Excerpt:

Sometimes ignoring could be a lot of work.

Penelope and Stacy emerged from Williams Bar-Be-Cue onto the corner of Eighty-sixth and Broadway, where Stacy stopped dead in her tracks, scrunched up her nose, and hissed, "Peee-ewwwww!" She tossed a grease-spotted paper bag of fried chicken at Penelope, who caught it just in time.

Blocks later, on Eighty-first Street, Stacy was still pinching her nose with exaggerated force. "I guess I'm just getting more sensitive to bad smells," she said when she finally felt safe to unclamp her nostrils. "My stepmother says that's what happens when women mature—odors bother them." Penelope had never heard that. She had noticed that lately Stacy had been scrunching her nose up all over the neighborhood. Places she'd gone her whole life, too: Williams, Broadway Nut Shop, Burger Joint.

Most kids who went to Elston Elementary lived on New York City's Upper East Side, so living across the park on the Upper West Side was a point of pride for Penelope and Stacy. "West is best!" they'd happily shouted when Elston Elementary's lone West Side school bus parted ways on the expressway with the fleet of East Side ones. "East is least!"

But that had been sixth grade. Now here was Stacy complaining that Broadway, the street she and her mother lived on, was a giant stink bomb. "Oh, please!" Stacy's mother scoffed when Stacy brought up the subject of moving across town. Shirley Commack was a reporter for the New York Times who cursed a lot and liked to talk about the good old days when she was a hippie at war protests. She wouldn't be caught dead on the pristine Upper East Side, and dreaded the thought that the West Side could get fancy like that. "You think Broadway stinks?" she argued. "Park Avenue is what stinks. Of boredom!"

Stacy and Shirley Commack lived in a building that looked more like a fortress than an apartment building, with its black gated courtyard, tiers, and towers. When Stacy and Penelope had been little, they'd pretended it was a castle: They were princesses; the doormen were palace guards; the elevator operators, knights; and Bernice, the Commack's housekeeper, a fiery dragon entrusted to protect them.

After delivering the chicken to Stacy's mother, who often had cravings for takeout when staying up all night on deadline, Penelope and Stacy retreated to Stacy's bedroom. Her father had paid to have it redone, and Stacy had been allowed to pick the theme, which was rainbows.

There were rainbow sheets, a matching quilt and curtains, and satin pillows in the shape of rainbows; there was a new desk; a new full-length mirror; and a new bookcase, empty except for Judy Blume's Forever and Wifey, since any books marked "Ages 8 to 12" had been boxed and shipped to Stacy's nin-year-old step sister in California.

"Do you think I should wear a pink of yellow oxford with these? If I wear the yellow, I can wear my white Nickes with the yellow swooshes. I was saving those for the second week, but I guess it's okay." Stacy was standing before her open closet, one of her mother's slender reporter's notebooks in one hand, a pair of white Levi's in the other. She consulted the notebook: "I guess I'll save them for next week and wear my penny loafers tomorrow. Did you see how Tillie Warner wore French coins in hers? I think that is so tacky. So, do you want to plan your outfit? If you ask me, you should wear your painter's pants. Not the white ones, the red ones. And don't wear that orange Lacoste with the red painter' pants like that one time. They don't match."

It had been a long first day, and a thought buzzed into Penelope's tired brain: We don't match. In the six years she'd been best friends with Stacy, she'd never had a thought like that. It was shocking! She tried swatting it away like a mosquito. Think of anything else! she told herself. Think of a song! Think about General Hospital! She stared hard at her feet, as if concentrating on her white sneakers—they were gleaming against Stay's plush new grape-colored carpet—would hypnotize her into forgetting the bad thought.

"Remember you swore you weren't going to wear white jeans tomorrow," Stacy reminded Penelope as she was getting on the elevator. Penelope didn't remember swearing anything, but she nodded agreeably as the elevator doors inched shut, leaving her on one side and Stacy on the other.