Claire threw herself into an orange plastic chair, dumped her backpack on the scratched linoleum, and put her head in her hands. Her face felt hot, and she was shaking, and she knew, just knew, that she was going to cry. Cry like the baby they all said she was, too young to be here, too young to be away from Mommy.

It sucked to be smart, because this was where it got you.

She gulped deep, damp breaths and sat back, willing herself not to bawl (because they’d hear), and wondered if she could call Mom and Dad for an extension on her allowance, or use the credit card that was “just for emergencies.”

Then she saw the note. Not so much “note” as graffiti, but it was addressed to her, on the painted cinder-block wall above the machines.

DEAR DORK, it read, WE FOUND TRASH IN THE MACHINES AND THREW IT DOWN THE CHUTE. IF YOU WANT IT, DIVE FOR IT.

“Shit,” she breathed, and had to blink back tears again, for an entirely different reason. Blind, stupid rage. Monica. Well, Monica and the Monickettes, anyway. Why was it the hot mean girls always ran in packs, like hyenas? And why, with all the shimmery hair and long tanned legs and more of Daddy’s money than Daddy’s accountants, did they have to focus on her?

No, she knew the answer to that.

She’d made Monica look stupid in front of her friends, and some hot upperclassmen. Not that it had been all that hard; she’d just been walking by, heard Monica saying that World War II had been “that dumbass Chinese war thing.”

And by simple reflex, she’d said, “It wasn’t.” The whole lot of them, slouched all over the couches in the dorm lobby, looked at her with as much blank surprise as if the Coke machine had just spoken up. Monica, her friends, three of the cool older frat boys.

“World War II,” Claire had plunged on, panicked and not quite sure how to get out of what she’d gotten herself into. “I just meant—well, it wasn’t the Korean War. That was later. World War II was with the Germans and the Japanese. You know, Pearl Harbor?”

And the guys had looked at Monica and laughed, and Monica had flushed—not much, but enough to ruin the cool perfection of her makeup. “Remind me not to buy any history papers off of you,” the cutest of the guys had said. “What kind of dumbass doesn’t know that?” Though Claire had been sure none of them had, really. “Chinese. Riiiiight.”

Claire had seen the fury in Monica’s eyes, quickly covered over with smiles and laughter and flirting. Claire had ceased to exist again, for the guys.