Winter White by Jen Calonita

Adopts Impoverished Teen from Harborside. The color drained from her face.
    “We’re happy to have you,” Mr. Preston continued. Izzie could feel the entire room’s eyes on her. Suddenly the room felt very warm. “I know you’re living a fairy tale now, but don’t think you can rest on your new family’s name around here,” he teased with a wag of his finger. Izzie didn’t crack a smile. “Everyone has to pull his or her own weight. Even the Monroes.”
    While Mr. Preston droned on about what they would be learning that year, Izzie stared at the newspaper on his desk. She couldn’t stop obsessing about that article. An article about her! When he finally asked everyone to get up and gather lab supplies, she made a break for it, swiping the newspaper and hiding it in her notebook till she could read it back at her desk. But when she did, she felt nauseated. Everything— everything —down to practically her Social Security Number was in there, from her mother’s death to her grandmother’s deteriorating health and poverty to how the community had been practically raising Izzie till the saintly Monroes stepped in.
    “Cute photo,” said a guy carrying a microscope and some slides past her. Izzie tried to hide the newspaper, but then she realized the guy was just making conversation. He might have even been flirting. “I love a girl in a one-piece, but the picture they showed on the Today show was hotter.”
    “The Today show?” Izzie quickly returned the newspaper to Mr. Preston’s desk and went back to her seat.
    The guy seemed to think for a moment. “Or maybe it was Good Morning America ? I don’t know.” He leaned on her desk and smiled. “You were on everything this weekend.”
    So this was why everyone was acting so weird around her. She wasn’t just Mira and Hayden Monroe’s cousin. She was that cousin. The poor one from Harborside. While Izzie had been in Atlanta with her aunt, everyone in EC had been reading about her princess makeover. How could this have happened without anyone telling her? Her uncle was even quoted in this article, which meant he’d probably done TV interviews, too. Did people at EP really care that much about zip codes? She glanced out of the corner of her eye at Blondie. She was whispering heatedly with another girl over a Bunsen burner. When they caught Izzie staring, they stopped and gave a little wave. Yep. Apparently the students at EP did care about geography.
    She forced herself to get a microscope even though all she wanted to do was go home. To her real home, her old school, her old life. Izzie knew starting a new school was going to be tough, but not like this. She and Lambie (yes, she still had a stuffed animal) had stayed up last night staring at the Pepto-Bismol pink chandelier on her ceiling. She didn’t want to have to make new friends, or figure out how to find the gym—excuse me, the Bill Monroe Sports Complex—or worry about where she was going to sit at lunch. She knew Mira would show her around and introduce her to people, but Izzie wasn’t an idiot. Mira didn’t want her there, either. It was almost as if Mira was scared of what having Izzie around meant. Didn’t she realize Izzie was scared, too?
    Science may have been her favorite subject, but thirty-five minutes later, Izzie had never been happier to leave a lab. She slipped out the building’s side door, pulled out her new phone, and dialed.
    Kylie screamed excitedly instead of saying hello. “It’s you!”
    “It’s me!” She felt better just hearing Kylie’s voice.
    “ Fi-na-lly ,” Kylie drawled slowly. “I got your first text and freaked, and then your second with the new number and freaked some more because you haven’t answered this number at all . Hot surfer boy has been trying to reach you, too.”
    Izzie felt her stomach drop. “Brayden?”
    “Yeah, he came into Scoops three times asking if I’d heard from you yet. He said he texted you, too, but he must have had your old