This Is How It Always Is

The book jumps forward to the beginning of Poppy’s fifth-grade year. No one in Seattle knows about her past as Claude, not even her best friend and next-door neighbor Aggie. Poppy, Aggie, and their close friends Natalie and Kim have been close since the first grade and playfully call themselves the “PANK Club.” During a sleepover, the girls discuss boys and their own budding breasts. Yet, while all her girlfriends are developing into women, Poppy is not. 

This chapter details the ways in which Poppy’s parents accidentally keep Claude a secret from their Seattle community. The reader learns of the family’s arrival in the city, which involved an inaugural barbecue at the house of their neighbors Marginny and Frank Granderson, who are Aggie’s parents. Marginny asks that Penn and Rosie keep Claude a secret so that Poppy and Aggie might forge a friendship. “It just seems like it would be unnecessarily confusing for them,” Marginny suggests (129). Headstrong Aggie and Poppy become fast friends. The night of the barbecue, Aggie taps on Poppy’s window to excitedly suggest that they be “rival princesses in neighboring castles” and tell each other secrets that they could tell no one else (134).