Read The Cupcake Diaries Collection: Katie and the Cupcake Cure; Mia in the Mix; Emma on Thin Icing; Alexis and the Perfect Recipe for Free Online

Wilson stepped into our circle.
    “Hey, it’s going to be about a half hour before the food is ready,” he said. “I inflated the volleyball this morning. How about a game of moms against kids?”
    That sounded good to me. I’m terrible at volleyball, but I still think it’s fun. Besides, anything would be better than standing around talking about why Callie and I weren’t taking the bus together.
    “Kids serve first!” I yelled, and I ran into the yardand grabbed the ball. I tossed it to Callie. “You’d better start. You know I usually can’t get it over the net.”
    Callie laughed, and we launched into the game. Let me explain what happens when I play volleyball: I will chase after any ball that comes over the net. I will hit it with everything I’ve got. The problem is I have no idea how to aim it. Sometimes the ball goes way off to the side. Sometimes it goes behind me, over my head. If I’m lucky, it’ll go right over the net. But that doesn’t happen a lot.
    Pretty soon Callie and I were cracking up laughing. We kept bumping into each other, and once we both tumbled onto the grass. It was really hilarious. And the funniest thing is that even though I am terrible at the game, we still beat the moms!
    “That’s game! Katie and Callie win!” Mr. Wilson called up from the deck.
    “Woo-hoo!” Callie and I cried, high-fiving each other.
    “And that’s perfect timing,” Callie’s dad added. “Lunch is ready!”
    Mr. Wilson might blame Callie’s mom for his big stomach, but he is a great cook too. After I drank two big glasses of lemonade (volleyball makes me thirsty) I dug in to the food on the table. There werehamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, juicy tomatoes from the garden, and of course, corn on the cob. I put a piece of corn on my plate before anything else.
    “Katie, remember the time you ate six pieces of corn on the cob?” Callie asked, giggling.
    “I was only six!” I cried.
    “I can’t believe we weren’t paying attention,” my mom said, shaking her head. “Six pieces. Can you imagine that?”
    “And I didn’t even get a stomachache,” I said proudly.
    “I love corn on the cob, but I could never eat six pieces,” Callie added.
    The rest of lunch was like that. We told funny stories, and we laughed a lot. It was just like last year’s Labor Day barbecue. Like nothing at all had changed.
    “Want to go to my room?” Callie asked when we were done.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “I might eat all the cupcakes while you’re gone!” Mr. Wilson warned.
    I hadn’t been in Callie’s room in more than a month. Some things were the same, like the unicorn decal and her purple walls and carpet. Andthe picture of me and Callie from when we went to an amusement park and had our faces painted like tigers. Callie with her blond hair and blue eyes, me with my brown hair and brown eyes. Totally different—but the tiger paint made us look like sisters.
    Other stuff was new. Like now she had lots of posters on her walls—lots of posters of boys. Most of them were from those vampire movies.
    When did she start liking those? I wondered.
    “You’ve got to see my pictures from camp,” Callie said. “I have so much to tell you.”
    “I know,” I said. “This is, like, the first time we’ve been together.”
    Callie held up her cell phone so I could see it and started scrolling through the photos. As they whizzed by, I saw lots of pictures of her and Sydney and the others. She stopped at a photo of a boy on a diving board.
    “That’s Matt,” she said. “Isn’t he cute? He was a lifeguard at camp.”
    I squinted at the photo. Matt had short brown hair and he was wearing a red bathing suit. He looked like a regular boy to me. But he didn’t have tentacles or antennae or a tail or anything, so I guessed that was a good sign.
    “He’s in eighth grade,” Callie said. “I pass him in the hallway every day between fifth and sixth period. The other day he actually said, ‘Hi, Callie.’