Character Analysis
There's a classic case of cheerleader stereotyping going on with Marcie Millar. She's thin, attractive, gossipy, and she wears short skirts, pigtails, and lots of makeup. She's pretty type cast and doesn't have a huge part in the book other than adding to the high school atmosphere by fulfilling the mean girl role and revealing the type of girl Nora is by acting as her opposite.
While Marcie is the kind of girl who poses in the JCPenny display window on weekends modeling bikinis, Nora is the kind of girl who plays the cello, has crazy hair, forgets to put on makeup, and writes for the school eZine.
Marcie is the spitting image of all things quintessentially popular, so for any readers who identify more with the bookish, slightly awkward, never-been-kissed type, it's satisfying to see Nora, not Marcie, as the center of attention in the novel. And it's especially satisfying to see guys like Patch and Elliot fawning over Nora rather than Marcie because, as Nora notes, most guys "begged Marcie for any attention she saw fit to toss them" (6.23). Patch and Elliot are clearly not most guys.