Mascara

Meet MASCARA which stands for Mara, Asher, Sue, Carmen, Amanda, Rachel and Adrianna, respectively. They are prep school Saint Lawrence Academy's elitist clique of girls who have everything. Literally, everything. Members of MASCARA have their own app (built by Asher's tech magnate father who built Sutherland Enterprises from the ground up). They each hold a chair position like Social Media Chair, Fashion Chair, Community Chair, or Beauty Chair to keep them abreast at monthly meetings of what's trending before it's even trending. Translation? They know all of the best clothes, accessories, products, apps and events before they're even out. They wear their signature cobalt blue mascara on a daily basis. They are the girls everyone at school wants to wake up and switch lives with. Each year, MASCARA gives bids to incoming freshman to pledge for the upcoming vacancies left by graduating seniors. Girls know they've been picked if the cobalt blue mascara is taped to their locker. However, only girls blessed to have a first name starting with the letters in "MASCARA" are even given the chance. Pledging this clique is far from simple, rule-laden, and has seen a whole lot of awry-going like using fake online dating profiles to flirt with the gym teacher or putting the school up for sale to the highest bidder. This year, Jorie Carr, (attention-defecit, dreamer extraordinaire) who changed her name after a second grade bully couldn't get enough of "Marjorie Carjorie," and her best friend Abby Port enrolled in Saint Lawrence against all things logical and public school. Marjorie a.k.a. Jorie gets a bid (the cobalt blue mascara taped to her locker) and Abby doesn't despite the fact that Abby was the one who told Jorie about it all in the first place. Life sure isn't fair in high school and it gets a whole lot more unfair as pledging unravels. Luckily, there are a few incentives to keep Jorie going. Namely, junior Derek Mackey. Oh, and the overwhelming desire to have hair like Asher Sutherland. Explore Jorie's quirky look at pledging a high school sorority through the eyes of a self-conscious freshman who just so happens to have had the good fortune to become accepted by the most popular seniors. It'll leave you crushing on cobalt blue for always.

Amanda Palasciano is a 7x award-winning journalist and content strategist living in the New York City metro area. She began her career in music public relations in Los Angeles in 2004 and parlayed this into a a versatile writing career over the years. She has written one feature screenplay, one comedy pilot and her debut novel, Artasium, prior to writing Mascara. Today, she works for a top ad agency in New York City and still contributes freelance to local outlets. She lives with her fiance and two dogs, Dolce and Cassius.