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the stall next to the one she had been in was a frail-looking blond girl—the one from the front desk. She was wearing a neat black wrap dress and black patent leather peep-toed heels. She looked very put together.
    “Naomi, right?” Jane said.
    The girl nodded. She studied her reflection in the mirror and swept a strand of hair out of her face. “It was probably your bag.”
    “Excuse me?” Jane said, confused.
    “No, it’s totally cute. Fiona just isn’t a fan of color. She prefers neutral. Black, white, cream, beige, gray. That way, we don’t clash with whatever color scheme we’re workingwith that day. It’s silly, but she thinks it distracts.”
    Jane turned back to her reflection and examined her not-too-neutral outfit. She had chosen a peach top with ruffles down the center, tucked into a red, high-waisted chiffon skirt that ended just above her knees.
    Jane couldn’t help but laugh at herself. “I don’t think it was just the bag.”
    Naomi smiled. “Tomorrow will be better.”

6
THE ONLY WAY TO BELONG IS TO ACT LIKE YOU BELONG
    “Is this the right place?” Scarlett asked as Jane pulled the Jetta up to a long, vine-covered building on Las Palmas. It was next to a large parking lot filled with Hummers, Mercedes, and a few Range Rovers. Scarlett couldn’t care less about being outclassed in the transportation department, but was concerned that finding a spot might be a problem. The place was a mob scene, and she didn’t feel like having Jane drive around for half an hour searching for an empty spot. She wanted to get inside and get a drink before midnight. It was a school night after all.
    “Yup. Les Deux. I Googled the address this morning. A girl from work told me about it,” Jane said.
    “It’s kind of a zoo.”
    “I don’t care. It’ll be fun! And you promised we’d do something fun tonight.”
    “Indeed I did,” Scarlett said.
    Her first day on campus had been uneventful—shepicked up her ID and registration packet—but she was happy to blow off some steam with Jane, who’d had a crappy first day at work. How crazy that their lives were about to be so different. Scarlett would be studying at night while Jane would be recovering from her workday.
    Jane managed to find parking down the street in a different lot, but when they got back to Les Deux, they found another obstacle waiting for them: a line, not of cars, but of people waiting to get in—young, dressed up, drunk, semi-drunk guys and girls gabbing, flirting, checking their phones, texting, smoking—that extended down the block. One group of girls (probably drunk) was swaying arm in arm and singing “Gimme More.” Another group (definitely drunk) was pulling down the straps of their tighter-than-tight dresses and flashing people passing by. Manning the front door to the coveted club was a huge brute of a guy wearing an all-black suit and a beanie. He stood next to a red velvet rope that he unhooked to let a few people through at a time.
    “I am not waiting in some lame line to get in,” Scarlett declared. “Come on, let’s just go somewhere else.”
    Jane grabbed her arm. “We came all this way. I’m sure it’ll just be a few minutes. It’s a Monday night—how crowded could it be in there?”
    Scarlett rolled her eyes.
    She and Jane joined the seemingly endless line behind two guys with bleached tips and Day-Glo tans. At leastshe and Jane had a better chance of getting in than those two. Did one of them actually have flames on his shirt? Poor guy.
    Five minutes passed, then fifteen, then thirty. She and Jane texted some friends from high school and made catty remarks about the other people in line, and texted some more as they slowly made their way to the front. They had been standing in sight of the door for about twenty minutes when a sleek black Mercedes glided up to the curb. Seemingly out of nowhere, a wave of photographers appeared, their cameras swinging and bouncing. The door to the Benz opened, and a long,