I am so disappointed.

 I'm starting 8th grade in less than a week, and I'm not nervous. For the coursework, anyway. No, more like I'm nervous to see my peers and stuff, you know? I went to the orientation yesterday to get my schedule and stuff, and I saw my classmates. They were more or less… the same. The ones I knew, and the ones I never knew but observed. They all hugged and smiled and complained about school and how it was stupid they had to go, and gave hugs to people they hadn't had three words with in their whole junior high career because they wanted to look 'nice' and 'cool'. That got me to thinking.

 Is being completely and utterly fake on the curriculum?

 It makes me sick, and a little disappointed, I'll admit. I can't stand it. Why can't someone just be themselves? I don't know how to put this. I guess I can just say that I'm sick of people that are already nice turning around and… I don't know. I hate it. I can't stand it.

 I sat alone at the orientation. Well, I was with my sister and aunt, of course. But I didn't sit with my friends because only one came, and I couldn't get her attention. She was far away, and didn't see me. Anyway.

 I sat alone. I watched all the pretty popular girls hug each other and show off their new tans, and I watched all the stoner guys with their backwards baseball caps and morals fist bump each other, and I wanted to cry.

 It felt like nobody cared about anybody. All the kids I liked – Charlie Mike, a sweet boy from Special Ed, for example – nobody talked to them. They weren't cool. They weren't going to get you up the social ladder. Except, you know, you'd be nice to them if a teacher was nearby and you wanted to look good.

 I hate it all. I was so close to tears. Girls with their tanned legs and too much make up for a 13 year old, boys with their boxers hanging out of their pants and their 'cool' attitudes..

 And then there were kids like me. Quiet, unassuming, a bit chubby and sort of cheeky if you got to know them. But nobody did, because nobody cared about them.

 No one.

 Everything is a contest. A fucking beauty contest, a goddamn popularity contest.

 I hate it.