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designer knockoff,” she snapped, squinting hard at me.
    Bad shoes?
    My cheeks warmed, and I glanced down at my feet. I was wearing my best pair of J.Crew wedge espadrilles, which hadn’t thrilled my mother either. But they were comfortable and they didn’t even have a lick of paint on them, like every other pair of shoes I owned. As for the borrowed dress, yeah, it was a tad too tight. I’d give her that. But it wasn’t a knockoff. My mother didn’t buy knockoffs. I would know for sure that Armageddon was near if I ever caught Cissy shopping at Nordstrom Rack or TJ Maxx.
    â€œI’m nobody,” I told her, “and you’re making a scene.” Although no one else in the busy kitchen was paying any attention to us, and I wasn’t sure that Olivia cared besides.
    She continued to rant like she had a fatal case of PMS. “How dare you interrupt when I was right in the middle of—­” Abruptly, she stopped screaming and blinked.
    â€œYelling,” I finished for her and jerked my chin at Millicent Draper, who was vaguely trembling and appeared on the verge of tears. “You were reaming out Millie. Then you insulted me. Wow, it’s like flashing back to prep school. Are you going to give us wedgies next, or push us into a gym locker?”
    â€œOh. My. God.” She breathed each word.
    The way she’d acted, I didn’t think Olivia had recognized me. Then I watched something change in her face. Her pale blue eyes flickered, and the frown on her wide mouth twitched at the corners.
    â€œIs it possible?” she drawled, and her finely plucked eyebrows arched. “Is it really Andy Kendricks in the flesh? Your mama must have hog-­tied you and hauled you here, didn’t she? I know your name wasn’t on the guest list.”
    â€œBrilliant deduction, Sherlock,” I said dryly.
    â€œOh, I know more than that,” she remarked with a smirk. “Like, I heard you design Web sites for charities. How quaint. Didn’t you go to some dinky art school in Chicago? But then you never did aspire to much, did you?” Her gaze dropped to my chest and she added with a slow grin, “Some things never change. I can see that you’re still lacking in the boobs department, too. You should’ve dug into your trust fund to have those puppies fixed.”
    She was right. Some things never changed.
    Self-­consciously, I crossed my arms. “And I can see that you’re still acting like Attila the Blonde and pushing nice people around,” I replied, about as witty a comeback as I could come up with on such short notice. Although I’d lain awake with tears in my eyes many nights during middle school, mulling over all the things I wanted to say to Olivia La Belle. But I didn’t figure calling her a “big stinky poop face” was going to do the trick.
    â€œOh, Andy, darlin’,” she said in such a honeyed tone you’d think I’d given her a compliment. “It’s so sweet that you’re holding a grudge after all these years. And I thought you’d forgotten me.”
    â€œMean is hard to forget,” I told her.
    â€œYou thought I was mean? C’mon, it was all just good-­natured teasing,” she replied, but there was a spark of malice in her eyes. Perhaps making fun of other people was funny to her.
    â€œGood-­natured teasing, right,” I murmured, getting angrier by the minute.
    She’d shoved me into the gym’s equipment cage in my underwear and locked it so that I was left to be found by the next class. She’d covered a sculpture I’d made for a school art exhibition in maxipads doused in ketchup. She had pummeled me with volleyballs hard enough to leave marks. That was good-­natured teasing? Was that how the CIA classified water-­boarding, too?
    My chest tightened, my heart aching in a way it hadn’t since my school days, and all the angst and