Free Here's Lily by Nancy Rue Page A

to Zooey, who passed it to Suzy. Nobody else noticed because they were all in a lively discussion about rules and punishments and what was fair and what wasn’t.
    All except Shad. He yawned elaborately before looking at Lily and crossing his little eyes at her. She just looked back at him. Then he pulled Leo over to him by the shirtsleeve and whispered in his ear while staring at Lily.
    Yeah. He was going to be hard to change. Somehow, she had to get him to that modeling show.

Eight
    T hat very night, Kathleen came to class with a stack of white envelopes and a brighter-than-usual smile.
    â€œIt’s getting close,” she said, her perfect eyes twinkling.
    Lily put aside her usual attempt to get her eyes to look like that and gazed curiously at the stack of envelopes. She was dying to know what they were, but this wasn’t like Ms. Gooch’s class. Nobody shouted out stuff or raised their hands to ask a bunch of questions Kathleen would answer anyway if anybody gave her the chance.
    We’re getting so poised , Lily thought. She crossed her ankles just so and tried to look expectant. Beside her, Cassie was clicking her polished Midnight Mauve fingernails together.
    â€œThese,” Kathleen said when she was finished teasing them with her silence, “are your invitations to the modeling show we’re going to give in just two weeks.”
    There was a ripple of excitement. Cassie’s fingernails clicked louder.
    â€œI have exactly ten for each of you—one for each person you would like to invite, not each family .”
    Lily’s head turned immediately into a calculator. Mom, Dad, Joe, Art—that was four. Reni, Zooey, Suzy—that made seven. Plus somebody to bring them, maybe Mrs. Johnson—that made eight.
    She gave a long sigh of relief. That left two—one for Shad and one for somebody to bring him .
    â€œYou will notice,” Kathleen was saying as she doled out the envelopes in little piles of ten, “that our event will be held on a Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. at the Riverside Garden Club. The space is limited, which is why you may invite only ten people.” She stopped and gave them all a sly look. “There are several important people I am going to invite, of course.”
    Cassie could no longer contain herself. Her hand shot up into the air, grazing Lily’s arm with a nail as it went.
    â€œYes, Cassie. Question?”
    â€œAre those important people, like, talent scouts or something? My mom will want to know.”
    My mom won’t , Lily thought suddenly. There was still the question of whether she and Dad were going to let Lily sign on with the Rutledge Agency at the end of the course. It depended on—
    Lily felt a sharp pang, a lot like the kind she got when she forgot to do a homework assignment, only worse.
    It depended on whether she could find God anywhere in this modeling business, and so far, she hadn’t tried very hard.
    I’m going to try right now, tonight , she told herself firmly. I’m going to focus on looking for God. I know He’s got to be in this somewhere .
    But that promise faded the minute Kathleen put her stack of ten invitations into Lily’s hand. They even felt elegant, just lying there on her palm. And then when Lily opened one, she gasped out loud. They were printed invitations, done in important-looking black script like someone’s perfect handwriting, only it wasn’t. Lily ran her fingers reverently across the letters and thought of Shad Shifferdecker being too impressed to say anything , much less something insulting and evil. There would only be the disbelieving eyes, the glinting braces as his mouth hung open . . .
    In fact, that was all she could think of for the rest of the evening. She didn’t even show Mom the invitations on the way home. She was determined that Shad was going to be the first one to lay eyes on them. Every time she felt the envelope in the pocket of her