Millie Michalchuk and Amanda Lumbard’s long-standing friendship

Millie Michalchuk and Amanda Lumbard’s friendship is defined by close companionship and shared presence: at school they move together, and when Millie decides to enter the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet Pageant in support of Willowdean Dickson, Amanda comes with her. The friendship is significant not because the novel supplies a full account of its beginnings, but because it shows loyalty operating in public—amid ridicule, practical obligations, and a pageant culture that makes appearance a spectacle.

Identity and School Life

At lunch, Millie walks down the aisle between the tables with a tray of food, while Amanda follows close behind. The narrator identifies Amanda as Millie’s best friend and sees the pair as an inseparable presence. Yet that visibility also makes them targets: the narrator thinks of the two together as an obvious invitation for other students to make fun of them. The scene establishes both the ease of their company and the hostile social attention surrounding it.

Amanda’s experience of that attention has a specific physical context. Her legs are uneven, and she wears thick corrective shoes. When she was younger and did not yet have the shoes, she limped, her hips moving up and down with each step; people stared, though she did not seem bothered by their looks. Patrick Thomas’s cruel comparison of her shoes to Frankenstein adds another layer of mockery. The narrator points out the absurdity in the insult: Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. Millie’s continued presence beside Amanda is not described as a dramatic defense, but their ordinary togetherness runs against the way other students reduce Amanda to an object of ridicule.

A Friendship Made Visible

The text gives little information about how Millie and Amanda first became friends or how long they have known each other. It does, however, repeatedly place Amanda near Millie: she follows her through the lunchroom, accompanies her to the pageant sign-up, and remains beside her as Millie explains why she wants to participate. That recurring proximity supplies the clearest evidence of the bond. Their friendship is presented as an everyday fact rather than something either girl needs to announce or prove.

Their shared presence does not erase their differences in temperament or circumstance. At the sign-up, Millie speaks directly about wanting to be part of Willowdean’s decision to enter, while Amanda raises a practical concern: her mother expects her to be on time to pick up her brother. The detail keeps Amanda’s life grounded in responsibilities beyond school and the pageant. She is not simply an extension of Millie, even when the two arrive together and take part in the same choice.

Joining the Pageant

When Millie arrives with Amanda and says that they are signing up too, Amanda quietly clarifies that Millie made her come. The exchange gives the friendship a gently comic edge: Millie is the eager instigator, while Amanda is less enthusiastic and mindful of the time. But Amanda has come, and she stays beside Millie as Millie explains that Willowdean’s participation matters to her and that she wants to be part of it. The scene makes their friendship active. Millie’s support for Willowdean brings Amanda into the room, and Amanda’s presence in turn makes Millie’s decision a shared undertaking rather than a solitary gesture.

Millie also says she tried to persuade Hannah Perez to join them, but Hannah refused. Amanda supplies Hannah’s blunt response. This moment places the pair in a wider circle of girls considering the pageant, while distinguishing their roles: Millie is the one trying to gather others, and Amanda accompanies her even when she has not been persuaded by the pageant itself. The evidence does not establish that Amanda shares Millie’s reasons for entering; it shows that she participates alongside her friend.

Significance

The friendship connects private loyalty with the book’s public pressures around appearance and belonging. Amanda’s corrective shoes have already made her a target of staring and insult, and the pageant offers another setting in which girls are exposed to judgment. Millie and Amanda enter that setting together, though with different degrees of enthusiasm. Their companionship does not end the ridicule or make their circumstances identical. Instead, it gives the narrative a concrete example of solidarity: they are not isolated individuals facing the same crowd, but friends who arrive together and remain present for one another.

That distinction matters in a story where appearance can determine who is mocked, watched, or welcomed. At the lunch tables, being seen together makes Millie and Amanda conspicuous; at the pageant sign-up, that same togetherness becomes a form of participation. The novel offers no grand declaration about their friendship. Its force lies in the repeated small facts—the tray, the companion following close behind, Millie’s invitation, Amanda’s practical objection, and her decision to come nonetheless. Together, they portray a friendship sustained through ordinary closeness and made newly consequential when Millie chooses to act.