gave up; in a wood-paneled alcove stocked with evening dresses, I found an empty chair and

collapsed into it, dropping my head back, closing my eyes, and sighing.

"I don't know," said a familiar voice, "you're the one who told me what black-tie means."

My eyes snapped open. Sitting a few feet away from me was the last person in the world I'd have

expected to find in the evening-dress section of the Ralph Lauren store at the Miracle Mile.

Sam Wolff.

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He was hunched forward over a sketch pad, and he didn't see me. In his faded jeans and a torn

Red Grooms T-shirt, he looked a little out of place sitting on the overstuffed chintz chair. But he

didn't seem self-conscious, like most of the other guys who were sitting around waiting for their

wives or girlfriends to show off a dress they were considering buying. Instead he looked totally

oblivious to his surroundings, like he could just as easily have been on the Left Bank of the Seine

or the median of the Long Island Expressway. While I was watching, he pulled absently on a

corkscrew curl at the back of his head, then suddenly let it go and drew a series of lines on the

page.

Just as I turned to look around for Jessica, the door to the dressing room right in front of where

Sam was sitting flew open to reveal the beautiful girl who'd sat down at my table that day with

Kathryn Ford. The slinky black cocktail dress she was wearing showed off her amazing body.

"Okay, this or the green one?" she asked. To my amazement, she was addressing Sam.

He didn't look up. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe," he said, still sketching.

"Sam," she said, "you're starting to piss me off."

He sighed and flipped his sketch pad closed.

"Okay," he said. "Turn around." She spun around on her heel. "The green one." Considering how gorgeous she looked in the dress she was wearing, I couldn't even

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begin to fathom what the green one must have looked like.

"Oh, please," she said. "You have the worst taste."

"And you're asking my opinion because ..."

"Just forget it, okay?" She looked at herself in the mirror, frowning, though what she could

possibly have seen that made her frown was completely beyond me. "Obviously, if I want this

done right, I'm going to have to do it myself."

"Jane, you're gorgeous in everything you tried on, up to and including the very first dress I saw

you in three hours ago."

Now I was starting to feel weird about how thoroughly I was eavesdropping. What if Sam

suddenly turned around and saw me?

"Could you just be quiet for a minute? I can't even hear myself think." She studied herself in the mirror. "I hate this stupid rehearsal dinner, I hate this stupid wedding, and I hate my stupid

sister."

"Amen to that," said Sam, flipping his sketch pad open again.

She shot him a look. "I'm getting both and I'll decide at home," she said. Then she opened the

dressing-room door and disappeared behind it just as Jessica appeared holding a shopping bag.

"There you are," she said. "Oh, hey, Sam."

Sam turned around lazily. I froze, sure he'd be all, Enjoying listening in on my conversation

much? But the

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only thing he said was, "Hey." Then he kind of lifted his head in my direction in a move that was somewhere between a nod and a nothing.

Now I was totally confused. How did Sam not only know A) the most beautiful girl in the senior

class, but also B) Jessica?

Jessica put her hand on my shoulder. "So we should probably hook up with Madison," she said.

"Yeah, let's go," I said. I stood up, and the ache in my feet that had disappeared while I was

sitting came back.

"See you," Jessica said to Sam. Without really looking up from his pad, he gave us a salute.

When we got outside, I was about to ask how she knew Sam, but she beat me to it.

"He's in my art class," I said. "But you know what's really weird? I think he was there with that girl who hangs out with Kathryn Ford."

"Oh yeah," she said. "Jane Brown. They go out."

I almost tripped over a nonexistent crack on the sidewalk. Sam Wolff, the most antisocial person

on the planet, had a supermodel girlfriend?

"She's such a mega-bitch," said Jessica. "But guys totally love her. Can you believe that of all the hot guys at Glen Lake she picked some random junior artist who's a total freak?"

Something about the way Jessica said artist and freak rubbed me the wrong way. I thought of Sam's

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beautiful paintings and stopped walking. "What's freaky about being an artist?"

Jessica shifted her bag to her other hand. "Oh, no offense," she said, putting her hand on my arm.

"I didn't mean he was a freak because he's an artist. I just meant ... He, like, never talks or anything. Why would she want to go out with him?"

We started walking again. "I don't know," I said, remembering the scene in the store. "If she's such a bitch, maybe it's weird that he goes out with her."

"Is he, like, a friend of yours?" asked Jessica. "Because you're being kind of defensive about him."

"No, we're not friends." Suddenly I realized Jessica was right; I was being defensive about Sam.

Which was pretty weird considering our total lack of anything that would resemble a friendship.

"He, like, never talks to me," I admitted.

"Well, don't feel bad," said Jessica. She spotted Madison walking toward us and waved. "Like I said, he's a total freak."

"I don't feel bad," I said. "I don't even care." It was true. I didn't care. I was about to tell Jessica about how rude Sam had been to me that day at the museum when she grabbed my shoulder.

"Oh my god, look!" she said. She was pointing at a red minidress in the window of Zinna, the

store right next to Ralph Lauren.

Before I could respond, Madison came up to where

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we were standing. "Hey," she said. Then she saw the dress. "Wow, that's hot," she said.

"You would look so good in that dress," Jessica said to me.

I pointed at my hair. "Red," I said. Then I pointed at the dress. "No," I said.

"Come on," said Jessica. "Redheads can totally wear red. Try it on."

"Connor would die if you wore that to dinner," said Madison.

"Yeah, so would my dad," I said. Were they serious? The dress was smaller than my cell phone.

"Just try it on," said Jessica.

"Yeah," said Madison. "What do you have to lose?"

I let them pull me into the store and waited while the saleslady found the dress in my size. They

stood on either side of me talking about how sexy the dress was and how great I was going to

look in it, while I pretended to be considering purchasing it.

Once I'd put the dress on, I didn't even need a mirror to confirm what I already knew: there was

no way I was going to buy it. Looking down, I saw that the neckline plunged below my bra, and

I could feel how the tiny skirt barely grazed my thighs. Not to mention the color. I stepped out of

the dressing room.

Jessica and Madison both gasped. "Oh my god," said Madison, jumping up and down. "That is