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cool, challenging look right back.
    Marnie felt her left hand clench in her lap. She had forgotten entirely about her imaginary hatpin. “I’ve never heard of this Jessica Chekhov. What plays has she written, Jenna? Enlighten my ignorance.”
    Jenna’s chin had gone farther up. “Dorothea? Fill Marnie in.”
    “No,” Marnie began. “Jenna, you’re the one who—”
    But Dorothea had opened her mouth. “Uh, everyone knows about Jessica Chekhov … Her first play was … was on Broadway … Leonardo DiCaprio was in it …” She stuttered on, saying one ridiculous thing after another and, throughout, staring at Marnie—not at Jenna—with helpless, increasing hatred.
    Everyone sat frozen at the table. Not one person moved to stop Dorothea’s babble as it increased in speed and volume and silliness—
    Finally Marnie couldn’t stand it. “Shut up, Dorothea,” she said sharply. It worked like a slap. Dorothea drew a deep breath, looking as if any minute she would burst into a storm of tears. And in the piercing moment of complete silence that followed, all the other girls looked at Marnie as if
she
had done something awful.
    Marnie tightened her hand on the imaginary hatpin until she could almost feel its bite. What she already knew was made even clearer. You were better off hanging out in cyberspace, chasing elves. Fewer people got hurt that way.

CHAPTER
3
    M arnie pulled the headphones off slowly, at the point at which Skye’s solo harmonized with the strong soft background vocals of the chorus, before blending so perfectly into the other voices that you could no longer distinguish her individual one. Marnie had asked her mother once if she was still singing at that point, or had stopped entirely, but Skye hadn’t remembered. It was all so long ago, she’d said. As far as Marnie could recall, Skye had never listened to her own vocal recordings. Of all Skye’s CDs, this one was Marnie’s favorite.
    Or rather, had been.
    She stared at the headphones in her hands. She listened to Skye’s CDs all the time, and yet, more and more of late, the music—Skye herself—seemed to slip away even as Marnie listened. It became a strong, disembodied voice that had nothing to do with Marnie, that left her alone instead of surroundingher with warmth as it used to do. The thought panicked her. Someday she might not even be able to listen anymore …
    She closed her eyes for a second. It was just that she was tired. She was tired all the time now. She longed to sleep but knew she couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Not so early. She ought to do some chemistry homework. Or
any
homework, really. The only class she was on top of was precalculus, which didn’t count since by some quirk she had never had to work at math.
    The problem was, she really didn’t want to work. If only Max would magically understand how stupid it all was, this school stuff. How pointless. Marnie knew she was right about this. If she could only leave, she would be all right … it was this place, not her. Those other girls—she didn’t understand them, she never would. A tough school was Max’s idea, since Marnie had herself insisted on boarding school. “Let’s try something academically challenging,” he had said, after Marnie demanded to leave the celebrity school. “You know you could be up for it if you tried.” The girls’ school idea had been Mrs. Shapiro’s contribution, but Max had liked it, and identified Halsett within days. Marnie wondered how he’d talked them into taking her, with her—even then—erratic academic record.
    Students tended to work intensely at Halsett. There was huge pressure to excel, to take advanced courses, to apply to prestigious colleges. Competition was fierce. Everybody knew everybody else’s class rank. Girls cried when they got grades belowA, or when their PSAT and SAT results were less than spectacular. Some girls took drugs to be able to stay up late, work harder, harder still. A few drank to relieve the