Early/pre-2000s novel set in high school with the main character coming from a poor family and it's about her dating the rich/popular boy. I think they break up at the end, or it's implied that they will (first love not last love).

[Rebekah]

Please help me find this book, it's haunted me for going on two decades now. I read it when I was an early teen (between 2005 and 2010??), and it's probably not even that good, but the not knowing won't let me move on! Here's what I remember (and I'm not even sure that this is all from the same book).

Poor girl in high school, idolizes the rich popular crowd (wants their life). She ends up dating the rich/popular guy. I remember there being a lot about how even though she is so happy to be part of the popular crowd, she never feels that she fits in (are they rude to her? I don't remember)

Specific scenes that have stuck in my brain:

-There's a specific dress she wants to wear to a school dance. At Christmas( or a birthday??) she opens a present exited that it's *that* dress, but it turns out to be one that her mom made. She bursts into tears and her family thinks she's just happy to get it, but really she's disappointed .

-When getting ready to meet her boyfriend's family for the first time (she goes to their house for dinner?), she is reading a magazine article about what to wear when meeting your boyfriends family and it says blue. So she wears a blue dress

-When meeting the family, she meets his cousin/older brother who is home from college (maybe??), this is important because later on he writes her a letter in which he confesses to her??

Overall it felt more like a coming of age story than romance