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“GROUP” IS MY PUNISHMENT. As in “Eating Disorder and Body Image Therapy Group.” It is just how you wish you could spend every day for the rest of your life: sitting around in a circle, talking about things you don’t want to talk about, in a room with no air circulation and orange carpet that smells like Cheez-Its.

The first day of Group I wouldn’t get out of the car. My mother had us parked in a ten-minute spot, but that didn’t make me move any faster. I stared out the window at absolutely nothing. Then I fiddled with the radio. When I’m in the mood I can switch stations so fast you can’t even tell what song is playing. It is quite a talent.

Finally my mother reached over and turned it off.

“What?” I said. “I was listening.”

“Isabelle.” She put her hand on my arm. “It’s almost five. You don’t want to be late.”

I moved as far away from her hand as I could get. “Yes, I do,” I said. “I want to be very, very late. You have no idea how late I want to be.”

My mother sighed and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.

I turned the radio on again and fiddled with the buttons like crazy, which you would think would make a mother furious. Not this mother. She is the type that says, in a voice so gentle you want to scream, “Oh, honey.”

“Fine!” I turned off the radio. I unbuckled my seat belt to make her think I was planning on going somewhere. “Just answer me one thing. Why are you making me do this?”

“Because that is the deal,” my mother said.

“Some deal. It’s not like I had a choice.”

“You’re right.” My mother took off the stupid black sunglasses she always has to wear when she goes out, even when it’s raining. She turned to look at me. “About this, you don’t have a choice. You need to do this one thing.”

Now I was the one who reached over to touch her arm. “Mom. Please? It was just that one time I threw up. I won’t do it again. I promise.”

“I know you won’t,” she said.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“So I don’t have to go?”

“No,” Mom said, shaking her head slowly. “You do have to go. That’s how I know you won’t do it again.”

“Huh,” I said. I made my voice quiet and spoke directly to the windshield. The worst words possible. “Daddy would never make me go. Not in a million years.”

The silence was so big it made my stomach ache.

My mother couldn’t look at me. “I’ll pick you up at six thirty,” she said in a wobbly voice. On went the sunglasses.

When I got out of the car I slammed the door as hard as I could. I didn’t care if she cried. She could cry all day if she wanted to. Just for once, though, I’d like her to do it out in the open, not hiding behind something like sunglasses. It’s a wonder she doesn’t go blind.

I stood at the curb, watching my mother fumble with the car keys for about a hundred years until she finally turned on the ignition. I figured I might as well wait until she pulled away, so she could wave good-bye to me like everything was fine. And I could wave back like nothing had happened.

The leader of Group is Trish, who has hair like Orphan Annie and an overbite. I know what an overbite is only because I have one too. At least I used to, before I got braces. Now all I have is a mouth full of metal.

The first day, Trish bounced around handing out three-by-five cards and touching everyone on the shoulder. “Here you go. . . . Here you go. . . .” She’s the camp counselor type. If anyone can make a rope ladder out of dental floss, it’s Trish.

“Welcome to Group!” Trish said. “Why don’t we go around the room and introduce ourselves. . . . Mathilde?” Trish pounced on the girl to my left. “Would you like to start?”

When Mathilde ducked her head, you could see all five of her chins. I’m not saying this to be mean, it really happened. She spoke so softly we could barely hear her. “I’m . . . uh . . . Mathilde.”

“Great!” said Trish. “Hi, Mathilde. Let’s all say ‘Hiii, Mathilde.’”

We all said, “Hiii, Mathilde.”

You have to feel badly for Mathilde. You really do. First of all, she wears things like shorts with little strawberries on them, and T-shirts with iron-on kittens. You can bet her grandmother picks them out. Second, she has the fat-test legs I’ve ever seen. Next to hers, my legs look like sticks.

“Dawn?” said Trish.

“I’m Dawn,” said Dawn, the cute girl sitting across from me. Long yellow bangs, sad eyes, pug nose. I liked her right away.

“Hiii, Dawn,” we said.

Then there was Rachel. Rachel looks like she should be in a gang. She has about ten earrings in each ear and black eyeliner all around her eyes. You can guess what she’s thinking just from looking at her. I don’t need you people! I don’t need anyone!

“Hiii, Rachel,” we said anyway.

Next was Lila, who is superskinny. She’s always tapping her fingertips against her kneecaps. Her skin is white, white, white, and you can count her ribs through her turtleneck. Most people would probably think that’s gross, being able to count someone’s ribs through their shirt, but personally, I wouldn’t mind looking like Lila. It’s better than being fat. Way better.

“Hiii, Lila,” we said.

Finally there was me. Isabelle Lee. Here’s the problem with Isabelle Lee: shorten it, and what do you get? Izzy Lee, which I hate. Or Belle Lee, which is just as bad. And Belly? Well, Belly is unforgivable. I wake up every day ready to kill Ape Face for coming up with that one.

I used to be Bella, Daddy’s name for me. But then he died and I wouldn’t let anyone call me that anymore. If they did I’d bite their head right off.

Nobody in Group knows about that. To them, I’m just Isabelle, and that’s how it’s going to stay.

“Hiii, Isabelle.”

“Hi,” I said. My voice came out so squeaky I didn’t even recognize it.

Trish looked at her watch and said we should wait a few more minutes, there were supposed to be six of us. Right on cue, someone knocked at the door.

Trish said, “Come on in, Ashley.”

And in she walked: Ashley Barnum. The Ashley Barnum.

I could not have been more surprised if I woke up to find my head stapled to my pillow. I was so dumbfounded I had to mouth the words. Hiii, Ashley.

Here is what you have to know about Ashley Barnum to understand: First of all, the name. Ashley Barnum. Royalty, right? When Ashley Barnum walks down the hall at school, you know it, and not just by the hundreds of wannabe Ashleys who follow her everywhere. By her glow. For starters, she has blue eyes, surfer-girl hair, and perfect thighs—skinny, but muscular too, the kind that flex instead of jiggle. You can bet they don’t rub together when she walks.

On top of that, she is captain of the field hockey team and vice president of the eighth grade. Last year she was voted most popular girl, and everybody knows that when we get to high school she’ll be homecoming queen and prom queen and every other kind of queen. Let’s face it, Ashley Barnum is the type of girl that, if she stepped in dog doo, every guy would line up for the honor of licking her feet clean. Not that dogs would dare doo in Ashley Barnum’s path. Even they would rather die.

Ashley has three brothers, high-school age. They all look like male versions of Ashley. Craig, Jonathan, and David are their names, and they take turns driving her to school in a silver convertible, so she doesn’t have to take the bus like the rest of us. They are her bodyguards. One Barbie, three Kens.

Once, I thought I could hate Ashley Barnum on account of her being so perfect all the time, but here is the clincher, here is the real tragedy: she’s nice. At least if she were a snob I could be left in peace.

This year, we have the same English class, Advanced with Mr. Minx. Now that we’re in eighth grade, everything is split into ability levels: basic, standard, and advanced. I’m in all advanced. I’m pretty good at everything, except for math. At math I’m the pits.

In Mr. Minx’s English class, Ashley Barnum sits front and center. Dan Fosse and Peter Marsh, soccer players (drool), sit on Ashley’s right and left, only too happy to play the bread to her peanut butter. Like every other guy in the school, they spend each fifty-minute period waiting for Ashley to sneeze so they can bless her.

Brian King sits behind her. He is in love with her. Everyone knows that ol’ Bri is not exactly in Ashley Barnum’s league. He’s doughy, and there’s always dirt under his fingernails, and he wears these thick glasses that are constantly sliding halfway down his nose. But does that stop him from writing love notes and dropping them onto her desk on his way to the pencil sharpener? Nope. He’s been doing this since sixth grade. And Ashley always smiles and says thank you. She slips Brian’s notes into her backpack like she’s going to read them later. Why? Because she’s nice.

I sit in the back row, between Nola Quentin and Georgine Miner, my friends since kindergarten. I like Nola and Georgie all right, but let’s just say that they are not going to win any beauty contests. No boy would think to pass a note to either one of them. Or to me.

But Ashley Barnum? Well, she is the kind of person you wish you could be friends with, even though she doesn’t know you exist. When I was younger I even wanted to be her, so much that I used to doodle her name all over my desk. Instead of your regular doodles—rainbows (R.O.Y.G.B.I.V.), hearts (true love always), and cubes (3-D), my doodle was Ashley Barnum (bubble letters).

So when she walked into Group that day, you can imagine my shock. Here was Ashley Barnum, wearing a jean miniskirt and matching clogs. Her eyes were pink, but other than that she was her usual radiant self. Obviously she’d stumbled upon our meeting by mistake. Someone should have told her that the meeting for “People without a Care in the World” was one floor down.

Trish put her arm around Ashley’s shoulder and squeezed. She handed Ashley a three-by-five card and guided her to a chair.

“The information you share on these cards, girls,” Trish said, “is private. The first rule of Group is confidentiality. That means that anything that’s shared in this room stays in this room.”

Trish stood next to an easel draped with grainy paper. “Pretend this is your card,” she said. With red marker, Trish drew six big dots. She wanted our full name, the name we prefer to be called, age, grade in school, reason for coming to Group, and a few of our personal goals.

“This part is important,” said Trish, double-underlining “personal goals.” “What kind of person do you want to be when you leave Group today? A month from now? A year?”

Trish walked around passing out golf pencils.

“Could I possibly have something less stubby?” said Rachel, like she’d just been handed a used Kleenex.

“Certainly.” Trish smiled and handed her a Bic instead. “Anyone else prefer a pen?”

The rest of us murmured “No, thank you” and went to work on our three-by-fives.

When I finished, mine looked like this:

I leaned a little to the left and tried to sneak a peek at Mathilde’s card. All I could make out were the words fat pig, before she flipped it over. Lila was hunched over hers like it was a vocabulary quiz and we were all trying to cheat off her. Ashley Barnum was sitting directly across the room from me, bending sideways over Trish’s desk. A curtain of blonde hair fell across her face.

I imagined her card to read:

Trish collected our cards and told us how proud she was of us already.

“Have a restful week,” Trish said. “Be good to yourselves.” She reminded us to bring a blank book to next Wednesday’s Group, for journaling purposes.

Ten minutes later, we were standing outside the hospital, waiting for the moms to pick us up. Me and Ashley Barnum. Ashley Barnum and Me. She was drawing swirls in the dirt with one toe. I was doing standing butt crunches. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and . . . I was on number seventy-nine when she said, “Isabelle?”

“Yes?” I couldn’t believe it. She was speaking to me. Ashley Barnum was actually speaking to me.

“You go to John Jay, right?”

“Yes.”

“8-A homeroom?”

“Yes.”

“Minx’s English?”

“Why, yes.” Why, yes? Suddenly I’d developed a British accent? Duh!

“Well, here’s the thing,” Ashley said. “I mean . . . I know we don’t really know each other or anything, but I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t, you know . . .”

“I won’t tell,” I said.

Ashley Barnum drew another snail trail in the dirt, nodded. “Thanks.”

“Sure.”

“Anyway,” Ashley said, “it’s not a big deal or anything. I mean, my mom just flipped about this gum she found in my backpack. She thought it was, um, Ex-Lax or something? She saw this thing on TV . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “Same. I mean, my mom flipped too, ‘cause she thought I was throwing up or something.”

“Yeah?” said Ashley Barnum.

“Yeah.”

There was a pause while I tried to think of something cool to say. Do you know I’ve wanted to be you since fourth grade?

But Ashley’s mom pulled up in her shiny black car and signaled with her cigarette for Ashley to hurry up, and Ashley said, superfast, “So, thanks, Isabelle. I’ll see you in Minx’s class, third period, ‘kay?”

“’Kay,” I said. “Minx’s class.” You betcha, girlfriend. Call ya later!

As the car peeled out, a little spray of dirt fanned through the air, just above the spot where Ashley Barnum’s toe had been.