I didn't argue with him anymore. As far as I was concerned, if he made me befriend Molly and Polly he had better give me a lot of good coaching advice in return.

I put my CD into the player that sat on his desk, took a deep breath, and belted out the song.

Mr. Metzerol watched me, frowning the entire time. When I finished he shook his head like a doctor examining a dying patient. "Chelsea, you're not utilizing your diaphragm. You're letting notes fall off left and right." He held his fingers together as though grasping something. "You've got to hold onto those notes." Then he sung out the words to a couple of lines in a booming, almost operatic voice. He nodded at me. "Now try it again without the CD. I want to hear you, not the CD."

I sang the song again, struggling to remember the words while concentrating on my diaphragm. Apparently I wasn't successful with that last goal because Mr. Metzerol kept yelling, "Hold onto it!" and "You're letting those notes fall!" and "God gave you a diaphragm, Chelsea! When are you going to use it?" He even took his conducting stick and held it to my stomach. "Here. Here is where you need to feel it. Stretch those notes out."

Which made me remember why I didn't take choir this year. The man was not above walking by and smacking us in the back if we slouched during practice, and he had this Nazi-like obsession with making us use our diaphragm.

After the fourth time through the song—both his fourth time and mine, because he had to keep showing me how it should be done—he finally said, "That's enough practice for today. You do your scales and your breathing exercises tonight, then come back in at lunchtime tomorrow and we'll see if it goes any better, all right?"

"All right," I said.

"And remember you're going to help Molly and Polly with . . ." Mr. Metzerol rolled his hand in the air, pumping his mental thesaurus. "Updating their look. Building their confidence."

As though you could just walk up to near strangers and say, Hi, I noticed you're ugly. Would you like some help with that? Honestly, Mr. Metzerol must have skipped out on his teenage years. "I'll try," I said. "I can't promise anything."

He sent me a calm smile. "Then neither can I."

You wouldn't think a teacher would blackmail you like that.

Chapter 8

I met up with my friends on the main stairway, affectionately called Jock's Landing because all the jocks hang out there.

"Where were you at lunch?" Aubrie asked.

"I went to Mr. Metzerol's to get some voice coaching."

She blinked in concern. "Do you think the rest of us should go in and see him too?"

"Only if you want to subject yourself to an angry little man repeatedly poking you in the stomach."

I leaned over to Samantha, who wasn't paying attention to me because she was talking to Logan. "Hey, I hope you don't mind, but since Mr. Metzerol is helping me with my singing, he's arranging to have us do our history project with Molly and Polly Patterson." And then I added a little more tentatively, "Mr. Metzerol wants us to be friendly to them, you know, help them fit in at PHS."

Samantha shrugged. "Okay." Then she went back to talking with Logan.

At that moment I really respected Samantha. She wasn't at all concerned about having to hang out with Molly and Polly or how their lack of popularity would affect us. Which made me feel worse that my own first reaction had been different.

She'll wink at you but only if you're cool . . .

It wasn't true, was it?

I took a deep breath. First reactions didn't define a person. It's what you did—how you acted around others—that was important, and I'd said I'd be friendly to Molly and Polly. So Rick wasn't right about me.

In world history class Mrs. Addington called us up to her desk in groups. Earlier we'd submitted our report topics for her approval.

She called Molly, Polly, Samantha, and me up to her desk last. "Now then," she said with a smile, "I know you didn't request to work together, but since Molly and Polly are still fairly new here, I thought it would be a good idea to put you all in a group together." She looked directly at me. "That's all right with you, isn't it?"

I smiled back at her. "Sure."

Samantha nodded. "That's fine."

Molly and Polly glanced at each other and then suspiciously at us. "I guess that's okay," Molly said. At least I think it was Molly I couldn't really tell them apart. They both had mousy brown hair pulled back in ponytails and identical wire-rimmed glasses.

Mrs. Addington said, "Great. I'll let you guys get to the library and decide whether you want to work on . . ." She peered down at a paper on her desk. "The history of space flight or inventions that spurred on the industrial revolution. They're both good topics."

We picked up our books and left the room. While we walked in the hallway, Molly and Polly kept two paces ahead of us, talking together and glancing back at us.

"Remember," I whispered to Samantha, "we're supposed to give them some pointers about fitting in here."

We reached the library door and Molly and Polly stopped to face us. "Look, you can be in our group," Molly said. "But we're doing the report on space flight, and we're not letting you cheat off of us." Then they pushed the library doors open and walked in.

We stood there in the hallway staring after them. "Well," Samantha finally said. "I just thought of their first pointer for fitting in."

I folded my arms. "Because we're cheerleaders we're automatically cheaters?"

"Shhh," Samantha said. "You don't want to give Rick any more song ideas."

We walked into the library, put our books on a table with Molly's and Polly's, then went and found books on space exploration, all of which, I'd like to point out, looked so boring they could be officially classified as sleep aids. We took notes, and in between jotting down things about Sputnik and Neil Armstrong I tried to make small talk with our new study partners. At first they answered all of my questions coldly, like they were just waiting for me to be rude, but after fifteen minutes they loosened up.

Molly kept saying snarky asides that made me laugh. "If they can put a man on the moon, why can't they put them all there?" And, "Well, of course the Soviets made it to space first. They were Russian."

She was as bitingly funny as Polly was tenderhearted. Polly kept ohhhing and ahhhing over the pictures of Laika the first astronaut dog.

And yes, in case you didn't know, they really did send a dog orbiting around the earth. Or as Molly pointed out, not only the Russians, but the canines, beat us into space.

When class was nearly over, I said, "Some of us are getting together to go to the movies this weekend. Do you want to come?"

"Who are 'us'?" Molly asked.

" I 'm not sure about everyone who's going," I said, because I'd just planned this off the top of my head and hadn't actually asked anyone. "Samantha and I—"

"And Logan," Samantha said.

"Right, and Logan . . . Aubrie, Rachel—whoever Rachel is currently stringing along in her football harem—"

"Sorry," Polly said. "We don't . . . um . . ." She glanced at her sister.

"Go anywhere near football players unless we're forced to by teachers or natural disasters," Molly finished.