Free Class Favorite by Taylor Morris Page B

Rosemary’s or Kayla’s. I’d never seen Rosemary get in a fight with anyone, and I never heard of anyone being angry with her. I watched as she scratched her freckled forehead, then gazed around the room. She looked back at me, and before I realized I had been staring at her, she smiled and shrugged her shoulders, and I somehow knew ithad to do with the quiz. I smiled and rolled my eyes as she turned back around. My heart thumped in my chest.
    I’d never had one of the popular kids acknowledge me before, except that time I accidentally sneezed on Kayla Cane in the halls earlier this year. She got this totally disgusted look on her face and screeched, “Ew! Gross!”—which is normal when you’ve had snot spewed on you by a stranger. Her friend Jessica laughed and said to me, “Way to go, grace.” Kayla, though, was not amused. She held out the arm I’d blown spit and snot on, wiped it on my shirt, and snapped, “You’re nasty.”
    So all popular girls weren’t nice, and having Rosemary acknowledge me in algebra was almost as exciting as having Jason himself engage in a full-on conversation with me, I decided.
    â€œTime’s up,” Mrs. Everly announced. “Everyone pass your papers forward.”
    I looked down at my sheet. I had barely answered half.
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    Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Everly went over all the questions on the quiz and I realized that, even with the questions I had gotten around to answering, I had only successfully answered the first three problems correctly. Screw it , I thought as the bell rang and we all slapped our books shut. I glanced at Rosemary, who dropped her blue pencil in her red Coach as I slipped on my tan corduroy jacket. Richie passed her and said,“Later, Rose,” and she smiled at him. Jason tapped his pencil on her head and winked at her. I deliberately stuffed my book and papers into my faded black messenger bag, trying to keep pace with her. Whatever it was that Rosemary had, I wanted a piece of it.
    I thought back to that recent night at Kirstie’s, when she finally helped me make the list of all the things that made popular people popular, like we had talked about. I would use it to tick off qualities for my Class Favorite quest, as well as to see how people like Rosemary made it to the top every year. Kirstie’d already given me pointers about my outward appearance—she suggested I cut my hair in long, sweeping layers and give it some golden highlights. I’d gone to Supercuts but chickened out and just asked for a trim. I also realized I couldn’t afford the color job, and still planned to buy a home-job at the grocery store. We talked more about the connection between Haden Prescott’s ascent and how I could do the same. We thought of things she had, and used those as guidance for me. This is what we came up with:
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    1. Hotness. Duh. Every movie star, even the D-listers, are beautiful. Same with popular people. (This made me wonder a thousand other things: Am I good-looking? Is popular beauty natural, or can I acquire it? Doyou have to get a professional manicure? What about a pedicure? Or only in the summer? Do you have to get your hair done at Toni & Guy, or was Supercuts okay so long as it looked like something out of CosmoGirl ? Was the home color job I was planning on buying okay or was it total white trash? And, wait, was CosmoGirl even cool, or was it so sixth grade?)
    2. The clothes. They really do count, don’t they? Maybe Bai Ling was a great actress, but she dressed horribly and so was never taken seriously. For me, Kirstie had suggested more skirts—short ones, she said—but I didn’t have many in my arsenal. She’d loaned me a couple, but she was taller than I was and they ended up being knee-length. She promptly took them back, ordering me to the mall, stat .
    3. Niceness. Here I got confused. Like I said, Rosemary is one of the sweetest girls in