It seems that this image represents the fact that everyone in her group but Haruhi is in on the masquerade. She's always out in the cold. Hell, in the last couple of novels she's taken a backseat to Mikuru and Yuki and the Anti-SOS Dan, so this could be expressing that too.
I imagine this as an alternate universe where Haruhi is more subtle and less domineering. A universe where the SOS Brigade never came to be, and everyone just regards Haruhi as "that weird girl" (well, more than they do already).