FYI: The end! I can't believe I finally finished it. It only took me… about four years? Thanks so much for reading! I will probably type up some closing "production notes" and post them to my website (the link to which is in my profile) if you're interested.

-o-o-o-o-o-

It was the last week of school. Going to school was really just a formality for me, at that point. I had already failed every single class except Chorus. I had been to three of my weekly sessions with Clyde so far, pouring out the endless stream of agony that had been brewing inside of me. I felt like a shell. Like I could never be the person I used to be. But Clyde said that that was normal, and the next step was to learn to accept the change. To stop dwelling on what I'd lost, and start thinking about what I could gain. Talking to him was making things a little easier, but the future still felt like a scary, hopeless thing.

"Easy, mija," my father instructed calmly from the passenger's seat of his car. "Foot on the gas gently, accelerate gradually, don't cut the turn too hard."

I took a deep breath as my hands rested nervously on the steering wheel. Making sure there was no car other car anywhere even remotely near me, I exited the abandoned parking lot and pulled out onto the road for the very first time. Maybe as some kind of consolation prize for going over the deep end, or maybe as some naïve attempt to give my life a sense of normalcy, my dad had been giving me driving lessons in the parking lot of a closed-down grocery store. Today was a big step for me, as I joined the actual streets and drove myself to Eli's house.

"Take it nice and slow. No need to rush. This is one of the trickiest time of day to drive, you know. Dusk and dawn. The twilight will play tricks on your eyes. It's hard to tell what's what when it's not quite daylight but not quite dark, either."

When we arrived, my dad gently told me how to put the car in park, even though I'd been practicing it for weeks. It was scary, but Dad was helpful. We got out of the car and I realized my heart was pounding just a little. I had driven! It was the first thing I had to be proud of in a long time. I reached out to give my dad a quick hug goodbye as he headed to reclaim his place in the driver's seat.

"Thanks, Dad," I said to him. "You've been a really great teacher. I know Mom never would have been so patient." I felt my voice get soft and sad. "She barely even talks to me anymore."

My father tousled my hair gently and looked into my eyes the way he did when I was small. "Don't be so hard on your mother, Miranda. Remember how you two used to be amigas? Never any fighting."

I exhaled and looked at the sidewalk. "That feels like a long time ago."

Dad smiled calmly. I wished I could have taken some of that calm and put it inside of me. "It wasn't as long ago as you think. She loves you very much. She's just worried about you. Between you and me, your mom worries so much because you remind her so much of herself. We've all been teenagers, mija. You're not the first. And you're not alone."

He leaned forward and placed a kiss on my head, waving goodbye as he climbed into the car. I sighed and went inside Eli's house, where he and Parker were waiting for me.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Inside the house, we quickly turned Eli's kitchen into a base of operations for our elaborate plan.

"I want to put pot in them," whined Eli, hovering over me as I poured red and green Christmas tree-shaped chocolate chips into a bowl of batter. He flailed his hands around dramatically, bouncing from foot to foot like a hyperactive child. "Can you imagine it? The whole school on drugs? Ms. Ungermeyer with the munchies? It'll be hilarious!"

"You're completely missing the point of this social experiment," Parker scolded. She was busy scooping spoonfuls of cookie dough onto a baking sheet. The entire kitchen was warm and saturated with the thick smell of holiday sugar. "The idea is to spread purely good energy, indiscriminately, for no personal gain. We're going to expel all of our negative energy from the year. Mimi's a genius."

I didn't respond. Instead, I reluctantly took a spoonful of dough and shoved it into my mouth. It was a mental ordeal just to swallow it, but I tried to let myself enjoy it. The next step was learning to be okay with it.

I wasn't so sure about calling this a social experiment, or any of the other fancy words Parker used. I had only said, idly, that we should make cookies. Not because I even wanted any. Just because, I remembered that one of my favorite parts of Christmas had always been baking cookies. I wanted to feel that way again. I thought baking Christmas cookies would bring back some of that innocence. And then I thought, we should give them away. And then I thought, we should give them away to everyone. And then Parker started to get interested. And before we knew it, we were baking over two hundred cookies with the plan of offering them to everyone at school the next day. For no reason.

Maybe we all needed to remember what innocence was like.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Later that night, we were watching Blood Feast Island Man as the cookies cooled. It wasn't a preferable movie choice for Parker or I, but it was all we could do to distract him from the cookies he kept trying to snag.

"So what, your parents are just going to ship you off to Rehab Summer Camp For Angsty Girls?" Parker said conversationally, as she munched pleasantly on popcorn. The whole thing was merely amusing to her. Like she had no sensitivity at all.

I fidgeted uncomfortably. "They're not shipping me off," I said, carefully. "I want to go."

"Ugh. Why? It sounds boring and trite."

There was no way in the world I could ever explain to Parker McKenzie why I decided to check into the clinic Clyde had recommended. Parker didn't believe in asking for help. Parker was an island. But I couldn't be Parker. And finally, after so many months of clinging to her glow, I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be Parker. I didn't want to be Mimi. I was Miranda, and I needed to hold onto that.

"So what am I going to do without you next semester? Scarf Starburst and watch awful movies with this fuckwit?"

Eli, eyes glued to the cheesy horror flick on the television, did not even notice he was being insulted.

I simply shrugged. "I'm sure you'll be okay."

The truth was, I needed to leave. My friends, my enemies, my parents: I needed to get away from them all. Maybe Parker more so than anyone. Not because I didn't like her, but because I didn't want her to be my crutch any more. I needed to go somewhere where I had nothing but myself. I needed to work through some things. I needed to go to this clinic.

I was already going to lose one semester; what was one more? I would leave for January and spend three months in the clinic. I would have to repeat the ninth grade. But maybe, I had finally decided, that was for the best. Maybe I needed a second chance.

"Hey Parks, I need you to help me with something," I said suddenly.

"Yeah?" she answered.

"I think I'm in need of something cathartic."

Parker turned towards me and grinned, her eyes widening with excitement. "Ooh, yeah? What do you have in mind."

I got up from where I sat on the couch and went into the kitchen. Parker followed me curiously. Digging through a drawer of supplies, I finally found a pair of scissors. I handed them to Parker and sat in one of the kitchen chairs, ready and willing.

"I want you to cut off all my hair."

"Whoa. Are you sure?"

I nodded and grabbed hold of the sides of the chair, just in case my body tried to fight my mind's choice. "I'm positive. It's growing out all awkward and uneven, anyway. I want to work with a clean slate."

Parker came towards me and took a piece of my hair, now just a few inches above my shoulder, and opened the blades of the scissors. She paused. "Seriously though, I'm not one of those kind of girls. I have no idea what I'm doing here. Are you sure?"

"Just cut it off, Parker."

She shrugged. "Works for me."

Like not so many months ago, I sat still as chunks of black hair drifted from my skull and covered the ground all around me. But this time, I knew what I was getting into. I knew that I needed a catharsis. I knew I needed to start over.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Cocoa dropped all three of us off at school the next day, helping us unload our many tubs of cookies. Being the ever-supportive hippie mother, she wished us luck on our quest for fucking the system's head and creating positive energy. Donning my new pixie cut and a stack of Tupperware, I marched into the school, more confidently than I ever had before.

Nervously, I approached the first person I saw, a sophomore drama student. "Hey," I said. "Would you like a cookie?"

The girl eyed me like I was a serial rapist. "Um, how much are they?" she asked, probably assuming I was raising money for a club.

"They're free."

"…what's wrong with them?"

"Nothing. They're delicious. They're for everyone."

"…are their drugs in them or something?"

I smiled. This really was a social experiment. People had no idea how to react to unprompted generosity. No one trusted anyone. No one thought good things came without a price. I reached into the Tupperware and helped myself to one of the cookies.

"No drugs, no catch," I said simply, my mouth half-full with chewy chocolate chip cookie. "Just free cookies. Merry Christmas."

After chewing on her lip for a moment, the girl finally gave in. "Okayyyy. I guess." She reached in for a cookie, then grabbed one of her friends and pulled her over to me. "Jenny, come get one of these cookies."

And so we spent the entire morning just like that. Traveling the commons area, offering cookies to everyone and anyone, smiling and watching the variety of reactions. Lots of people asked how much they were. Lots of people were thrilled. Lots of people were too freaked out to take one. Almost everyone hesitated, if only for a second. But we never stopped. There was no segment of the silently segregated commons area that we didn't hit. Drama kids, jocks, smarties, even the Senior courtyard. Even the Untouchables in the cafeteria. The Stoners, of course, were especially happy to see us. We visited the Bandies, and even they welcomed us into their clique-ish cult. I offered two to Cody Pearson, and he smiled at the peace offering. It was overwhelming, the rush I got from our silly little game.

Our last stop was the very center of the commons, the people who thought they were the center of the universe. But by the time we reached them, I felt so good about myself I wasn't even remotely intimidated.

"Free cookie?" I offered.

Charlie Kurasaki grinned. "Wow. Sweet. Aren't you just too cute?" He gave my chin an affectionate squeeze. "Can I take one for my girlfriend, too?"

I grinned. "Don't worry. She'll get one."

As Parker and Eli and I wandered around the circle of populars, I finally came up to a group of freshman cheerleaders.

"Do you guys want a cookie?" I asked, unafraid of them for the first time. I had something they didn't: the power of unconditional friendliness. The cookies are for everyone.

Kate, Rhonda, Lizzie, and few other Unrecognizables stared back at me. Kate chortled. "What, are you raising money for a new wardrobe?" she hissed. "Because you desperately need it."

"Nice haircut," Rhonda sniggered. She leaned over to Kate. "She looks like an uber-dyke."

Beside me, Parker interjected. "Oh clever, Larson. Taking your insults from a movie. How third-grade of you."

But I didn't care. I looked at Lizzie. "Cookie?"

Lizzie blushed. Her friends stared at her, challenging, accusing, waiting to see if she would actually take anything from my tainted Weird Kid hands. I stared right into her, and I could see her fidget and try to avoid my gaze. But after a moment, she exhaled, and reached forward into the tub of cookies.

"Thanks, Miranda," she said. Then she looked over at her friends, who were shocked and affronted. She shrugged. "What? You guys are going to turn down a free cookie?"

And in the end, it was that simple. We still weren't friends. Tomorrow these people would hate and/or ignore me just as much as they always had. But the Cookie Experiment let me see, if only for a fleeting moment, how senseless and unthreatening those arbitrary high school lines were. It made me see, if only for a fleeting moment, that life was bigger than what stood inside these chipped-paint walls. If nothing else, I could say I'd gotten a few laughs out of Hillridge before I took the leap into rehab.

The bell rang and our tubs were nearly empty. The momentary high was over, and it was time to head to class. As I walked down the hall towards my locker, I noticed a curly-headed boy in my periphery, falling into stride beside me.

"Got any more cookies?" asked Gordo.

I shrugged. "Sorry, kid, mine are all empty. And I'm pretty sure Eli ate all of his. But I think Parker has a few left."

Gordo nodded. "Too bad you weren't filming all that." Realizing what he was saying, he slapped himself on the forehead. "Too bad I wasn't filming all that. Talk about fodder for sociological analysis! What an experiment. That was seriously awesome."

I smiled. For some reason, I wasn't surprised at all that Gordo viewed the whole thing through the same lens as Parker. "It's rare, I know, but I am inclined to have moments of awesomeness."

Gordo grinned and nodded. His face then grew serious. "You know I'm really sorry, right? For ever… leaving you out or forgetting about you or whatever. It's been a weird semester."

As I arrived at my locker, he helped me shove all the empty Tupperware inside. I took a deep breath and looked at him. Looked at him with the same calm my father always had in his eyes. "You know what? It's cool. It's in the past. It really doesn't matter."

And I felt a pinch of warmth inside me, realizing I almost believed the words as I said them. A few lockers down, I spotted Parker struggling to open her own locker while juggling all those plastic containers. "Hey Parks!" I hollered across the noisy hall. "You got any cookies left for Gordo?"

Parker scurried over with a smile on her face, clearly thrilled to be able to do any kind of favor for Gordo. I shook my head and smirked to myself as I shut my locker and started to walk to Science. In no time at all, Parker and Gordo were wrapped up in flirty smiles and deep conversation. I had a feeling Parker would indeed have someone new to occupy her while I spent the semester at the clinic.

People liked to say that the reason I changed was that she was a bad influence on me. That I fell in with the wrong crowd, that I was just an innocent victim of peer pressure. But those people were wrong. I don't exactly know myself how it all happened, but I know that it wasn't any one person's fault. I mean, that's life. Sometimes it brings people together, sometimes it tears them apart. We were all just caught up in its current.

But I guess that's high school. You've just got to keep your head above water. Swim through the twilight, head for the sun.