AN: This is my first ever fanfic for this category so I hope that I'm okay with the characters. I used to watch this cartoon all the time when I was a preteen and I hope I can do it justice. Well thank you for reading. This first chapter is an intro so it's shorter than the others where I want to aim for 2k words each

I'm Not That Girl

Intro – Beginning Junior Year

It was strange when you looked back on a past success and realized that that wasn't the person who you were any longer. It had been a reverse Cinderella story. Courtney had grown up in a world filled with luxury where she followed the ideas that her mother had followed during her youth. She had had people crowd around her because she had money and was popular. It had all seemed so easy. It was like cut outs where all you had to do was arrange the pieces, a boxed cake mix where you took pride in stirring together the ingredients.

That was before she had gone broke after her father was arrested. Of course, the media did do their little thing and blow it all out of proportion and they weren't as "broke" as they made it out to be but it did give Courtney something that she had been missing for years, perspective.

She was embarrassed by how she had been in middle school, how they had let her be, and then when the dreaded news reports came out she mainly isolated herself from everyone around her. It had been then when she had realized her passion. She could design clothes that she wanted to wear and find things from thrift stores and discount stores and she taught herself how to sew and how to knit and crochet and she was incredibly talented with picking out new trends and wearing fashionable clothes.

Even if she was going to have to find a part time job at a coffee shop, she was going to be able to look good and get makeup when it went on clearance and actually appreciate how hard some people had to work in life. Now that it was her junior year of high school, she might be able to truly enjoy life again. She was no longer the girl that she had used to be.

She often heard her mother complaining about their poor lifestyle but somehow being poor, learning not to take things for granted had been a huge life changer for Courtney who had started to journal and was learning about herself again. Her blond hair had grown longer and she had always been known as beautiful but due to early development, she was talked about as if she were a goddess at times. She tried not to let those comments rope her back into how she had been.

School was just about to begin and she went up to her small bedroom and sat at her desk looking out of the window. That day she would be trying out for the cheer squad and maybe she would make it, she had been practicing. She didn't want to be the girl she had been back all those years ago, she wanted to be the girl she had become since she had lost everything.

She took a pen to her journal and hummed as she clicked it down.

Well, bonjour world,

It's a brand new day and let's hope that it's a good one. Junior year starts today and I'm hoping that this brand new Courtney continues. It's rather nice to have someone to talk to even if it is yourself writing in a little book. Now, I sound strange for acknowledging that fact. There's not too much to say, you know, just excited about starting school for the new term. Let's hope it's a good one.

-C