Kensington

SO NOT THE DRAMA A Del Rio Bay Clique Novel by Paula Chase List Price: $9.95 Pages: 288 Format: Hardcover/Paperback ISBN: 0758218591 Publisher: Dafina

Prologue

“They wanna know. Who’s that girl?” —Eve, “Who’s That Girl?”

Popularity is a drug. You get a taste of it and suddenly the looks you get from people, the way you get treated, the things you get away with...you need it. You honest to God need it. People make pretend that being popular is no big deal. Either those people aren’t popular and know they’ll never have a chance at tasting its sweet addicting juices, or they’re lying.

I got my first taste of popularity when I was four. No, seriously. My boy, Michael, and I attended Sunny Faces, a day care run out of his grandmom’s house. The day care was downstairs in her basement, a kiddie wonderland of toys in every corner and hugantic paintings and colorful decals on the walls. There was also a big playground out back.

Now the basement is Michael’s, remade over into a bedroom/ gameroom/den of boyness.

But back then, when it was our playpen, even with all the dazzling odds and ends and kidgets, the one place we all wanted to go was upstairs. We never got to see the rest of the house. It was off-limits. So naturally, that’s where we wanted to go. The stairs went up forever, gobbled up in the darkness near the top, with only a sliver of light coming from beneath the door.

With me leading the pack, we’d make up adventures about conquering the fantasy land beyond that door. Like, maybe it opened up into a lake of ice cream and trees of chocolate—since that’s where Ms. Mae Bell came from with snacks. That became our favorite fantasy and eventually, the truth, as far as a bunch of four-year-olds were concerned.

If only we could get beyond the dreaded baby gate, we could take a dip in a big creamy vat of vanilla and take a bite out of one of the choco trees.

You know, to his credit, Michael never said a word to dispel any of our myths about the rest of his house being a candy land. Then again, why would he? How cool would that be to live in a land of candy?

Since his grandmother ran the joint, Michael was always allowed to go upstairs. Sometimes he’d toddle after her and she’d let him help bring down the snacks. If anyone else tried, Ms. Mae Bell would scoop them up, plop them down at the bottom of the stairs, and secure the gate with a firm, “You’re gonna break your neck on these steps. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Man, but that gate made it irresistible. Some days we’d park right next to it and play because it was as close as we could get.

So, yeah, anyway popularity and how it found me.

I became popular thanks to workaholic parents climbing the corporate ladder. Thank you, Fifty-hour work weeks! My mom had just started her own PR firm and my dad was a techie at a big company based out of Northern Virginia. They were mad busy scrambling to the top.

One day my mom called. She was running late and she couldn’t reach my dad. Could Ms. Mae Bell please keep me a little later than normal? Of course, she’d pay whatever penalty was required for having Ms. Mae Bell work beyond her usual grueling twelve-hour day of screaming toddlers and crying babies.

So as everyone else was leaving, Ms. Mae Bell announces, to no one in particular, I’m guessing—we were a bunch of four-year olds—that I’d be having dinner with her and Michael. She lifted the latch on the baby gate and ushered us upstairs to watch television, while she waited for the parents of the three other kids still left.

My stomach sang and danced as my chubby, four-year-old legs carried me out of the dark coolness of the stairway into heaven. I was so excited walking up those stairs, so caught up in what I’d do when I got to candy land, that it took me a few seconds to realize that the plush brown carpet wasn’t, in fact, a river of chocolate.

Michael’s house was just like mine.

Where were the gummy rocks? The Reese’s cup benches? The clouds of cotton candy (don’t ask why he’d have clouds in his house)?

I’m not sure, but I think I cried. I really only remember Michael showing me his room and watching Teletubbies. I was too shocked to ask him where the candy stuff was hiding.

The next day, I was all set to report that candy land did not exist. But when everyone crowded around me, anxious to know what it was like, giving up their snack if I sat by them to share my adventures, wanting to team up with me for play circle ...well, I discovered something better than candy land.

I had something everyone wanted—a glimpse into the other side—and it made me the It girl of Sunny Faces day care. It put me on the pop side or at least as popular as you can be with a crowd with very short attention spans. I think Shelly Mason was popular two days later for bringing a puppy in for show-n-Tell.

No matter, my taste for popularity was born and my quest to remain ever the It girl sprouted roots.

I remember making up some story about not being able to talk about what was upstairs because it was top secret. Which was cool with them; they just wanted to be near someone who had crossed over.

I’ve never looked back.

Why would I? Being popular rocks!

When my rule of middle school came to a close, naturally, I had to hatch a plan to remain on top at Del Rio High School. Del Rio High is full of cliques. What high school isn’t? But it’s more full than most and the fate of your existence depends on where you get stuck, labeled, categorized, and otherwise boxed in by the governing clique—the Uppers.

So you see my dilemma?

Me and my crew have always been popular—but that transition from middle to high school is inevitable—and we’re about to go from Middle School Royalty to High School Ambiguity. So, you know, I’m thinking I’ve gotta handle that.

It’s not the same as starting over. Popularity carries over. So it’s not that I’ll be totally unknown. The Class of 2009 will know what’s up and some of the sophs knew me before they left middle school. It’s the junior class I’m worried about. I’ll have to scrabble my way to the middle of the pack—which is to be the most popular in your class and more popular than some sophs and juniors. But, of course, never more pop than the reigning senior class. Lesson #10 from Pop 101.

All of this and classes too!

I’m an old pro at the tricks of becoming and staying popular and I could pretend that there’s a true formula, or I can be real and let you know, it’s a lot of work. Work that started the minute my pink Nellie Timberlands left Del Rio Middle School and strutted a few blocks down to the one and only high school, in the ’burbs of the DRB. Samuel-Wellesly, Del Rio Bay’s only other high school, is another story. And we’ll get to that later. But the best laid plans of popularity can and are disrupted by real life. So let me back it on up and let you peep how plans go right, left, back and forth before they land you at your destination . . . or at least somewhere really close.

Excerpted from SO NOT THE DRAMA © Copyright 2007 by Paula Chase. Reprinted with permission by Dafina. All rights reserved.

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