held day one of kindergarten against us, it's pretty tough to kill such a vivid first impression. The Pants-wetters were never going to be allowed among the Populazzi: the most adored of the social elite.
But now Claudia was right: I wouldn't be with those people anymore. The day after sophomore year ended, my family had moved from Yardley to Malvern—about an hour and several Pennsylvania Turnpike exits away. My new classmates all went to Chrysella Prep, a charter school my parents kept telling me was "known for both the teachers' and students' creative thinking and extreme academic excellence." They'd shown me a brochure about it called "The Charter School Difference," but it didn't seem terribly different from Pennsbrook at all ... except for the fact that every single student there was a complete stranger whom I'd meet for the very first time in just three days, fifteen hours, twenty-five minutes, and thirty-one seconds.
Not that I was freaking out about it or anything.
Claudia leaned toward me, her dark eyes intense. "You have the chance to rewrite your life story. No, not the chance ... Reinventing yourself is your destiny! It's in the name of your school: Chrysella, the chrysalis from which you will emerge, no more a pupa, now a butterfly!"
Actually, the school was named after an ex-student named Chrys who'd died from some rare and hideous disease, but I couldn't tell that to Claudia. She was on a poetic roll. I was fairly certain her last phrase had been in iambic pentameter.
"You can be anything at Chrysella," Claudia continued. "You can break into their Populazzi. You can even be the Supreme Populazzi: The Most Popular Girl in School."
That's when I really should have laughed. The Incident notwithstanding, I have never been the Supreme Populazzi type.It's not that I don't want the title; who wouldn't? SPs never get laughed at for personal quirks like navigating the halls with their nose in a book. SPs never feel shy or insecure; they can walk into any room and know that everyone there is dying to see them. SPs never have to pine for the guys they like; those guys pursue them.
So I should have laughed, but I didn't. I recognized the look on Claudia's face.
"You have an idea," I said.
"I have a plan," she amended. She reached into her fuchsia, faux-leather shoulder bag and pulled out a huge, overstuffed yellow binder, which she thudded down in front of me. "I hereby present: the Ladder."
Sure enough, there it was on the front of the binder in black-Sharpie calligraphy: "The Ladder."
"What is this?" I asked.
"Your ticket to a new life. The Ladder is how you climb from one tier of the Popularity Tower to another."
"You can't climb from one tier of the Popularity Tower to another."
That was the whole point of the Popularity Tower. Claudia and I had named it and all of its tiers back in seventh grade. There were kids who were more and less popular before that, but by seventh grade everyone was cemented into a specific and universally accepted Tower position. Like it or not, you were either a Happy Hopeless, Cubby Crew, DangerZone, Penultimate Populazzi, or Supreme Populazzi. You didn't get to choose, and you didn't get to change.
"That's what we always thought," Claudia said. "But there is a Ladder. Its rungs are relationships. You can climb into a new Tower tier if you have a boyfriend there. You get that boy friend by already having one in a slightly lower tier. Having a boyfriend makes you desirable."
"Okay ... but I don't have a boyfriend." I said it like I was talking to a mental patient. It's not like she didn't know.
"Notyet," Claudia said. "When you get to school, you target a first boyfriend: someone who's not a total loser but is low enough on the Tower that he's easy to get. From there, you date your way up higher and higher until by the end of the year you've achieved the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi and the title of Junior Prom Queen. Your date for that event? The male Supreme Populazzi—the most spectacular guy in the entire junior class."
Claudia glowed with excitement. She loved this idea. I was tempted to take her temperature. And maybe check her pupils for concussion.
"Claude, I've never had a boyfriend. How am I supposed to 'target' some guy and get him to go out with me?"
"That's the beauty of a brand-new school!" Claudia said. "You can be anyone, including exactly what each guy you