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“Are you sure this is something you want to do?” and smiles circulate around the room because everyone knows that’s the first step to her caving in.

Chapter Three
    After Mickey and Victoria leave, Mom starts the process of reading through the stack of releases that need her signature and enters lawyer mode, stabbing at the pages of the contract with her red pen. She negotiates with the studio over the course of the next few days, and it takes near divine intervention for her to agree to cameras all over our house, but she finally gives her reluctant consent.
    Meanwhile, I’m having a really hard time keeping my massive secret from Marnie, James, and Rick as school winds down. Thankfully my default setting is “distracted,” so I’m not acting much odder than usual as I make my way through finals week.
    Marnie is heading on a mission trip to the Bahamas with her church’s youth group once school ends, so thankfully I won’t have to suppress my secret much longer. I was a little bummed when she first told me she was dedicating her summer to Habitat for Humanity, but now I get to go to Prom Queen Camp with a clear conscience.
    And I won’t have to worry about Rick and James looking to hang out over the break, since we’re more or less just friends by default. On top of Marnie’s secret love for James, the four of us usually sit together at open study hall where, as long as we use our “indoor voices,” we’re allowed to work on trigonometry as a group. Rick and I can get insanely competitive over cosines, but this one time I saw him grab a phallic-enhanced gnome off my desk and throw it away before it could upset me. The whole thing is pretty much all his fault, but we’re friends enough I suppose. Friends of least resistance.
    Marnie wags her head in amazement as the four of us eat in the cafeteria together on the final day of school. “So, besides the party Saturday night, the next time we’re together, we’ll be seniors?”
    I’d forgotten about the party. A kid who used to be in our advanced classes before he got fast-tracked to graduate a year early invited us to a celebration at his house tomorrow night. I’ve heard buzz that a Neanderthal football player named Pete is having an epic house party tomorrow night as well. But of course, we didn’t get invited to the epic one.
    â€œOne more year of this torture, and we’re outta here,” says James. “I’d like to say I’m going to miss it…”
    â€œWe know, we know,” Marnie says. “The soul-crushing oppression of high school, blah, blah, blah.” Marnie always acts like James annoys her, which is the most obvious cover for being madly in love with him.
    The urge to shout out, I’m going to be on TV! is welling up in my throat, so I blurt, “So, what are everyone’s plans after graduation next year?”
    Rick flashes me an amused grin. “Shan-non!” he accuses. “You haven’t fully tuned-in to a single conversation this month, have you?” Um, no . I have a tendency to go into extreme daydreaming mode when the topic switches to something I’m trying to avoid thinking about. Like, for instance, college.
    I realize that putting off thinking about college is probably the way folks end up with a career at Royal Burger. I picture my super-successful friends visiting me at work, where I’ll be wearing a greasy orange apron and a paper hat on my head.
    â€œâ€¦and of course Rick is staying in PA to study science at Pelham,” James recites their future plans as I start designing a quilt for the four of us in my head. The Friends of Least Resistance Quilt .
    James is easiest; with his button-down shirts and all-business buzz cut, he’d get stiff material sewn into neat right angles, but with a cow photo-bombing one corner, since he lives on a dairy farm. Marnie’s section would have rows of