The Popularity Scale {On Hold}

Chapter One

 Cover on the side by Faiths_Light13

Chapter One

Among my admittedly small list of talents, being invisible was number one. I didn't command the attention of everyone's eyes when I entered the room, nor was I center of everyone's conversations. I just blended right into the background, like sprinkles on a cupcake, or the audience of a play. I didn't create scenes. I only watched them.

Because observing came hand in hand with being invisible. And I was an expert at being invisible.

So I peered through my lenses of my glasses again, doing what I did best: watching the more popular people, the more outgoing ones.

Because at Westbrook High School, you were either popular, or you weren't. And if one thing was for sure, invisible was not a synonym for popular. But that was okay. Because in my own way, I was popular. Anonymously. And here, in the newspaper staff's office, was the closest I could ever get to sitting on that throne of popularity I had created without exposing myself. 

And right now, all there was to see was the head of the schools newspaper, discussing, or rather telling, us what to do.

From her stiff, black hair that was so obviously covered in gallons of hair spray to her permanently red face, it was immediately obvious to anyone that the head of the newspaper staff, Amy, received her power through fear. And if you were on the receiving end of her yelling, then she was nothing short of terrifying. 

As of that moment, she was immersed in yelling at an innocent Sarah, who hadn't done her job up to Amy's standards, which were nearly impossible to meet for anybody, including herself.

"...What were you doing out there? Do you understand how to use a keyboard, or do you just purposely mess up?" Amy finally finished, ending as she always did with a condescending rhetorical question. It was a wonder to me how she wasn't panting after so much yelling, with small bits of food flying out of her braces at unexpected volunteers.

It was accurate to say that a mix of terror and disgust masked the faces of everyone in the room.

But even as she stood up in the front of the room and yelled at us, I still couldn't deny that there was something I envied about Amy. There was something about the way she emphasized the most important words in her sentence that guaranteed being heard.

And being heard was not only a rarity for someone like me, but also a privilege. And a powerful one at that.

As Amy finished her tirade, her eyes scanned over the rest of us in the room, as if we had written our flaws on our foreheads, and she was deciding which of them she was going to yell at us for next. Her glazed over me, causing me to let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. But I was also disappointed. Just once, I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be recognized as a person, or at least acknowledged.

And as much as I wanted to bury my wish, deep down I knew that really, I just wanted to be popular. Because for someone who knew so much about popularity, I was surprisingly lacking in the category.

Finally, Amy settled on Cory, whose bed-head somehow made her decide that if his looks weren't adequate, neither were his papers.

It was better she hadn't chosen to pick on me, though. She didn't even know what I did for the newspaper. Nobody did. And in that case, it was most definitely better that nobody noticed me.

Because if you wrote something as dangerous as a popularity scale, being anonymous was a necessary.

And to be anonymous, you needed to be invisible, something of which I excelled at.