We all look across the yard to where Iris is seated with Paige Breckner. “Lavender just makes me think of Iris, which makes me enraged,” Amber says. They have lavender in them, right? That’s supposed to be calming.” Instead I watch as Madison pats Amber’s back. My brother technically owns 40 percent of it and somehow manages to drive it 80 percent of the time.īut I don’t say any of this to Amber for fear she might fling a tray of cookies at me. I had to scrape and scrounge and toast subs, and remake the subs that I toasted badly, just to buy a car. They drive Range Rovers and have celebrity deejays at their sweet sixteens. Society itself puts us on different pages.

More often than not, they’re all on one page, and I’m on a completely different one. In truth, we are rarely all on the same page. It’s quiet for a split second, and then a laugh escapes from Madison.Īmber doesn’t laugh, but her lips twitch in amusement. “Abso-tootin-lutely!” I declare loudly, because I am a moron. We all know magenta is not pink, right?” She looks to me. “Someone get her a fucking Pantone booklet because magenta is not pink. “Someone get that girl a color wheel,” Amber hisses angrily to Madison Lutz, sitting to my left. This seems to incense Amber even more, because while we all know that Iris’s dress is a big official eff you to the entire Pink Party construct, Kaitlyn doesn’t seem to realize that she’s committed a faux pas. We’re all wearing pink except for Iris Huang, who had the nerve to arrive in lavender (Amber’s angry whispers carried clear across the lawn), and Kaitlyn Winthrop, who is technically wearing magenta. I stare around Amber’s backyard at clustered tables covered in pink gingham cloths and at the girls around said tables. It also implied that there had been a number of mediocre luncheons this summer, as this was meant to be the last of the great ones.

As if my summer had been packed to bursting with a whole host of other themed luncheons instead of babysitting jobs and shifts at Pinky’s Sub Shop. The invitation-on thick pink paper, naturally, with gold and turquoise swirls-had declared it to be the last great luncheon of the summer.

It’s at Amber Brunati’s annual Pink Party that everything begins to unravel.

Foolish hearts by emma mills