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an empty stal . Her bright yel ow platform shoes tapped against the linoleum. “She’s mad crazy for attention, you know she’d do anything.”
    “But we’re talking total humiliation hot zone—”
    “Massive meltdown territory, but does she seem upset? Negative. You know she’s, like, loving every minute of it.”
    “I don’t know,” the tal one said, now perched on the sink, fiddling with her nails, which were painted cotton candy pink and so long that they almost curled back toward her fingertips. “Maybe it was some nobody, like, you know, some bitter loser who wanted—”
    “As if.” A laugh floated out of the stal . “How would some loser know al of that? No, it had to be—”
    Final y, Miranda couldn’t help herself. “Did you ever think that maybe—”
    “Uh, excuse me?” the brunette said, glaring. “Were we talking to you?”
    The shorter girl burst out of the stal and quickly slathered on a layer of hot pink lipstick. She didn’t bother to look in Miranda’s direction—or make a move toward the sink. “Was she, like, eavesdropping on our conversation?”
    “Whatever. Forget her.”
    “Her who?” the other girl cackled as she pushed through the girls’ room door, the brunette fol owing close behind.
    Miranda and Beth stared at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Were they for real?” Beth asked in wonderment.
    “Oh, yeah, like, total y, I mean, you know, whatever,” Miranda said, giggling. “For reals, dude.”
    “And that makes us the losers?” Beth asked, grinning.
    “Apparently.” Miranda stuck out her hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, I’m nobody. And who are you?”

    “Someone who would never walk out of this bathroom without washing her hands,” Beth joked.
    “I think we’re missing the key point here,” Miranda said, trying to stop laughing. “Did you hear the way they were talking about ‘her’ ?”
    “Harper,” Beth fil ed in.
    “Right. Obviously. Like she was this pathetic nonentity, desperate for attention….”
    “Humiliated,” Beth said, raising her eyebrows.
    “Pitiful,” Miranda added, shaking her head.
    “Defeated.”
    Miranda grinned and slung an arm around Beth’s shoulders. “And al by a pair of bitter nobodies. Who would’ve thought?” The curiosity-seekers had been swarming Kane al morning—and by lunchtime, it seemed half the school had surrounded him, desperate for insider information and some notoriety-by-association. Outwardly, he smiled, preening under the attention. But underneath, he was fuming. It was Beth. It had to be. No one else could know some of the things she’d printed, the few secrets he’d been foolish enough to share.
    That was the worst of it: the realization that he’d brought this on himself. After swearing to protect himself, he’d left himself raw and exposed.
    Not again—never again.
    After spotting the flyer, Kane had quickly started his own campaign of disinformation; judging from Kaia’s and Harpers animated smiles and the naked curiosity of their eager disciples, it seemed the girls had chosen to do the same. They sat at separate tables, each the center of a smal whirlpool of people, flowing past to catch a moment with the stars. The horde surrounding Kane was, of course, the largest.
    “She begged me to take her back,” he confided to the second-string point guard. “It was getting pathetic. I mean, tears is one thing—you know girls. But when she started showing up at my house in the middle of the night? It’s not like I wanted to cal the cops….”
    “Let’s just say, I now have a pretty good idea of what it must feel like to kiss a cold, dead fish,” he confided to the sympathetic blonde from the cheerleading squad.
    “And the smel … you know, she works at that diner, and al the onions, the grease, the sweat …” He shook his head, and the busty freshman patted him sweetly on the shoulder. “It was nauseating. I have a very delicate stomach, you know, and