By the time they sat down to eat, Laney wouldn't say she and Ysabel Shannon were friends, but at least, they'd found some common ground - though even at the same school, the spheres of a bookworm scholarship student and a sorority queen were separated by more than the difference in their ages. Still, it was a start.

Over coffee after dinner, Zach and his dad watched as Laney demonstrated her electronic reader for his mother. Ysabel pretended to be appalled at the idea that ...