Falling

2

Halfway through lunch, I heard Lacey talking to her boyfriend about some party. Ever since Lacey started dating him, she'd moved up the rankings in terms of popularity. She had popular friends, hung out in popular places, was in all the popular cliques et cetera. The problem was most popular girls (and guys) in this school weren't the nicest people. As far as I was concerned, there was a direct correlation between your popularity and how much of an assshole you were. Thankfully, Lacey was the anomaly.

Anyways, it turns out Kyle was throwing a house party, the first one thrown since Lacey and Kyle started dating. Since Lacey was his girlfriend, she was obviously invited. And since she was invited, I was (she'd invited me, and I'd reluctantly accepted). Ethan Chase going to a party with popular kids was, in terms of chance, as low as getting struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark. Come to think of it, that would be an amazing movie.

While I was excited by the prospect of an actual party with alcohol, I was also conflicted. Kyle was a dick, and so were all his friends. They were all part of one popular clique, a group of friends who I would not feel at all comfortable with. Every time I walked past them in the hallway, I felt like I was being judged, like every aspect of my life was being meticulously taken apart and examined by their judgy, unforgiving eyes. Why would I willingly go somewhere I knew they'd all be? I mean, I didn't like the feeling of being judged and sized up all the time, but I still wanted to go to that party out of sheer curiosity. With that thought, I entered my first class of the day.

School was boring. Just the usual. It may have been the most mundane school day of my life (so far). Ben and Gus both had band practice, so it was just Lacey and I on the bus together. Those two guys both had this comedically far-fetched dream of making it big in the music industry, and it didn't help either of their egos when I always complimented their songs. (Really though, they were all shit. Not even close to good. They were the high school equivalent of Nickelback.) When Ben, Lacey and Gus all had after school stuff to attend, I would just hang around and wait for them at school, purely to avoid the utter humiliation of being the only senior student on the bus.

Lacey and I decided to have lunch at The Shack, pretty much the one-stop place for all of Johnstone High. It was wildly popular, and for a good reason. They did an AMAZING fish and chips. Which was pretty much all Lacey and I ever ordered here. Although the fast-food place stank of grease and fat, through all that was the heavenly smell of The Shack's fish and chips which made everything okay. "So, Ethan. You never answered my question" she smiled mischievously. "What question?"

"Who are you going to ask?"

"To Prom?" I responded. "No shit, to prom!" she laughed in between mouthfuls of chips. "I don't know...I haven't really thought about it" I replied, which was both a truth and a lie. The truth was I didn't know who to ask. The lie, however, was that prom was all I had been thinking about these past few days. What was I going to wear? Who was I going to ask? I couldn't go alone. No way. My social life had already suffered enough. What if I was the only one without a date? Those popular kids would judge me even more. I hated to admit it, but I was scared of them... Really intimidated. Because high school was a hierarchy, and those kids held all the power. Their judgement defined what everyone else thought of you, because no one had their head out of their ass enough to go against them. This pissed me off. I was terrified of prom, but I tried to hide it from Lacey. Since she was part of the 'popular crew' now, she might have felt as if she was part of the reason for my anguish, even though I had emphasized to her multiple times she was not at all part of my problems, because I saw her differently to everyone else.