The Sister Of Popular

Chapter Three

"If this is your attempt to be cool," she suddenly burst out, emphasizing the word 'cool', "it's not working. How pathetic are you? First you ruin Francis' skirt and then you just try to casually befriend me! Don't you get it? You don't belong here, you never will! I'm not going to be your friend, and neither will anybody else! Nobody wants to be seen with somebody pathetic like you!"

I was frozen with shock at her cruel remarks. I thought Florence liked me!

Taking one last look at me, Florence stood up and headed towards the door. I tried to say something - I didn't know what, but something - but the words disappeared down my throat as I watched Florence storm out of the room. Whoever said that 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me' was completely wrong. If they weren't wrong, then said person had social issues.

Although, from what Florence had just said to me, I was probably the one who had social issues.

But then that Sticks and Stones person couldn't have social issues as well if words never hurt him unlike how they hurt me.

What did I have? What did the Sticks and Stones person have?

This was hurting my brain...

Either way, my social skills were going down and I didn't particularly like that fact. Whilst my eyes were fixated on Florence's dark bob bouncing out of the room, it suddenly disappeared from my line of sight to show her face again. I braced myself for more snide comments, my heart sinking. One more person to hate me, and my head was swirling with rude words and teasing jokes and it felt like a massive rock was being lowered onto my head, threatening to crush me.

"You don't understand what it's like here, Lexi. I wish I could help, but there's only one way to be a somebody. Get a life."

***

"Mum, I need a phone."

As I hopped down the stairs, bare feet sinking into our newly vacuumed carpet, I saw my mother's shocked expression at Levi's question. Well, it wasn't even a question. More like a command.

"What on earth for, darling?" My mum's voice was just a little too high-pitched. She obviously wasn't expecting her ickle Levi to ask for that sort of thing. We didn’t have many electronics here – just an old second-hand Dell laptop each, and an iPod nano. Not the fancy Macs and iPhones everyone had. All we really used for communicating with neighbours here were my mum’s Nokia and emails. Not that we really need to use them much – everyone we knew (apart from Levi’s new popular friends) lived a few steps away.

"God, Mum, I have friends now, you can stop treating me like a baby!"

But if our mother had been asking him if he needed nappy changing, that would be treating him like a baby. Not asking what he needed a phone for.

At least he had friends to call.

I sat down, watching the conversation between the slants of wood on the staircase. I couldn’t bring myself to add my own opinion into the conversation. Levi and I had been too distant after only a week or so of school. It was completely different – I tried my best in every class to become invisible, he was living the dream.

"Oh," Mum gasped and let out a little sigh, as though she had only just realised that Levi was fourteen, a teenager. "Well...I might get you and Lexi a little present soon, then."

Levi was silent for a moment. I attempted to send him a telepathic message of thanks. He didn't appear to get it, although my brother was good at hiding his feelings. But I had always wanted a phone, one of those cool gadgets that magicked your social life to perfection. I hadn’t admitted it of course. But everyone had one, and having a phone might make me more…’social’? Maybe Levi was doing this for me. Maybe he knew that I desperately wanted to be popular like him, so he asked for a phone, knowing that Mum would give me one too!