The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel Page A

in my head.
    A quick glance over my shoulder informed me that Kate had made her purchases and was gone. The soccer team was also filing out the door like a single organism composed of many tan legs in knee-socks.
    At least I can get my stupid magazine now, I thought.
    But once again, there was no Fabulous magazine to be had.
    Was nothing going to go right?
    I approached the checkout lady, too steamed at Kate Southington to be embarrassed about asking after my trashy magazine a second time.
    “You’re the one that asked about the magazine,” she said.
    I nodded. “You said—”
    “They came in, and they went out. The girl ahead of you bought every copy I had. Sorry.”
    Kate had bought every copy of Fabulous magazine? I was furious. What a petty thing to do. She didn’t want me to have my favorite magazine, so she wasted twenty bucks to make sure I couldn’t buy one?
    But wait. Kate Southington had no way of knowing I loved that magazine. No one at Eaton knew that. She couldn’t have known what I was in the bookstore to buy.
    So why had she taken the whole stack of copies?
    There was definitely something off about the girl. She was acting bizarre. And I still felt like I knew her from somewhere. Something was definitely up, and I had to know what it was.
    I went straight to the library and grabbed a spare desk in the computer bay. I Googled “Southington” and “Migawam,” then “Southington” and “music,” but came up empty. Then I Googled “Kate Southington.” No hits. I cleared the search field and just reentered “Southington.” There were thousands of hits for that. I noticed a link to haveyouheard.com , one of my favorite celebrity gossip sites. I pulled up an archived article flagged “Southington Family,” glanced at the photograph that came up along with it, and drew in a long, deep breath.
    It was all right there for the world to see. The picture was of hotel billionaire Lockwood Southington and his two daughters. One of the girls was flaunting herself for the camera, hands on hips, chin slightly lowered, long blond hair hanging in a flawless curtain around her heavily made-up face. She was gorgeous, and she wanted to make sure we all knew she knew it.
    The second girl had her face slightly turned away from the camera, head angled down, arms folded over her chest, eyes on the floor. The caption identified the two girls as “aspiring model Brooklyn Stiles Southington and notoriously camera-shy younger sister Phyllida Caytson Southington.”
    Phyllida. Caytson. Southington.
    Caytson Southington.
    Kate Southington.
    Holy mackerel. This family made celebrity headlines every month! And not in a good way. Brooklyn Southington was the poster girl for trust fund kids—famous for her partying ways, her skimpy outfits, and her rapidly expanding collection of miniature dogs. She drove a neon pink Hummer and had been arrested for various party crimes, like attempting to use a yacht as an impromptu rock arena. Her father was currently awaiting trial for some kind of money-related misbehavior. The mother had run off with a polo player, then returned unrepentant to the family, if memory served. The Southingtons were one of the richest and worst-behaved families in America. When I thought Kate looked familiar, I had no idea how familiar she really was.
    And now I knew her secret.
    No wonder she had bought every copy of Fabulous .
    Kate was an Undercover Heiress.
    I ran across the quad and into Sage, and jogged up the stairs to the third floor. I was bursting to tell Spinky the secret identity of Kate “All My Cops” Southington.
    But by the time I reached my hall, I knew I wasn’t going to say anything to Spinky about Kate’s secret. As mean as she was, there were just some things a girl didn’t do to another girl.
    There was only a half hour left of evening study period, and the hall was quiet when I pushed open the glass double doors. Maybe Kristen hadn’t done check-in tonight. I paused a moment to