NOT IF YOU BREAK UP WITH ME FIRST

Lifelong best friends Eve and Andrew survive a “Category 5 emotional hurricane” in the first months of eighth grade.

Eve is thrilled when Andrew returns from two months away with his family, but things are immediately weird. It seems to matter—to their families and friends, anyway—that Eve’s a girl and Andrew’s a boy, even though the two of them don’t intend for anything to change. But when Eve’s cross-country friends start talking about dates for the school dance, Eve worries she’ll be “left out and left behind,” so during his marching band practice, she asks Andrew to go with her. Their respective friend groups assume they’re dating, ruining their friendship, which is especially unfortunate for Eve, whose parents have been fighting. Both kids receive tragically bad advice, and each ends up determined to make the other initiate the breakup—and each stubbornly refuses to be the one to break up with the other, leading to mean pranks, hurt feelings, and a huge fight at a school event. Eve struggles with the belief that her relationship with Andrew makes her mom happy; after the public disaster, Eve’s parents reassure her that it’s not her responsibility to hold the family together. Andrew’s mom teaches him about sincere, heartfelt communication. Andrew and Eve ultimately break up, restoring their friendship in a messily honest, heartfelt, and satisfying denouement on the playground. Main characters read white.

Perfectly captures the “actual disorder” of being 13.