The town of Green Acres where we live is split into two halves, the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-nots’. The ‘Haves’ live in North Acres, which is where all the houses have electric gates, their own pools, and big enough plots that you can’t see your neighbors’ houses. South Acres is where the ‘Have-nots’ live. Run-down houses sit next to abandoned lots, beside drug dealers selling from street corners.

Courtney’s family has a beautiful McMansion on a beautiful road in North Acres, her parents are lawyers and her family comes from money on both her mom and dad’s sides. I live slap bang on the border of north and south, or no-man’s-land as I like to call it. My house is small, just two beds, one and a half baths, and a yard full of flowers my mom bought at the grocery store when they were on offer. We’re not rich like Courtney’s family, but we’re not poor either.

My mom is an author. She writes thrillers and has even hit the New York Times bestseller list a few times. What people don’t realize is that even when an author sells a shit ton of books, they don’t necessarily make a shit ton of money.

Some months she makes loads, other months she earns practically nothing, which means that although we almost always manage to pay the bills, we need the money I make working at the diner to bridge the gaps between the good months and the bad.

The only reason I can afford to attend Green Acres Academy—a classy private school in North Acres—is because my mom got a big advance from her publisher to write the next three books in her current series and she paid my tuition in advance for my freshman and sophomore years. If I’ll be able to attend here for my junior and senior years is kind of up in the air at the moment.

Climbing out of the car, I smooth down my green-plaid skirt and hook the straps of my backpack over my shoulders. The kids at GAA are all rich, and even though they’re not assholes to me, they know that I’m not one of them. Thank God the diner I work at is in South Acres, because if anyone here came to the place I work and I had to wait on them, they’d never let me forget it.

I’m not ashamed of having a job, I’m happy to contribute to take some of the pressure off my mom. But to the kids that go here, their idea of a part-time job is interning at their parents’ Fortune 500 company, not serving burgers in a run-down diner in a rough part of town.

“I’m so excited for sophomore year,” Court exclaims, hooking her arm through mine and marching us toward the school entrance.

“Really? Why?”

“Duh, because we’re not the newbies anymore, select sophomores get invited to all the good parties, and we’re going to be two of those people. We’re both hot, maybe we could even get junior boyfriends and then we’d be a shoo-in to be Elite by the time we hit our senior year.”