The story I'm about to tell you is totally true, and it started the summer the G.G.s—the Goody-Goodies—took everything away from me.

I didn't think they could do that. I didn't think anybody could. So when my mom and my dad and I walked up the steps of Gold Country Middle School that morning in June, I wasn't even nervous. Some twelve-year-old girls would've been munching on their fingernails or making breakfast out of the ends of their hair, but not me.

My just-trimmed-yesterday bob was swinging in the Grass Valley breeze.

My armpits under my pink-striped tee were powder dry.

And my mind was so calm I was practically asleep.

The only irritableness was coming from my father. He took off his sunglasses and looked down at my mom and said, "I told the woman there was no need for a face-to-face meeting."

The "woman" he was talking about was the principal, Mrs. Yeats. I called her the Chin Freak. Not to her face, of course. Even I couldn't get away with that.

Mom tossed her straight dark hair-like mine only longer—out of her face and waited for Dad to open one of the doors while she thumbed her cell phone. "It's either this or Kylie doesn't get back in, so humor her."

Dad said something about that not being our only option. He was always talking about options and other boring lawyer things, but in this case, I was okay with it because it probably meant he was going to fix what he called This Situation before Mrs. Yeats could wiggle her chins too many times.

I switched to noticing how weird it was to be at Gold Country Middle when there was no school going on. No Patrick and Andrew and Douglas hanging out on the steps, making comments that sounded rude but really just meant they liked me. Especially Douglas. No signs on the door announcing all the stuff that made school worth coming to. Like dances and cheerleading tryouts.

The strangest part? My posse wasn't standing as usual by the trophy case across from the office waiting for me to start the day. Riannon. Heidi. Izzy.

Actually, Riannon and Heidi were there, but it wasn't "as usual." Their parents were there too. It didn't get much more bizarre than that. Both of their moms were talking with their hands flapping all around and their gel nails reflecting off the glass on the case, and the dads had their arms folded across their stiff white shirts and foreheads scrunched practically down to their noses.

As for Riannon and Heidi, although they were flattened against the glass like they were trying to become part of it, when they saw me, their faces sprang into action and we had one of those conversations only best friends can have—the kind where you don't actually say a word.

Heidi's hazel eyes bugged, sort of like a pug dog. Translation: This isn't turning out the way we planned.

Riannon darted her green ones to her mother, whose voice was now sounding like Minnie Mouse's, and zippered her finger across her lips. Translation: I can't talk in front of her.

I rolled my eyes and held up both of my thumbs and twitched them. Translation: Text me.

"Not going to happen, Kylie," Minnie—uh, Riannon's momsaid. She curled her long fingers around Riannon's bare arm and peeled her away from the trophy case. "Riannon won't be texting you. E-mailing you. Or calling you. We're done."

She gave a nod like a punctuation mark and dragged Riannon to the door where her dad was already waiting. Somehow Heidi had also been hauled away, and when the big door shut, all the air was sucked out of the hallway.

I recovered fast, though. My parents had already disappeared inside the office, which gave me a minute to laugh. Was Riannon's mom a crazy person? Of course Riannon was going to find a way to text me, even if she had to wait until her mom got over herself and forgot about it. Which she always did.

All our moms did.

Mine poked her head out of the office door then and said, "Hello? Let's get this over with."

That was the thing that made my mom different from Riannon's and Heidi's: she never sounded like Minnie or any other mouse. She was more like a mama panther.

So I sailed past the secretary's empty desk and followed Mom into Mrs. Yeats' office. The last time I stood before the Chin Freak, I'd pretty much had a screaming meltdown. This time, though, I was ready for her. I was going to be totally cool because, like my mom said, we were just there to humor her. I could do humorous. I could do cooperative. I could do irresistible.

I could do anything.

Until I saw who else was in Mrs. Yeats' office, sitting in front of her desk like they were members of the faculty. It was two of the three people I most wished would break out in acne.

One was Ginger Hollingberry, better known to my posse and me as "Gingerbread"—and not in a good way. She was the freckly, red-haired annoyance of a person who started the whole hot mess to begin with.

The other was the Dwarf. Lydia Somebody. She was a weirdly short woman with too much hair who thought she could come in and stop it all.

I'm scared.

I froze in the doorway, not because of Gingerbread and the Dwarf, but because I hadn't heard that tiny voice in a long time. It was a wee thing inside my head that nobody knew about but me. Now was not the time for it to be whispering and definitely not the time for me to start listening to it.

"Kylie," Mrs. Yeats said. "Come join us."

All of her chins were wiggling, so at least I had something else to think about as I plopped down in a chair next to my mom. The first time we met with the principal, Mom wondered on the way home why the woman didn't have plastic surgery.

"Mr. Steppe?" Mrs. Yeats said as she motioned Dad toward the last empty seat.

"I'm fine back here." Dad sounded like we were about to watch a movie or something. I couldn't see him, but I could hear the bright smile in his voice. Dad's teeth were always as white as Tic Tacs.

Mrs. Yeats folded her hands at her thick waist. Just like every other day she wore a gold vest with all these buttons and pins on it that said stuff like, Go Miners! and Miners Make Good Citizens and a new one, Bullying Is Everybody's Problem. Lydia must have given her that one.

"It's my job to determine," Mrs. Yeats was saying as she nodded her head of gray hair that looked like a space helmet, "whether to recommend that Kylie be readmitted to Gold Country Middle for the next school year."

"And you've decided?" Dad said.

"I have not. Certain criteria will have to be met before I can make that determination." Mrs. Yeats looked at me with eyes that were probably meant to make me break out in hives, which I didn't. "You know what criteria are, Kylie?"

Did she think I was an idiot? I was in honors classes.

"The things you're going to make me do," I said. I tried to smile like Dad.

"Wrong."

What? I always aced vocabulary.

"I'm not going to make you do anything. This is going to be your choice, and I want it to be a genuine one."

She waited like she expected me to say something. Maybe that was the first "criteria." So I said in my I-am-cooperative voice, "What do you want me to choose to do?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Lydia pass her hand over her mouth, like she was wiping off a smile. I didn't turn my...