Hey everyone. This is the first installment of a book of one shots. Hope you guys like them!

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“You were the popular one, the popular chick. It is what it is; now I’m popular-ish.”

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October 18th, 2012

There she was: Claire Hawthorne, captain of our school’s cheer squad. She smiled that fake popular girl smile up at the stands around our football field at the game last week. She sickened me. She always pretended to be this perfect girl who was nice to everyone in the world…except of course, to me.

All the boys love her. When winter formal, and then prom comes around, I bet she’ll have had at least fifteen of them ask her, but of course hold out until Mr. Football Captain, Evan Turner, asks her. I, on the other hand, will probably just go alone. Not even go with my best friend as a “date”. I’ll just stand in the corner with the other rejects.

When people see this year’s yearbook, they’ll see Claire’s picture. They’ll remember the popular girl with beautiful blue eyes like Ashley Benson’s, and the beautiful brown hair like Troian Bellisario. They’ll say, “She looks like she should have been on Pretty Little Liars. She looks like the perfect Rosewood girl.” Only I will be the one who knew her as the real version of Alison DiLaurentis, at least in my mind. She was just like her. She looked perfect to everyone, but she wasn’t as nice as she seemed.

Then, right after they reminisce about the beautiful girl, they’ll notice the girl one picture to the left of hers. That was mine. They’ll all see the name of Kristin Hawkins and laugh, remembering the nerdy girl with the chunky frames instead of designer sunglasses. They’ll see the girl with the stupid haircut that nobody could pull off. It didn’t look good on me, only on Rihanna. “Kristin looks stupid,” they’d all say. “How could she even go to the same school and have her picture so close to Claire Hawthorne’s?”

That’s what Claire made me feel like. She makes me think that everyone hates me, and that I’m the school’s laughingstock, and always will be for the rest of my life. Well, to be honest, she makes me and Luke Bartheld feel like the school’s laughingstocks. We always will be, won’t we?

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October 19th, 2012

Luke’s my best friend. He’s the smartest guy I know. He’s nice to everyone on this planet, unlike Claire and the rest of her posse. He’s got reddish-brown hair and these striking green eyes. I don’t understand how people don’t even like him. He’s just so nice, and smart, and funny…

And there’s the fact that I’ve liked him since Sabrina Bryan was on Dancing with the Stars. That’s another big thing that I forgot to mention. It’s also the biggest and most important thing I’ve tried to keep a secret.

Luke has always told me that even if people don’t like me, I still need to be nice to people. Their opinions of you don’t matter. You just need to be true to yourself. Every time I forget his advice, he always reminds me and adds, “That’s all you’ll ever really need to know to get ahead in life, Kristin.”

I always nod and say, “I get it, Luke,” but now I think I really am getting it. It’s been a week since that last football game I talked about in my last entry. There’s another game tonight.

I have a plan. The next time Claire Hawthorne flashes a pretty girl smile at the stands, you know what I’ll do? I’ll just give her a good Kristin Hawkins smile back. We’ll see where that leads.

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“Kristin, what are you doing?” Luke asked me, snapping me out of my reading He sat down on the bench next to me, draping an arm over my shoulder. He and I were now official as of early December. Now I was off the market for prom in a few weeks.

“Oh, just reading some old journal entries from earlier in the school year. Remember earlier, like last October, when Claire Hawthorne was cheer captain?” I asked, sliding my pair of sunglasses into my backpack. When he nodded, I said, “Well, I had been writing about how jealous I was of her, so I was actually reading that part.”

Luke nodded in understanding. “I can’t believe how much really can change over Christmas Break,” he said, remembering how different the beginning of this year was.

You see, the night of the football game, the one I had been talking about in my last entry; I had smiled back at Claire when she smiled the fake popular girl smile that was her trademark look. She got so shocked by my response; she actually fell off the top of the pyramid. She went out for the entire season because of that injury.

When she tried to order people around to do stuff for her, “while she was in her time of need”, people started to realize how much of a royal pain in the butt she actually was. Her friends all ditched her, leaving her with nobody to take with her to her cabin over winter break. Also, Evan Turner asked a different girl to winter formal (to which I went to with Luke), and Claire ended up falling down the social ladder from Queen Bee to Wannabe.

When I came back from Christmas Break, however, I had started using contacts, so my ugly chunky frames were all gone. Anne Hathaway had brought back the short haircut I had tried thanks to Les Misérables, so I actually looked somewhat cool. Some girls even thought I was a new student, since my glasses were gone. They had completely changed my appearance, so that’s what people had thought I looked like. But that wasn’t me.

People noticed how I was nice to people, and I slowly climbed the social ladder. I wasn’t Queen Bee, obviously, but I actually was up there. It was kind of crazy. In about four months, I was at a decent level of popularity. Luke and I were popular, and Claire was down at the bottom. And, I had all of that written down in my notebook.

“Hello?” Luke asked. “Earth to Kris, are you there?” he added, waving his hand in front of my face.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”

Luke laughed at me. “I said, ‘I can’t believe how much really can change over Christmas Break.’ Do you not listen to me or something?”

“I listen…” I said with a blush. I shut my notebook and laid my head on his shoulder.

“Yeah, sure,” Luke responded jokingly.

“I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear you and just answer your earlier statement,” I said. Then I said, “I know, right? Everything’s changed…”

“Exactly,” Luke said with a nod. There was a bit of awkward silence, and then he asked, “Hey, want to go to the movies after school today?”

"Sure,” I said as the warning bell went off. I sighed, and pecked my boyfriend’s cheek gently. “See you after class,” I said before getting up and walking towards class. As soon as I got up and made it into the middle of the hallway, I lost sight of Luke in the sea of high schoolers.

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Luke and I walked into the movie theater after school, holding hands. We weren’t entirely sure what we wanted to see yet, so we still had to decide. After standing in the lobby for about five minutes deciding, we decided on seeing the re-release of Jurassic Park in 3D.

Luke paid for our tickets quickly, and smiled down at me. The guy passed us the tickets as I smiled up at my boyfriend. He led me back towards the popcorn stand, and then what I saw there shocked me.

There was Claire, working the popcorn stand. I had barely seen her at school anymore, so seeing her here was like a flashback. But, she looked different. Her long brown hair was messily pulled up into a ponytail, instead of the classy way she had done it at school. Her face was missing the signature smirk I knew so well. She was almost like a different person. I barely knew her.

“Hi Claire,” I said softly.

“What can I get you?” Claire said unenthusiastically. She looked so bored there, unlike how she looked when she had been parading around the school gym.

“One large popcorn, please,” Luke said politely. “Oh, and a small Coke, and…” he looked down at me, probably trying to remember what I liked.

“A small lemonade, please,” I supplied, smiling up at him.

“Alright,” Claire said, and told Luke the price. He quickly paid and claimed our popcorn and his drink.

"Thanks,” Luke said with a polite smile.

“See you at school tomorrow,” I said, claiming my lemonade.

Claire shrugged, and turned away. Luke and I shared a glance, and then started off towards the theater.

We passed a poster for a new movie as we walked. “Wow, she went from cheer captain on the football fields to working at the movies selling popcorn…” Luke commented, holding the popcorn in one hand and his drink in the other.

“Yeah, I never expected that,” I agreed as we reached the theater and walked inside. But Luke must have. He had given me that advice earlier, after all.

All I had to do was be true to myself. That’s all I really needed to know. But Claire, she’s got an awful long way to go.