School had just started, and I began to slowly live middle school life again. I wasn’t exactly considered popular or cool in my school, but I had my circle of friends which whom we would all stand up for each other. We would do almost everything at school together, and we were never lonely, and we would always be seen together. We would be bullied together, do homework together, and we thought that we were as close as any friends could be, that is excluding the popular kids.

The popular kids seemed to have the most friends of anyone in the school, and they would always brag about hanging out with their friends, which other people actually enjoyed hearing about. The popular kids were athletic, spirited, and funny. Many kids in our school would look up to them. They were what made every class happy, and also what made every teacher angry. Even though the popular kids sounded pretty nice, they weren’t. The popular kids would walk over all the other kids who weren’t popular, and anyone who went against the popular kids were usually shunned by all the other students in the school, which was why we didn’t like the popular kids, and also why we weren’t exactly liked in the school. We were one of the people who would say no to the popular kids.

Eventually after time, I began to think that being popular was so great. I started to try to befriend the popular kids, but it wasn’t too easy. My friends aren’t exactly well known for loving the popular kids so much, which gave me a pretty bad disadvantage. I decided the first thing to do was to try to let the popular kids see me betray my friends, which I slowly began doing. I was beginning to put my friends underneath me so I could walk to the popular kids. I made sure that the popular kids were around to see me slowly rejecting my friends.

Eventually I angered my friends enough for them to stop hanging out with me. I began to follow the popular kids around the school. If they were making fun of someone, I would be the one in the side laughing supportively. I became another kid in the “we suck up to the popular kids” group.

I began to go to the popular kid’s parties and such, and eventually I actually befriended them… well… if you can consider it actual friendship. The popular kids weren’t actually too close to each other. One popular kid would always try to walk over his “friend” to get more popular… kind of like what I had done. They never actually were close to each other, and we would use each other whenever we had the chance. I had begun to see that I had no friends now. The popular kids weren’t real friends with each other, they just hanged out, and my old friends probably didn’t like me too much any more.

I went to go find my old group of friends, and tried to befriend them again, but they said “oh no, you’re popular now, your just going to use us… like you did even when you weren’t popular.”

Now I had no real friends, even though I still hang out with the popular kids a lot. I had my eyes set on the wrong treasure; I had slain the princess and rescued the dragon.