That that shade of lipgloss was so right on Whitney? I have been alive nearly seventeen years and I still have no idea what shade of lipgloss looks good on me. The second he said that, my mind went even more blank. ‘All right, Emerson,’ Mr Greer said, ‘you’ve got two minutes.’ He looked down at his watch. Twenty-four sleepy faces blinked back at me.Īnd I realized I had completely forgotten the speech I’d been up half the night writing.

although I guess that could have had something to do with it – and turned round to face the room. I fought off a reflexive urge to gag – because I was about to speak in public, not because of their exchange.

‘I know,’ Whitney murmured to her reflection. Lindsey Jacobs, seated in the row beside hers, stared at Whitney admiringly and whispered, ‘That shade of gloss is so you.’ That’s because she had dug her compact mirror out of her bag and was gazing at her own reflection. We’re going in reverse alphabetical order, remember?’Ĭhagrined, I slid out from behind my desk and made my way to the front of the room while the rest of the class tittered. It’s time for you to give the class your two-minute persuasive oral piece. Only I’m guessing it wasn’t because he’d been frantically finishing his homework for this class, like I was. I guess he’d been up pretty late last night too. To which she responded by narrowing her heavily made-up baby-blue eyes at me and mouthing back smugly, You wish. I threw her a dirty look and mouthed, Bite me. ‘Here,’ I called, jerking my head from the top of my desk and surreptitiously feeling the side of my mouth, just in case I’d been drooling.īut I guess I didn’t do it surreptitiously enough, since Whitney Robertson, seated with her long, tanned legs crossed beneath a desk a few feet away from mine, snickered, and hissed, ‘Loser.’ Do they really expect us to be alert at eight fifteen in the morning? Come on. ‘Emerson Watts,’ called my first-period Public Speaking teacher, Mr Greer, startling me from the light doze into which I’d drifted.

Being Nikki by Meg Cabot