Populazzi. Part 1

Populazzi.

Elise Allen.

To Randy, Maddie, and Riley, the loves of my life.

Chapter One.

"Don't you see, Cara? This will be the year everything changes!"

I laughed out loud.

I hated to do it. Claudia is my best friend in the universe and has been since kindergarten. Still...

"What?" Claudia asked, but I was already halfway under my bed, dragging out the giant plastic bin in which I keep all my journals, from my first grade h.e.l.lo Kitty diaries through the leather-bound notebooks I use today. Some would say under my bed isn't the smartest place to hide my most private thoughts and observations. Surely my parents could find them there. What if they wanted to sneak in and read them?

The truth is my parents would never read my journals. Not because they're such saints, but because after sixteen years (twelve, technically, for my stepdad), they're 100 percent confident there's nothing juicy in them. This is part of my problem.

"'Deer Diary,'" I read from h.e.l.lo Kitty, "'today I go to first grade! It will not be like kindergarten. It will be grate for Claudia and me.'" I held up the page so Claudia could appreciate not only the spelling but also the adorable stick figure drawing of the two of us holding hands, ma.s.sive grins on our giant bubble heads. Claudia nodded; adorableness noted.

I tossed that diary aside and grabbed a turquoise journal with cover art featuring a plume pen spouting a rainbow of sparkles. "'Dear Diary,'" I read, "'fourth grade was the same as always. It's all about fifth grade. This is when everything will change.'" I dropped the journal and plucked up a funky striped notebook in gradations of pink, red, and orange. "'Okay, diary,'" I read, "'tomorrow starts Junior High. Junior High! It's a whole new school! Seriously-this is the year everything changes.'" I looked at Claudia. "I could go on."

"Don't," Claudia said dramatically.

Claudia says everything dramatically. Her mom read Shakespeare to her insanely early, and she took the "All the world's a stage" thing to heart. Not that she's an attention hound. Unless she's playing her cello, the very idea of being in the spotlight sends her ducking for cover. She's not fake either; it's just that her real-life emotions are maybe ten times larger than other people's.

"I know what you've always said," Claudia continued, "but this year is earth-shatteringly different. You're going to an entirely new school, where n.o.body knows anything about you. Nor do they know about ... The Incident."

The Incident was pretty much the inciting event in our friendship. It happened on the first day of kindergarten. Ms. Jewel lined up our cla.s.s for a trek to the bathrooms-"a potty party"-first thing in the morning, but I was way too nervous to do anything but count to ten and come back out again. That meant by halfway through circle time my bladder was so full I was dying, but I was too embarra.s.sed to raise my hand and say anything. Instead I danced in my spot on the floor, madly jouncing my crisscross-applesauced legs and squinching my face super tight. Looking back, I can't believe that Ms. Jewel didn't realize what was happening ... or what would happen if she kept ignoring me.

Heather Clinger was the first to notice. She pointed and squealed from across the circle, "EWWWW! That girl peed herself!"

Immediately, the kids on either side of me leaped away screaming, while the rest of the room laughed or sneered. I didn't want to cry, but I couldn't help it. I just felt so small and embarra.s.sed and ashamed...

Until a grinning little girl with super-pale skin and the same two looping black braids she's worn every day of her life cried out, "Look at me! I peed my pants, too!"

The girl was Claudia, and she was sitting right next to Heather, who screamed again. The whole room erupted into chaos. Finally, Ms. Jewel called in an a.s.sistant, who took Claudia and me out of the room, cleaned us up, and shoved us into mismatched castoffs from last year's lost and found.

"Were you embarra.s.sed to raise your hand, too?" I asked her.

"No," she said, shaking her braids. "You just seemed sad to be the only one all wet with pee. So I did it with you!"

Just like that, I'd made a best friend for life.

Unfortunately, while our origin story formed an intense bond between Claudia and me, it permanently grossed out everyone else in the cla.s.s ... all the same people who would follow us through elementary school, junior high, and PennsbrookHigh School. And while it's not like they actively held day one of kindergarten against us, it's pretty tough to kill such a vivid first impression. The Pants-wetters were never going to be allowed among the Populazzi: the most adored of the social elite.

But now Claudia was right: I wouldn't be with those people anymore. The day after soph.o.m.ore year ended, my family had moved from Yardley to Malvern-about an hour and several Pennsylvania Turnpike exits away. My new cla.s.smates all went to Chrysella Prep, a charter school my parents kept telling me was "known for both the teachers' and students' creative thinking and extreme academic excellence." They'd shown me a brochure about it called "The Charter School Difference," but it didn't seem terribly different from Pennsbrook at all ... except for the fact that every single student there was a complete stranger whom I'd meet for the very first time in just three days, fifteen hours, twenty-five minutes, and thirty-one seconds.

Not that I was freaking out about it or anything.

Claudia leaned toward me, her dark eyes intense. "You have the chance to rewrite your life story. No, not the chance ... Reinventing yourself is your destiny! It's in the name of your school: Chrysella, the chrysalis from which you will emerge, no more a pupa, now a b.u.t.terfly!"

Actually, the school was named after an ex-student named Chrys who'd died from some rare and hideous disease, but I couldn't tell that to Claudia. She was on a poetic roll. I was fairly certain her last phrase had been in iambic pentameter.

"You can be anything at Chrysella," Claudia continued. "You can break into their Populazzi. You can even be the Supreme Populazzi: The Most Popular Girl in School."

That's when I really should have laughed. The Incident notwithstanding, I have never been the Supreme Populazzi type.It's not that I don't want the t.i.tle; who wouldn't? SPs never get laughed at for personal quirks like navigating the halls with their nose in a book. SPs never feel shy or insecure; they can walk into any room and know that everyone there is dying to see them. SPs never have to pine for the guys they like; those guys pursue them.

So I should have laughed, but I didn't. I recognized the look on Claudia's face.

"You have an idea," I said.

"I have a plan," she amended. She reached into her fuchsia, faux-leather shoulder bag and pulled out a huge, overstuffed yellow binder, which she thudded down in front of me. "I hereby present: the Ladder."

Sure enough, there it was on the front of the binder in black-Sharpie calligraphy: "The Ladder."

"What is this?" I asked.

"Your ticket to a new life. The Ladder is how you climb from one tier of the Popularity Tower to another."

"You can't climb from one tier of the Popularity Tower to another."

That was the whole point of the Popularity Tower. Claudia and I had named it and all of its tiers back in seventh grade. There were kids who were more and less popular before that, but by seventh grade everyone was cemented into a specific and universally accepted Tower position. Like it or not, you were either a Happy Hopeless, Cubby Crew, DangerZone, Penultimate Populazzi, or Supreme Populazzi. You didn't get to choose, and you didn't get to change.

"That's what we always thought," Claudia said. "But there is a Ladder. Its rungs are relationships. You can climb into a new Tower tier if you have a boyfriend there. You get that boy friend by already having one in a slightly lower tier. Having a boyfriend makes you desirable."

"Okay ... but I don't have a boyfriend." I said it like I was talking to a mental patient. It's not like she didn't know.

"Notyet," Claudia said. "When you get to school, you target a first boyfriend: someone who's not a total loser but is low enough on the Tower that he's easy to get. From there, you date your way up higher and higher until by the end of the year you've achieved the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi and the t.i.tle of Junior Prom Queen. Your date for that event? The male Supreme Populazzi-the most spectacular guy in the entire junior cla.s.s."

Claudia glowed with excitement. She loved this idea. I was tempted to take her temperature. And maybe check her pupils for concussion.

"Claude, I've never had a boyfriend. How am I supposed to 'target' some guy and get him to go out with me?"

"That's the beauty of a brand-new school!" Claudia said. "You can be anyone, including exactly what each guy you target thinks is the perfect girlfriend."

"So I lie to these guys, use them, and that makes me popular?"

"You don't lie. You highlight different aspects of your actual personality. And you don't use anyone. They're guys. Guys are psyched to have girlfriends. You'll be helping them. Just like you, they'll be more desirable when they're part of a couple. When you're ready to move on, it'll be easy for them to get someone new."

It was a lot of insight for someone with as much guy experience as I had. In other words, next to none. Claudia had seen a p.e.n.i.s, but it was attached to her first cousin Rob, who's fourteen and a total dork. His idea of biting satire is to tape googly eyes and paper elephant ears on the front of his jeans, then let "the trunk" hang out of his fly.

I, on the other hand, have never in my life seen a p.e.n.i.s. I've tried to imagine what that eventual momentous occasion might be like, and even spent a whole cla.s.s period once staring at the word in my notebook, but all I pictured were other words you could make from its letters. Like SPINE. And SNIPE. And E-SNIP, which seemed like a good name for an online circ.u.mcision service.

"You have doubts," Claudia said. "You shouldn't. I've done the research." She nodded to the binder. "Open it."

I did. The book overflowed with reams of magazine articles, written notes, and Xeroxes of book and newspaper pages.

"My G.o.d, Claudia, when did you do all this?"

"You were busy packing; I had time on my hands." She scooted next to me to read over my shoulder.

"The whole book is filled with evidence," she said. "Tons of situations where the Ladder led to success. Like in the musical Evita-how does Eva Peron go from poor villager to First Lady of Argentina? The Ladder. Or Cinderella-a million different Cinderella stories from a million different places in the world and a million different points in history turn a scullery maid into royalty. How? The Ladder. And it's in real life, too! Would anyone care about Yoko Ono's art or music if it weren't for John Lennon? Would anyone care about Sharon Osbourne's opinion if she weren't married to Ozzy?"

"Since when did you play Carnegie Hall with Yo-Yo Ma?" I had just flipped to a perfectly Photoshopped picture of them on the famous stage, their heads bent over their instruments in twin concentration.

"Metaphorical Ladder," Claudia explained. "Happens in music and sports all the time. You always want to practice with people just a little better than you so they pull you up to their level."

I smiled at Claudia's implication that Yo-Yo Ma was only a little better than she was at the cello. A lack of confidence had never been one of Claudia's issues, and she seemed extremely confident about this Ladder idea. I had to admit it sounded intriguing. And going into Chrysella with a specific mission would certainly be less intimidating than just being myself and nervous and shy and hoping that people would see through to the real, fun, fascinating me.

Still, I had major doubts that I could pull it off. "I don't know, Claude..."

"You can do this, Cara," she said, leaning in close. "I know you can. And you won't be doing it just for yourself; you'll be doing it for me, too. For everyone who has ever felt like a misfit, or was ever picked on, or laughed at, or treated like they weren't good enough. You can prove we're no different than the Supreme Populazzi by becoming one of them. And you can do it with the help of the Ladder."

Claudia believed every word she was saying ... and in that moment I almost did, too. I wanted to believe it. If I did, then maybe starting a new school didn't have to be scary at all. It could be a chance to make a statement, to show something to the world, even if Claudia and I were the only ones who ever knew about it.

But was it really possible?

As if reading my thoughts, Claudia rose and walked to my night table, where a small replica of the Liberty Bell sat next to an unopened pack of Tastykakes. She put one hand on the replica and looked into my eyes. "This will work, Cara. I swear it will work."

She was swearing on the Bell. It wasn't something we did lightly.

For just a second I let myself really imagine it: me walking down the halls of a brand-new school with a huge smile on my face, completely at ease and at home. Me: the Supreme Populazzi.

"Okay," I said. "I'll do it."

Chapter Two.

Four days later it was September 7, and I was about to walk into a school where I knew absolutely no one. I told myself it would be fine. I was strong, confident, and fearless.

I reached for the door handle ... and panicked.

My cell phone chirped with a text from Claudia. "Fear not, C-the Deer Friends are with you!"

I laughed out loud. It was a reference to Shakespeare. In Henry V before the battle of Agincourt, the king stirs up his troops by shouting, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more." But when Claudia heard it and told me about it in second grade, she thought it was "deer friends," which made us think a team of ferociously loyal woodland creatures was rallying behind King Henry to power him through. We liked the image; whenever we faced a challenge, we imagined the Deer Friends were along to help us out.

I may have been in an unfamiliar place, but I wasn't alone. Claudia was with me. And we were on a mission. I pulled open the door to Chrysella Prep, found my locker, then strolled down the halls with purpose, constantly taking pictures and video clips with my phone and sending them to Claude. I had to be subtle about it: even though cell phones were allowed before and after school, I'd score major dork points if anyone noticed.

Despite its seemingly normal brochure, I expected Chrysella to feel like a strange alien planet. It didn't. I already saw familiar representatives from every tier of the Popularity Tower. It was kind of comforting.

"I feel a great disturbance in the Force."

Uh-oh. I wheeled around to see a guy with his eyes closed and his fingers to his temple, not only quoting Star Wars in casual conversation but doing so while dressed in a floor-length, hooded brown cloak. "You must be new," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Robert Schwarner."

Leave it to me. The first person I meet at my new school and he's a Happy Hopeless, the very bas.e.m.e.nt of the Popularity Tower. Happy Hopeless are so socially out of it, they don't even know the Tower exists, so they don't notice or care about their less-than-stellar position on it.

Robert may have been a perfectly nice guy, but hanging out with him on my first morning would be instant social suicide. Claudia would be horrified. I quickly shook his hand, then excused myself and moved on. As I did, I checked out the throngs on the next Tower tier: the Cubby Crews. Little groups so into their own thing that they geek out on it, and everyone a.s.sumes that's all they're about.

Of course, not all Cubby Crews are created equal. Some barely rank above the Happy Hopeless, while others are only that little bit of cachet away from being Populazzi.

At Pennsbrook, Claudia and I were a lower-echelon Cubby Crew. Even though we were always up for hanging out with other people, everyone a.s.sumed we weren't, so they pretty much stayed away. The more they stayed away, the closer we got and the more inside jokes we had, so the harder it was for anyone else to break in. Eventually they stopped trying.

Picking out the individual Cubby Crews was easy.

The low-key guys and girls in jeans and ironic T-shirts chatting and laughing easily with the faculty? The Geniuses.

The proud eccentrics in bizarro clothes talking in goofy voices with huge full-body gestures? The Theater Geeks.

The polished fashion-forwards who reeked of cigarettes and breath mints, sipped lattes, and gave a running catty commentary on everyone around them? The Cosmopolitans.

The stringy-haired, glazed-eyed androgynes with no books who sat against the wall leaning heavily on one another? The Wasteoids.

There were other Cubby Crews, too, including ones without t.i.tles-scattered partnerships, trios, and quads that were clearly islands unto themselves. Yet all of these moved out of the way when a lone guy strode down the hall.

If they hadn't moved, I think he'd have plowed right through them without even realizing it. He was the hottest guy I'd ever seen, but I got the sense he didn't care about that kind of thing. His eyes were a million miles away, and his long black trench coat and the guitar case slung over his shoulder seemed totally out of place, like they belonged to another era. He was different, but he was no outcast. He had a force field of cool around him. People went silent when he got close, then stared and whispered after he pa.s.sed.

I snapped a picture and sent it to Claudia with the text "DZ?"

"DZ!!!" she shot back.

DZ stood for DangerZone, the next tier on the Popularity Tower. DangerZones can pull off the "different" thing because they're so dark, troubled, and fascinating. It's tough to call DangerZones popular. They're above labels like that. They do whatever they want, and all the others-from the Happy Hopeless to the Supreme Populazzi-feel honored if a DangerZone wants to talk to them.

I turned away so the DangerZone wouldn't see me watching him ... and was almost blinded by the glow of the uppermost tier on the Tower: the Populazzi. I saw them through a large picture window. The Populazzi lazed among the branches of a sprawling oak tree, basking in the leaf-filtered sun. It had to be the best spot on campus, and I wasn't surprised they'd claimed it. They were the Golden Ones: beautiful, confident, and admired.

I snapped a picture of them and sent it to Claudia. At Pennsbrook, she and I had criticized the Populazzi a lot. They were too cliquey, too judge-y, and way too tyrannical about keeping the rest of us stuck in our spots on the Tower...

...and I'd be lying if I didn't admit we totally wanted to be them.

Okay, maybe not them exactly, but we wanted to be in their position. Who wouldn't? They sat around their tree, on display for the whole school to see, yet none of them looked the slightest bit self-conscious. In fact, they radiated ease and happiness. Going through life like that ... it would be like living a fairy tale.

Of course, the problem with all the Populazzi we'd ever known was that they'd been born into the fairy tale, so they didn't appreciate it. The people who'd make great Populazzi were people like Claudia and me. We knew the other side, so we'd recognize how good we had it and wouldn't be harsh to anyone on other tiers.

As I continued watching the Populazzi, I noticed one girl stood out more than the others. She sat on the lowest branch of the tree. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair had beautiful waves and highlights that I swear seemed to sparkle in the sun. Perfectly white teeth beamed out of her sun-bronzed face, and her cowl neck white sleeveless top and jeans looked both casually thrown together and catalog-model flawless.