Chapter 1.

"Stacey?"

"Here!" I called out. Then I continued to draw suns, planets, stars, and hearts on the front cover of my social studies notebook. It was a bright, sunny fall morning, and I was sitting in creative doodling class, otherwise known as homeroom.

Homeroom. What a strange name. It’s a room, all right, but it’s nothing like home. Unless your home happens to have chalkboards, fluorescent lights, and seven rows of barely awake eighth-graders who are whispering, passing notes, brushing their hair, or scrambling to finish the last three questions of their math homework, while a teacher (Ms. Levine, in my case) tries to take attendance, keep some order, and make announcements.

I don't know about you, but, thankfully, my home isn't anything like that. For one thing,

my mom hardly ever takes attendance. Just kidding.)

I mostly use homeroom as a time to gather myself together for the day. None of my good friends is in my homeroom, so I don't have anybody to whisper with or pass notes to. (Sheila McGregor and I used to pass notes back and forth, but we don't anymore, which is a long story I'll tell to you some other time.) I always take care of my hair and clothes before I leave the house in the morning, since both of those things are pretty important to me, so I'm never brushing my hair or checking my outfit in the classroom. And I never leave my math homework unfinished. English homework, maybe, but never math. I actually like math, and I'm good at it, so I usually breeze right through any assignments.

I always sit next to Sheila McGregor in homeroom. Why? Because my name is Stacey McGill, which means Sheila and I are alphabetically related. Like Sheila, I'm thirteen, and I go to SMS —StoneybrookMiddle School— which is inStoneybrook,Connecticut. Unlike Sheila, and unlike most of my classmates, I did not grow up in Stoneybrook. I grew up inNew York City, inManhattan. (My parents are divorced, and my dad still lives inNew York. Even though I chose to live in Stoneybrook with my mom, I still visit him there as