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heart dropping. The audition. Right. Claudia had sent in an application to this prestigious dance program right outside Princeton for next year. The hope was, she’d get into her dream school and her dream dance program and they’d be within walking distance of each other. Suddenly my chest was heavy with dread. If she got this audition, it would be a sign. Because if she got the audition, she’d get into the dance program. And if she got into the dance program, there was no way she wasn’t going to get into Princeton. After tonight, she could be one step closer to getting everything she wanted. And everything she wanted would take her away from me.

CHAPTER THREE
Claudia
    “Can I get you guys anything else?”
    The waitress at Pizza City stood at the end of our table, smiling at Peter. She was a girl from school, a junior I was pretty sure, and she was always here. I think her family owned the place, but I wasn’t sure what her name was. What I did know was that she wanted my boyfriend. Of course she did. Everyone wanted my boyfriend. He was Peter “QB-1” Marrott. But this girl was making it totally obvious, with her sly half smile and by the way she was leaning one hand into the faux-wood table, pushing up her boobs by angling her triceps against one of them. Why didn’t she flirt with Gavin? Or Orion? Or Peter’s annoying friend Lester? One of the guys at the table whose girlfriend wasn’t sitting right next to him.
    “You can get me something else,” Lester said, leering at her.
    Well, okay. I understood why she didn’t flirt with Lester.
    She stood up straight and sighed, looking down her nose at him. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
    Lester Chen’s skinny face turned purple. “Oh, um, nothing. I was just kidding.”
    The girl looked hopefully over at Peter again. I leaned in closerto his side and looked her in the eye. “Thanks. We’re fine.”
    Emphasis on the “we’re.” She gave me this look, like she couldn’t believe I was sitting there with him even though we came in here together twice a week, every week. Then she finally, finally walked away, flipping her weirdly orange hair over her shoulder.
    I tugged Peter’s large class ring out from under the collar of my shirt, where it hung on a gold chain, and toyed with it. It wasn’t as if I could blame the girl for her confusion. Honestly. It had been fifteen months, three weeks, and two days since Peter had first asked me out, and even I sometimes found myself wondering how and why it had happened in the first place. We’re talking about Peter Marrott here, people. He was the hottest, most popular, most athletic guy in the senior class. Girls had started crushing on him in kindergarten. He’d been voted best-looking in eighth grade by a landslide (I was in charge of counting the votes, so I knew). Before me he’d gone out with Aura Sen, who was a year older than us and the hottest of Lake Carmody’s legendary Hot Sen Sisters. (There were five of them, and the youngest had already won some pageant that put her on the cover of the local paper last year.) But they’d broken up after the junior prom scandal two springs ago. (Rumor was there was vomit involved. Lots of vomit.) Three weeks later he’d come to his sister’s dance recital, which had just happened to also be my dance recital, and afterward he’d waited for me—yes, me—to come out of the dressing room and now here we were, sitting at Pizza City together for the hundredth time with his superhot and popular friends.
    Lester excepted, of course. From the hot part, anyway.
    So yes, I’d been surprised when he’d first asked me out. While I do have good hair and a tight body, I’m not Aura Sen–level beautiful. But now that I knew Peter so well, I wasn’t surprisedwe’d been together as long as we had. We didn’t have any classes together and we hung out with different crowds at school, but opposites attract, right? And besides, when it came down to it, we had more in common