That night, after dinner, Lizzie headed upstairs to take a nap like her mom had suggested. As soon as she entered her room, though, the phone rang.

"Hello?" Lizzie said, picking up her purple cordless phone and answering it.

"Hey, Lizzie," Gordo said.

"What's up?" Miranda asked.

"Pretzel stomach," Lizzie replied. "And I have a headache from all this worrying."

"See, I told you that worrying wouldn't do you any good," Gordo said.

"My stomach is tied in knots, too," Miranda told Lizzie, ignoring Gordo's comment.

"At dinner tonight, Matt seemed to be horrified about starting grade five, but it turns out that he is just concerned about getting more homework and not having enough time to play his video games," Lizzie said. "I was hoping that he was going to say that he was worried about being late for class, and getting detention, and having more responsibility and worrying about not being able to handle it all, so that I could hear what my parents had to say to him, and see if I could relate to it."

"At the risk of sounding stupid, why don't you two just sit down with your parents and tell them how you feel about junior high?" Gordo asked.

"Because they would just tell us that we have nothing to worry about," Miranda replied.

"Yeah, and Gordo, please call it middle school. It makes it sound even worse calling it junior high," Lizzie added.

"Listen, I have to go now, but you guys, just try to relax, okay? If you told your parents your worries, they would probably offer some guidance," Gordo said.

"Easy for you to say," Lizzie said. "Your parents are shrinks."

Animated Lizzie: My parents are normal people who like taking trips down memory lane during conversations about my problems.

"Whatever. See you later," said Gordo, hanging up. After Lizzie had talked to Miranda for a little while longer about how bizarre Gordo's idea of their parents actually offering them some good advice about grade seven, Lizzie got off the phone with her, too. She crawled underneath the covers of her warm, comfortable bed, and soon slipped off into an uneasy sleep, her mind spinning with what Gordo and Miranda had just said in their previous conversation.

"They would probably offer you some guidance," Gordo's voice echoed through her head.

"They would just tell us that we have nothing to worry about," this time it was Miranda's voice.

An hour later, Lizzie finally gave up on trying to slip into a deep, peaceful sleep and headed downstairs.

"How do you feel now, Lizzie?" her mom asked when she entered the living room.

"Huh? Oh, um, much better. A nice, refreshing nap was all I needed to get rid of that headache," Lizzie lied. Her headache was reduced to a dull ache now, instead of the intense one it was before, but the nap that she had just taken, if you could even call it that, was anything but nice and refreshing. Now she had the battle of her mind trying to decide whether or not she should talk to her mom about how she felt about starting middle school, or if she should just keep it quiet, to add to the stressful things in her life.

"Oh, that's good," Lizzie's mom said. She acted pleased, but Lizzie had a feeling that her mom knew that she wasn't completely telling the truth.

"I think I'm going to go read in my room for a while," Lizzie said, hoping that reading would take her mind off of middle school for a while. Lizzie's mom shot her a suspecting look. Lizzie wasn't that big of a reader.

"Read?" she repeated.

"Yeah, our English teacher gave us that summer reading list of cool books to check out, and the last time we were at the library I got a couple out, and I want to go read them now," Lizzie replied quickly. This was the truth. Mrs. Parker, Lizzie, Miranda, and Gordo's sixth grade English teacher had assigned the whole class a reading list, and had said that if they read at least two books on it, they would have a good headstart on English class in grade seven, and Lizzie did want to read them, because then there was at least a slight chance that she wouldn't be completely lost in the fall.

"Okay," her mom agreed. Lizzie turned and headed up the stairs, breathing a quiet sigh of relief that her mom hadn't seen right through her, asked her why she was reading when she only read when something was bothering her, and made her tell her all about everything that she was stressed out about. That conversation would lead to her mother reminiscing about her middle school days, and a discussion that would normally have been fifteen minutes would turn out to be an hour long.

Upstairs, Lizzie tried to read her book, but it just wasn't interesting to her. It was hard to get into a book when you were a really stressed twelve-year-old and all you could think about was how much of a nightmare middle school was going to be. She was thinking of putting it down and finding something else to do when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She quickly bent low over the book and tried her hardest to look completely immersed in it. The person on the other side of the door knocked three times, and Lizzie immediately knew that it was her mom.

Animated Lizzie: Mom always knocks three times before entering when she wants to talk to me about something. It's like her secret code.

"Come in," Lizzie called.

"Hi, honey," her mom greeted cheerfully.

"Hey," Lizzie returned the greeting, looking up from her book and trying to sound as normal as possible.

"How's the book?" she asked.

"Huh? Oh, good," Lizzie replied.

Animated Lizzie: She definitely wants to talk. She always asks me about what I am doing when she wants to talk.

"Lizzie, I couldn't help but notice that you seemed a little distracted downstairs. Is there anything that is on your mind that you want to talk about?" her mom questioned.

"No. It's just the headache," Lizzie lied. The side of her mind that was telling her not to talk to her mom about middle school had won the battle.

"Oh, alright. If you're sure..." Lizzie's mom replied.

"I'm sure, mom," Lizzie assured her mom.

"Well, just remember that if you ever want to talk, I'm here," her mom reminded her as she left the room. Lizzie flopped back onto her bed. Maybe that side of her mind had won the battle, but it hadn't won the war. She was sure that she had this whole thing sorted out until she had talked to her mom about...talking to her mom. Conversations like that tended to have that effect on her.

That night, Lizzie had a nightmare. She was in school, and everything that she had imagined that could go wrong on her first day of middle school did go wrong in her dream. She forgot the combination to the lock on her locker, she forgot where all of her classes were, she grabbed the wrong books for the wrong classes, and she got three dententions, as well as being assigned tons of homework. Lizzie sat up straight in her bed, breathing heavily. What a horrible dream! After fifteen minutes of tossing and turning, Lizzie finally fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.