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whose light brown hair was again up in a messy bun. She led with her hips as she walked, her back straight and her chin up. A gawky brunette boy stared at her as she passed him by and she winked at him surreptitiously. He turned a deep, disturbing shade of purple before sliding down in his seat and hiding behind his manga book. The girl laughed to herself, triumphant.
    With her was the cherub, whose blond curls bounced as she scurried after her friends. She was the only one of the four who walked with her head down, her pale skin blotched with pink from some kind of exertion, pleasure, or embarrassment. She hugged her books to her chest and seemed to be concentrating hard on something going on in her head.
    They really were here. They really did exist.
    “I would kill to be Noelle Lange,” Diana said, leaning her chin on her hand.
    “Yeah. That’s gonna happen,” Missy said sarcastically.
    “Which one’s Noelle?” Constance asked.
    “White blazer,” Lorna said, envy dripping from her very lips. “Rumor has it that Harvard, Cornell, and Yale are all fighting for her.”
    “Please. She’ll go wherever Dash McCafferty goes,” Missy said, glancing over.
    I saw that the big, blond guy who caught my punt yesterday was now sitting on a table behind Noelle, rubbing her shoulders with his huge hands. She titled her head back, her long tresses tumbling down behind her, and he leaned down for a kiss.
    “More like he’ll go wherever she goes,” Diana said. “I highly doubt Dash wears the pants in that relationship.”
    “When Noelle’s in the room, she’s pretty much the only one wearing pants,” Lorna added.
    “That’s true. I take it back,” Missy said.
    “Who’s the reader?” I asked, noticing that ethereal girl once again had her nose stuck in a book.
    “That’s Ariana Osgood,” Missy said. “Her family owns half the South. Which means the rest of the Billings Girls forgive her for being from the South.”
    Diana, Constance, and Lorna all snickered.
    “They’re in oil,” Missy added. “All big, cigar-chomping, bane-of-the-environmentalists types. God only knows how they produced her.”
    “She’s a poet,” Diana explained. “She writes half the literary magazine every quarter. She’s really good.”
    “The model is Kiran Hayes,” Lorna said. “She’s done Abercrombie, Ralph Lauren . . .”
    “Omigod! Yes! She was on the billboard outside my Pilates studio!” Constance exclaimed.
    “Omigod! Keep your voice down, you freak!” Missy shot back, mimicking her.
    “Wait. She’s an actual model?” I asked.
    “What? Like you’ve never seen one in the flesh before?” Missy said. “Half the girls in my building back home have done the spring shows.”
    I glanced around and noticed that at least half the male population of the room was in fact watching Kiran, most of them practically drooling.
    “And then there’s Taylor Bell,” Diana said. “From all accounts, the smartest girl ever to step foot on the Easton campus.”
    Across the way, the cherubic girl laughed and had to slap her hand over her mouth to keep from spitting out her oatmeal. Didn’t look like a genius to me, but then again, I’d never seen one of those in the flesh either.
    “Best schools. Hottest boyfriends,” Diana said. “Yeah. Being a Billings Girl definitely wouldn’t suck.”
    I stared across the room at the four girls and the guys who hovered around them, my pulse racing with a new sense of excitement. A few more girls sat down at the other end of their table, every last one of them beautiful and poised, though to me they seemed second-string compared to the four girls I had seen the night before.
    “What about the others?” I asked.
    “Eh, they’re in Billings too,” Diana said with a wave of her fork.
    So I was right. It was Noelle and her friends who were important. Noelle and her friends who were the most worth knowing.
    My heart pounded against my rib cage and I pressed my sweaty palm into the