Mission (Un)Popular Read Online Free Page B

yard pretending we were going to give him cooties. And now he hangs out with us at lunch (if he’s not playing basketball or Nintendo DS with his friends Mike and Amir). Sometimes all five of us go over to Andrew’s house after school to watch movies in his huge rec room. But not often, because guys only ever want to watch movies about outer space, guns, or zombies, and it makes me and Erika practically fall asleep.
    Which brings me to the second quality: not very popular. Andrew is my friend, and we hang out with his friends. And, of course, there’s Erika-with-a-K, who I do everything with. So it’s not like I’m so unpopular that nobody talks to me, but Erika and Andrew aren’t exactly Mr. and Mrs. Popularity either. And at my school, you’re either popular or you’re not. It defines who you are, so that’s why I put it on the list.
    I think I’ve already explained the talkative/sarcastic part. Like I said, I’m working on it.
    â€œAre we finished?” Mrs. Carlyle looked at us hopefully. I had folded my list into a little accordion and was squeezing it between my fingers for something to do. “I’d like you to swap papers with the person beside you and discuss how you feel about the qualities you’ve listed.”
    Em looked as thrilled about the exercise as I did, but I figured I’d a hundred times rather swap with her than with Little Miss Knows-all-the-answers on my left. “Trade?” I asked. She handed me her list.
    3 Qualities that describe me, Em Warner:
Rebellious
Spunky
Smart
    â€œSpunky?” I said.
    â€œYeah,” she said, matter-of-factly.
    â€œThat’s…” I was thinking conceited , but I caught myself in time. “Different,” I said, and then, because it hadn’t come out sounding very sincere, I added: “You have really nice handwriting.” She raised her eyebrows and gave me a look like she couldn’t care less.
    Then, desperately trying to fill the silence, I said her jeans were cool and asked which she liked better: Lucky jeans, Mavi, or Parasuco. She told me that mostly she just wore vintage. So we talked about where the best stores in the city were. Or at least, I talked and she listened, because it turned out she’d just moved to Darling and she barely knew where the malls were.
    Thankfully, Mrs. Carlyle only asked a few groups to present their answers, and she skipped over Em and me, since we were obviously total failures at self-esteem. After that, she made us chant mantras, repeating the words “I am powerful. I am unique,” until our self-worth was affirmed. I glanced at Em out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting with her arms folded, not even pretending to mumble along.
    Then we made magazine collages to show our “secret selves.” For some reason, Em cut out all these pictures of fruit, nail polish, and expensive cars. “What?” she said when she saw me looking at it. “I like fruit.” She was obviously trying to mess with Mrs. Carlyle’s mind. My collage had a lot of pictures of girls with perfect creamy skin and straight hair, along with one photo of a tombstone that Em passed me. I don’t even know where she found it. “Put this in,” she whispered. “She’ll think you’re deranged.” Instead, though, the teacher held up my collage and said how powerful it was.
    â€œSymbolically speaking, Margot feels like she’s dying a little on the inside,” she explained. She swept her hand around the circle of peach-skinned models, then tapped the tombstone. “She’s struggling to define her beauty in a society that doesn’t value differences.” Em started laughing softly, and I could barely contain a snort. There was nothing symbolic about it. Other people just took all of the good pictures from the magazines in the pile. By the time I got there, there were mostly ads for skin cream left. And none