A/N: Wrote this one a while ago, maybe ¾ of the way through last school year. For English class, based off my life with a bunch of names changed, as is probably obvious. See if you can find the parallels to Great Expectations So, yeah. Not edited too thoroughly, so….. reviews, please? Any and all feedback, including criticism. Please don’t read and not comment; if you take the time to hit the review button and leave an anonymous review that says “good job” or “horrible” then I’ll be happy. Well, probably not happy if you leave me the second one, but it’s better than nothing. Cheers.

Popular

It’s the three of us. Me, Juliet, Leah. I don’t remember exactly how I met either of them, around a year ago. I do remember, though, that we went from being friendly acquaintances to the tightest of friends. Leah and Juliet started off knowing each other through me, just like I started off knowing both of them through another friend, but this was the year we really got to know each other.

Everything was good, I thought. I don’t really understand how it happened. I had thought the popular crowd was being pretty bitchy to Leah, actually. They’d been teasing her for a while, mostly about guys. It became a sort of ritual; whenever a teacher was late, or whenever we had a break, Juliet and I would sit there and cringe as Amanda and Christie and Carmella and Aaron and Kevin harassed Leah halfway across the room. Even during class, there were notes and whispers and little bursts of giggles. I don’t know how she stood it.

So I guess I don’t really mean good. But still, I didn’t think things were this bad.

Now that I think about it, it was weird. A lot of the time, it was like Leah put herself in the middle of all the popular people. I mean, she got really pissed about it, she yelled a few times, or she’d break down after school to me or Juliet or one of her other friends, but later, after the teasing had let up a little bit… a lot of times, she would deliberately sit with the group that kept throwing in those little barbs. At least, it seemed that way. I don’t know, maybe I was imagining things; it still annoyed her enough.

Eventually, the teasing stopped. Mostly. It was probably because Leah started being friendly with Kevin. Well, sure, first there was an uproar about how she “liked” him, but that died down after a while, and it was just them horsing around in homeroom or something. I mean, they weren’t really close friends or anything… Still, they hung together a little during school.

Yeah, I have no idea why. He’s a total idiot with no imagination or tact. Did I mention he’s an idiot? Honestly, you should see him in history class. Or English. Or math. Or Spanish. Puh-thetic.

I should probably mention that this was around the time there’d been some complaints about the populars, that exclusive little clique that decreed the laws of coolness. A bunch of us “losers” (anyone who wasn’t either a popular or trying desperately to become one) had mentioned how they were all bitches, and, good Samaritans that they were, they set out to prove us wrong. They started acting pretty civil, nice even.

Amanda and Christie had tried to make friends with me, actually. By friend, though, I mean follower. I just didn’t want too; they were nice enough on the outside, but I couldn’t be friends with anyone so superficial and hollow, not to mention gossipy and high-and-mighty. Every time one of them talked to me in a friendly way, it felt fake. I’d rather have friends, people who understand me and know me inside and like me for that.

So anyway, it might have been some sort of weird, good deed, “help the needy” thing when the populars asked Leah to take the bus across the park with them.

Our last class had just let out, and I was getting my coat out of my locker. Leah appeared at my elbow. “Ready to go?” I asked her, shouldering my bag.

“I’m, um, going on the crosstown,” she said.

“Ok-aay,” I said slowly, raising an eyebrow; she usually took the subway with me and Juliet. “I didn’t know you could take the crosstown home,”

“I can take the 1 from there,” Leah responded. “Look, I gotta run. See you tomorrow.”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Bye.” As she walked around the corner and out of sight, Juliet sidled up from the opposite side of the locker bank.

“Leah isn’t coming?” she asked, tucking a lock of frizzy black hair behind her ear.

“No. She’s taking the bus.”

Juliet’s response was the same as mine; a shrug. “Whatever. Let’s go, I still have to start that English project.”

I guess that’s where it really started. Leah began growing more and more distant, hanging out with the populars, sitting with them during class, being in their group whenever we had in-class activities to do, riding the bus with them after school, instead of the subway with me and Juliet. They roamed the hallways, giggling, they passed notes in class, they gossiped. Their conversations were as inane and petty as ever; Leah had lowered herself to their level.

In the presence of the populars, Leah wasn’t herself; she was one of them. She hardly said two words to me when they were around, because a popular couldn’t really associate with a loser. She wouldn’t even make eye contact with me anymore.

I mentioned it to Juliet. “I noticed,” she said quietly. “It bugs me. I thought she was one of us.”

I was losing one of my best friends, even though we sat in the same classroom every day.

The next day, I was leaning against one of the lockers, writing in my notebook. Juliet was at a club, and Leah… I didn’t know where she was. She didn’t tell me anymore. The only other people in the hallway was a gaggle of populars, some from my class and a handful from some other classes with the same free periods as us.

Kevin showed his math homework to a tall girl I didn’t know. She scribbled onto her own paper, occasionally looking back at Kevin’s work for the next set of answers. Flipping the sheet over to see the rest of the homework assignment, she paused. “How’d you get this answer?” she asked, jabbing her finger at one of the problems.

Kevin shrugged. “Leah gave me the answers,” he said.

“Who?” asked the tall girl.

“Oh, you don’t know Leah?” Carmella inserted herself into the conversation. “She’s, like, this really annoying math geek.”

“Whiny, too,” added Aaron, slipping his arm around Carmella’s waist.

“And absolutely no fashion sense,” said Amanda from the tall girl’s other side.

Grimacing, I stood and stowed my notebook and pen in my locker, then walked away. As I rounded the corner, I saw Leah heading towards me. She gave me a nod and a small smile and walked past me.

“Hey, Leah?”

She turned and looked at me. “Yeah?”

“Can I—Can I talk to you for a minute?”

She looked confused. “Uh, sure.” I stepped into an empty classroom and she followed.

I was silent for a moment, not sure how to begin. “You’ve been hanging out with the popular people a lot lately.”

She leaned against the wall. “Yeah?” she said uneasily.

“Well… it’s not you.”

Leah looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, slightly more confidence in my voice, “that you’re better than them. You see things in a different way. You aren’t shallow like they are. You don’t belong with them, you belong with me and Juliet. People who are actually your friends, and don’t just hang out with you because it’s funny for them to see you submitting, instead of being who you are.” I took a breath and looked at her.

“You’re jealous,” she said icily, “that I have real friends.”

“Those aren’t real friends,” I retorted angrily. “They don’t even like you. And who you are around them, it isn’t you.”

“You don’t know me!” she snapped.

There was a long pause.

“Central Park,” I said simply. “The sunset.”

Leah and Juliet and I had been good friends, but we became something more than that when we went walking in the park a few months back, in the evening, and caught the sunset over the reservoir. We had stayed and watched, reverently, until darkness fell, soaking up the beauty of it. We talked little, but enough, and we understood each other perfectly. That day reminded me why I was friends with both of them; the way they perceived things was different, unique.

Leah looked down, shamefaced. “You know you don’t belong with that crowd,” I said quietly, eyes fixed on her.

“I…”

“We want you back. Me and Juliet, we miss you.”

“It’s hard,” she said finally.

“We’ll help.”

“But…” Leah stopped, and looked up at me sadly. “Maybe,” she said, and walked quickly out of the room, hiding her face.