She’d be much safer that way.”

Chelsea's blue eyes turned sympathetic. “You can find another date for the prom.

You’ll go with a better guy.”

“Right.” And who would that be? It was three weeks till the dance, and most people already had their plans set. My stomach knotted up. I had to go to the dance. I’d already bought my dress and shoes. I was on the prom committee. How could I help decorate the place and then not go to the event?

I said my goodbyes to Chelsea and walked numbly out of the school to the parking lot to find my car. Bleakness was setting in.

I could always go with Doug.

No. I wasn’t that desperate. After all, Doug would probably show up for the prom in the greyhound outfit.

There was Logan.

I groaned out loud and flung open my car door. Why had his name popped into my mind when I was thinking of prom dates? Logan and I couldn’t get along for one evening, even if we both were desperate. He’d probably rather eat staples than go out with me. I would rather eat staples.

So who?

I climbed into my car and took a deep breath to calm down. Someone would ask me.

They had to. How could I even contemplate being popular enough to run for president if I wasn’t popular enough to be asked to the prom?

This thought haunted me for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER 4

On Tuesday I talked, flirted, and smiled my most upbeat smiles to all the cute guys in my classes. Upbeat shows you have confidence. Upbeat shows you don’t care if some guy just dumped you.

At lunchtime, while I put my books in my locker, Brad walked up to me. He shuffled up to the locker next to mine, just like it had been any other day.

“I wanted to talk to you about the prom . . ."

“Did you? Are you sure you didn’t want to talk to Whitney about the prom?”

I slammed my locker door and faced him square on. “Why don’t you just tell her whatever it was you wanted to say, and let it get back to me through the grapevine. That worked so well last time.”

A tinge of red rose in Brad’s neck. “Sorry, but after the way you were yelling at me on Friday—”

“Oh. The way I was yelling at you on Friday? That’s nothing compared to the way I’m going to be yelling at you in two seconds.”

Apparently two seconds was too long for him to stick around. He mumbled something under his breath, questioned which species I belonged to, then turned and hurried down the hallway.

“Loser!” I called after his retreating back. “You are such a lowlife, Brad!”

It was then that I noticed Logan and a couple of his friends walking up the hallway, witnesses to the scene I’d just made. Logan raised an eyebrow, then turned back to his friends. As they walked by me he said in a louder-than-normal voice, “And the really amazing thing is, that’s the way Samantha talks to guys she likes.”

I didn’t set him straight.

When I got home from school, I found Mom in the kitchen kneading a bowlful of bread dough. She took a French cooking class once a week, so every Tuesday she’d present us with some strange and exotic dish for dinner. Then we’d all have to pretend we were really full, and not just too uncultured to appreciate stuffed veal kidneys.

Bread looked normal, though. I walked farther into the kitchen, eyeing the counter f or rogue ingredients she might be planning to ruin the bread with. No sign of escargot, truf fle paste, or liver pâté.

Mom punched the dough, and puffs of flour floated up into the air. “Samantha, my hands are sticky. Would you get the butter out of the fridge?”

Butter was good. Part of a regular food group. I got it out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter by her. “What are you making?”

“Croissants.”

“Great. I love croissants.”

“They’re for the goose-neck-and-garlic sandwiches.”

“Goose neck? People actually eat that on purpose? I always thought that was one of those animal by-products that ended up in dog food.”

Mom wiped a section of hair that had fallen into her face, leaving a smear of flour across her cheek. “Goose neck is a delicacy. You have to at least try it. In fancy restaurants people pay up to fifty dollars a plate for this stuff.”

And at our house we were force-fed it for free. Just another irony of life.

I waited until Mom was spreading flour over the counter, then grabbed a bagel from the bread box. I surreptitiously took a bite, then inched toward the kitchen door. She plopped down the croissant dough on the counter and asked, “Did anything good come in the mail?”

“Not unless we’ve actually won the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes this time.”

“Your SAT scores didn’t come today?”

“No.” Technically it wasn’t a lie. They didn’t come today. Mom got out the rolling pin and flattened the dough into a circle. “I talked to Linda Benson today. She said Elise got her test score—a composite of twelve hundred. Can you believe it?”

Elise was a girl my age whose bad attitude canceled out all of her good looks. Elise said and did whatever she wanted, including—and especially—tormenting anyone who got on her bad side. Last year we went to the same girls’ camp, and she averaged two practical jokes a day—three if you counted the ones she played on the leaders. If she wasn’t sewing someone’s tent flap shut, she was hiding plastic bugs in the sleeping bags. I fell victim to her jokes on a daily basis. My shampoo was dyed orange, my sleeping bag wandered by it-self to tents across the camp several times, and one morning I woke up with purple marke r lines across my cheeks. Everyone called me Poca-Samantha for the rest of camp.

All of this wouldn’t have been so bad if Elise actually got in trouble for any of it, but no one ever caught her. I knew she was guilty, though. I could tell by the way she smirked innocently every time it happened.

Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought Elise cared enough about school to be able to count to 1200, let alone get that score on the SAT. I actually pay attention in class most of the time, and I got an 810. Life is so unfair.

Mom said, “Don’t worry about your scores. I’m sure you did great. I just wish they were here already so I could start bragging about you.”

No, I thought, you really don’t.

“I bet they come tomorrow.”

I’d take that bet. In fact, I’d bet they were never going to come. They’d been inexplicably lost in the mail. Perhaps even rerouted to a small village in Albania. Funny how those things happened sometimes.

I decided to change the subject. “Class elections are coming up. I thought I’d run for president.”

Mom spread a thin slab of butter across the dough, then folded it over. “That’s wonderful. You’ll make a great president.”

“Well, I have to win first.”

“Who’s going to be your vice president?”

“Whoever the student body votes for. We don’t run as a ticket.”

Mom spun the rolling pin across the dough again and shook her head. “That’s not very efficient. What if you and the vice president have opposite political views?”

“I think mostly we just plan dances, fund-raisers, that sort of thing.”

“You should still have some sort of an agenda. What are you planning to campaign on?”

“Poster boards. Flyers. Maybe some buttons if they’re not too expensive.”

“I meant what issues are you campaigning on?”

Issues? What was the point of having issues when all you did was plan dances and fund-raisers? I imagined myself standing in front of the student body delivering my campaign speech. “And if elected, I promise not to hire bands who have thus far performed only in their garages and who create songs using screeching sounds instead of actual musical notes.

Furthermore, if elected, I promise that when we do our annual car wash fund-raiser, none of you will have to scrape bugs off of strangers’ radiator grills. We’ll make the incoming freshmen do that.”