Hi! I'm Claire. I LOVE school and almost everything about it. My favorite classes are math, ELA, science, and social studies, and I absolutely love to read. I finish about one book every single day.
I'm also super smart. At least, that's what my mom says. I mean, kids don't usually say they're smart unless they're bragging, do they? Oh, well. It's not like I have a lot of reputation to begin with.
You see, I'm really, really low on the school social class system. (Ugh, there I go again, using social studies terms in regular sentences! I think I pay too much attention!) I just moved here from Michigan, so I don't really have any friends, and it's not like there's that many people to choose from, since everybody's got their friends already. It's seventh grade! You totally need friends to get through it. That's my exact problem. No friends. Of course, I've got people in my classes that I say hi to, but having a real friend is different. Someone that will sit next to you at lunch every day, not just the people who sit next to me at lunch out of pity when they see me alone. Well, I'm not really alone. Another loner sits at lunch with me. Her name's Leia, I think. I think I still remember the first day of seventh grade, when I didn't have any friends yet. Hold on. Let me think...
~flashback~
The commotion of the lunchroom was like no other I'd ever heard. It sounded excited, annoyed, and happy, all at the same time. I sat down at an empty lunch table, watching all the other kids file in and wave to their friends to save them a seat. I had no friends to save me seats. I didn't have to. My table was barren.
Well, I started eating lunch when a girl walks drearily to the table and is about to sit down. I stop chewing. This girl's actually going to sit with me? After nobody's talked to me all day? I think. When she sits down and sees me, she pauses and looks surprised, like she'd just seen a ghost or something.
"Is this your table?" I ask timidly, starting to pack up my lunchbox. "I'm sorry, I'll go find somewhere else to sit..."
"No, it's all right. You can sit. You're just the first person to sit... Oh, never mind," she says.
So, on that day, I had made what I thought was my only friend. But, what I didn't know was, in the near future, I'd have more. All of us would be connected and we would do things that other kids dream of doing, and all because I had unknowingly sat at Leias table.
