Most people at Cassidy High ate lunch in the cafeteria, but the geeky nerds and cool nerds ate in the library—probably the only rule they’d ever broken. All of the cafeteria’s walls were windows, which meant the room was either megahot or wear-hats-inside-but-not-ironically cold, depending on if the sun came out. Since Cassidy High wasn’t that big we had a handful of cliques, which, despite my classmates’ extreme desires to be nonconforming, could be identified by a key clothing item: bros had hats, hoes had something neon, hipsters had flannels, overachievers had scrunchies or crazy-short socks, the people into anime had colored streaks in their hair, the freshmen had braces, rebels had faded jeans, cool underclassmen had black jeans, hot girls hadleggings, the normals had Converse, marching band people had hoodies, artsy-fartsy kids had supercolorful glasses, theatre kids had business casual, geeky nerds had graphic tees, cool nerds had bad posture, and secret nerds had whatever name-brand quarter zip was in style.

See? A handful.

I approached my table, where Carter and Robert were diving into their peanut butter and jellies. The cafeteria buzzed with the usual mix of unsubstantiated yelling and tone-deaf gossip. Sweat had already started to congeal on my back from the sun’s sadistic sheen, boiling the room and reminding me, yet again, of impending global warming.

“Hey, Mags . . .” Carter greeted me. “You in for the fashion show?” He pointed to a single sheet of paper under his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It had two columns and a lot of lines with people’s names on them.

“What happens if I say no?”

“Yeah, right,” he said.

Every year, the Parent Teacher Association hosted a fashion show to fundraise for their organization. Ms. O’Connor, as a hardcore volunteer, always enlisted Carter to get representatives of the male gender (me) to sign up. Super-not-optional.

“When is it?”

“Two weeks.” He scribbled my name down. “My mom’s getting the rental tux place to donate suits.”

“Your mom is ridiculously on her game,” Robert said from across the table. “She should run for president.”

“She’s overqualified.”

Robert sighed. “And a woman would never get the votes. She should! But she won’t.”

“She will if you vote for her,” said Carter.

I threw up my hands to mediate. “Guys, it’s not even 12:30.”

Luckily, my phone lit up with a new notification. Text message from Madison: You first.

I gulped.

She sat by the small (exclusive) table closest to the door with the other, overly dramatic senior girls, and held my gaze for three impossibly long seconds.

Fine.

“Oh hey, Carter,” I said. “You still need tutoring hours?”

“Is the National Honor Society still up my ass? Yes. Yes it is.”

“Right,” I said. “The National Horror Society. So, Madison, you remember Madison, the girl you’ve known since sixth grade, talked to her yesterday—”

“Sounds familiar.”

“She requested your help with trig.” Maybe setting up a tutoring date was totally lame, but that was me thinking on my feet. Anything to keep her from flipping out.