Tina and I looked back at Lana and Josh.

Really attractive people, like Lana and Josh, don’t ever go anywhere alone. They always have this sort of entourage that follows them around. Lana’s entourage consists of a bunch of other girls, most of whom are junior varsity cheerleaders like she is. They are all really pretty, with long hair and breasts and stuff, like Lana.

Josh’s entourage consists of a bunch of senior boys who are all on the crew team with him. They are all really large and handsome, and they were all eating excessive amounts of animal by-products, just like Josh.

Josh’s entourage put their trays down beside Josh’s. Lana’s entourage put their trays beside Lana’s. And soon, our table, which had consisted only of two geeky girls and their bodyguards, was being graced by the most beautiful people in Albert Einstein—maybe even in all of Manhattan.

I got a good look at Lilly, and her eyes were bugging out the way they do when she sees something she thinks would make a good episode of her show.

“So,” Lana said, all chatty-like, while she picked at her salad—no dressing, and only water on the side. “What are you up to this weekend, Mia? Are you going to the Cultural Diversity Dance?”

It was the first time she’d ever called me Mia and not Amelia.

“Uh,” I said brilliantly. “Let me see . . . ”

“Because Josh’s parents are going away, and we were thinking about having a thing at his place on Saturday night, after the dance, and all. You should come.”

“Huh,” I said. “Well, I don’t—“

“She should totally come,” Lana said, stabbing at a cherry tomato with her fork. “Shouldn’t she, Josh?”

Josh was shoveling chili into his mouth using Doritos instead of a spoon. “Sure,” he said with his mouth full. “She should come.”

“It’s going to be so cool,” Lana said. “Josh’s place is like great. It’s got six bedrooms. On Park Avenue. And there’s a Jacuzzi in the master bedroom. Isn’t there a Jacuzzi, Josh?”

Josh said, “Yeah, there’s—“

Pierce, a member of Josh’s entourage, and a six-foot-two-inch rower, interrupted. “Hey, Richter, remember after the last dance? When Bonham-Allen passed out in your mom’s Jacuzzi? That was rad.”

Lana giggled. “Oh, God! She chugged that whole bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Remember, Josh? She drank practically the whole thing herself—what a hog!—and then she wouldn’t stop throwing up.”

“Major vomitage,” Pierce agreed.

“She had to have her stomach pumped,” Lana said to Tina and me. “The paramedics said if Josh hadn’t phoned them when he did she’d have died.”

We all turned to look at Josh. He said, modestly, “It was way uncool.”

Lana stopped giggling. “It was,” she said, all solemn now that Josh Richter had declared the incident uncool.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to say about that, so I just said, “Wow.”

“So,” Lana said. She ate a shred of lettuce and swished some water around in her mouth. “Are you coming, or not?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”

A lot of Lana’s friends, who’d been talking among themselves, stopped talking and looked at me. Josh’s friends, however, went right on eating.

“You can’t?” Lana said, making this very astonished face.

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

I thought about lying. I could have said something like, Lana, I can’t go because I have to have dinner with the prime minister of Iceland. I could have said, I can’t go because I have to go christen a cruise ship. There were all sorts of excuses I could have made up. But for once, for once in my stupid life, I went and told the truth.

“I can’t go,” I said, “because my mom wouldn’t let me go to a party like that.”

Oh, my God. Why did I say that? Why, why, why? I should have lied. I totally should have lied. Because how did I sound, saying something like that? Uh, like a total freak. Worse than a freak. A dork. A grade A nerd.

I don’t know what compelled me to tell the truth in the first place. It wasn’t even the real truth. I mean, it was a truth, but it wasn’t the real reason I was saying no. I mean, it’s true there was no way my mom was going to let me go to a party in a boy’s apartment when his parents are out of town. Even with a bodyguard. But the real reason, of course, is that I wouldn’t know how to act at a party like that. I mean, I’ve heard about these kinds of parties. There are like whole rooms reserved for people to go into to make out. We’re talking major French kissing. Maybe even MORE than French kissing. Maybe even like above-the-waist touching. Maybe even below-the-waist touching. I don’t know for sure, because no one I know has ever been to one of those parties. No one I know is popular enough to get invited.

Plus everybody drinks. But I don’t drink, and I don’t have anybody to make out with. So what would I do there?

Lana looked at me, and then she looked at her friends, and then she burst out laughing. Loud. I mean, REALLY loud.

Well, I guess I can’t really blame her.

“Oh my God,” Lana said when she had gotten over laughing so hard that she couldn’t talk. “You can’t be serious.”

I knew right then Lana had just latched upon a whole new thing to torture me about. I didn’t really care so much about me, but I felt bad for Tina Hakim Baba, who’d managed to keep such a low profile for so long. Suddenly, because of me, she was being sucked into the middle of the popular girl torture zone.