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inviting me to your party!” (Dork!)
    Chelsea: “Hi, Stacy.” (Fake smile.) “Cute, um, shoes? Where did you get them?”
    “Oh, these?” I looked down at Becca’s green high-tops—the ones that Roman had drawn skulls all over—shoes Chelsea wouldn’t be caught dead in. “They’re my—”
    She’d already moved on.
    “Summer!” Hug, hug. “Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
    Probably a guy. Summer didn’t even look back. The two of them left me in the dust. Just like that.
    I tried making small talk with Jenna and Ariel. The two of them stood next to the food table talking but not eating, which was annoying all by itself.
    “Hey, Jenna. Hey, Ariel,” I said as I picked a handful of party mix out of a bowl, and when I said it, it wasn’t in a very enthusiastic way since they don’t like me.
    “Hey, Stacy,” Ariel said, all bored and distracted. Jenna stared at me as I shoved a few pieces into my mouth.
    “Fun party?” I asked.
    Ariel shrugged. “No one’s here yet.”
    “You two look great, you really do,” I lied. If I were going to be mean, I’d describe their look as two hookers in training—short-shorts and boots, tons of makeup.
    Jenna rolled her eyes, and Ariel gave a half-smile and turned back to Jenna so they could continue their deep conversation about the very best way to shape eyebrows and the controversy over threading or plucking.
    Parties are weird. You find yourself making conversation with people you’d never speak to in real life. People like Jenna and Ariel. I mean, when I say they’re shallow, what I really mean to say is they’re completely awful, gossipy girls possessing the combined IQ of an anteater, which I’m guessing is not very high. (I mean, they eat ants.)
    Given the choice of being ignored by two witches or sitting alone, I decided on the third option of taking a self-guided tour of the house. Chelsea’s got a great house. Two stories. Her dad does something important. I think I heard he was a sports agent. Who knows? But her parents are loaded with cash. They’ll probably give Chelsea an expensive car when she turns sixteen, like a BMW, and pay for her to go to any expensive university she can get into. (But knowing how dumb she is, they’ll probably have to bribe someone to let her in.)
    Wait. Do I sound jealous?
    As I quietly walked upstairs to look for a place to hide, I took in the posh surroundings. Chelsea’s room is very sophisticated (I know because I kind of pushed the door open a little bit). Everything is done in maroon and black, and it looks very professional. No posters taped to the walls or random pictures shoved up with thumbtacks. She even has all of her shoe boxes lined up on special shoe racks. We live in two different worlds. Her world is a money world. Mine is not. Plus, she’s shallow. (Did I mention that?)
    Finding myself slightly depressed by how great her room was and agreeing with my own assessment that Chelsea totally didn’t deserve to live in such luxury, I slouched back downstairs and found a place to hide. I sat alone in the family room playing Ms. Pac-Man on an old game machine, watching her eat all the little dots. I made it to the second level of sucky crapulence, and just as I was about to get to level three—Hell, at the point when I couldn’t take any more and was about to call my mom to rescue me—something happened. I felt hands over my eyes. Man hands. Hands that could only belong to one person.
    Anthony had his hands over my eyes.
    This was where time began to warp—speeding up and slowing down at the same time.
    Of all possible scenarios of how this night could have turned out, Anthony’s hands covering my eyes as I played Ms. Pac-Man was probably the last thing I would have expected.
    Legs: like JELL-O. Insides: all wobbly. Get hold of yourself, you big dork! Trying not to breathe too fast. Trying to maintain some sort of composure.
    Weak in the knees, I turned around, and there he was