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said, to read and think and figure out who she wanted to be. Lauren watched Ms. Absolute Perfection inch toward the front of the line and wondered, for the first time, if they had any idea what they were talking about.

chapter 3
    Chloe looked as though she had been drawn with a compass , a source of infinite exasperation to her mother, who had been laid out with a straightedge. Chloe was adamantly, irrevocably round, from her mink eyes to her soup-bowl belly to hips that yearned for the demise of low-rise jeans. A fat halo of russet curls framed her face, despite her mother’s repeated offers to pay for Japanese straightening. Her little cobalt blue toenails were rounder than her mother’s red brick rectangles; she was not so much plump as circular, as unsubtle and unstable as a beach ball. She knew from her mother’s perpetually downturned mouth that Deena resented the way she looked. As long as Chloe was in the house, it was impossible, despite a folder full of legal documents, for Deena to eliminate Dave from her life entirely.
    In an intact household, Chloe told herself, she would have channeled her energy into something big, an as yet unidentified career that guaranteed her a closet full of the latest fashions and public appearances where she would be photographed wearing them. Ever since her parents’ argument in the parking lot, Chloe had a darker mission—to retaliate, to punish them for being so selfish that they could not manage to stay married until she left home.
    If getting into a great college was going to be the one stellar accomplishment her parents pointed to, to prove that they had not irreparably harmed their only child, then college was going to be the one thing Chloe blew off—just shy of not going, of course,for she was not that brave. Chloe intended to find a decent school that her parents considered to be completely inappropriate, a private one that cost a lot of money, and to insist that it was the only place on earth where she could be truly happy.
    Chloe had sustained damage in the breakup, she just knew it, though she figured it would be years before she understood its scope, and years more before she was willing to give it up as a convenient excuse for bad behavior. The right college might help her get her bearings, but of course losing those bearings in the first place probably guaranteed that the right college would not want her. Other kids might feel like rejects when a school turned them down. Chloe intended to occupy the much cushier berth of the emotional casualty.
    If she were being honest, she would have admitted that life before her parents’ split had not been much fun, either, and that in fact there was a certain relief to being able to get through a day without holding her breath. She preferred instead to remind her parents, whenever possible, that she had endured a wrenching detour, one that involved not just the logistical challenge of joint custody but the academic and social demands of a new school—a transition of a magnitude her parents failed to appreciate to this day.
    There were so many adjustments to make. At Crestview, she had never carried a real purse, thanks to an informal competition that involved being the senior with the most beat-up but still serviceable six-year-old backpack. At Ocean Heights, girls started babysitting in eighth grade so that they’d have enough saved up for a Kooba or a Tylie Malibu by the time they started high school. They bought their shoes at Payless and their jeans at Target—at Tar-jay, merci—but the purse had to be an important one, even if it was last season’s, even if they ignored their algebra homework to scour eBay and the online discount sites for markdowns.
    By the time anyone remembered her name, Chloe was sporting a brand-new Tylie that the other girls would have to dream about until the after-Christmas sales. She banished to the back of her closet the $175 jeans favored by Crestview kids, with their frayed hems,