In one week, my whole life changed.

Okay, not my whole entire life. I still lived with my dad and my brother, I still didn't have a cell phone, and I still had red hair that started to look like shredded carrots if I didn't wash it, like, every ten minutes.

I guess I should say my school life changed. When you're twelve and in sixth grade, school practically is your life.

In the seven days before that Thursday, no one had told me I was annoying.

In those one hundred sixty-eight hours, nobody had stuck gum in my hair or laughed right in my face or whispered, "I hate Gingerbread," when they passed me in the hall.

In those ten thousand and eighty minutes, I'd gone to the restroom between classes and nobody had harassed me, and I didn't have to go there at lunchtime to eat my sandwich in a stall. I'd even gone to my locker and not freaked out because there might be moldy cookies in there.

For those I-don't-how-many seconds, I wasn't that Ginger girl everybody was mean to.

Now I wanted to yell, "Woo-hoo!" and grin all goofy all the time, but my brother, Jackson, would have said, "Do you have gas or what?"

So on Thursday, March 12, when Mrs. Zabriski announced that the health part of P.E. was over and we would now be working with her husband, Coach Zabriski, I was the first to go, "Woo-hoo!" Actually I was the only one to go, "Woo-hoo!" Which was strange because I wasn't the only one who considered Mrs. Z to be their most unfavorite teacher.

Our other five sixth-grade teachers upheld this Code we had signed, which said we had to "respect the dignity of every human being." But Mrs. Zabriski ... let's just say she let Kylie Steppe and her, um, mean-girl friends be just snarky enough to almost disrespect the dignity of every human being. Especially my friends and me. The Tribelet.

Like, just then, as we were all filing out of the health classroom, Kylie turned her head so her little splashy brown bob swung into her blue-with-gold-specks eyes. She brushed it away like she was all irritated with it and looked at Tori, the leader of our Tribelet—and my friend—and said, "Nice shirt."

That would have sounded like a compliment if Kylie's lip hadn't been curled all up to her nostrils like something smelled bad. Actually, something did because the BBAs (the boys who were always burping or belching or doing disgusting things with their armpits) were all around her, and the most disgusting thing about their armpits was the gross odor.

Anyway, Tori, who in my opinion had a way cuter bob than Kylie because it was chocolate brown and thick and she didn't use it like a weapon, just looked down at her Einstein hoodie sweatshirt and said, "Thanks. I like it."

Kylie nudged Riannon with her elbow, and Riannon's green eyes got all close together, and she said, "OBviously. You wear it practically every single day."

I could've pointed out that Riannon shouldn't talk because she wore those green contact lenses every day, and they looked totally fake. But saying stuff like that wasn't in the Code, and besides, I also felt like I tasted whatever they were smelling when I did.

The line going down the hall toward the outside door spread out, but of course the Tribelet stayed together: Tori, Ophelia, Mitch, Winnie, and me.

"I'm scared of Coach Zabriski," Winnie said.

I almost didn't hear her because everything about her was sort of feathery, including her almost white hair and her voice. I just knew she'd be saying it. She was pretty much scared of everything.

Ophelia, on the other hand (I liked thinking things like "on the other hand"), got into it when something scary was about to happen, although I still didn't get what was so bad about Coach Zabriski. When I moved to Grass Valley and started at Gold Country Middle School, we were already doing health with Mrs. Z, so I didn't know him.

"Do you think he'll make us run laps again?" Ophelia said as we passed through the double doors to the schoolyard. Her eyes got as big and round as two Oreos, and she pulled the pink tie thingy out of her braid. Butter-colored hair unraveled down her back.

"What did you do that for?" Mitch said. She never understood Ophelia and her hair. Mitch's own was brown and spiky and short, and she liked being called Mitch instead of Michelle. Mitch was tough, and she could be as prickly as her own hairdo. She once punched a kid in the face for calling her brother retarded, but she didn't do that kind of thing anymore—not since the Code—but nobody forgot that she could.

Anyway, back to Ophelia's hair, which the March wind picked up and swirled in the air as we headed for the fenced-in area where everybody else was going.

"I want it to look dramatic if we have to report him for student abuse," she said.

"Is she serious?" Mitch said to me.

"Oh, yeah," I said. I was sure my grin was goofy—I was glad my brother wasn't standing there—but I couldn't help it. Nobody ever used to ask my opinion about anything, so when they did now it was woo-hoo worthy.

"All right, people, let's move it!" a voice bellowed (that's the only word for it) from the other side of the fence.

It belonged to a short guy with that kind of hair that's cut flat on the top. I couldn't be sure, but it looked like he dyed what there was of it blond. I never knew guys did that.

Mitch grabbed my arm and broke into a stampede kind of run, but Coach yelled, "You know better than that, Iann."

"Wish he'd make up his mind," Mitch muttered to me.

"I know, right?" I said.

Mitch grunted. That was Mitch for "you're okay."

It was good to be okay.

Coach Zabriski (on the other hand) didn't seem to think that anybody was okay. He stood in front of this big wooden frame thing with thick, knotted ropes hanging down from it. The way he had his arms—which kind of reminded me of two big hams—folded across his chest and the way his whole forehead came down over his eyes like the hood on Tori's sweatshirt, I wondered if he was about to use those ropes to tie us up. Beside me, little Winnie whimpered. She did that a lot.

When our whole class was bunched up in front of him, Coach said, "I see we have some 'tudes in this group."

I raised my hand. He lifted his chin at me, which I guessed meant he was calling on me, so I said, "What's a 'tude?"

"Name."

"'Tude is a name?" I said.

"Don't get smart with me," he said. I almost couldn't see his eyes now because his eyebrows were in the way. "Tell me your name or you're doing laps."

"Ginger Hollingberry," I said. Well, yelled. My brother also told me I sounded like a bullhorn when I got all worked up.

Coach lifted his chin again, this time at everybody. "Someone tell Hollingberry what a 'tude is."

"I will," Tori said, and turned to me while Kylie's friends groaned with their eyes. "It's short for 'attitude,' and it means when you, you know, pull an attitude."

"Oh," I said. "I don't have one."

Coach Zabriski glared me down until I was sure I was shrinking like Alice in Wonderland, and then he said, "I'm not wasting any more time on this. All right, people, listen up."

Great. I was a waste of time. I now knew what was so bad about Coach Zabriski.

It got worse. He went on and on (and did I mention on?) about the...