Yikes, that description.

She sees a white flash of light that came from one, of the middle tables. It has three people in it, and she decides to approach them.

Remember: three people.

Claire asks them if the flash came from a “PowerShot S100 digital Elph” and the photographer, a girl with hair separated into seven braids dressed in faded jeans with suspenders and a pink tank top, says "yes" and that it was a birthday gift.

This is Lane Abeley. She's Chris' sister, and she's one of the nicer students at OCD. She eventually becomes Claire's real friend, but I hear in the later books, Claire ditches her for the “Pretty Committee.”


Why would you think that's okay, after a certain point?

Claire just so happens to have the exact same model in her bag. How convenient. Then we get a description of the other two girls, both of whom have rhinestone tattoos, a blue butterfly for one and a pink heart for the other. The former is wearing red cords and a T-shirt that read “Daddy's Little Girl.” The latter, has blue-and-white striped jeans as well as an I ♥ Carbs T-shirt. Remember them because this will come up a second later.

Wait, so the entire student body is supposedly so into becoming and staying thin they won't eat chocolate, yet this one girl loves carbs, which along with sugar will fatten you up. Where's the consistency? Oh but wait, there's more!

While the Blockhead and her friends are glaring at Claire (Massie, I thought you wanted her to hang out with other people), they start taking pictures of themselves doing exaggerated poses of Vincent's “different expressions.” One of the girls tells Claire to “show me lost.” Claire makes such a funny face, some girl in a FCUK T-shirt starts laughing so hard, she starts squirting milk out her nose.

All right, now the problem with the three people I mentioned before rears its ugly head. One of the three’s Layne. We've already learnt what the other two are wearing, and there's no French Connection T-shirt mentioned anywhere! Is there a fourth girl Harrison forgot to mention? Oh but wait, there's even more! The other two girls introduce themselves as Heather and Meena. We don't know which is which; is Heather the girl with the Daddy T-shirt or is that Meena? No one knows, Harrison never tells us.

How did this book get past the editor?

Look, I get during the 90s there was a trend where popular books would get rushed out, so much so they'd be written by ghostwriters and the editor would only skim through them before they got published. This happened with Animorphs, Goosebumps, and the Babysitters Club books. They were pushed out so quickly during the peak of their popularity; it went up to like, Goosebumps #500 and Babysitters Club #800. (Slight exaggeration but you get my point).

Now, the Clique came out in 2004, so it missed the 90s by a few years but the same process happened. Usually with these churned out books, you'd see a huge drop in quality in the later ghostwritten ones. The earlier books written by the original author would be decent enough, but when you compare them to the later books you'd be able to pinpoint where they started rushing the release process and when they used a ghostwriter. In those later books, you'd get things like inconsistencies, flanderization, bad twists that come out of nowhere etc. Example: I heard one of the ghostwritten Animorphs books was really just a thinly veiled soapbox for veganism and despite that moral; they threw consistency out the window and had the main cast eat burgers at the end. I think that was The Experiment.

The thing with the Clique is that the inconsistencies you'd expect in a later ghostwritten book shows up in the first one! Harrison wrote this herself and it still reads like a sad, sloppy excuse typed out at 5 in the morning by someone who doesn't care and just wants to get this over with, when the deadline's two days away!

Layne asks if Claire is Massie's friend because she saw her talking to the Blockhead earlier and because she's dressed like a “pure Massie-chist.” I think this is a Clique-ism for dressing in a way Massive Blockhead would approve of, so in trendy designer clothes. Claire lies and says the Blockhead was “scared I'd make other friends and dump her.” Normally I wouldn't like the lying, but given all the torment she's been through, I see it as Claire being so desperate for acceptance, she's resorted to lying to not get ostracized. Heather and Meena have to leave for their next class, and Claire promises “plenty more Massie stories.” Layne offers Claire some oatmeal from a thermos but she declines.

Meanwhile, Massive Blockhead, Alicia, Dylan and Kristen are leaving, and look at Claire's reaction when they're getting close, she's already starting to sing "wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings These are a few of my favorite things" in her head. That tells me Claire's go to, automatic reaction to see them is to sing mentally, y'know th. Wow, you really did traumatize her in one day, Massie.

They ignore Claire and Layne, causing the latter to say that “Massie really is jealous.” Claire nervously agrees, but she relaxes the moment the Bitchy Committee are gone. They spent the rest of lunch period talking about their mutual love of old musicals (especially Sound of Music, Annie, and Wizard of Oz ), skater boys, and digital cameras. They hated the snobby factor of Teen Vogue and thought Drew Barrymore seemed like she’d be kinda bitchy.

I have to be honest, the first time I read this, I got flashbacks to chapter 3 of I'm Not Okay the badfic by Raven, Tara Gilespie's friend, where the Sue Eternity and her new friends talked about bands like Slipknot, MCR, Evanescence, GC, Marilyn Manson, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance, Christian Death, Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Clan of Xymox, Fields of the Nephilim, Southern Death Cult, 45 Grave, X-mal Deutschland, Garden of Delight. They all agreed that they rocked and they all hated shitty pop bands like BSB and Play. I first thought it was hard to believe that Claire just so happened to meet someone who liked and hated the same things she did. It was convenient, too convenient. Upon a rereading, I realized it is possible to meet someone with the same likes and dislikes as you, so it's not exactly implausible.

But I can’t exactly say the same about the circlejerk. You would think despite liking the same things, they’d have different opinions about them. Maybe Claire buys into the fan theory that Glinda is the true villain in the Wizard of Oz, maybe Layne takes everything at face value and believes the Wicked Witch is the real villain. I'd like to see some variety, even if they do like the same things.

Soon enough, lunch is over. Layne puts the thermos away in her bag, which had a dark green shell that opened like the trunk on a scooter. The surface was covered in stickers from different snowboard companies, except for two spots on the either side. That’s where the stereo speakers were. Layne starts playing music, Claire compliments the bag, saying “half the bags I’ve seen around here cost ten times more and they don’t do anything!” Layne thinks that was funny and asks Claire to hang out on Friday. Claire says yes