I’m Kady. There is really only one thing my name and I have in common, we don’t follow the rules. Other than that it does a bad job of describing me. I’m not unique or weird or anything like that. I think of myself as a “friendless popular girl.” By that I mean I know everyone and everything about them. I have friends, but no best friends really. So how do I gain my popularity? Well it didn’t come easily. I started school here in the sixth grade and I didn’t gain fame till ninth grade really. Actually, it started that summer.

Every summer I go to New York to see my family, nothing too exciting. One year I met a boy who I soon developed a summer crush for, but it was only that- a crush. I wouldn’t realize what he gave me till my tenth grade year. He gave me the confidence to become a heart-breaking, name-making, self proclaimed friendless popular girl, or in my mother’s eyes, a tease who was trying to move too fast for her age. Ninth grade I quickly fell in with the “popular” bunch. Well, they weren’t all the extreme elites or anything, but I was no longer spending my Friday nights in front of the television with my nine year old brother. They were up there though. Most people would say they grew their wings freshmen year, as for me, I grew into my camouflage fatigues that I wore 24/7. I didn’t stand out, but I sure as hell didn’t go unnoticed! My freshmen year was great and it only got better as time went on. In just that one year I accomplished more than I could have ever imagined. I dated one of the coolest kids on the baseball team against my mothers will and I started a cafeteria fight that is still a legend to this day, I spent my weekends hanging out with the hottest soccer player who all the girls drooled over, and I was racking up guys like it was my job.

By my tenth grade year I had the friends down pack. Now it was time for the heart-breaking. I remember my first encounter that year with the boy who would bring me up, slam me down, and send my would spinning out of control. It was at open house where it clicked. I saw him across the cafeteria; it was as if the crows parted like the Seven Seas. He gave me a look that seemed to say, “Damn! You sure did change over the summer,” but in a good way. That was all I needed to predict the future. Well, that and what seemed like a very clear sign. That sign was our seating arrangement in out third period chemistry class. He sat right behind me. Even when we were assigned new seats he sat diagonally in front of me. Along with the look and the sign, there was something I’d call fate. It just so happened that everyday we were the last ones to leave the school and some of the first to arrive. With these three things we quickly became friends; even faster though, we became more than friends… much more. I didn’t have sex, do drugs, or drink, but we didn’t need to. We did other things; we gave each other a natural “buzz”, a natural high. Through him I learned how to take my confidence from my ninth grade summer and use it for power; power that was captivating; power that had the ability to suck any guy in like a black whole. If I drew a picture of myself at that time, I’d be a beautiful woman wearing a sultry dress, red of course, with high-heels. I’d be standing atop a mountain of men dying to get to the top, dying to get to me. That self-image gave me confidence that was very apparent to everyone around me. That’s all I needed. As Corey Smith once said, “I was taking names and numbers just for fun.” I learned how to play The Game, once a man’s game, now my game.

Truthfully though, all of this really wasn’t me. I was good at making everyone else think it was though. I got so used to playing guys so I didn’t get played that I almost passed up one of the best guys I know. Poor boy, I put him through hell because he stuck around longer than the others, about two and a half years longer. Too bad my mom didn’t like him. I didn’t really care though; I was too busy learning tricks of the trade to focus in on one guy. At a candy store, a child doesn’t want just one piece when so many are around, they want the whole store; they will do any and everything in their power to get what they want too. That’s what I was, a naïve child in a school full of candy, or guys, it was all the same to me. I thought that this was what I wanted; well this is what I thought I should be wanting anyway. In every movie about high school the most popular girls have all the guys and they are so free and fun. I wanted to be like that so bad that I didn’t realized that television does an extremely unrealistic job of depicting high school. All because of this image that was plastered everywhere pretty much every girl in my school was trying to achieve the same goal, to be like the girls in movies; the girls that threw awesome parties, the girls that every guy wanted to be with, the girls that everyone wanted to be friends with, the girls who supposedly had it all. I guess to me it seemed like these kinds of girls were real because some girls at my school actually came close to this kind of “fame,” or as I later came to find out, infamy. I lost my near perfect average, my “good-girl” image, and most importantly, my mother’s trust before I finally accepted the fact that I was a complete fake. I was doing more harm for myself than good. I started to give in to peer pressure, even if it went against my personal morals. I realized that I was creating an image for myself that I despised in other girls, so, I quickly cleaned up my act before everyone began to see me for what I really was, a tease who was moving too fast for her age. Sure guys liked me and talked to me when I was moving fast, but I realized that they didn’t respect me, most of them barley even knew me, yet they’d try to hook up with me. After realizing all of this I quickly changed my ways before it was too late.

Today, I have managed to salvage and bring back to life my “good-girl” image, but I am still working on my grades. Do I regret what I did those two years of my high school career? Of course not, everything happens for a reason. I’m thankful that I have such strict parents who forced me to come back down to earth. Even though at times I miss that old lifestyle, I remember that it’s not real; I remember that it caused more bad than good. Now, I am infuriated when I see girls like myself, confused and power hungry. I wish everyone would realize that breaking the rules is not what high school is about; it may be about that on T.V., but in real life, it’s about being yourself.