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girlfriend after this—much less go to Paris with you.”
    Alex’s mouth dropped open. He shook his head. Then he stood up and started pacing the sidewalk. “I can’t believe this. All because of one little—”
    â€œBelieve it,” I said.
    â€œSo it’s over?” he asked. I could have sworn his eyes looked moist. “Just like that?”
    This was my chance—to make him grovel and apologize and swear I was the only girl for him. But deep in my heart, I knew, I’d never be able to get that picture out of my head. And I’d never forgive Alex for acting like this wasn’t such a big deal. I looked at his tortured face in front of me. I did get a little bit of solace that at least he looked half as broken up as I felt inside. I was about to do the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I took a deep breath and met his eyes.
    â€œIt’s over,” I said. “Just like that.”

Chapter 6
PASSING THE TORCH
    The girls and I had agreed to meet at Candle Café for breakfast before school on Friday. Originally, the plan had been to go over the final details before the red-eye flight that night. But since my whole world had come crashing down on me twelve hours ago, things were looking slightly different. When my Betty Boop alarm clock went off at six-thirty, I groaned, rolled over, and buried my face in my pillow. The sound was so unwelcome, I wanted to throw Betty against the wall.
    Noodles, the world’s greatest Pomeranian, chose that moment to pounce on my neck and start attacking me with kisses. He could always sense when I need a little extra love. This morning, I was so utterly devastated—I needed a whole lot of extra love.
    It wasn’t going to be easy to break the news to my friends. For starters, breaking the news meant I wasgoing to have to relive every excruciating detail—starting with Kennedy’s sneer at Saks and ending with the sight of Alex, walking away down Perry Street without even looking back. Then I was going to have to tell them that my eyes were already too red from crying to take the red-eye. I had to tell them I was going be a GPA no-show.
    All of this was made even worse by the fact that everyone was depending on me to be the ringleader. Just thinking about all my friends right now—innocently blow-drying their hair at home (Harper), accidentally oversleeping (Camille), illegally downloading one more song for our trip’s mix CDs (Morgan), and making a last-minute decision to throw both pairs of hot pink jeans in her suitcase (Amory)—made me panic. None of them had a clue that I was about to drop the biggest bomb, possibly in the history of spring break.
    We’d decided to meet at Candle Café because a) it was super healthy and super delicious (one last cleansing day before we consumed half the butter in Paris) and b) because it was our last day to dine somewhere that was
so
Manhattan. As Camille pointed out, there was little chance we’d be eating macrobiotic quinoa in Paris.
    But there was just one problem: the vegan chefs atCandle swore by that very special (read: imposter!) food product called carob. The dessert list was all carob puddings and carob chip soy ice cream, etc. And everybody knows that there are times in life when a girl needs the real thing.
    Today was a chocolate day if I’d ever seen one.
    To help arm myself for the difficult conversation I knew I had ahead of me, I swung by the nearby Crumbs en route to Candle Café. I’d always wondered why a cupcake shop needed to open at seven in the morning—but today I understood. When I saw the shaven-headed, nose-ringed, white-aproned baker slide a tray of luscious-looking cupcakes into the glass case before me, I knew she was going to be my savior.
    â€œCan I have that double chocolate cupcake—no, to the left … the big one?” I pointed to the case and waited for the biggest, swirliest, chocolatiest