The Mosts by Melissa Senate Page A

head. “He wears an iPod most of the time and never hears me when I say hi. And he seems really into the work.”
    “Sam is very out of our league,” Elinor said. “And anyway, standing out can be dangerous, Avery. That’s the reason I always make the Not list in the first place.”
    “Well, I don’t want to look worse ,” Avery said. “I want to look better . I want to look more than better—I want to look like you, Madeline, and your friends.” Elinor stared at her with pride, at this girl who dared to dream big. “I just don’t know how . Even when I go shopping and try stuff on that I see you and your friends wearing, I just look … stupid. Like I’m trying too hard or something. Does that make sense?”
    “Yeah, I understand what you mean.” I did, because I used to be Avery.
    “So?” Elinor said to me. “Three hundred and fifty bucks to teach us how to be more … normal before the Not list comes out.”
    “This is crazy,” I said. “In what, four, five weeks’ time, I’m supposed to turn you both into totally different people?”
    They nodded.
    “Different enough to not make the Not list,” Elinor said. “That’s what I want. And Avery wants to look better enough to possibly make the Most list! Yay, A!” she added. “Omigod, that rhymes!”
    Omigod was right. Was she really this corny? If she said something like that around Caro and Fergie, they’d torment her with it forever.
    “Three hundred and fifty dollars,” Elinor repeated, knowing that would cover what I needed. “I’m paying more, since I need the most help and I’m planning on passing what I learn to my sister. She’s in middle school, but it’s never too early.”
    I pictured my dad marrying a woman I’d never met. I pictured Thom and the blond girl in a bikini in math class. He was pulling the strings to her top. She was giggling.
    Maybe some lessons in how to be popular—how not to be a total dork, really—wouldn’t be such a big deal. A few hours of my life here and there for three hundred and fifty bucks. For California.
    “We can give you half the money right now and the other half in two weeks,” Elinor said. “That’s when I’ll have the last hundred from babysitting the Cotter twins. They’re four.”
    I took a very deep breath. California. California. California . Half the money in my possession now, to make it feel real. And the other half in two weeks.
    “Okay. I’ll do it,” I told them. “I’ll try to change your image. But I can’t guarantee anything.” I’m a high school sophomore—not a miracle worker .
    Elinor started jumping up and down and clapping. The almost cute girl took a deep breath.
    “Elinor, lesson number one,” I said. “Don’t jump.”
    The interns, excluding Sam, who rode his bike to the farm and to school most days, were waiting in their cluster by the Blueberry Ledge Farm sign at the main road. I sat on a huge rock—on my English notebook—across the dirt driveway, waiting for Mandy, Caro’s housekeeper, to pull up. Caro lived in an amazing house a mile away on the Atlantic Ocean. The first time Caro had invited me over, I’d thought her house was one of those fancy bed-and-breakfasts. That was how big it was, how grand. Mandy had been with the Alexander family forever, since Caro and her older brother (he was in college already) were babies, so Caro treated her with a degree of respect.
    Elinor whispered something to Joe, the other guy intern, and he looked over at me. Now there was someone who could use a little fashion advice. He wore a T-shirt tucked into blue shorts. All that was missing were kneesocks.
    “Could I ask you something?” he said to me.
    Oh God . I nodded.
    “I’m sort of interested in going in on this thing that Elinor and Avery are doing. But, I’m a guy, you know? It’s not like you can give me advice on makeup or whatever.”
    “She can help you be more like her boyfriend and his friends,” Avery said. “How to dress, how to