When I was in high school, money was tight. My parents had divorced and my brothers and I knew that certain rules of a single-parent household were unassailable: he who opens the clean dishwasher must empty it, you gotta share the last box of Mac & Cheese, and there's No Excuse for an empty toilet paper roll.

The flip of these rules was my best friend's life. Z. didn't have a rowdy, crowded house of siblings, but lived in an only-child paradise replete with extras: extra Poptarts, extra privacy, extra-empty afternoons where her mother might drive us to the mall or the movies, with a bit of extra money leftover for shopping. Unfortunately, Z. also had something that we both knew was not exactly a score—her stepdad. Who was always perfectly friendly to me, but at some point had decided that I was a charity case, in dire need of helpful hints and tips. "Have you ever had a fig?" he once asked. "Help yourself, but don't spit out the seeds." Or, another time, "Do you know how to work my camera? It's sophisticated. You might never have seen this brand."

His asides were not malicious, and usually concerned with table manners ("that's called shrimp cocktail and you'll need to peel the shell first," was a zinger that Z. and I loved to repeat). But I also knew the comments upset her, I guess because they underlined what she already disliked about her stepdad—that he was insensitive and a bit of a snob.

Many kids in my new book, The Julian Game, come from a world of prep-school privilege, and are insulated by money and the power it wields. Kids wrangle for status in tiny, cruel instances—Squid's glance at Raye's book bag, for example, or Ella's wheedling that Raye can't wear her own sweater to a party. Not quite insults, they cut sharp and dirty nevertheless, serving to keep Raye in check by destabilizing her self-esteem.

In writing these scenes, my memory is always drawn back to that long, elaborate dance of how Z. and her mom tried to keep her stepdad in check, and yet how casually he might, in one comment ("That one's a soup spoon, Adele, which means it's just for soup!") undo their efforts. In a snap, I'd have to see myself as Z's stepdad perceived me, and even if I acted as if it didn't matter, those digs never failed to mortify. Now I reprocess those memories for moments in my fiction—that twist of the knife, the elbow in the ribs. My motto being that if it hurt in life, then it's probably good for some dialogue; seeds, shells and all.

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