The Preps sat at the Deluxe Table, named so because it was both next to a window and far enough from the lunch monitor that you could execute petty crimes, like trading cigarettes for Trojans or just saying titty-fucker without getting an after-school detention. I usually sat near the trash cans with a quartet of quiet girls who read fantasy novels or drew manga while eating Lean Pockets. At the Deluxe Table, the Preps shared a paper plate of prunes, sliced mangos, and rice cakes. My mom had packed me turkey and mustard on rye, which I promptly threw away, untouched, along with the yellow Post-it that read: HAVE THE BEST DAY EVER! Exactly why I’d been invited to this lunch was a mystery. Had there been some kind of meeting? Had an oracle visited Paige in her dreams? It was possible they thought I was new to school, new to Wichita—I’d just gotten contact lenses and lost fifteen pounds by eating nothing but celery sticks and Mentos— but I didn’t want to think I’d been completely invisible before my transformation. Perhaps they just wanted someone to bear witness to the inner sanctums of their beauty, their coolness. Perhaps they could sense how desperate I was to be one of them.

On the day of the laying out, I made my mother drop me off a block away from Paige’s house, so nobody would see the horror of her van.

“This place is pretty chichi,” my mother said, looking around at the houses, the streets so wide they were called avenues. “Can you take a picture of the kitchen?”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m just curious, Laney. These people. It’s like they live in a television show. You’ll see.”

I got out of the car before she could ask me to steal a roll of toilet paper.

Paige’s house, which was not really a house but a mansion, belonged in one of the catalogs my mother kept beside the toilet. The door was large and wooden and shaped like a gravestone, flanked by shrubs neatly shorn into teepees. I rang the bell and then crossed my fingers for a butler in full regalia—top hat, waistcoat, monocle—but it was Paige who eventually opened the door. She mumbled, “Hey,” and then turned around, as if I was there to sell cookies.

Inside, the smell of old wood and clean emptiness—leather and lemon, everything either ancient or modern. Through gossip I knew that Paige’s father made his money from some sort of high-end children’s toy operation. Contrary to the whimsy of his career, there was a rusted mace above the doorway and a polar bear rug that could have easily been faux if not for its yellow teeth. Because my mother loved home decorating shows, I had seen dozens of houses like this come to life, one hired hand at a time. I could imagine the lean interior designer flying through the front hall, shouting where to put the reclaimed wood wine bar, how high to hang the Swarovski crystal chandelier, his pointed crocodile boots clicking across the sea of hardwood. All the while, Paige’s father would nod in silent approval from a leather armchair, a rare Pokémon card ensconced in his breast pocket.