Glitter Girl by Toni Runkle Page B

called Grape Jelly that went perfectly with the purple sleeveless blouse with the draped neckline that she’d been dying to wear to school since she’d seen it in the last edition of Cosmo Girl . A little subtle lip gloss, some slingbacks, and a pair of skinny jeans, and she was ready to roll.
    Before she grabbed her backpack and headed out of the house, she grabbed the engineer’s cap and put it on. She looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t in love with that hat, but Chelsea had strongly suggested she wear it. Besides, she couldn’t very well give it a great review on her blog and then not show up with it on her head on Monday. It’s just this once , she thought.
    She hopped into the waiting Prius in the driveway, said hello to Jules’s dad, and then came face-to-face with Jules.
    â€œHi,” Kat said, not really knowing what else to say. She was wishing today was Jules’s birthday so she could give her the amazing present right now and all this awkwardness would be forgotten. Instead, Shakespeare was nowhere to be found, and Kat was left on her own in the back of the Prius. Jules looked over Kat’s Glitter Gear as if she were looking at someone who had just refused to recycle a soda bottle.
    â€œUh, hi,” said Jules, equally awkwardly.
    â€œYou didn’t want to wear any of the stuff from the gift bag?” said Kat, who saw Jules had her usual jeans and T-shirt ensemble on today. This one was pale blue and had a stick figure on the front with a giant peace sign for a head. She’d worn this one before so Kat knew that on the back of the T-shirt in some outrageously large font size were the words “Think Peace.”
    â€œOh, yeah,” said Jules. “Some of that stuff wasn’t really me. How was the rest of the party?”
    â€œIt was okay,” said Kat simply, even though it had been one of the best sleepovers ever. “We tried out some other products and told Chelsea what we thought of them. I blogged a bit more. And then we all went to bed. Usual stuff.”
    â€œYeah. I read your blog,” said Jules simply. Kat felt a pang of embarrassment. Jules had read her review of the hat! Ick.
    â€œYou look nice, though,” said Jules. Now she was the one not quite sure what to say.
    â€œThanks,” said Kat. “You don’t think it’s too much purple?”
    Jules thought Kat looked a bit like an eggplant being devoured by some kind of hideous pink bug, but all she said was, “No, you look nice.”
    They didn’t talk much more than that for the rest of the ten-minute drive to school. Instead, Kat looked out the window and listened vaguely to Jules’s dad’s classic rock station that he always listened to when the girls were in the car.
    They got to the school about ten minutes early, so most of the kids were still outside the building, milling around and talking. Jules and Kat got out of the Prius and slammed the doors shut. Looking out into the mass of students, they had one simultaneous reaction:
    â€œO…M…G.”
    Wendell Willkie Junior High had been transformed into Glitter Girl Central. Every flavor of lip gloss was represented; every color of nail polish adorned someone’s fingers or someone’s toes. Girls were happily posing for pictures that they took with each other’s Glitter Girl slam cams. And the hats! How many girls were wearing those Glitter Girl engineer’s hats? Kat couldn’t count them all. There had to be a hundred at least, and that was just in the eighth grade alone.
    â€œIs this amazing or what?” said Kat.
    â€œIt’s something,” Jules had to admit.
    â€œI guess Chelsea knows what she’s doing.”
    â€œThis isn’t about Chelsea,” said Jules. “This is about you, Kat. You must be very proud.”
    Kat was proud. Sort of. But in a way, it was a little creepy to see how many girls all looked the same. All of this