Raise Your Glass Read Free

isn’t just for high school. The Rule of Popularity Limitation is pretty much universal. As far as I know, it applies all the way to Hollywood and the world in general. There is always a hot girl and then the ones around her. Doesn’t matter if you are talking about Marilyn Monroe or Megan Fox, there is always an It girl who captures the boys’ attention and the girls’ envy. There isn’t a rhyme or reason for why this happens, but there is just a something that people see and are attracted to. It isn’t about tits or ass or any of that. I mean, sure, the physical stuff helps , but in the end what grabs the attention is attitude more than actual physical looks. And there is only one spot that can be filled by one Girl—or Guy—of the Moment. One.
    Like Britney Spears: when she was hot, she was so hot. I mean, I remember being seven and thinking I was going to lose it when I saw her videos. She was It and everyone knew that. And then there were the girls around her. Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson—the list goes on and on. Now, there is nothing wrong with those girls. If you were to break it down attribute by attribute, there were better singers, better bodies, better dancing, better everything. Yet in the minds of everyone else, all those girls were just second to Britney. And they were girls . Britney was It .
    And that is how people are. They fixate on that person. Everyone else is compared to them and always found wanting. I’m sure what I’m saying is nothing earth-shattering to anyone. It’s not like I have the launch codes or anything. But here is the rest of that reality: you either know you are It or that you are not It. Knowing that simple fact changes who you are inside for the rest of your life. And not in a sunshine and flowers way, either. Knowing that you’re It also means you know you have a shelf life. From the second that someone tags you and you become “It,” a timer starts counting down over your head. If you’re not “It,” you just stare at that clock and wait. There is only a finite amount of attention that people can focus, only a finite amount of attention on one person, and only for so long before their attention shifts. That means if someone becomes more popular, someone else just becomes less popular. It sounds stupid, but it’s the way it is for those of us who live on the adoration of others.
    Once you enter that race to the top you are forever looking around you to see if there is someone you can pull down on your way. You wonder why pretty girls are so bitchy? Because they know every slur that the other girl takes means one step closer to the top of the food chain. You ever ask yourself why jocks always seem to be fighting? It’s because we are just a few IQ points away from pissing on stuff to claim it as our own. We are all sharks swimming in the same small tank, wondering who’s going to fall asleep first so the rest of us can have lunch. Not everyone thinks like this—they simply act like this out of survival, and most of it is subconscious behavior.
    I always knew that there was something inside of me that, if it came out, would make me the very opposite of everything that makes up a popular person. So I guess I was always aware of how cutthroat popularity was, because it was just a matter of time before it was taken away from me. I could, or at least I hoped I could, handle what I always knew might happen.
    Kyle was the one that I was worried about.
    He wasn’t used to any kind of attention; he’d been careful to avoid any attention at all, for Pete’s sake. For someone to go from school unknown to school pariah over a weekend was a lot to ask.
    I hadn’t realized how long I had been sitting, lost in thought, until Kyle squeezed my hand and asked, “You okay?”
    I looked over at him and felt an ache in my chest when I realized how much I liked him. I had never felt like I did with Kyle. Not with Kelly, the first guy I had fooled around with, not