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his room and skip the whole cafeteria scene.” Penny took a right past the senior lockers. “All of the staff are twelfth-graders. We’ll be the only two juniors. Cool, huh?”
    As much as the Get-Out-of-Lunch-Free card sounded good, not to mention that my mom would puddle over an extracurricular to pad the college apps — a 4.0, according to my mom, wasn’t enough anymore — it sounded like work. Penny looked at me hopefully.
    “I’ll eat lunch with you guys today, but let me think about it. There’s a bunch of other stuff going on right now. I don’t want to feel pressured.”
    I followed her into the room, thinking maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, maybe I needed a diversion, until I got a look at the occupants. Not only were they a collection of misfits, but chief among them sat Jack, the angry Apple Boy, still sporting a seed cap and flannel shirt. If I had felt slightly chilled all day, I was now downright iced. And blue lips look cadaverish on ultra-pale blondes.
    “Guys, this is Kat. She’s in my design class.” Everyone said hello except Jack, who kept his eyes lowered to a sandwich. “She’s considering taking on the fashion column.” I glared at her as we sat down at side-by-side desks, part of a larger semicircular configuration. She was oblivious to my look, more intent on Jack, whom she must have thought hadn’t heard her. “Jack, did you meet Kat?”
    “We’ve met,” he said, balling his crusts and wax paper into a brown bag. “I gotta go check the printer.” He walked out of the room without another word.
    Everyone got all spooky quiet, as if something eventful had happened. They looked at me like I’d done something wrong. I felt like I’d just dropkicked a puppy. And I hadn’t even said anything. He was the one who stomped out of the room. I gnawed on the inside of my cheek instead of the rubbery chicken strips, and watched as grease marks soaked through the small paper plate. What was it with guys in this town? I’d had plenty of guy friends in LA, and Ethan Milken and I had managed to go out for six months without the least bit of drama. Even our breakup had been easy. So why was it that the only two guys I’d even said boo to here wouldn’t acknowledge my existence?
    Penny nudged me and put a stack of school newspapers at my elbow. “Jack’s our editor.”
    Of course
.
    “And I’m assistant editor,” she continued with the bluster of a second-in-command. “Why don’t you have a look at some of our back issues? You can get an idea of what we’re looking for.”
    I pretended to shuffle through the old papers, but all I could do was sulk. How could I have gotten off to such a bad start here? How was I already a persona non grata?
    My mind drifted to Wade. I thought about how he had started frequenting the store the last few weeks of August, buying sodas, magazines, and packs of gum. He seemed to have a knack for showing up just after Afi shuffled home. It had been a lonely summer; my mom and I had moved in late July, so I hadn’t yet had school as a way to meet people. The first thing he ever said to me was, “Cool boots.” Sure, I had been wearing leopard-patterned UGGs with jean cutoffs, but “cool boots” was a phrase my friends and I in LA used for everything, and “CB” was text for a range of affirmations, anything from “OK” to “I’m there” to “got it”— so he got my attention. For a hick, he wasn’t bad-looking, a tall, barrel-necked linebacker type, who filled a room with both his stature and self-confidence. At first his size made me nervous, but when he’d leaned on the counter with his thick forearms resting casually, I’d relaxed. And he did have a certain charisma or charm that I found compelling. He wanted to know about California, beach life, and surfing. And he said he had a thing for blondes, real blondes.
    I knew that a player’s a player, no matter the geography. The only difference was the ones in LA had better tans — and