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Kate Sanders put on a big cheesy smile as she sat down next to her best friend, Claire Miller. She began to eat the unrecognizable school slop on her tray and acted interested in the whirlwind of unimportant things Claire told her. Kate knew Claire well enough to keep the conversation going without listening to a word she said, and doing so unnoticed.
Kate's mind was on other things, however. She looked a couple tables down from her own, discretely. No one could know that she was thinking about them. It would surely ruin her reputation.
She thought back to the day before she left for summer camp. The summer camp that had changed everything. Her, Lizzie and Miranda had made the oath to be best friends forever. She wondered how it all changed so fast. But she knew.
Most people thought that Kate had changed because her friends at summer camp were like Claire and the other popular cheerleader types at Hillridge Junior High. They weren't. Looking back on this, she realized that they were more like Lizzie and Miranda. Except popular.
That had been the fatal attraction. Popularity. Kate had been befriended by a certain girl. A girl that had it all; popularity, the most sought after guy in summer camp, and happiness. Kate had misread the popularity as happiness. If only she could go back.
This girl named Melissa had shown her the ropes. She introduced her to all of her friends and while Kate entered the physical and emotional changes of puberty, she had changed herself.
When Kate had returned to her normal life once the summer was over, a rift had been created between her and her friends from before that summer. Popularity. It had ruined her. She wanted popularity so that she could be happy like her friend Melissa. She couldn't let herself down by ignoring all that she had been taught that summer. It would have been for nothing. So it happened.
Popularity happened.
It meant leaving behind all that had meant anything to her. Everyone who had meant something to her. She didn't realize it at first, being swept up into the fake storm of her new world. It had been easy at first. It had made her happy at first. At first.
She now wondered if it had all been worth it. It was the last day of school at Hillridge Junior High and soon they would be off to high school. Would things change? She missed them. Her old friends from grammar school. She watched as they genuinely laughed at something they had been talking about. Now that she thought of it, they had everything. She wished she could join them. But she would be leaving something that she wasn't ready to leave behind.
Popularity.
"Are you even listening to me, Kate?" Claire asked, annoyed.
"Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about this perfect shade of lip stick that I saw at the mall yesterday." she put on that fake smile again.
And once again she was brought back into reality. Her reality. With it's cold grip on her fate, Kate once again left behind the thoughts of her past. She embraced a quality that she had begun to loath but still couldn't seem to let go of; for she was afraid of it at the same time.
Popularity.
A/N: This is not the beginning to a story. It's just a sight into what could be going on inside the head of Kate Sanders. Appreciate it for what it is.