OK, let's continue. Thanks for your review, Sideshow Cellophane 26 (and there's a few episodes on YouTube if you're interested – I especially recommend "Helga On The Couch" and the best ep to watch for a later plotline would be "Curly's Girl").

Ten days later...

The ninth-graders were boring. None of them were interesting at all. I was missing my friends and forever emailing them. Tasha, Azure, Sunshine, Mel and Laura all sent emails about what was going on in Springfield, which actually made me feel homesick. Who would've thought I'd miss the place?

I mostly ended up hanging out with the oldest people who had personality – the sixth-graders. Maria was okay to hang out with, and I didn't have to always stay composed around her, since she already thought I was super-cool because I was older than her. Connie wasn't so great, because she was annoying, but Maria's other friends were OK, and they all looked up to me. So I usually went around with them out of classes. Most of the middle-schoolers realized that, but being dull, they didn't seem to care, so they didn't shun or befriend me.

Patty, who was also in the sixth grade but only a year younger than me, was someone I talked to. She didn't seem that bad, but she had a reputation for being tough and I heard stuff about how she'd put people in wheelchairs before. I wasn't sure why she'd been held back in the sixth grade, though. She seemed smart enough. But she didn't seem to have that many friends. I watched myself a bit, but she seemed pretty nice when she wasn't provoked. She wasn't like my friends at home, but she reminded me a little bit of Mel, my friend from the ghettos. She was tough and usually seemed serious, but on just hanging out, she could be a lot of fun. Patty was similar, but I usually talked to her out of school hours, all the same. Her reputation at school would ruin any reputation I had, and she never really was the same person she was in school as she was outside of school. So in school, I sometimes chatted to Maria and her friends, and after school (and occasionally at lunch) I talked to Patty.

I was jealous of Lisa. Her class was full of interesting weird people and mental cases. Bart mainly had a class full of delinquents, but there were more than delinquents in the fourth-grade class. Lisa gushed on the first night about how Mr Simmons was a caring, innovative, creative teacher and she felt appreciated. But she still didn't have any proper friends. I knew who she wanted to be friends with – a nerdy little Asian girl called Phoebe. I'd seen her a couple of times. But Phoebe happened to be Helga's best friend, and what I'd said to Helga had screwed up Lisa's chances of having any friends that followed Helga's rules of the classroom. Most of the fourth-graders were scared of her, so most did what she said. She did pick on Lisa a bit, but no one, not even Lisa herself, told her to back off, and I sure as heck wasn't going to ruin things by telling Helga off. That would just make her worse towards my sister.

Lisa did seem to change, though. Over the first weekend, she went shopping with some of the girls and came back with some fashionable clothes. Apparently one of the girls, a rich girl called Rhonda, had declared her red dress a "fashion disaster" and had practically forced Lisa to go shopping with her and her friends. That was probably because, for the moment, Lisa was going around with one of Rhonda's friends, a redhead called Lila who was so sweet, I was surprised she wasn't spilling sugar everywhere she went. She'd even invited Lila over a couple of times. I was sure Lisa found her as annoying as I did, but she was the only one that tried to be friendly from the start. But a day after getting her new wardrobe, Rhonda invited her to a sleepover. I was listening on the extension and it sounded like it was just an excuse for her to point out and correct absolutely everything that barricaded her and Lisa from being friends. Lila was also going to be there, and so was Nadine, a quiet blonde who was supposedly Rhonda's second-in-command and best friend.

Lisa often gushed to me about her classmates, making me more and more jealous. Rhonda was the school gossip, and so Lisa heard a lot of it second-hand from Lila. I didn't really care if Harold Berman was teased after he got beaten at arm-wrestling by a girl and then told everyone he didn't care, or that Helga played an epic April Fools' joke on Arnold by pretending to go blind and he got back at her by spinning her into the school pool during a tango dance with a lot of sexual tension. I didn't care what anyone was wearing, either, which seemed to be most of what Rhonda talked about. And I certainly didn't care whether Arnold's crush on Lila had ended after Gerald's little sister started following Arnold around and his eyes were opened to the problems in the nonexistent relationship (Gerald and Arnold were best friends, by the way).

Well, that's not true. I didn't care about most of the gossip, but the romantic stuff I wanted to hear. "So...do Rhonda, Nadine or Lila have any crushes?" I questioned, much too eagerly.

Luckily, Lisa didn't seem to notice. "I heard someone saying that Lila had a thing for Arnold's cousin. Rhonda told me that Nadine has a crush on Sid – he's the boy with the green hat and the Beatle boots – he's nice enough, I guess. And...well, Rhonda would have you believe she doesn't like anyone, but there is this boy in our class who likes her."

"Oh?" I said.

"Yeah." Lisa frowned at the thought of him. "I didn't really notice him until Rhonda yelled at him for stalking her, but I've heard he can be a bit of a psychopath."

I folded my arms. "Yeah, that's nothing new." I scoffed. "Our next door neighbour has some serious personality disorder. I have never seen her even smile genuinely when she knows there's people around, yet when she's in her room, she's always talking to herself and being all dreamy and smiley. Someday I'm going to break into her room and find out why it has that effect on her."

"Helga's usually OK." Lisa assured me. "It's not just me she picks on, she does that to everyone. Although Arnold mostly gets the worst..." I had seen Arnold around school a couple of times. I could tell by the fact that his head actually was the shape of a football.

"So why does she pick on him?" I asked. "Does she have a crush on him or something?"

Lisa shrugged. "No one seems to know. Everyone says that she just hates him. I think Lila might know something, but she won't say, and I wouldn't be surprised if Phoebe knows, but I can't ask her because she's always with Helga. Anyway," she continued, "She's not a psychopath. I know what to expect from her."

"And from this kid?"

"So far, he never really says much unless he's trying to charm Rhonda." Lisa admitted. "He's pretty dramatic when he is, though. He's even a bit frightening in his intensity, and I've heard stories about what he's like when things don't go right for him."

"Is there anyone NORMAL in your whole class?" I exclaimed. "Helga's got some kind of personality conflict, Rhonda's a rich bitch-"

"Stephanie, don't be mean to her! She actually tried to help me."
I ignored that. "Nadine and Phoebe are doormats for their friends, Lila's perfect, Rhonda's stalker is insane..."

"Stop it!" Lisa insisted. "Everyone's just got their own quirks. You have those, I have those, the whole planet has those. And if you haven't finished, Arnold is great at giving advice, Harold acts tough but is pretty much a coward who cries easily, and Sid is more superstitious than anyone I know."

I grinned. "I like crazy people. Bring a few of them over to our house sometime."

So...what did you think? I decided to make Patty thirteen, although I think in one episode Helga says she's fourteen and in the sixth grade, because I can't imagine she's been held back more than two years. She seems too bright, but she's obviously a older than the average sixth grade age. Keep in mind she doesn't have that much screen time, so she might seem a bit OOC when she's hanging out with Stephanie. Now, please review!