It all started in second grade when I met Claudia Higgins. She always wore designer clothes, sat with the cool kids at lunch, and was always there to make fun of you if you were lower than the cool kids on the social food chain. Since I was lower than the cool people, drama club to be exact, Claudia and I hated each other. From second grade, even in high school, this is how things were.

Then, Claudia's dad lost his seven-figure-paying-job. Since the economy was completely down the tubes, he couldn't find any jobs in his field of interior design which meant that he had to file for unemployment.

With money being so tight, they couldn't pay for Claudia's cheerleading expenses. She tried her best to find some other after-school-activity, but her parents couldn't afford any of them. The only one that was free of cost was drama club. I was manning the lights when she came into the auditorium to audition for our spring play. I couldn't believe that she was so desperate to have an extracurricular. I mean, she's picked on us drama geeks for years, and now she wanted to become one of us. "Claudia Higgins. You're next," said Ned, our student director, who was sitting in one of the auditorium seats as Claudia got up on stage and started to read some lines.

"You...you...," she nervously stuttered. Nobody in the room was helping her; instead, everyone was laughing at her like she had laughed at them. A while later, everyone was still laughing, and I just couldn't take it anymore.

"Fran, can you take over the switchboard for me?" I asked as she tried to stop laughing.

"Sure," she said as she took control of the switchboard for the lights while I ran down to the stage. A few minutes later, I walked on stage with a script in my hands as I read from another part in the play. Once I started to say the character's lines, Claudia stopped stuttering and started acting. When everyone saw that Claudia could act, their laughing stopped, and their applauding started. Not to mention that Claudia and I became friends.

The next day, Claudia walked over to the cool kid's table at lunch. "Hey, Chelsea," she to her cool friend who was poking at her salad. "Can I sit here?"

"You're a drama geek now. So get lost," Chelsea said snobbishly as Claudia walked away sadly.

"Hey, Claudia! Over here!" I said as I waved her over.

"Really?" she smiled.

"Yeah," I said as she happily walked over to the lunch table that I was sitting at.

So, Claudia lost her social status, her allowance for designer clothing, and her so-called friends who now make fun of her, but she and I gained a friendship that would last a lifetime.