Never in a million years did I think that I would be one of the girls that falls into the deep sinking hole that is popularity…and I never was. This was until four months ago, when my parents forced me out of our lovely home in California to the freezing, gloomy, and bleak place that is Boston. Starting at a new school is hard, especially when it is high school. The fear of being judged and having no friends engulfs every teenager inside the brick walls of the school. I was preparing to stick to my dependable plan of making one tolerable friend, and holding it out for the next four years, but that is not at all how everything played out.

It was my first day of school at Westberry High School, and it was terrifying. Tall, senior athletes loomed several feet above me while walking down the halls, and lines of girls with their arms linked blocked my path. Everybody seemed to already have their friend groups figured out, since it was about a month into the school year. I felt as if I was under a microscope of extreme judgement. My seventh period class on the first day was Biology, and I was not excited about it. I did not want to have to introduce myself again, since I already had during every other class that day. Thankfully, when I walked through the door there was an old disheveled looking substitute teacher who did not know I was a new student. I stood in the doorway, unsure of where to go for about fifteen seconds, until a pretty brunette girl waved towards me. I thought she was gesturing to me, but I was unsure. I glanced my head to both sides just to make sure that there was no one else standing near me in the doorway. She seemed to notice my confusion, so she got up from her chair and gracefully sauntered over to me like a ballerina prancing across the stage.
“Hi! I’m Christine!” She exclaimed, “You’re the new girl, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered shyly.
“Come! Sit!”
She was so nice! I did not expect this on my first day of school, especially from someone as elegant as Christine.
“So… where are you from?” She asked, seeming to be very intrigued.
“Um… California,” I replied shyly, tangling my hands within my messy blond hair.
“Oh that’s awesome! You always talk about California, Kelsey!” she says gesturing the girl sitting next to her to speak.
“No way! You lived in California?” Kelsey exclaimed nudging the small brunette beside her “Jasmine! You know how much I want to visit California!” Soon a small group of excited girls gathered around me. They were all happily inquiring about my life in California. How could I tell them that I lived five hours away from any place that has even had the presence of a celebrity? I couldn’t…so I didn’t!
“Have you ever met any celebrities?” Kelsey asked. This was when everything went wrong.
“Uh…yeah…tons!” I said. My voice was a little bit shaky, due to the fact that I was lying, and I knew that it was wrong. Did I really think that they would treat me any differently if I told them the truth? I guess I did, because my lies did not stop there.
“I used to live next door to…Reese Witherspoon” I continued. She was the first thing that came to mind, due to watching one of her movies in my study hall the period before.
“Really!” Christine exclaimed, “Did you talk to her a lot?”
“Yeah…tons!” I answered, “She used to have us over for dinner like at least once a week. She is so fun and…she took me to a bunch of her movie sets.”
“That’s so awesome! I wish I was you! Do you think you can get us to meet her…? I mean…you guys must be pretty close if she was your neighbor,” Christine intrigued nervously.
“Yeah…we are…really close,” I responded.
“No way! I have to tell the other girls on my lacrosse team! We watched a bunch of her movies just the other day.” Kelsey said excitedly.
That is how it all started. All of the lies, and the stress of me trying to fit in with people that I could have been friends with by just being myself. A few months after I stated that first lie in biology class, I dug myself into an even deeper hole. By that time the entire school knew that I “knew Reese Witherspoon”, and that caused me to feel like I was loosing control of my life. I thought that if I did not keep up my lies I would never fit in at this school, or have any friends. This was mainly because of how far the lies stretched. The worst lie of all, however, was when I told Christine that I could get her an internship at one of Reese’s movie sets. Christine wants to become a producer when she gets older, so this was a big deal for her. This would have been a great opportunity for her…if it was real. She got so excited about this “internship”, that she cleared her plate for the entire summer. She even bought a plane ticket to Los Angeles when I told her that Reese agreed to the whole thing. This was the moment that my guilt finally tore through my body, and I could not take it anymore. I could not believe what I had done. I had ruined Christine’s summer, and she didn’t even know it yet.
The next day, after Christine told me that she booked her flight, her mom called my mom explaining how grateful she was that I had set this whole internship up for Christine. To say that my mom was furious would be an understatement. She ordered me to write apology cards to all of the people I deceived, and pay for the ticket that Christine had already bought.
The most unfavorable part, however, was walking down the hallway at school the next day. Everybody glared at me like I just committed a felony, and it felt as if nobody dared to approach me. I felt like I was a lone fish in a giant fish tank. Kelsey was the only person that risked her social status to come near me that day. I was elated because I assumed that she was going to be the first person to forgive me, but the only reason she approached me was to defend Christine. Christine had apparently been crying the entire night before, and this fact concluded the theory that had been nagging at me since I started these lies…that I would lose all of the wonderful friends I had made. All of my friends seemed to vanish into the air, and it was just because I was scared of not fitting into a group. I could have become friends with Christine, Kelsey, and everybody else by just being the person that I was, but I didn’t. I was too consumed with the thought of not fitting in, and becoming a part of the popular group, that I lost the meaning of true friendship. True friendship is when you can tell a person anything, and they won’t judge you. They will accept you the way that you are. Maybe Christine and the other girls wouldn’t have wanted to become friends with me at all, but the misery and stress that I put myself, and other girls through, caused much more pain than not fitting in with the popular crowd. Making friends with people who like you for you, and not people that you have to pretend to be another person around is the most important moral. I wish that it was something that I knew before I dug myself into a hole that I could not climb out of.