Moving Day by Meg Cabot

right away saw that the whole thing had been a setup—at least fromBrittany’s side of things. In fact, it all turned out to be part of Brittany’s “brilliant plan” to make Mary Kay and me be friends again.
    “Surprise!” Brittany yelled as soon as I came through the door. “I invited Mary Kay, too! Now you guys will have to start talking again! Because you can’t be in the same house all day and not talk.”
    “Wanna bet?” Mary Kay asked, glaring at me. It was obvious Brittany had not warned her beforehand, either, of the touching reunion she was planning for the two of us.
    It was also obvious from her angry expression that Mary Kay was not backing down one inch on the whole still-being-mad-at-me thing.
    “Come on, you guys,” Brittany said, taking us each by the hand and looking into our eyes very meaningfully. “You’ve been best friends too long to let something as stupid as Scott Stamphley get in the way of your true bond. Mary Kay, Allie is only going to be in school with us for another few weeks. Are you really going to stay mad at her that whole time?”
    “Yeah, come on, Mary Kay,” Courtney Wilcox said. Because it turned out Courtney had been invited to come along for the reunion, too. Even though I had no idea what she had to do with any of it. “Allie didn’t mean anything by it. Did you, Allie?”
    I sighed. I could see all my fun plans for playing with Lady Serena Archibald—not to mention Brittany’s huge Barbie and Bratz collections, all of which, by the way, still have their shoes and feet—vanishing into thin air.
    I thought about asking to use the phone and calling my mom and having her come pick me up. Only two things kept me from doing so. One was what I knew was about to happen at the open house with my rock collection.
    The other was the fact that Brittany was standing kind of close to a life-size ceramic figurine of a cat (in addition to having a real show cat, Mrs. Hauser collects ceramic figurines of them, as well), and I was afraid if I tried to leave, thwarting her brilliant plan to get us back together, Brittany might throw it at me.
    “No,” I said. “Of course I didn’t mean it.”
    Mary Kay glared at the floor. The tops of her ears were turning red, a sure sign she was getting ready to cry.
    Only not because she was sad. Because she was angry.
    “Allie promised, ” Mary Kay said. Only not to me. She was apparently speaking to the floor, because that’s what she was looking at. “She promised not to tell anyone she was moving, because it was my special day, and I asked her not to. And then what did she do? She turned around, and she told. Scott Stamphley , of all people. That’s who she told. After she PROMISED.”
    “I know I promised,” I said. I seriously felt terrible. Like I hadn’t been feeling terrible about my broken promise—on top of a lot of other things—for weeks now. “But I temporarily forgot. Are you really going to hold temporarily forgetting for one minute against me for the rest of my life? I mean, you’ve temporarily forgotten stuff.”
    Mary Kay lifted her gaze and fastened it on me. “Like what?”
    To be honest, I couldn’t exactly remember anything at that particular moment that Mary Kay had temporarilyforgotten. I was totally sure there’d been some stuff. I just couldn’t think what.
    “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But, like…stuff.”
    “This is ridiculous,” Mary Kay said, with a sniff. “I’m not staying here. I want to go home. I’m calling my mother.”
    And she made a move to head toward Brittany’s kitchen, where the nearest phone was.
    Brittany was too fast for her, though. She stepped right into Mary Kay’s path.
    And sure enough, I saw her hand come to rest on the nearby cat figurine.
    What’s more, Mary Kay saw it, too. And she grew very still.
    Everyone knows about Brittany’s reputation as a bat thrower. Everyone.
    “Nobody’s going home,” Brittany said in a hard voice. “Everybody is staying