Gorgeous by Rachel Vail

usual look of determined innocence to one of concern, and she slipped right in beside me. “What’s wrong, Allison?”
    I opened my mouth but for once nothing came out.
    “Did they find out you ditched school?”
    “Yes,” I told her, secretly thanking her for solving my problem.
    “How?” Serena asked from across the aisle.
    “I don’t know,” I admitted, panicking afresh. “How could they have found out?”
    “Maybe the school called,” Jade whispered. “Or one of the teachers who’s friends with your dad.”
    “Right,” I agreed. “That must be it.”
    Jade shook her head. “I told you, Allison. I don’t know why you did that. It’s so not like you. So what did they do? How much trouble are you in?”
    It was almost hard not to grin, this was going so well. I could keep my family’s business and my own all private without breaking a sweat. I really am the Fort Knox of secrets, I congratulated myself, while saying, “Large trouble.”
    Serena leaned into the aisle, her elbows on her knees. As a soap opera addict, she had to be in heaven with this.
    “I’m out of Tennis Europe.”
    “No!” Serena and Jade both gasped.
    I nodded sadly.
    “That’s so harsh!” Serena said.
    “She cut school for the whole day,” Jade said. “We’re in ninth grade, Serena; this isn’t baby stuff anymore. You cut school for one day and you could totally wreck your college chances. It could go on your transcript. You think the competitive colleges want someone who just ditches school?”
    “Whoa,” Serena said, and I thought.
    “I mean, it stinks, but can you really blame Allison’s parents? She’s lucky she’s not suspended.” She turned to me with a disappointed look on her pretty oval face. “Where did you and Roxanne Green go, anyway? I hope it was worth it.”
    “It kind of was,” I couldn’t help saying, especially because in truth I actually hadn’t suffered any consequences. Maybe I’d feel different if I’d really been caught and screwed up my whole future, which would probably be murky at best even without radically stupid moves on my part like cutting school. Still, the more I thought about not being able to do Tennis Europe, the more relieved I felt. It was weird, because I’d begged to be allowed to go only a few months earlier, and now it felt like a too-small hat had suddenly been removed from my head.
    The bus was pulling up to school by then, so we grabbed our stuff and trudged off toward the side entrance of school.
    “So?” Jade asked again. “Why aren’t you telling us where you went when you cut?”
    “I already told you,” I said as we approached Jade’s locker. “We went into the city.”
    “By yourselves?” Serena asked, shocked.
    “Yeah. Roxie used to model, and—”
    “She really did?” Serena asked. “I thought that was just a rumor.”
    “Rumors aren’t always false,” Jade murmured.
    “Cool,” Serena said, sounding, as always, vaguely astonished.
    “She’s done commercials and catalogues, lots of stuff,” I told them as Jade completed her morning locker-crap-sorting ritual. “Anyway, we went to this open call for models for this magazine called zip .”
    “I love zip !” Serena shrieked. When she caught Jade’s condemnatory look, she continued in a forced whisper, “Well, it’s the hottest magazine, isn’t it? Roxie is in zip ?”
    Roxie flumped up just then, and said, “Apparently not.”
    I looked at her and she half smiled back. “No call,” she said. “So, I guess I wasn’t moe again.”
    “Who’s moe?” Serena asked.
    “Inside joke,” Roxie said, and I caught the split-second tightening in Jade’s face. Roxie apparently didn’t, because she just forged right ahead, saying, “I don’t know if Allison told you guys, but we went to try out for this cover-model contest, the New Teen or something. There were probably close to a thousand girls there, don’t you think?”
    I shrugged. Jade and Serena were looking from Roxie to me