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dressing to be "glossy and popular" so much as "sleazy and desperate.” I didn't think Megan would make the distinction. Not after she'd had us make a pact never to become like "them”
    Besides, it was just a one-time freaky mental slip.
    Or was it? Maybe it wasn't drugs that had made the other Emily seem so weird to her parents. Maybe there was something going around, some sort of personality-altering disease. I mean, what would possess Emily Cooke to go wandering miles from her house, barefoot and wearing only her pajamas, especially on the same night I dressed like a streetwalker and decided to jump out my window?
    Maybe it was the weirdness of the night before, or the bizarreness of coping with an entire school filled with shocked people walking around like zombies all day, but I didn't feel right. Something felt shifted inside of me, off center and wobbly, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't put that unnameable something back in place.

    Megan nudged me as Tracie finished speaking and the kids in the bleachers applauded politely. "Hey, don't get all silent on me," she whispered. "It sucks that the other Emily got whacked, okay?"
    I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn't get a word out before a girl turned around and shushed us. Embarrassed, I clamped my lips closed.
    Megan rolled her eyes but didn't say anything.
    We sat there, silent, as the rest of the world's most depressing assembly death-marched to its somber finish and we could finally go home, where I could escape into a book and forget all about dead teenagers and strange mood swings and this horrible sensation that after last night, nothing was quite right anymore in our school or our small town.

Chapter 3
Big OF Fatty Hambeast
    After racing through the downpour to my front door, I hugged my dad, where he sat at his desk killing undead hordes in his computer game, then decided I'd distract myself by trying once again to read Lord of the Rings, since it felt like my geeky duty to do so. I didn't last long at that—yes, I know, I should feel horribly ashamed that I can't get past all the hobbit singing to get into the story. Instead I went browsing online.
    Maybe it's just me, but hearing about someone my own age, someone I vaguely knew, dying ... it wouldn't leave me alone. Forget my giant DVD case filled with movies about teenagers getting murdered—I'd seen so much CGI and makeup and red-dyed corn syrup that when it came to the idea of another teenager dying it never seemed real. I'd never really considered that one day I could walk outside and get shot, and it would be all over.
    So maybe that's why I Googled "Emily Cooke" and spent hours reading about her. There were local news articles about the mysterious murder, of course, and a whole slew of blog posts from people who'd known her, talking about their shock. Some people posted letters of hers they'd saved—

    Nothing gets your mind off of depressing thoughts of dead teenagers like being called fat on the internet.
    It happened the same day as the assembly. Nothing was on TV that night—
    it was only early September, after all, and new TV seasons don't start until mid-month—so I was in my room. I'd come home from the horrible downer of school five hours earlier after riding alongside Megan through a torrent of rain that fogged up her windows, the world outside hidden behind a gray mist. I'd say that the weather had matched the day's downcast mood, but I knew that was a joke. The writhing storm clouds would soon give way to blue skies before returning a few hours later along with, like, a flurry of hail or something. No one's mood is as bipolar as western Washington weather.
    After racing through the downpour to my front door, I hugged my dad, where he sat at his desk killing undead hordes in his computer game, then decided I'd distract myself by trying once again to read Lord of the Rings, since it felt like my geeky duty to do so. I didn't last long at that—yes, I know, I should feel