Today’s assignment was to “steal a title from a book you’ve never read and invent your own story.”

Nineteen Eighty-Four

I was eleven, smart rather than fun – so smart that I was a year ahead in school.  My long black hair stayed perpetually in a braid because I couldn’t figure out what else to do with it.  My parents wouldn’t let me cut it short and get a perm like the rest of the cool girls in school.  Every day I watched them strut through the hallways bouncing their hair side to side, those curls tossing perfectly as they laughed and called each other names in that mean girl joking sort of way.  I pretended not to care, but I wanted more than anything to be pretty and funny and popular like them.

It probably didn’t help things any that I had the highest GPA.  The natural correlation to that ranking was naturally the lowest social status in school.  Every teacher knew me by name and liked me name – also a bad sign in pre-teen land.  My only real friend was a fellow loser named Grace whose super religious parents made her wear long skirts every day of her life.

“Angela,” a voice called from behind me.  I turned, shocked to hear my name, wondering if someone said it by accident.

Running to catch up was one of the bouncy-haired girls wearing hot pink lipstick and a fluorescent green shirt that hurt my eyes to look at directly.  I stood frozen, unsure what to do in this unusual circumstance.  She had a half-sheet of paper that she was waving in my general direction in her one gloved hand (a la Michael Jackson.)  The entire moment was unsettling, due to the being addressed by a cool girl part, being expected to respond to something other than a math equation or history fact, and the unknown cause of the incident.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly when she reached me planted in front of the boys’ bathroom.  She stuck the paper in my face.  “I’m having a birthday party this Saturday and was hoping you could come.”

I was dumbfounded and just stood there staring at her like a dumb-ass.  It was like my brain short-circuited and I had no response available for retrieval.  She stared at me for a few seconds, then smiled and tilted her head like a cute puppy.

“You have really pretty hair,” she said, then stuffed the paper into my hand and headed on down the hall to chase someone else with another flier.

I stared at the crumpled paper, then smoothed it as best I could.  Not only was this the best day of my life to date, but I had an even better day to look forward to on Saturday.  One of the cool girls wanted me at her party.  Things were looking up.