Populazzi - By Elise Allen Page 0,3

walking down the halls of a brand-new school with a huge smile on my face, completely at ease and at home. Me: the Supreme Populazzi.

"Okay," I said. "I'll do it."

Chapter Two

Four days later it was September 7, and I was about to walk into a school where I knew absolutely no one. I told myself it would be fine. I was strong, confident, and fearless.

I reached for the door handle ... and panicked.

My cell phone chirped with a text from Claudia. "Fear not, C—the Deer Friends are with you!"

I laughed out loud. It was a reference to Shakespeare. In Henry V before the battle of Agincourt, the king stirs up his troops by shouting, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more." But when Claudia heard it and told me about it in second grade, she thought it was "deer friends," which made us think a team of ferociously loyal woodland creatures was rallying behind King Henry to power him through. We liked the image; whenever we faced a challenge, we imagined the Deer Friends were along to help us out.

I may have been in an unfamiliar place, but I wasn't alone. Claudia was with me. And we were on a mission. I pulled open the door to Chrysella Prep, found my locker, then strolled down the halls with purpose, constantly taking pictures and video clips with my phone and sending them to Claude. I had to be subtle about it: even though cell phones were allowed before and after school, I'd score major dork points if anyone noticed.

Despite its seemingly normal brochure, I expected Chrysella to feel like a strange alien planet. It didn't. I already saw familiar representatives from every tier of the Popularity Tower. It was kind of comforting.

"I feel a great disturbance in the Force."

Uh-oh. I wheeled around to see a guy with his eyes closed and his fingers to his temple, not only quoting Star Wars in casual conversation but doing so while dressed in a floor-length, hooded brown cloak. "You must be new," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Robert Schwarner."

Leave it to me. The first person I meet at my new school and he's a Happy Hopeless, the very basement of the Popularity Tower. Happy Hopeless are so socially out of it, they don't even know the Tower exists, so they don't notice or care about their less-than-stellar position on it.

Robert may have been a perfectly nice guy, but hanging out with him on my first morning would be instant social suicide. Claudia would be horrified. I quickly shook his hand, then excused myself and moved on. As I did, I checked out the throngs on the next Tower tier: the Cubby Crews. Little groups so into their own thing that they geek out on it, and everyone assumes that's all they're about.

Of course, not all Cubby Crews are created equal. Some barely rank above the Happy Hopeless, while others are only that little bit of cachet away from being Populazzi.

At Pennsbrook, Claudia and I were a lower-echelon Cubby Crew. Even though we were always up for hanging out with other people, everyone assumed we weren't, so they pretty much stayed away. The more they stayed away, the closer we got and the more inside jokes we had, so the harder it was for anyone else to break in. Eventually they stopped trying.

Picking out the individual Cubby Crews was easy.

The low-key guys and girls in jeans and ironic T-shirts chatting and laughing easily with the faculty? The Geniuses.

The proud eccentrics in bizarro clothes talking in goofy voices with huge full-body gestures? The Theater Geeks.

The polished fashion-forwards who reeked of cigarettes and breath mints, sipped lattes, and gave a running catty commentary on everyone around them? The Cosmopolitans.

The stringy-haired, glazed-eyed androgynes with no books who sat against the wall leaning heavily on one another? The Wasteoids.

There were other Cubby Crews, too, including ones without titles—scattered partnerships, trios, and quads that were clearly islands unto themselves. Yet all of these moved out of the way when a lone guy strode down the hall.

If they hadn't moved, I think he'd have plowed right through them without even realizing it. He was the hottest guy I'd ever seen, but I got the sense he didn't care about that kind of thing. His eyes were a million miles away, and his long black trench coat and the guitar case slung over his shoulder seemed totally out of place, like they belonged to another era. He was different,