Note to self: learn social skills

Chapter 1

I have been inspired. The writing muses have absolutely ravished me. I am sitting in English class, reading Anne Frank, and I wonder if she knew her story would be the second most read book in the world? I seriously doubt it. So now I'm thinking that maybe I should write. Nothing important, you know, but just whatever happens to me. It may not be a fascinating read, but who knows? Maybe in 100 years, everyone will have a copy sitting on their shelves. "The Memoirs of Katharine Thames" Yea, I like that.

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It's Monday afternoon, and I'm eating lunch with my friend, Ruth. Ruth keeps me grounded (or at least she tries) and in touch with all the latest gossip. She knows everything, really, everything. And not because she reads it in some magazine. She just knows.

Currently she's telling me in quick whispers about a very public break up this morning between Hal and his steady-girlfriend-of-one-week.

"He just told her it was off, he didn't give any reason at all. She started bawling, I mean, absolutely howling." Ruth says.

I roll my eyes, "She's mad. She's mad that he never took her out and her picture didn't get put in a paper."

Hal is quite a popular guy. I don't just mean at school. He is popular at school, of course, but he's popular outside of school too. There are tons of websites and fan forums dedicated to him. Girls constantly stalk him. The paparazzi is all over him all the time. Why? Is it because of his contributions to society? Because he saved a child from death? Because he won the Nobel peace prize?

No. Oh no.

It's because his father is the third richest man in the world, and because he got voted People Magazine's hottest bachelor under 25 two years in a row, and because last year his daddy paid for him to star in a movie opposite Will Smith. Some adventure thing where he ripped his shirt off. There was more to the movie, but that's the only bit people can seem to remember.

So, despite, or maybe because of, his popularity, Hal is an idiot. He parties, he sleeps around, and he's a jerk. Really, he is. He's in my science class, believe me, I know.

Speaking of science class, this happens right after lunch. I walk in there with heavy feet every day. Not just because I loathe seeing Hal but also because my lab partner is Chad.

When Chad sees me, a sneer develops on his face, pushing his glasses further up his nose. "Are you ready for lab?" he asks in his awful nasally voice.

I sigh, sitting down beside him. Chad is, for lack of a better word, a nerd. He wears his pants too short, his collar buttoned to his throat, and keeps a stash of Number 2 pencils in his shirt pocket. The other thing about Chad, though, is that he's really smart, and he knows it. He's really smart, and I'm really not.

I struggle through setting up the experiment; our teacher is walking around helping. Somehow she fails to notice Hal and whatever-her-name fondling across from me.

The other bad thing about science, besides Chad, and my continuous failing grades, is watching Hal and whatever girl he's with make out over the test tubes they were most likely created in. And they do this right across from me.

Why, why does Hal sit directly across from me? Alphabetical order? Maybe. Cruel fates touring me? More likely.

Cruel fates have also placed me a mere two seats down from James. James-who-loves-me-but-doesn't-know-it-yet-Thomas. He is absolutely beautiful. I met James the first day I moved to this school. I was in science class, just like now, and he came over to me to introduce himself. I took one look into those big brown eyes and dropped a jar of formaldehyde all over his feet. James, being the wonderful, gracious man that he is, just laughed. We've been friends ever since.