Fourteen-year-old Nikki Maxwell writes in her diary of her struggle to be popular at her exclusive new private school, then of finding her place after she gives up on being part of the elite group.
Nikki's diary describes a frightful Halloween, on which she helps with her sister's ballet class party at the same time she is Brandon's date for their middle school Halloween dance, where she has promised to spend the evening with her two best friends.
When scholarship student Nikki Maxwell, whose father is the school exterminator, decides to enter the talent show at her expensive private school, her nemesis MacKenzie threatens to reveal Nikki's status to the rest of the school.
When her crush Brandon reveals that the animal shelter where he volunteers is in danger of being closed, Nikki and her friends enter an ice skating competition to help raise money, an effort that is compromised by an interfering Mackenzie.
When Miss Know-It-All's inbox overflows with pleas for guidance, Nikki Maxwell, the school newspaper advice columnist, turns to her best friends for help.
