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  • Claire's parents. It's been mentioned that her dad's a college professor and not currently unemployed - why do they continue to be so financially dependent on relatives, staying in their guest house and letting Massie's folks pay their kids' private school tuition. Surely at least renting a place in a decent school district, getting Claire into a charter school affiliated with dad's university, even looking at Catholic school would all be options on the table. Given the effect Massie, the PC and OCD is having on their daughter, even an Inner City School would be preferable...
    • MST3K Mantra...
    • Why don't Kristen's parents do the same thing? Why don't Dylan's parents (or parent) wise up to her eating disorders? MST3K Mantra indeed...
  • Massie's "allergy" to nuts. In the first book, Massie can't try out their homemade lip gloss because peanut oil is one of the ingredients. A few books later, she's shown to be eating Nutz Over Chocolate Luna bars. Fair enough, the author could have simply forgotten about the allergy. But in The Clique Summer Collection: Claire, Massie claims, once again, that she's allergic to nuts, which Claire—silently—figures is a bluff. Except... is Massie allergic to nuts or not? Was she lying in the first book (even though there was nothing to suggest she was), is she lying in Claire's book, did the author totally forget about the allergy, or is she deliberately retconning it?
    • Claire later mentally mentions a "shellfish" allergy that Massie claims to have, but only gets mentioned when Massie doesn't want to eat something. Maybe she didn't want to try the lip gloss because she thought it was beneath her (her endless disgust for low-cost or non-brand options), but didn't want to actually SAY so.
  • Are breast implants for middle school aged girls even legal?
    • With parental permission, there's probably a surgeon corrupt enough to take the money and do it.
    • There are also plenty of black market and out-of-country surgeons who don't really care what the law says if they are getting paid.
  • If Kristen’s parents aren’t rich- and if memory serves are on the same class wealth as Claire’s- how on God’s Green Earth was Kristen able to have an unlimited supply of up-to-date fashionable, designer clothing?
    • Borrowing/charity?
    • The other PC members (except Claire) will usually lend her their own designer wardrobe.
      • When clothes aren't being supplied to her, she'll shop at H&M, much to Massie's amusement.
      • But all of those theories/explanations don’t really make sense. Kristen had been passing as just as wealthy as Alicia, Massie, and Dylan for years before they found out, so she couldn’t have been borrowing clothes from The Pretty Committee to convince.... The Pretty Committee that she already had those clothes. As far as other charities- that still doesn’t account for how up-to-date the clothing she would wear to fit in would be.
    • Shoplifting?
      • Well in an early book Massie did try to catch Kristen in the act of stealing a few of her friends cast offs. While I don’t remember if she succeeded (Kristen was likely gonna buy herself something pretty if she had).
    • It’s said in a Summer collection book that Kristen is good enough at making knock offs such as her Lacoste tank top. Shops at stores like TJ Maxx, does chores, tutors people and babysits kids for cash so she can go shopping with her friends. Her parents are also strict so it is possible she uses that excuse when she’s light on money. But the OG post is correct Kristen can’t shop like her friends all the time, she doesn’t have the money to shop like them, while she’s good at pretending they would likely find out she’s “poor” if they haven’t already and at the right time call her out but luckily for Kristen a girl with NO fashion sense according to the PC came at the right time. Claire’s arrival threw her friends off her trail long enough give Kristen a better opportunity to tell her friends the truth.
    • One of the books reveals that Kirsten's family was previously wealthy before her father, who was an art dealer, lost his fortune in deal that went horribly wrong. It's likely that some of Kirsten's clothes really are designer that she maintained from her wealthier days.

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