I hated wasting time before the bell rang. By the time my mascara dried, I knew I was going to have to get my information elsewhere.

The junior class definitely wasn’t as tight with the senior guys as the Bambies were. Juniors were hot, but too new agey for their own good, and they usually hung around in the low-country marshland with scruffy out-of-towner guys who drove minicampers stocked with all-you-could-puff vaporizers.

Then again, strange things had been known to go on in their bathroom before school hours. There were rumors that the crème of their class had predicted when Lanie Dougherty would lose her virginity — down to the hour — and been right. And just last month, those very same juniors had been the first to know about the whole mortifying embezzlement scandal that got Principal Duncan fired and replaced with the temporary and painfully dweebish Principal Glass.

In the mirror behind me, Darla Duke stood picking at a large red zit in her T-zone. Believe me when I say that the Double D didn’t just rub me the wrong way because her father was dating my mother. With her bacne, permanent brown nose, and all-too-visible cleavage, the girl was legitimately gross. When she caught me watching her zit-pick with my eyebrows raised in horror, the way a vegetarian might look at, say, pork gristle, she dropped her hands to her sides.

I popped open my Mary Kay compact and dabbed the pink pouf around my nose. “Don’t worry, D,” I said. “It might clear up by this afternoon.”

The sophomores gasped. There was nothing polite about mentioning another girl’s blemish, even in the privacy of the powder room.