The game did not last a day or a week. It went on and on. Every morning, before the bell, the girls would gather round Wanda and ask, as if they truly wondered, how many dresses she had today. A hundred, Wanda would answer quietly. All silk. All velvet. All lined up in her closet. And the girls would walk away satisfied, laughing. Peggy was the one who always started it. She was pretty and clever and the most admired girl in the class, and she did not think of herself as unkind at all. To her it was only a bit of fun. Her best friend Maddie watched it all and felt something twist inside her. Maddie was poor too. She wore clothes handed down from richer cousins, and every time Wanda was teased, Maddie thought: one day they might turn on me. Maddie wanted the game to stop. She even wrote a note asking Peggy to leave Wanda alone. But she never gave it to her. She was too afraid that Peggy would laugh at her instead, or stop being her friend. So Maddie said nothing, and did nothing, and the teasing went on. Around this time the teacher, Miss Mason, announced a drawing contest: the girls would design dresses, the boys would design motorboats, and the best would be pinned up around the room.