Chapter Seven
A Whole New World

"Katy Perry is pretty hot, but I'd rather do Taylor Swift. Then I'd get a song about me."

Whoa. This was a weird moment to walk into jazz choir.

"Hey, Grover," Jeff Salvator said. "What do you think: Katy Perry or Taylor Swift?"

I'd been in jazz choir for two weeks, and so far we'd done no singing and had a lot of conversations like this, which was fine with me. People were even being…nice. Of course, that ended as soon as practice was done, just like Silena had promised.

"Ummm…" I dropped my backpack on the floor and sat next to him and Silena.

Silena smacked her lips. "He obviously doesn't like either." Oh God. She didn't know. Did she? "Grover seems more like a…Nicki Minaj type."

Now was the time I was supposed to pipe in and say which singer I thought was drop-dead amazing, and all I could think about was Nick Pitera. He was amazing. "Yeah, umm…Nicki Minaj is okay, but I'd pick Lady Gaga over her."

"Imagine how freaky she'd been in bed!" Josh Hendrickson hooted from behind us. "What's the song about the disco stick?"

Kasey Forester rolled her eyes. "I'd go for Bruno Mars. He's amazing. Or Adam Lambert."

Agreed. I watched every episode of American Idol and actually voted for once when he was on it. Kris Allen had nothing on him.

"Eminem. I have a soft spot for bad boys," Silena admitted.

"Kesha," Mr. Sol shouted from his office. "This place about to blow," he sang in a falsetto.

Bianca di Angelo groaned from the back row where she'd been sitting silently the whole time. "You ever going to get that stupid Christmas music, Mr. Sol? I knew jazz choir was going to be a huge waste of my time."

She stood up and walked to the door. "Oh, and I'm having a party on Halloween. My house. Come in costume, or don't come at all. Spread the word, children."

Everyone waited until she was out the door before Carrie Frieder said what was on everyone's minds. "What a bitch."

Silena sighed. "You know the story."

"What story?" I asked.

Becky Nakamura stared at me. "Shut up. You don't know?" I shook my head. "Silena, you tell him."

Silena's eyes lit up, but she bit her lip like she felt bad about talking about Bianca behind her back. "Okay, so you know their dad. Owns the local funeral home and stuff?" I nodded. The di Angelo family had run it since Shallow Lake was founded. "Well, once upon a time there was a Mrs. Di Angelo.

"She was…well, a mail order bride from somewhere in South America. She stuck around with her husband long enough to give him two kids and get her US citizenship. Then she just took off – changed her name and everything. Bianca was only five. Her dad was crushed, so she pretty much had to be a mom to her younger brother. I'd say it entitles a girl to be a little ice princessy."

We were all quiet for a few seconds, then Josh broke the silence. "Silena, you know way too much about people. It's kinda creepy, but also really hot."

Yeah, typical day of jazz choir.

As far as teachers went, Mr. Brunner was pretty cool. He was an older guy and had to use a wheelchair. I bet he had been in a war or something cool. I hated history, but he actually made it kind of interesting…and that took talent.

That being said, I had no problem saying I hated him at the moment. He'd just assigned a giant project, and he was going to pick our partners. We had to take a giant piece of poster board and make a giant collage of what it was like to be a teen in whatever ancient society you got assigned or something. Oh, and you got to work in partners…that he picked.

"Taklan, Nakamura. You've got Rome. Underwood, Jackson – Greece."

Great. I was stuck with the class loser. Okay, maybe being the swim team prodigy was going to my head.

"Chase, Bostun. You're doing –"

"Lea has mono," a kid in the front row said. "She's gonna be out of school for like…three weeks."

Mr. Brunner didn't miss a beat. "Annabeth, you can go with Grover and Percy. Just remember, I'll expect more from a group of three."

He kept rattling off partners, but I wasn't listening. I was stuck with the class loser and the class overachiever. Things just didn't get any better. I didn't know anything about ancient Greece, and Annabeth was probably able to write a book about the complexities of their ancient society.

"Okay, get with your partners," Mr. Brunner said loudly. While some groups eagerly shifted desks to get closer together and gossip, the three of us reluctantly gathered around one of the back tables.

Annabeth immediately took charge. Go figure. "Well, we're obviously not going to have enough time to get it all done in class, so we'll have to work on it before and after school."

"I have swim practice after school," I immediately interjected.

"And I have jazz choir before school," Grover added nervously.

"You're in jazz choir?" Annabeth gave him a disbelieving look.

"Yeah. We're singing stuff from the Nightmare Before Christmas."

That movie scared the crap out of me when I was younger. Don't repeat that.

"Well," Annabeth started. "I guess I'll just do everything, because no way am I getting my GPA ruined because I'm stuck with you guys on a project that's worth 20 percent of our grade. 20 percent," she repeated. "And you probably don't even care. You probably think I'm a freak for caring about my grades, but one day when I'm a famous architect and you're just some random person living-"

"Annabeth. Relax. The project will get done," I butted in, worried that she was going to give herself a brain aneurism or something.

Thank God the bell rang right at that moment. Annabeth stormed out. "Wow. I'm having flashbacks to the first Harry Potter."

I laughed. "Yeah. Talk about Type A."

"Yeah, well…" he trailed off awkwardly. I could tell his social skills weren't the greatest. Or maybe talking to people just made him nervous.

"See you, Grover," I finished for him.

Maybe this history project wouldn't be death.

Yeah, and maybe I'd actually end up being friends with Annabeth and Grover.

Sometimes it was hard to hold your head up when people knew your mom was the town whore. Dima Beauregard might have been the best news anchor in our county, but that didn't change what people thought about her.

She had four kids, myself included. And it was obvious that we all had different dads. Of course, we were all drop-dead gorgeous. It came from having someone so impossibly beautiful for a mom. Yet each of us looked completely different, not even a common feature like eye color to unite us.

I'd never met my dad, but I didn't really care. He was probably some loser anyway.

The only thing I cared about was the reputation my mom, and all of her children by association, got. It was worse because we were in a small town where everyone had to know everything. But really, the people talking were only making me famous.

Speaking of which, I hadn't really done anything noteworthy lately. I'd been single for two weeks after breaking up with a guy from Vildesburg. I know, it was death, but Shallow Lake boys were so boring.

Except the ones that were off-limits, but that was a different story.

"Earth to Silena. Are you there?" Clarisse, my best friend, waved her hand in front of my face. "The Bachelor's almost on."

That's right, Clarisse La Rue liked to watch The Bachelor. I kept her secret, and she didn't tell the world that I ate like a pig and actually liked watching football – I told people I only watched to check out the players.

Way back when in grade school we'd discovered that we had a lot in common after spending three hours in the principal's office together after some stupid fight during recess. I think Clarisse had made a comment about my mom being pregnant again, but she claimed I'd told her she had a face that looked like a pig.

Anyway, we'd been secret friends since then. We both had an image to keep up, and being seen with each other would not be a good idea.

"Yeah. Pass the popcorn. Bianca di Angelo is having a Halloween party. We should go."

Clarisse snorted. "Yeah. Doesn't even make my top 500 list of things to do."

"Chris Rodriguez is going," I added.

Clarisse made a sound that could only be described as a girly little squeal. "Really? How do you know that? Is he really going? We should definitely go."

Well. That'd been easy. "I know everything. We can go as warrior princesses. It will be fun." I shoved a handful of popcorn in my mouth.

"Yeah. Fun. Whatever," she said gruffly, trying to play off her girly moment. "Who are you going for?"

"No one." I lied, giggling.

"Tell me who!" she insisted, easily putting me in a headlock.

I grabbed a handful of popcorn and threw it at her. "Stop! I'm not saying, and The Bachelor just started and you're missing it!"

"Really?" Clarisse immediately let go and stared at the TV. That girl was worse than me.

Thank God. Because no way was I admitting that I had a stupid crush on Luke Castellan.

And even stupider, I also maybe, just maybe had one on nerdy little Grover Underwood.