- 3rd Person POV-

When Millie returned to the Fox's residence at 5:30 that night, her heart was pounding. "What will Kyle do to me when I see her? What if she has all her friends in my room waiting for me? What if she's convinced her parents to kick me out of the house?"

She avoided Kyle until dinnertime.

"Millie?" Tracy Fox's voice sounded form over the intercom, "It's time for dinner, sweetie. Barbara has cooked some delicious salmon tonight!"

Millie sighed and brushed her white blonde hair and fastened it with a silver clip. She felt like she needed to look as A-list as she could manage for the Fox's. She swiped on some old mint chapstick which she had hardly ever used, tied her gray Adidas's, and washed her hands. After looking at herself in the full-length mirror on her closet door, she thought, "I'm going to need to actually start buying lipgloss."

-Kyle's POV-

When Millie comes down the steps, I can so read the look on her face: She's scared of me. Come on, I'm like, the nicest person ever! Okay, just kidding, but still. So I got a little food on her. It's not like it ruined her clothes. They were ruined before she bought them. I was pretty much doing her a favor.

As she sits down next to me, she's shaking like an earthquake. "Please stop," I say, "You're giving me motion sickness." She stops.

I would have said, 'You're making me nauseous' but she might have taken it the wrong way and thought her face was making me nauseous.

Oh, but then again, it's true.

"So," I say to her, ready to have some fun, "How was the movie?"

Her face is totally in a state of shock, like she can't believe what she heard.

"Well?" I ask.

"U-uh...I-I…um…" She looks around, and her eyes land on my mom. "Ineedtogotothebathroom!" She splutters in one word. Millie leaps from the table and half-runs, half-stumbles into the powder room.

What a loser!

The next day I rise at 5:45 AM, the usual time. A new week, and a new way to show that I rule the school. I decide to 'forget' to wake Millie up and head to the shower.

After cleansing myself, I pick out a sexy off-white American Eagle V-neck sweater with a pale blue cami, blue jean miniskirt, and light brown Uggs. Even though the weather is supposed to reach 60 today, I think I'll be fine. Square diamond studs and a few sprays of Sarah Jessica Parker's Lovely Liquid Satin complete my look. About a seven on the scale of one to ten if I do say so myself. If it were a little colder, I could have picked a turtleneck instead of a V-neck, and my decorative snowy-furry Uggs instead of my brown ones, and that could have bumped me up to a nine, but I actually don't care today.

Next to Millie, I'm always a twelve.

-Millie's POV-

Someone's pushing me…

Leave me alone…

I want to sleep!

"Read, get up, we're going to be late,"

Oh, great. It's Kyle.

"Millie, get up,"

Go away.

"It's 6:40 and the bus comes in ten minuets."

WHAT??

I spring out of bed, every inch of grogginess gone from my body. "I'll be down in a minuet!" I shout to Kyle. She shrugs and walks out of my room. I strip off my pajamas and grab the first outfit I can think of. I don't have time to shower, so I just pull on a pink Aeropostale shirt, Gap blue jeans, and shoes without socks. I haphazardly brush my hair, apply Clearasil, and brush my teeth, and then I run downstairs and out the door with Kyle.

Kyle's on her cellphone as we walk to her bus stop. She could at least be a little more considerate and talk to me. But then I remember what she did to me last night, and I decide instead to listen in on her conversation.

"Yeah, Tasha, the homework for Mr. Benson is due today. What? Yeah, I didn't do it either," She laughs as if it's funny to be failing science, which is what Mr. Benson teaches. "I'm at the bus stop. Why? You know I can't get a ride from Ian to school; he hates getting up before six. You're already at school? Lucky biotch! It's freezing out here!" Kyle shivers in her expensive boots. Hey, she shouldn't be wearing a miniskirt in the middle of October in the first place!

The bus comes just then, and we get on. Kyle immediately sits with Gabby Fain, a mini-BFF if you will. Kyle seems to have a lot of them. They're a bunch of pretty girls who sit at the Fab Five's lunch table and like to buy presents for everyone. Gabby recently streaked her brown-black hair lilac, which actually goes well with the purple eyeshadow she always wears. Astrid calls her Gabby the Grape.

I have no one to sit with. Nobody that I'm really friendly with is on this bus; it only picks up rich kids. And, well, let's face it; my friends aren't really upper class. I end up asking an American Eagle-clad sophomore if I can sit with him. He doesn't reply, but slides his backpack over and keeps playing his PSP. I sit down and pretend to be looking at something interesting on my backpack zipper.

-Kyle's POV-

When the bus lets us off, I quickly finish up my conversation with Gabby Fain about Britney Spears' latest baby gossip, and head straight for my locker. Gabby's hideous $2 faux topaz chandelier earrings make it nearly impossible to look at her without killing her.

Speaking of killing people, here comes Astrid Mills in yet another wardrobe malfunction. Nearly every label in this school has three or more people, but not Astrid's label, which happens to be P.U.K.E (Possibly the Ugliest Kombinations Ever. Ivy made it up, which is why it sounds so stupid). She's the only one. Today she's wearing a knee length skirt with vertical rainbow stripes, a camouflage cami, penny loafers, and a disgusting old gray granny sweater that is undoubtedly from Good Will. I swear I can smell the mothballs from, like, 20 feet away.

Next to Astrid, Millie almost looks good. And that's saying something, since her cheap jeans are up past her calves and her Aero shirt makes her look even flatter than she already is.

Astrid smiles at me as we pass each other. It isn't a nice smile either, sort of an I-Know-What-You-Did-Last-Summer kind of smile. I don't like it one bit. She so deserved that Diet Pepsi being poured on her.

Cho greets me at my locker in red Nina bonnie pumps, a black straight miniskirt, thin white cami with an unbuttoned black drawstring peplum blouse, large black belt with a red buckle, and white tights. A shiny red Fossil watch around her wrist and the scent of Lucky Number 6 behind her ears adds a sophisticated funk to the outfit. No wonder Cho's A-list; her sense of style is defiantly tops.

"Gorgeous look, Cho, baby," I smile at her, "Looks like you're the editor for Vogue."

"Great!" She smiles, "That's what I was going for."

Mrs. Miller, the strict Honors English teacher strolls by us on her very own black Nina heels. She turns to Cho and suddenly, for what seems like the first time in her life, smiles.

"Lovely outfit, Miss Spring," she complements, "I'm certainly glad that some young ladies today are actually dressing like young ladies." When she says 'some' she looks straight at me. What is she implying?? Cho thanks her, and Mrs. Miller walks off.

"Whoa," I turn to Cho, who has this huge grin on her face, "Miller is always ratting on all the girls here because they dress 'inappropriately'," I make air quotes with my fingers, "You're like, the first person she's ever complimented!"

Cho cannot stop smiling. I hope this doesn't go to her head.

Well, lunchtime is here, and Cho is still smiling. I swear it looks like she's on anti-depressants.

"You can't still be smiling about the Miller thing," Beverley exhales as she sits on her Abercrombie & Fitch-covered ass and begins to unwrap the pizza slice she bought for lunch. "Seriously, who cares if you pleased a teacher?"

Cho looks up at her, "No," she says, and points across the room, "There's Kenny!"

We all look over to see Kenny Okano, the cutest Asian guy ever to set foot in Summerton High. And the best part ever? He's gay. I love it 'cause no girl can ever steal him away from us. He loves designer stuff, and wants to be a designer himself someday. Kenny's defiantly one of the best-dressed guys in 9th grade.

"Ohmagawd!" Wannabe Marina Burke cries, "He is so dreamy!" She twirls a lock of her platinum blonde-dyed hair and reapplies her lipgloss for the 60th time this period. She is such a suck up; it's not even funny. She was a total nerd in 7th grade and now she's desperate to be popular. "I love him like-"

"Kenny!" Cho waves enthusiastically, cutting Marina off, "Come here!" Her eyes are shining even brighter than they had been all day. Yes, while we all love Kenny like a brother, she love loves him. And she's not afraid to show it.

Kenny comes over to us with his coke in one hand and fries in the other. As he sits, he stares at my feet. "Are those the new Uggs?"

"New?" I ask, "Kenny, I've had these forever. But what are you talking about new Uggs?"

He chews a fry and holds up a magazine ad that he had in his backpack, "These new Uggs," he hands the ad over to me, "They're multi-colored."

Must have.

"Oh, girls," I say, putting the ad into my bag, "Read is such a pushover! I asked her last night about how the movie was, and she just about fainted!"

"Heart that!" Marina laughed.

I shook her a dirty look, "I wasn't talking to you."

She immediately shuts up.

"Anyway," I say, turning back to my REAL friends, "Feel free to have some fun with her. She's such a laugh."

Bev smiles evilly and Tasha cracks her knuckles. "With pleasure," Ivy grins.

-3rd Person POV-

Millie sighed as she looked over at Kyle's lunch table. She couldn't understand what it took to be popular; surely it had to be more than clothes. She stared at her old friend Marina Burke, whom she had been close with since 3rd grade. Two years ago, Marina ditched her faded Wal-Mart jeans and signature frizzy unbrushed chestnut hair for tight blue Abercrombie & Fitch jeans, Redken blonde hair dye, and a new paddle brush. Millie still couldn't grasp the idea that Marina would leave all the good times they had together laughing at popular people behind to try to be one of them. It was just so wrong.

"Earth to Millie!" Astrid called next to her. Millie snapped out of her staring at once. "Did you not just hear what I said?"

Millie shook her head. Across the table, punk-goth Ursula Scott picked at her iceberg lettuce and bookworm Victoria Sander ate her Fritos and read some fantasy kingdom book. Millie sighed again. She had never even spoken to half the people at her lunch table; it was pretty much full of rejects with nowhere else to sit and were just thrown together like plastic, glass, and old banana peels. Not mixing.

"I said, 'Don't you think Kyle looks like such a fat ho today?'" Astrid rolled her eyes and continued scrambling for the answers to her math homework.

Millie shrugged. No way was Kyle fat. "What about Marina? How do you think she looks?"

The black-haired girl shook her finger at Millie, "Excuse me? Marina who? I told you that she is dead to us, Mill!"

Her friend nodded, "But why did Marina leave-"

"Millie! Please! That name is giving me a headache! She's totally useless in my eyes, and she'll grow up to work in Taco Bell for the rest of her life."

Millie gazed in awe at her friend. She wished that she could be brave and clever like Astrid. She wondered if Astrid would get back at Kyle if she lived with her. Millie wanted desperately to stay cool with Kyle, but she didn't want to be a punching bag either.

This situation was going to need some thinking.

As the bell ending the period rang, Millie headed for Algebra. On the way, she bumped into Beverly D'Angelo, who seemed so unnaturally friendly when Millie dropped her books.

"Oh, I'm so so sorry, Millie!" Beverly cried, "Let me help you!" She bent over and picked up all her books, handing them back to Millie.

"Um...thanks…" Millie mumbled, a bit surprised. "Why is she being so nice?"

"Oh, don't mention it," Beverly smiled, "By the way," she took out her lunch box, "Kyle tells me you like Diet Pepsi, Skittles, and gummy worms," She took out a pack of Sour Patch Kids, "and these too. Want some?"

Millie froze.

Beverly smiled.

"No!"

She ran off, hoping to blend into the crowd, hoping to get away from everyone else, wishing she were a nobody.

Kyle searched the halls for Millie after 9th period. Tracy, her mother, had told her to inform Millie that Kyle would be staying after for the football game, and her mom didn't; want Millie to freak out if Kyle wasn't on the bus. "Wouldn't that be a shame," Kyle thought sarcastically.

She stopped dead in the middle of C-hall and put her hands on her hips. "What do I care if she gets on the wrong bus or something? She should know by now that I'm not going to go out of my way to carry her through life."

Just as she turned around, though, she walked right into Millie on her way to the front lobby. She had…tears in her eyes?

"Um, Millie?"

Millie sniffed. She tried to make a mean snarl.

"You…you…" Millie jammed her hands in her jeans pocket.

"What?" Kyle snapped.

"You biotch!" Millie cried.

"Whoa."

"You t-total jerk! You and your loser friends think it's so much fun to pick on m-me, don't you? Well, st-stop! It's not fun! How would you like it if I d-did that to you?"

Kyle tried to speak, but Millie kept going, "All day your stupid friends have been making fun of me and Astrid because of what happened in the m-movies! But you know what? We t-told the police what you did! You have to pay a lot of money! So you know w-what? Ha!"

Millie wiped her nose with the back of her hand and forced a weak grin on her face. Then she turned on her sneakers and pushed the front doors open, leaving Kyle unmoving and alone.

:) Gildaaah