Excerpt from This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Uh, 'scuse me—no." Dani wrapped her bright blue gum around her finger and pulled a long strand from her teeth. "They're basically the Beatles of punk."

"The Sex Pistols are the Beatles of punk," Wendy said.

"No." Dani leaned forward on her elbows, the better to challenge him. "The Sex Pistols are the Stones of punk. Want to quit talking out of your ass?"

"Want to kiss it?"

"Ooh!" Dani chirped. "Nice one!"

In what was clearly an attempt to neutralize the situation by ignoring it, Andrew pulled out the assignment sheet their history teacher had passed out three days ago and studied it intently. The project required them to write their own research paper around a single theme and then give a group presentation on four "remarkable lives," as Mrs. Dreyer had put it. Oneida's group had at first been excited to pull musicians out of Dreyer's old ball cap, but whether to write about four separate musicians or four members of a single band was proving difficult to decide.

Oneida was torn between wanting the session to continue indefinitely—no matter how much she wanted it, Andrew Lu would most likely not stick around for cocoa and conversation without the excuse of a school project—and wanting Wendy and Dani out of her face as quickly as possible.

"We have to write about the Beatles," she finally said, adjusting her glasses.

"No shit, Shirley," said Dani.

"Well, they're the only group we've mentioned so far where there's a lot of information about all four members," Oneida said to Andrew. "So unless you want to get stuck writing about, you know, the other guys in U2, we have to write about the Beatles." She tapped her pencil on her notebook.

"That's a great point," Andrew said. Oneida felt her stomach tremble. She flushed and grinned. "I'll take George," he said.

"John!" Oneida said, raising her hand.

"Frick, I guess I'll take Paul," said Dani. "I look forward to exploring his pathological desperation to be liked and the ensuing artistic toll on the genius of John Lennon."

Wendy rubbed his scar. "That leaves . . . what's her name? Yoko Bono?"

"You're really witty for a sociopath," Dani said.

"Ringo," Andrew said. "Ringo Starr, Wendy. OK?"

Wendy shrugged.

In a flurry of closing notebooks, the study group disbanded. Dani clomped through the kitchen and onto the side porch, and the relief Oneida felt upon hearing the screen door squawk behind her was palpable. If pressed, she probably wouldn't have been able to quantify exactly what it was about Dani that drove her insane, but the cumulative effect of her gum-snapping, Beatles-trashing, obnoxiously quippier-than-thou ways incited Oneida to imagine acts of great physical violence befalling her. Oneida wouldn't have said that she and Dani were enemies—nothing had ever occurred between them around which to base an epic loathing— but damn, they irritated each other.

"You don't like her very much, do you?" asked Andrew Lu. He stood beside her on the porch as they watched Dani Drake weave her bike down the unpaved gravel drive. His sudden proximity made her jumpy and she nodded, not trusting her voice. She needed to be comfortable around him. He wrinkled his nose and leaned into her side—he was only slightly taller, so the effect was of Andrew Lu pinning his hip to hers, like they were contestants in a three-legged race— and mumbled conspiratorially, "That makes two of us." Then he hopped off the side porch and climbed on his own muddy bike. He even waved as he pedaled off.

Oneida wasn't sure it had actually happened. She raised her arm to return the wave a beat late, and ended up waving at Andrew Lu's retreating backside. She thought about how warm he had felt when he leaned into her, how ridiculously aware she had been of his solid mass. Oneida Jones was not the kind of girl who touched other people lightly, and she didn't take it lightly when other people touched her, no matter how fleeting the gesture. It wasn't that she didn't like to be touched; she just didn't trust it, or trust herself to interpret it.

Excerpted from This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia. Copyright © 2010 by Kate Racculia. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.