danielle ripped a piece of paper out of her notebook, scribbled her number, and handed it to him.

“Whoooaaa,” said a student nearby.

Max kept a straight face. “Oh, yeah, we’re dating,” he said. Danielle cracked up. The idea of her dating Max was absurd. He was immature, she wasn’t interested, and she was convinced she had commitment-phobia, in any case.

After school, Danielle waited for Max to call. By 1:30, she gave up. “That’s another reason why I don’t hang out with new people, or even my friends very often,” she told me then. “I can’t trust them to actually do what they say they will. So it really doesn’t matter if it was hard or not to ask Max, because it didn’t work out anyways.”

This single incident caused Danielle to be dejected about her challenge once again, sure that there was no way she could make a new friend who would spend time with her outside of school. “I don’t think people are ever that interested in