Olivia Bennett - The Allegra Biscotti Collection

Since there were no windows, the only light was from the industrial fluorescent bulbs overhead, which Emma thought made everyone look like they had the flu. On top of all that, the lunchroom perpetually smelled like grease, even though the PTA had voted fried food off the menu two years earlier.

Emma stood in the doorway and scanned the buzzing room until she spotted Holly paying the cashier. I need to grab her, Emma thought.

Holly smiled when she saw Emma coming toward her. “There you are. You brought your lunch today, right?”

Emma always packed a yogurt and chips. The mysterious ingredients and origins of the school lunches were too baffling to a girl who never got higher than a B in chemistry. She liked being able to identify her food. “Do you want to go to the loun—”

Holly cut her off, lifting her tray with one hand and grabbing Emma’s elbow with the other.

Emma’s heart sank as soon as she realized where they were headed. “Remind me again why we have to sit with Ivana and the ’Bees?” she asked.

“Because everything’s different now that we’re in eighth grade,” Holly explained. “Plus it’s more fun to hang out with Ivana and the girls than those random people we used to sit with. You have to admit, Em, those kids are kind of weird.”

“Charlie isn’t weird,” Emma protested, yanking back on Holly’s arm to stop her before they reached the table. “We always had fun with him. He’s our friend .”

Holly snapped her gum. “Charlie barely eats in the cafeteria anymore. He’s always off in the student lounge listening to his iPod or looking at those weird Japanese comic books. Trust me. He hasn’t even noticed that we’re gone.”

That was sort of true, actually. Charlie liked being a bit of a shadow, fading in and out without anyone noticing. Plus, he hated crowds. And the color green. But Emma suspected that this new lunch-table situation had more to do with Holly being flattered that Ivana had invited her—and probably not both of them—to sit at her table. For the past few weeks, Emma had been going along with Holly’s new seating arrangement. She figured as long as she got to sit with Holly, maybe it would be all right.

But so far, it hadn’t been that great.

“Come on, Em! I’m starving .” Holly gave Emma’s elbow another tug, coaxing her toward the table.

Reluctantly, Emma gave in. They barely had twenty minutes left to eat lunch and would have even less by the time they got upstairs to the student lounge anyway. As Holly slid into the empty chair next to Ivana, Emma settled down in a seat at the end of table. The Ivana-Bees were in the middle of a heated discussion about their ideas for this year’s first fund-raiser.

“Last year, the eighth-grade class held a bake sale, and they raised a ton of money,” Shannon said, nibbling on a carrot stick. The way she wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her face reminded Emma of a rabbit.

Ivana laughed loudly, tossing her long red hair over her shoulder as if she were in a shampoo commercial. “Shaye, you can’t be serious. Remember the last time you tried to bake something? Di-SAS-ter!” Ivana turned to Holly. “She almost burned down her kitchen because she put the oven on broil instead of bake.”

“The doorman had to come turn off the fire alarm because Shannon didn’t know how to do it!” Kayla added—again just to Holly.

Holly giggled. “That’s hilarious ,” she said. “I so wish I’d been there!”

Emma snuck a sideways glance at Holly to see if she was faking her enthusiasm. But Holly was totally serious.

“It was pretty embarrassing,” Shannon admitted, though she seemed more flattered than embarrassed that she was the focus of attention. “But I still think a bake sale is a good idea.”

“How about something that doesn’t require using the oven—or any fire, for that matter?” Ivana suggested.

“I know! We could have a car wash!” Kayla leaned forward.

“ Ew! ” Lexie squealed. “I don’t want to have to wash some weirdo-stranger’s car!”

“Um, hello?” Ivana added. “We live in a city, remember? Most people don’t even own cars.”

Emma pretended to be fascinated with the last dollop of strawberry yogurt in the container. She swirled it around with her plastic spoon. Since she hadn’t joined the Fund-Raising Committee like Holly and the other girls, she didn’t have much to contribute. Nor had she signed up for the Social Committee or the Film Club, even though Holly had begged her to do those with her, too.

What was weird was that Emma and Holly had never been “joiners” before.

They had always been happy to move around the edges of all the groups without necessarily being a part of any one of them. Emma could tell who was who just by looking at what they wore. She had sketched them all, fascinated by how clothes ruled the cliques. Each group had their own style, she knew. If your clothes didn’t fit in, than neither did you. For as long as they’d been friends, Emma and Holly had hung out with various kids from all of the groups, but they mostly spent their free time together because that’s what they had the most fun doing.

Until this summer.

After school ended, Holly’s workaholic parents had dragged her to their new weekend house in Litchfield, Connecticut. Holly complained to Emma via a torrent of daily text messages about how there was nothing to do and no one to do it with. But then Holly started to sound like she was having fun. That’s when Ivana’s name began popping up.

Ivana’s mother and latest stepfather had a place in Litchfield, too. Emma was shocked. If she had been stranded on a desert island with Ivana, she would have sooner befriended a lizard than Ivana Abbott. When Emma complained about it to Charlie, he said that it was probably just a “friendship of convenience.” Emma spent the rest of the summer hoping he was right.

But now it looked like he wasn’t. Around the Ivana-Bees, Holly was different. Emma couldn’t put her finger on how. She just knew that suddenly she felt like their friendship went from being the most natural, easiest thing in the world to requiring a conscious effort to keep it going.

“Maybe we could put on a fashion show,” Holly said. “That’d be fun, wouldn’t it, Em?”

Emma looked up, surprised. She had started to draw a new outfit for Ms. Ramirez, the dowdy cafeteria cashier, in her sketchbook. It was coming out like a futuristic jumpsuit. Maybe not the best look. “For what?”

“A class fund-raiser,” Holly answered. “Don’t you think we could build a catwalk in the gym and get some of the students and teachers to model? Maybe call some boutiques to see if they would let us borrow their clothes?”

Ivana and the ’Bees faced Emma expectantly.

“Um, I guess so,” Emma answered.

“And you could be our fashion expert,” Holly added enthusiastically.

Someone snickered, but Emma wasn’t sure who. She glanced at the digital wall clock. Four minutes until lunch was over.

“ Or ,” Ivana began, turning everyone’s attention right back to her, “we could do an auction. I bet everyone’s parents have something decent they could donate as prizes. It would be so much easier. My cousin is an event planner, and she always says how no one ever realizes how much work it is to do events. Plus they’re super-expensive.”