Chapter One
“Just try them on, Miranda,” Hannah, my stepsister, ordered me. She sounded like an army general sending troops into battle. Except that we weren’t on a battlefield. It was even worse than war—we were at the mall.
Hannah had dragged me from one end of the Orange Cove Mall to the other, stopping in nearly every store we passed. We were now in J.Crew, and I was drooping with exhaustion.
“Why bother trying them on? They’re my size,” I said, double-checking the tag on a pair of skinny jeans. Then I saw the price. “These jeans cost eighty dollars!”
“So?”
“Why would anyone spend eighty dollars on a pair of jeans? That’s insane. I could get these at Target for twenty bucks.”
Hannah looked at me with a pitying expression. “No, you couldn’t. Now go try them on.”
I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her. I turned toward the dressing room.
“Wait,” Hannah said. She handed over a huge pile of clothes—skirts, pants, tops. It looked like she’d gotten one of everything in the store. “Try these on, too.”
“What? All of these?” I asked, reeling under the weight of the clothing.
“All of them,” Hannah said. She checked her watch. “And you’d better hurry. If you keep wasting time, we’re never going to make the movie.”
Defeated, I headed to the dressing room.
“Show me everything you try on,” Hannah called after me.
The next half hour was sheer hell. I know some girls love trying on clothes and think of shopping as a hobby. I am not one of those girls. Pulling countless shirts over my head and wriggling into an endless series of pants caused me to become light-headed.
“I think I need a Coke,” I complained to Hannah on one of my frequent trips out of the dressing room to model an outfit for her. “My blood sugar is low.”
Hannah was unmoved. “You haven’t tried on the dark-washed denim pencil skirt yet.”
“Seriously, I can’t try on one more thing. I’m going to pass out from hunger.”
“The denim pencil skirt,” Hannah ordered. “I told you: we’re making over your wardrobe.”
“Why does it matter? They’re just clothes.”
Hannah looked truly shocked. “Clothes always matter,” she said. “Now go try on the denim pencil skirt!”
Forty minutes later we left J.Crew with bags so heavy that the thin, ropy straps felt as if they were about to cut through my fingers. I was wrung out. I mentally calculated how much money I’d spent that day—it was at least half the money I’d saved that summer working as an au pair to Amelia, a ten-year-old music prodigy. My dad had offered to chip in for new school clothes, but since he’d just bought me a car—an ugly used car, but I wasn’t complaining—I felt guilty asking him for money.
Hannah seemed oddly energized after our shopping expedition. “Oh, my gosh, just think of how much better you’re going to look this year,” she said as we made our way toward the food court.
Hannah was so beautiful that heads were swiveling as we walked by. She had a really pretty face, set off by platinum blond hair that swished across her shoulders. She was also very thin and very petite. I always felt freakishly tall and gangly when I stood next to her, like a clumsy giraffe towering over a dainty gazelle.
“Gee, thanks,” I said. I didn’t think my old wardrobe was that bad. Maybe I wasn’t a fashion plate, but my clothes were unobjectionable. Jeans, T-shirts—that sort of thing.
“No problem,” Hannah said, missing my sarcasm. “I bet your friends at school won’t even recognize you.”
Hannah and I were the same age—we were both sixteen and going into our junior year—but we attended different high schools. Hannah went to Orange Cove High. I went to the Notting Hill Independent School for Gifted Children, which was better known as Geek High. Most of the kids at Geek High had a special talent. For example, I could solve math problems—even complex ones—in my head. Growing up, my rather unflattering nickname had been the Human Calculator. And I didn’t even want to be a mathematician. I wanted to be a writer.
“I don’t think skinny jeans are going to mask my true identity,” I said.
“Just you wait. People will see you in a whole new light,” Hannah promised.
I didn’t believe that for one moment. The thing about going to Geek High was that most of the kids really did care more about their studies than what their classmates were wearing. Besides, why would I want to be seen in a different light? I had lots of friends at school. Okay, sure, I had some enemies, too—like awful Felicity Glen and her toady Morgan Simpson. Felicity had mocked me endlessly over the years for my boyish figure and boring clothes. But I was pretty sure that if she couldn’t make fun of my clothes, she’d just find something else to ridicule. Like my too-large nose or my wavy hair that frizzed when it was humid. Considering that I lived in South Florida, that was pretty much all the time.