Nikki refuses to draw any tattoos because she’s tired and needs to study. At lunch, Chloe and Zoey sit with the popular crowd while Nikki eats by herself. MacKenzie gives Chloe and Zoey invitations to her rescheduled birthday party, and Nikki feels like they’ve just been “USING [her] all along to earn that trip to NYC for National Library Week” (270).

Nikki is rudely awakened by the phone ringing. It’s her grandma, and Nikki explains she wants to transfer schools, tells her grandma what’s happening at school, and asks what her grandma would do. Her grandma says that it wasn’t about the school and instead about “whether [she chooses] to be a chicken or a champion” (274). Nikki doesn’t like this response and hangs up, only to find her sister asking if Nikki will watch her puppet show.

Monday is the art fair. Nikki falls asleep studying for a geometry test and wakes up late. Though it’s embarrassing, she gets a ride to school with her dad in the extermination van. When they get there, MacKenzie is out front, and she hurls insults at Nikki as she sets down her watercolor to get her backpack out of the van.