OCTAVIAN COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL
THE AUDITORIUM

Monday, May 3rd

8:33 A.M.

Principal Burns stood at the podium shuffling papers while the OCD girls filed in. The auditorium smelled like wet textbooks, and the bands of colored light streaming through the stained-glass windows drew unfortunate attention to the major amounts of unsettled dust floating toward the dark, domed ceiling.

Once seated, everyone whisper-gossiped about what this impromptu assembly could possibly be about.

But not the Pretty Committee.

Dressed in head-to-toe gray—a sign of mourning—they had more pressing matters to discuss.

Kristen leaned forward, across Dylan, Alicia, and Massie, and gripped Claire’s wrist. “Ehmagawd, I’m still in shock. He really said, ‘Stop calling me!’?”

Claire averted her eyes and nodded yes. “Then he hung up.”

“Well, that’s better than getting your inbox flooded with flash-art pictures of pigs all weekend.” Dylan sneaked a sip of Enviga, the calorie-burning soft drink.

“Well, I haven’t heard a thing from Griffin, and I probably never will again.” Kristen subconsciously rubbed her nail beds, which, despite three rounds of heavy-duty remover and a scrub brush, were still stained with black Bride of Chucky polish.

“What about Derrington?” Alicia asked Massie. “Has he texted you yet?”

“Um, not since I checked during the car ride over here,” Massie snapped. “He thinks I’m immature, remember?” She rolled her eyes at the absurdity of it all.

“At least you have Chris Abeley to fall back on.” Dylan sighed hopelessly. “I remember when I had two.”

“I kinda got rid of him at the party.” Massie lifted the cashmere fold of her gray turtleneck over her chin.

“What?” they all squealed.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Alicia seemed genuinely offended.

Massie shrugged, even though she knew why.

The truth was, she had forgotten all about Chris the minute Derrington told her off. And she had become obsessed with wanting to change his opinion of her. Obsessed with wanting him to like her more than the eighth-grade girls. And obsessed with figuring out the most “mature” way of getting him back. But why admit all that when it was cooler to act like it didn’t mean enough to mention?

“It slipped my mind.”

“How is that even possible?” Alicia’s brown eyes widened. “He’s cute and he drives.”

“I know.” Massie sighed. But he’s such a downer.” She borrowed Skye’s word, seeing as it was so appropriate.

“How’d you shake him?” Dylan asked. “He was so into you.”

“I swiped his iPod, found the JoJo song that reminded him of his ex, Fawn, and blasted it. Sent him right back into a full depression.” She smiled with glee.

The girls leaned across one another for a group high-five.

“You know Colleen Campo?” asked Alicia.

The girls shook their heads no.

“Minnie Mouse?”

They nodded.

“I heard she doubled home on the back of Barbie’s Ken’s bike, and Mickey Mouse ended up crashing in Skye’s downstairs bathroom because he was too embarrassed to leave without her.”

“How upset was Barbie?” asked Kristen.

“Ew, puh-lease, she didn’t care.” Alicia rolled her eyes as if this should have been obvious. “Ken is her twin brother.”

“I heard Emily Merlino told Rachel Brown that we had the cutest dates there,” Alicia beamed.

“Until they bailed on us,” Dylan whispered as she silently read the nutritional information on the back of her sparkling green tea drink.

“Shhhhh,” Massie hissed, eye-warning her friends about the passing girls and their hunger for all things Pretty Committee–related. “I thought we weren’t going to mention the date-ditch in public.”

“It’s not like people won’t find out,” Claire mumbled, her eyes swollen and red. “Besides, everyone’s been staring at us all morning.”

“Puh-lease, they’re always staring at us.” Alicia lifted her chin.

“I know word will spread, but as long as the Briarwood boys are over there”—Massie pointed south, where the boy’s school was located—“and OCD is over here, we can spin the truth. Call them liars. Spread our own versions of the truth. It’ll be easy.”

“I hope so.” Kristen sighed just as Strawberry, the faux redhead, and Kori, her bad-postured sidekick, walked by their seats, whispering.

“Trust me,” Massie assured them. “Besides, I have a new life plan.” She pulled out her PalmPilot and read her screen, taunting the others with her mysterious new credo.

“What does it say?” asked Alicia.

“Share,” insisted Dylan.

Kristen and Claire leaned across the others to avoid being left out.

“It may not be for everyone,” Massie teased. “It’s probably something I should do on my own.”

“No,” they pleaded.

Allie-Rose and Sydney half-turned their heads to try and eavesdrop.

“Do you mind?” sneered Massie, rolling her eyes at her lack of privacy.

The girls slid down the back of their seats in utter shame. When Massie could no longer see the tops of their heads, she continued.

“As of May third, I—I mean, the Pretty Committee is on a strict boy fast.”

“Ah-greed.” Dylan gave her the thumbs-up. “I gained eight pounds with my crushes. That’s like four pounds each!”

The girls snickered.

“No more thinking about boys,” Massie continued. “No more talking about boys, and no more crushing on boys.” She paused for objections but there were none.

“We must rid our systems of all the boy toxins that are clogging our pores and dulling our complexions. So what if we’re the Cheetah Girls. We don’t need—”

“Um, question.” Alicia raised her hand. “Does this mean I can’t IM Josh tonight while I’m studying?”

“Not if you want to be part of the New Pretty Committee.”

Alicia bit her lower lip.

Massie secretly held her breath while Alicia chose between a boy and her friends.

“Okay, I’m in.” She removed Josh’s Yankees cap and placed it gently at her side.

Massie exhaled. “Maybe the DSL Daters need boys to make them feel special, but we’re better than that. We’re already special. So from now on, the New Pretty Committee is boy-free. No more sadness, no more temptation. No more distractions. It will just be us, all the time, with clear skin, having the best time ever. Ah-greeed?”

“Ah-greed.” They air-clapped.

“Done, done, and done,” Massie nodded at her PalmPilot before shutting it off and dropping it in her gray Versace Madonna bag.

“Simmer down,” grumbled Principal Burns as she bent the microphone closer to her thin lips and focused her beady black crow eyes on the students. “Simmer!”

The murmurs faded to whispers, which faded to a few dry coughs. And then silence.

“In preparation for summer, all lockers should be cleaned out no later than Friday at noon. I want all the stickers, mirrors, photos, and glitter letters scraped off the metal.” She paused, giving way to the inevitable chorus of agitated mumbles. “If, at twelve-oh-one, so much as single shiny fleck catches my eye, everyone in that row will start off their summer break with a weekend detention.”

More mumbles. A few random stares from LBRs looking to see how the Pretty Committee was reacting to the news assured Massie that even if word about the date-ditch had spread, she was still their beloved alpha.

“For those of you not spending this summer at five-star camps, yachting through the Mediterranean, or sunning yourselves on a beach in the Hamptons—the extra-credit summer school sign-up sheet is posted outside my office. There are several exciting new math programs to pick from, so take your time reading through the course descriptions before choosing.”

The New Pretty Committee peered over at Kristen, who, thanks to financially challenged parents and a scholarship to uphold, would be all over that sign-up sheet. She kept her eyes forward, though, as if it had no relevance to her whatsoever.

“And now”—Principal Burns tucked her wild gray Albert Einstein bob behind her ears—“I have some terrible news.”

The creaking-wood sounds of girls shifting in their seats echoed throughout the auditorium.

Massie’s heart started to race. She loved a crisis. Loved watching people get all worked up about things. It added excitement into her life, especially when the crisis had no effect on her, which this ah-bviously didn’t. Besides, it would be fun watching someone else in turmoil for a while, because she had certainly had more than her share in the past year.

She had dealt with Claire moving to town, Alicia trying to start her own clique, Nina the big-boobed boy-snatcher visiting from Spain, her first kiss with Derrington, getting expelled from OCD, watching Claire land the starring role in Dial L for Loser, searching for the key to a secret bomb shelter, prying it away from Layne, fixing up Chris and Skye, and wondering if Derrington would ever like her again.

And now, finally, with the creation of the New Pretty Committee, it was all behind her.

Principal Burns cleared her throat. “This morning, at three a.m., something devastating happened at our brother school.”

Massie half-smiled. She was right. It had nothing to do with her.

“Somehow, the main water valve that was used to fill the wave pool was punctured.”

Massie’s palms began to itch.

Alicia fanned her face.

Claire bit her nails.

Kristen opened and closed the Velcro straps on her gray-and-black Pumas.

Dylan started chewing on one of her red curls.

And Layne, who was two rows in front of them, slid down in her seat.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of water gushed onto the roof of Briarwood and the old building.” Principal Burns swallowed. “Well, the old building, she just couldn’t handle the weight.” Tears welled in her eyes. “And she collapsed.”

Everyone gasped.

Principal Burns dabbed her wet, beady eyes with a crumpled tissue she’d plucked from her tweed blazer pocket. “And now the institution no longer stands as a New York State landmark. Instead, it looks like the lost city of Atlantis.”

“We are so dead,” Alicia mumbled.

“If we’re lucky,” Kristen mumbled back. “I’m never lucky,” moped Claire.

“Does that make us dead or not dead?” asked Dylan.

“Shhh,” whisper-warned Massie. “You sound guilty.”

“We are,” Kristen insisted.

“No,” Massie muttered from the side of her glossy mouth. “Layne is.”

“Be assured that we are doing everything in our power to find out what caused this tragedy. And we are consulting with several European contractors about building restoration. But it’s a long process, and it could take several years.”

“Ehmagawd,” Massie whisper-panicked.

“Ehmagawd,” the New Pretty Committee whisper-panicked back.

Massie imagined her summer. No lazy afternoons by the pool or vigorous rides on woodsy trails with Brownie. Instead, she’s be sweating in a stuffy orange jumpsuit picking trash off the side of Interstate 287 with the New Pretty Committee. It served her right for trusting Layne Abeley.

Principal Burns finally stopped talking, and Massie’s ankle started shaking. She needed to get out of there and discuss, pronto. But instead of dismissing them, Principal Burns looked toward the back of the room and nodded once. The sudden pump of the door handle caused every head to turn.

A rush of overenthusiastic Briarwood boys swarmed inside, scanning the seated girls with the hunger of released convicts. They slid into any and all available seats, and even plopped down on a few of the eighth-graders’ laps. No one had any idea what was happening, but the gleeful expressions on their faces proved they didn’t care. There were guys in OCD. And this was more rare than a Louis Vuitton Panda Pochette special-edition handbag.

Massie, on the other hand, felt invaded and violated by the enemy.

“So please, give a warm OCD welcome to next year’s new students,” announced the principal with a mix of generosity and fear.

“What?” Massie jumped to her feet in protest. “No!”

Alicia jumped up too and applauded. Everyone followed except the rest of the New Pretty Committee, who looked up at Massie, waiting to be told how to feel about this shocking development.

“Sit down!” Massie grabbed Alicia’s arms and lowered them both back into their seats. “This is bad. Very bad.”

“Ehmagawd.” Alicia quickly took her seat. “I totally forgot we hate boys.”

Massie rolled her eyes, trying to downplay the giddiness that was swirling all around them.

Snippets of lively conversations danced in the air like the dust particles from moments ago. And everyone except the New Pretty Committee seemed to be taking part in them.

“… do you think he’ll sit at our lunch table?”

“We should start doubling to school. You can ride on the back of Jesse’s bike and I’ll ride on the back of Luke’s.”

“We have to go shopping.”

“And tanning.”

“… he’s the one in the black Lacoste—no, don’t look.… He’s totally checking you out.…”

“Can I look now?”

“No… wait… okay… now.”

“Ohmygoshhe’ssocute!”

“Ehmagawd!” Massie gasped for air. “Do you realize it’s been, like, an entire minute since anyone’s even looked at us?”

“Huh?”

“It’s like the boys are the new alphas!”

But no one responded. The New Pretty Committee was too busy scanning the crowd for their ex-crushes to notice much else.

“Is Olivia Ryan talking to Cam and Derrington?” asked Alicia.

“Yup,” scoffed Kristen.

“I think I’m going to barf.” Claire lowered her head in her hands. Her shoulders shook.

Suddenly Massie was overcome with flu-like symptoms. Her first instinct was to flirt with other guys, but as the founder of the New Pretty Committee, she couldn’t. Which left her feeling embarrassingly helpless and lost.

“Ehmagawd, if Olivia so much as talks to Josh, she’s dead to me.”

“Kemp and Plovert won’t even look at me,” Dylan whined.

“Neither will the LBRs,” Kristen gasped.

“Ehmagawd.” Massie fanned her face with a musty prayer book. “What if our ex-crushes are the new eighth-grade alphas and we’re the new…” Her voice trailed.

“The new what?” Asked Alicia.

Massie opened her mouth, but all she heard was a collective gasp from the New Pretty Committee. No further explanation was needed.

While the auditorium was buzzing with excitement and anticipation as the OCD girls and Briarwood boys mixed and mingled, Massie, Alicia, Kristen, Dylan, and Claire sat motionless. Their futures were clear. Their fate was obvious. And it could be summed up in three letters.

Three letters that would haunt them over summer break.

Three letters that would become their eighth-grade nicknames.

Three letters that would mark the end of an era.