Gorgeous by Rachel Vail

doesn’t mess up your plans to have me around this weekend. You can just ignore me.”
    “Not at all, Allie Cat,” she said. Okay, I was officially freaked. She hadn’t called me Allie Cat since I was in third grade.
    “I gotta go get a head start on my homework,” I told her, heading fast for the back stairs before she, like, kissed me or something. “Big project to work on.”
    I took the stairs by twos.
    My cell phone buzzed as I was crossing the upstairs den.
    It was a text from Roxie:
    I know u’r grounded but can you still use your cell and IM?
    I texted back:
    Can u keep a secret?
    Yes, she sent back immediately. Like u. Absolutely.
    In my room by then, I flopped down on my couch and texted:
    I’m not really grounded. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being stuck with them all wknd. Is that horrible? They r my best friends.
    It took a minute or two for her to respond, during which time I made long mental lists of why I am a terrible person. But then I read her message:
    Not anymore. I am ur BFF now.
    I read that about twenty times, and then texted back,
    True.

13
    M Y PARENTS WERE PROWLING our halls, trying to cheer us up and reassure us (which I must say is the most worry-making thing parents can do to their kids) in between long sessions of going over papers in the study. Friday night, Quinn and I watched TV in my room for a while and fell asleep in a tangle of blankets and pillows like we used to when we were little. But when I woke up Saturday morning she was gone, and after both my parents repeatedly asked me how I was doing, I realized I had to get out of there, too.
    I texted Roxie and when she said, Absolutely come over right now! , I was packed and out the door within ten minutes.
    I slept at Roxie’s Saturday night and we found out from Facebook and various other sources where everybody was headed party-wise. We counted ourselves lucky to be out of it and settled in front of the TV with pints of Ben & Jerry’s frozen yogurt.
    “Maybe we should have a party,” Roxie suggested during one commercial break.
    “I think we’re having it,” I told her. “All the guests who would come are already here.”
    “Oh,” Roxie said, and laughed.
    Next commercial break, she said, “It totally makes no sense at all for me to be depressed about not making the callback for zip .”
    “They made a mistake,” I said, meaning more than she knew.
    She turned and smiled at me. “You’re the best.”
    There was nothing she could have said that would have made me feel worse. “No, really. I suck.”
    She laughed out loud. “You just think you suck.”
    “I’m pretty sure. I’ve known me for a long time.”
    She laughed again but then interrupted herself. “You know what?”
    “What?”
    “Let’s crash that party tomorrow night.”
    “The one at the girl’s house? Madeleine freaking Smith? We don’t even really know her. It’ll be all, like, seniors.” There was no way I was going to that party.
    Twenty hours later we were in Roxie’s huge bathroom, getting ready to go to the party.
    I already felt so guilty for getting her zip spot (I knew it made no sense really to think that, but I couldn’t help it) and also for not telling her about it (which was so wrong and I knew it, it’s just that it would’ve been even more wrong to tell her and probably it would amount to nothing, so why make her feel worse?) that I had to do anything she wanted to make up for it.
    With family I am all, “Screw you.” With friends I chase myself around in circles trying to make it up to them.
    I sat down on the stool next to Roxie’s while she pulled her hair back in a headband to start her makeup. She casually threw a spare, still in the wrapping, to me. I pretty much gave up makeup at the beginning of ninth grade, after using way too much eyeliner in eighth. I often came home from middle school looking like a raccoon, despite Jade’s sign-language indications to me to wipe beneath my eyes. Jade said I looked