The guard turned and stared at me. My mouth went dry. "It was all a mistake," I said. "I thought she was my little sister." No one moved. No one spoke. "Great makeup job," I added.

The witch let out a humph and said, "And you didn't realize I wasn't your sister when I yelled out, 'Leave me alone' and ran away from you?"

I shrugged apologetically. "It's something she might do."

The girl arranged her wig and hat back onto her head. "Well, we don't have to wonder why, do we?"

" I 'm really sorry," I said again.

The guard looked between Samantha and me, then growled, "You two, come with me."

We did. And this time I managed to follow without running into things. He marched us down the hall, away from the ballroom, lecturing us about our rowdy behavior. It was people like us, he said, that ruined things for everybody else. What if the administration decided not to let the students put on more fund-raisers because a few people didn't have the decency to behave in public? Had we thought of that before we'd gone careening into the refreshment table and jumping on innocent people?

Well, obviously not, but I didn't say so.

He kept lecturing us, and our only saving grace was that he'd taken us away from the crowd. I don't think I could have stood to be chewed out in front of Rick or the Clark Kent guy.

The Clark Kent guy. The thought of him made my shoulders droop. He'd paid for me to get in, and I'd told him I'd dance with him. Now he'd think I'd just used him for his money and disappeared.

The guard led us to an exit, opened the door for us, and said he'd better not see us anywhere near the dance again. The next moment we were outside in the cold night air.

We walked side by side toward the car, moving quickly. "I'm sorry," I told Samantha, "but how was I to know? It was the exact same costume that Adrian bought."

Samantha spoke in a low voice, "Don't tell anyone about this night. Not Rachel. Not Aubrie. It's a secret we carry to our graves. Even if Rick hears about it, we deny everything. It was another medieval princess and angel who got tossed out of the dance, not us."

"Right," I said, and really hoped Rick hadn't been paying attention as I rammed the refreshment table while chasing a hapless stranger. I mean, once that story got around, Naomi would never let go of it.

On the way home my mom called my cell phone. "Guess what? Stefy's mom just phoned and it turns out Adrian has been there the entire time. Stefy's mom just didn't recognize her because she looked so different in her witch costume." My mom let out a relieved chuckle. "So I'm sorry I made you leave your party, but you have to admit, it's funny."

Maybe one day, but not today.

Chapter 3

On Monday at school I waited for Rick or one of his friends to say something obnoxious to me in the hallway, like: "Hey—tackle any more strangers lately?" Or "This is just a guess, but you flunked out of guardian angel class, didn't you?"

No one said anything out of the ordinary though, which must mean he didn't know. This was the first good news I'd had in a long time.

After school we had an extra cheerleading practice at my house. Extra because we had a pep assembly the next day and we wanted to make sure we had our routine down. Our cheerleading advisor, Mrs. Jones, had gone to a cheerleading conference and come back with a great choreography to "Be True to Your School" but it was more difficult than the routines we usually did.

Forty-five minutes into practice—and still without us doing the whole thing perfectly—Samantha walked to the CD player and pushed the off button. "We need to take a break."

I started to protest, but Aubrie and Rachel headed to my kitchen, moving very quickly for people who were agreeing that they needed a rest.

I went with them, and while I poured everyone drinks, Samantha said, "I think we've almost got it. One more time through is all we need."

Rachel eyed Samantha's still-in-place long blonde hair and perfectly applied makeup. "You just want to end early so you can go hang out with your boyfriend."

Samantha gave her a satisfied smile. "Right."

She had totally missed the point. Love apparently makes you immune to sarcasm.

"I think we need to go through it until—" I took a sip of my drink, "we do it flawlessly a bunch of times."

This brought forth groans from Aubrie and Rachel. "It's a pep assembly," Aubrie said, "not the Olympics."

"I can't mess up in front of Naomi and her minions."

Rachel let out a sigh. "Since Mike broke up with you, you've become an absolute perfectionist." She turned to Samantha and Aubrie as though I wasn't in the room. "You know, we'd all have a lot more free time if Chelsea got a boyfriend. We should do something about that."

"Maybe we could take up a collection to buy her one," Aubrie said.

"Or we could set her by the road with a sign that says, 'Will cheer for hot guy,' " Samantha added.

Rachel sighed into her drink. "I know I'd cheer for a hot guy."

Right. Poor her. Apparently she hadn't found Mr. Right at her party.

While I finished my drink, Adrian and Rick strolled into the kitchen. Adrian had taken to gelling and hairspraying her short hair so that it stuck up in random angles, resembling a maroon feather duster. Today Rick's hair was almost as messy.

Adrian went to the cupboard, grabbed a bag of Cheetos, and sat down at the table with them. She used to hate Cheetos. We used to laugh at anyone who ate food with so much orange powder on it that you could use it to write messages on the table. But Rick liked them and that changed everything.

He pushed past me and stood in front of the fridge. "Well, if it isn't the cheerleading quadruplets: Blonde, Blonder, Blondest"—he nodded in my direction—"and Dangerously Blonde. Are you done jumping around in the living room, or is it still unsafe for normal people to come out?"

Rachel folded her arms and eyed his shirt, which looked like it had been spray painted by thugs and then thrown under a moving truck. "Since when are you a normal person?"

He let out a snort. "Like you'd know the difference."

It was one thing for Rick to insult me at my house—which trust me, he did often enough—but it was another thing for him to insult my friends at my house. Instead of ignoring him, and saying my usual prayer that Adrian would wake up from her almost trancelike adoration of the guy, I turned to him and said, "Do you need something? I mean, besides the obvious fashion lesson?"

He sneered at me, reached into the fridge, and grabbed the last two cans of soda. "Sorry to take it all," he said, "but hey, it's probably for the best. If you keep dipping into the treats, it won't take long before you can put a lot more besides the word 'Cheer' on your rear end." He threw one can to Adrian, then eyed me over with a smile. "Looks like you're almost to sentence length as we speak."

First of all, I am in no danger of being able to spell out sentences on my shorts. And while I'm bringing up the inaccuracy of Rick's insults, I'll also mention that only three of us on the cheerleading squad are blonde. Rachel has brown hair that she highlights. Rick just says anything that he thinks will bother us.

I walked away from Rick and back to where Adrian sat flipping Cheetos into her mouth. In a low voice I said, "You know you're not supposed to have boys over when Mom isn't home."