Chapter 1-016

And since I couldn't see her perfectly penned answers anymore, my grades took a  dive. Especially in spelling. Then one time,during a test, Juli's in the middle of  sniffing my hair when she notices that I've blown a spelling word. A lot of words.  Suddenly the sniffing stops and the whispering starts. At first I couldn't believe it.  Juli Baker cheating? But sure enough, she was spelling words for me, right in my  ear. Juli'd always been sly about sniffing, which really bugged me because no one  ever noticed her doing it, but she was just as sly about giving me answers, which  was okay by me. The bad thing about it was that I started counting on her spelling  in my ear. I mean, why study when you don't have to,right? But after a while,  taking all those answers made me feel sort of indebted to her. How can you tell  someone to bug off or quit sniffing you when you owe them? It's, you know, wrong.  So I spent the sixth grade somewhere between uncomfortable and unhappy, but I kept thinking that next year, next year, things would be different.  We'd be in junior high —a big school — in different classes. It would be a world  with too many people to worry about ever seeing Juli Baker again. It was finally,  finally going to be over.