I could ask my father for special permission to use the phone for non-homework business, but he'd want to know what that business was.

I sighed.

I glanced out my window. The side window of my bedroom looks right into the side window of Kristy's bedroom next door. Her light was off, the room dark.

I sat cross-legged on my bed and gazed around. No wonder Stacey had called me a baby. My room looks like a nursery. There's no crib or changing table, but basically the room hasn't changed since I was three. It's decorated in pink and white, which my father had just naturally assumed every little girl would like. The truth is, I like yellow and navy blue. Pink is one of my least favorite colors.

The curtains, which are ruffly, are made of pink flowered fabric and are tied back with pink ribbons. The bedspread matches the curtains. The rug is pale pink shag, and the walls are white, with pink baseboards.

Living in my room is like living inside a cotton-candy machine.

What bothers me most, though, is what's on the walls — or rather, what isn't on them. I've spent a lot of time in Kristy and Claudia's rooms, and I've been in Stacey's room twice, and I've decided that you can tell a lot about the people who use those rooms just by looking at the walls. For example, Kristy loves sports, so her walls are covered with posters about the Olympics and pictures of gymnasts and football players. Claudia is an artist and her own work hangs everywhere. She changes it often, taking down old paintings or drawings and putting up new ones. And Stacey, who misses New York more than she'll admit, has tacked up a poster of the city at night, another of the Empire State Building, and a map of Manhattan.

Here's what're on my walls: a framed picture of my parents and me, taken the day I was christened; a framed picture of Humpty Dumpty (before he broke); and two framed pictures of