Canyon High School was bigger than I had initially thought. Crowded hallways and rude upperclassmen made it almost impossible to navigate to all my classes. At lunch I was lucky enough to meet up with some of my friends from middle school. We ate, chatted, and joked about how easy it was to get lost here. Pretty soon, as always, the conversation came around to boys. They whispered and giggled about a boy we had apparently gone to school with last year. His name was Dante…. Searching my memory , I came up with a vague picture of a boy peeking into classrooms, sitting in the principle’s office, and walking with his arm around a blond girl.

“Wait”, I said, “Wasn’t he the one who moved in the middle of the year last year?”

My friends laughed and cracked jokes that I didn’t understand. Finally, Kate answered my question.

“No, he didn’t move, he got himself expelled!” She giggled, and turned to Rosa. “Hey, do you remember when he asked me out?”

Rosa reached over and slapped Kate on the leg, “Yeah, I do! That’s the reason he stopped talking to us! You just had to turn him down!”

The warning bell cut through their chatter, and we said our goodbyes and began to cut our way through the cafeteria. 15 minutes later, late pass in hand, I finally found my Ecology class. Opening the door, I peaked in. Sitting behind a large black desk in the front of the room was a middle-aged man, looking annoyed with the class. Sneaking a quick look at the students, I saw the back row consisted of cocky boys who looked way to old to still be in a freshman science class. I quickly handed the teacher my note, and hoped to make it to a seat before the back row noticed me.

I almost made it. I was halfway to the seat that the teacher had directed me to when I heard the boy in the corner of the back row whistle.
“Hey baby, come sit by me!”. His friends laughed and punched him on the
arm.

Embarrassed, I slung my bag onto the ground, and slid into my chair. The seat I had been assigned was about halfway back, on the left side of the room. I scooted further down in my seat, and tried to inconspicuously scan the room for any body that I knew. Five Mexican girls huddled together in the exact middle of all of the rows. An Asian girl with an electronic translator had seated herself directly in front of the teacher. A red head, two blonds, and a straight-haired brunette were scattered through the class, looking uncomfortable and vaguely bored. Excluding the back row, there were only two guys in the whole class. I flicked my hair back, and pretended to get something out of my bag. While my head was down I quickly gave the back row a little bit of a closer look. Hmmm…. A few cute guys, a couple in-between ones, and, parked in the middle of all of them was a girl with three inch nails and ratted out hair. I immediately hated her for being brave enough to sit back there. The teacher commenced with the classroom rules, and I found my self listlessly staring at the cover of my brand new binder, remembering the comfort of middle school A few minutes later I was jolted out of my thoughts, and brought back to the present.

“All right. Everybody come up and grab a sheet” Instructed the teacher, “Then, I want you all to meet four new people. Right down their names and one interesting fact about them. OK?”

Great, I thought, I hate get to-know-you activities.