Elizabeth Eulberg: The Lonely Hearts Club

"Ugh, I can't stand her."

Tracy had never really been a big fan of Diane's — not many girls in school were. Maybe it was her perfect appearance or the fact that she excelled in everything.

But that was just petty jealousy.

There was really only one person at McKinley who had a valid reason to hate Diane Monroe.

Me.

If it wasn't bad enough that she was a prime example of A Girl Who Gives Up Her Identity for a Guy, she'd also given me up. I'd always thought those girls who'd dump their friends whenever a guy showed interest in them were pathetic. But when I became one of those friends, I'd found out how much it hurt.

Just another example of what guys had done to ruin my life. As if treating me like crap wasn't enough, they stole my friends.

Even though I hated Tracy's list for how much it upset her, I was usually secretly glad when it ended up being a big failure. I never wanted to lose Tracy like I'd lost Diane.

Once we made our way through the long line of confused freshmen who were not yet aware of the cafeteria poison, Tracy and I established ourselves at our lunch table — the same one as last year. Our friends Morgan and Kara soon followed.

"Hey, guys," Morgan greeted us as she and Kara sat down. "My parents are so riding me about having more extracurricular activities on my college applications. Can you believe that? I have to start worrying about college already. Didn't we just start junior year?"

We all nodded in agreement. Kara shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with her apple as the rest of us dove into our lunches. It was hard not to notice the fact that she had lost even more weight over the summer — if that was even possible. She was practically drowning in her gray McKinley High hoodie.

Suddenly, Kara's body was pinned against the table by a short, curly-haired girl "who must've slipped on the floor. Her tray hit Kara's head and her soda spilled on Kara's shoulder.

"Oh, no!" the girl screamed. "My soda."

We all looked in shock as she picked up her plastic cup and surveyed her outfit, ignoring Kara completely. I'd never seen tins girl before, so I figured she had to be a freshman. There was no way I would've missed her, even though she couldn't have been more than five feet tall.

Everything on her was done to the extreme-acrylic nails meant to look like a French manicure, dark brown hair that had been over-highlighted with blond streaks, eyebrows narrowly plucked, and lips overly penciled in. She was wearing a very mm, denim skirt and a lace tank top in other words, looking like she was going to strut down a catwalk instead of eat lunch at the school cafeteria.

"Are you okay?" Morgan handed Kara some napkins to clean

"Ash-ley!" the girl screamed at her friend. "Did I get anything on my shirt?"

Tracy whipped her head around. "Excuse me — what about apologizing to my friend who you just soaked?"

The girl looked at Tracy like she was speaking a foreign language.

"What? I spilled my soda."

Tracy shot her the patented Tracy Glare — eyes squinted into tiny slits, lips pursed, a look of complete disgust. "Yes, you spilled your soda — on my friend. Do you understand what an apology means?"

The girl opened her mouth in annoyance. She mumbled something that I guess was supposed to be an apology (it sounded more like a question: "saw-reh?") and walked away.

Tracy sat back down, "Unbelievable. It's the first day of school and already these freshmen think they own the place. Oh, and, what a shock, look what table they're going to "

There was a long group of tables against the windows that would always hold the jocks and cheerleaders, including the infamous Elite Eight; Ryan Bauer and Diane Monroe, Brian Reed and Pam Schneider, Don Levitz and Audrey Werner, Todd Chesney and one of his many revolving girlfriends.

Tracy and I were among the few girls left in our class who hadn't made it to the table as Todd's girl of the moment. I'd never had a desire to be part of their demented version of Noah's Ark, where you could only survive if you were paired up with a member of the opposite sex. If I had to choose between dating Todd and missing the boat, I was fully prepared to drown.

Both Kara and Morgan had dated Todd. Morgan had dated him in eighth grade, and he would go around and lie to the basketball team about how far he got with her. After he'd dumped her, Morgan had become increasingly popular with the other guys in class, until she'd realized it was because they all thought she was easy.

You would've thought that Kara would've learned from Morgan's mistakes. But no. Todd had managed to disarm all common sense in a girl, Kara had thought it would be different, so she'd taken the plunge. . and found that this girl named Tina Mclntyre was swimming in the same pool at the same time.

I couldn't help but wonder why it was that a guy could find two good girls to date at the same time, when we girls couldn't even find one decent guy.

My face became hot as I thought about how much trouble Todd had caused — not just with Kara and Morgan, but with practically half our class, I never understood the power he had over girls. He was your typical dumb jock: a big guy with a dirty blond buzz cut and an outfit that always showed off at least two sports team logos.

Thinking about Todd made me realize I wasn't the only girl at McKinley who would benefit from a boy boycott.

Those nasty freshmen girls were all over him now, and he was enjoying every minute of it.

"Guys are jerks," I practically shouted.

A laugh escaped Tracy's throat. "What to the evs — like you don't spend your time flirting with Ryan and Todd!"

Like I WHAT?

"What are you even talking about?"

"Are you even kidding me? Every time you're around Ryan, you flirt up a storm."

Yeah, well, that was the old Penny. New Penny was done flirting.

I'd be happy if I never had to speak to any guys for the rest of the year.

"The guys in the Elite Eight aren't the problem," Morgan said.

"Those girls are so shallow and have zero — and I mean zero —things to discuss outside of their boyfriends."

"Well," Kara interjected, "Diane is always nice to me. But Audrey and Pam are a little full of themselves."

Morgan glared at their table. "Please. Sure they're cheerleaders and date the star athletes — how boring! — but nobody really likes them. You know that's what's totally ridiculous about all of this — all those guys who are allegedly the popular ones are despised by most of the students. And anytime they're nice to somebody outside the group, it's always, always because they want something."

"Exactly!" Tracy chimed in. "Today in class, Diane pretended she wanted to be KFFs with me. And she tried the same thing with Pen this morning."

Morgan nodded. "Exactly. It's obvious she wants something."

"Yeah, well, whatever it is," Tracy said, looking over at the Elite Eight table, "she's not going to get it."

I GOT INTO WORLD HISTORY class and was completely surrounded.

Ms. Barnes, our teacher, did the seating assignments in alphabetical order (how original!) and I was placed between Ryan and Todd, with Derek Simpson sitting two rows behind me, and Kevin Parker (Tracy's main obsession) and Steve Powell (lower on the list) close by

There were only three other girls in the class, and they ended up seated as far away from me as possible.

"Hey there, Senorita Penny," Todd welcomed me to my seat. We'd had Spanish together that morning and (much to my displeasure) had been assigned to be conversation partners. Todd had spent most of the time making up words by placing an o at the end of them — el chairo, el sandwicho, el footballo,

Ryan sat down next to me, "What a surprise," he said.