Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon

new kid. Welcome to loneliness.
    You always end up getting invited to sit somewhere at lunch the first day. You sit down and quickly realize that you were asked to sit with the other outsiders. You hear your mother in your head telling you to be nice and make friends with these kids because they’re just as lonely and sad as you are and they really want friends and they’re probably nice, but you really, really want to be popular this time. You’ve never been popular and you’re starting over for the tenth time in another school and you thought maybe this time you’d get it right, but instead you’re sitting with kids who never have plans on the weekend and they know all of the television lineups from Friday to Sunday. They ask you if you need help with your algebra. You watch the popular kids when you look up from your hot-lunch plate and you realize that you have two choices: You can suddenly get all cool and tell these losers that you’ll smell them later, storm over to the popular table, declare a place, and say that you’re lucky you got out without a pocket protector tattoo. Or you can sit there like your mother would want you to and be good, be a nice girl, and meet these kids but still stay distant enough that you don’t really like them. It’s easier to not make friends. You’re going to be leaving soon anyway. You always do. Don’t get attached.
    You keep feeling like you’re going to be sick. You sit in class and wonder if anyone will know it’s your birthday. You watch the birthday girl with the balloons tied to the back of her chair and realize you won’t have that because you haven’t had these friends for years. They’ve all got history. You’ll be the one without valentines again. No one will ask if you’re going to the dances. You will only be talked to when you forget to put on one of your socks, or if you accidentally make the chair fart when you lean over to get your pencil. You miss every school you ever went to, even when you hated those schools so much you’d cry yourself to sleep every single night.
    The sound of a school bus will forever make your stomach drop. The smell of a pencil brings a lump to your throat. Line leaders. Fire drills. The tardy bell.
    Then there’s that moment when you stop watching everyone else play Boys Chase Girls and decide to go inside and read instead. That moment when there is someone else inside reading, and you start talking to her about Ramona Quimby and Beezus. You suggest books for each other and at the end of the day you find out she rides your bus. Not only that, but she lives down the street! Suddenly you have a new friend and your mom is happy for you. (She stops asking when you’re going to make friends. She stops looking at you like you’re a broken child.) Everything is so much fun as you spend the night at each other’s houses watching scary movies and eating too much and talking about movies and music and you’ve finally found someone who understands you. She’s got some friends and she lets you in and suddenly you are a part of a group. You belong. You’ve got friends and you like the school and you can’t remember ever hating it, and then you go home one day and it’s time to move again.
    You’re moving again and you have to pack up everything in your bedroom. Quickly. Again. There were things you hadn’t even unpacked yet. It’s happening again. That feeling again. You say good-bye again to your new friend who won’t remember you in three months when you are still wishing desperately to see her every day. You will remember her name long after you’ve become a faded memory to her.
    You can’t sleep that last night in your room, when it’s all boxed up and dark and you don’t know where you’re going and you don’t know anyone where you’re going and you don’t know what to expect. You get mad at