Chapter 9

At lunch, we all head to the cafeteria. They coach me on what's good and what's not.

"Over all, pretty much everything that is over there in the hot section is bad. That is the main course stuff. Everything else is pretty good though. Oh, and the soup is sometimes okay. It just depends. Never go for chicken anything. Vegetable and tomato soups are good, otherwise, steer clear. Everything in the salad area or light lunch area is good. Milk is either four days to expiring or it expired a day ago, so beware of that."

"Wow, thanks."

We go for bagels and tomato rice soup.

We head out to the cafeteria. "Okay, where do we sit?"

"With the rest of the popular kids of course," Char says leading the way.

"But I thought we were the popular kids..." This is so confusing.

"I mean in the other grades. We sit with the most popular kids in all four grades. The younger ones look up to us, and we look up to the older ones."

"Okay..." This popularity thing is kind of weird, and really confusing. In France, it was so much simpler.

I just follow Charlotte.

We sit down, and they introduce me to everyone. In ninth grade there is Angel, Brad, Olivia, Nate, Laura, and Mike. In our grade it's me, Charlotte, Brittany, Erin, Parker, and Kyle. In eleventh grade is Peter (yes, my brother!), Hayley, Derek, Courtney, Sam, and Julia. In twelfth grade is Lucy, Joey, Rob, Stephanie, Brad, and Vicky. I notice that there are six popular kids in each grade. Three boys, and three girls. They are all paired off into couples too. Oh god, what did I get myself into?

I just focus on my bagel.

After school, I go with them to cheer leading tryouts. After I told them that I did cheer leading and gymnastics at my old school, they almost went crazy.

"You have to join the squad!" Brittany squeals.

The guys are all on the football team.

"Okay ... I might as well try it."

Luckily, all of the popular girls are on the squad. That means there are twelve girls. We are going to be cheering on all the guys. The popular guys are all on the football team, plus a few other buff guys who are popular in the jock kind of way. You know?

We all try out, getting the thumbs up from Vicky, Stephanie, and Lucy, the captains, also our friends from lunch.

It's great. We are automatically on the squad. We sit around and watch several other girls who are not quite popular try out. At the end, they make an announcement that they will be posting the lists on the high school bulletin tomorrow. We already know who will be on and who won't though, they all ready told us. I have learned that being popular here gets you everything.