Mission (Un)Popular by Anna Humphrey Page B

right? You probably learned all about it at modeling school .”
    Without blinking, Em said, “Yeah. But it’s pretty simple. You always want to pluck from underneath and line the arch up with the pupil. Margot had the right idea.” She looked at my eyebrows. “She just overplucked, which is better than not plucking at all, if you ask me.” She shot Sarah an appraising look.
    Oh, this was definitely not good. Did the new girl have a death wish? “We should get started,” I said loudly, trying to change the topic to poetry before any blood could be shed. “I’ll get a dictionary.” I flew across the room, grabbed a Canadian Oxford , raced back, and threw it on the desk. “Why don’t you look up the word, Em?” I suggested.
    â€œSure.” She flipped through the pages. “‘Melancholy,’” she read. “‘Noun. A deep sadness or depression.’ But you can also use it as an adjective.” She slammed the dictionary shut loudly. “That’s a cheerful word. How many sentences do we need again?”
    â€œFive,” I answered. “One each.” We all stared blankly at our notebooks for a few seconds.
    It was Gorgeous George who finally broke the silence—and he broke it by speaking to me! “Does your look hair different?” he asked, but not in a mean way.
    â€œYeah,” Sarah agreed. “No offense,” which is what she always said right before saying something really mean, “but it looks kind of retarded at the front.” And then she looked at Em. “But I guess that’s a modeling thing too?”
    â€œThat,” Em said, looking at me, “is just a bad hair day.” Then she pointed her pen at Sarah. “Don’t pretend you don’t have them too.”
    â€œI use good products,” Sarah J. said. “And at least I don’t dye it some fake color and then let the roots grow out.”
    Normally, I would have been busy obsessing over the fact that Sarah J. was picking on me, yet again—and in front of George, no less—and wondering what it meant that he had noticed that my hair was different. He’d noticed my hair on other days, when it wasn’t different? But right then I was too shocked by the way Em was standing up to Sarah J. on my behalf, and too worried about how she was going to pay for it. If only I’d warned her the day before when I’d had the chance.
    â€œLet’s just read this, okay?” Simon spoke up, not lisping once. I think we were all so surprised to hear his voice that we were shocked into silence. Everyone looked down at the poem for a few seconds.
    â€œHey, where’s Nerdette, anyway?” Sarah said, her attention span for English literature coming to an end as quickly as it had begun. She was talking about Erika-with-a-K, who always got straight A’s in everything but gym.
    â€œNone of your business,” I mumbled. The last thing I needed was for Sarah to find out that my ham stealing had gotten her sent to Sacred Heart, or that we weren’t even friends anymore, which meant I officially had no friends at all except Andrew. “Can we please do the sentences?”
    â€œFine,” Sarah snapped. “It makes me feel melancholy when people whose names start with M are so rude.” She shot me a look. “And it also makes me feel melancholy when new people show up and think they’re all that just because they’re from New York, because honestly, they’re not, and that’s the most melancholy part—because they don’t even realize it.”
    Em considered this for a few seconds, tapping her pencil calmly against her notebook. “It’s a run-on sentence,” she said, “but it’ll do. Extra points for using the word melancholy three times. You’re really smart. Okay,” she went on, not pausing long enough for Sarah to make a comeback,