The Social Ladder

dedicated to @foreveryoung_09 for the wonderful cover!

x Prologue - How This All Came to Be x   

    Call my school cliche, or corny, or cheesy, or typical or whatever the hell you want to call it, but we had a social ladder- a ladder that everyone (even the outcasts) had a spot on. If you weren’t on it, which was a very very rare situation, you were invisible- technically, you were still there, physically, and your body was clearly visible, but the simplicity of your presence was ignored.

    This “social ladder” consisted of six steps, or pedestals; in my opinion, it was more of a cruel and immature segregation ladder than anything else. There were the highly acclaimed and often praised King and Queen, both of whom were expected to stroll into school each morning hand-in-hand with glorious smiles on our faces. Instead, we had “King” Damien, who walked around and didn’t give two craps about anything and “Queen” Tori, whose parents were multi millionaires and honestly, I didn’t even know why she was still in our crappy little high school.

    Below them were the princes, princesses, duchesses and dukes; who all, contrary to the King and Queen, walked around in the same group all. the. time. There were, what, twenty of them? I wouldn’t name all of them, but I did know that their so-called “leaders” were Penelope, Greg and Colin.

    On the pedestal below that one, there were the jesters. These people meant something to those above them, but they weren’t “popular” enough to be worshipped and praised like the princes and princesses.

    Then there were the lads and ladies; basically normal enough to be under three pedestals, but high enough to be above average. This was basically where most of us fell into. If you weren’t in this category, clearly, luck wasn’t on your side. If you didn’t fit into any of the previous four categories, you were either :

    A) a norm as in you were normal and not treated with any respect or. .

    B) a peasant- the worst category of all. Being a peasant meant you had to serve the King and Queen, who usually took advantage of the peasants, making me almost feel poorly for them. Almost. The peasants were also really irritating and annoying, so in a way, them being sorted out into the lowest category possible (above uncategorized) was their ‘punishment’.

    Now that you’ve got down the basics, I don’t think there’s anything more you would need to know if you were looking forward to not being neglected for the entirety of the four years you’d spend in high school. I think that we were the only schools who had this- though only the students knew about this supposed ladder (of popularity). The teachers and everyone else were completely oblivious to the fact that the way things ran in school was mainly because of this concept of popularity levels.

    This was all stupid to me. During the first week of school, everyone would have set up their account for the website on which the school staff uses to communicate with all the students regarding homework and all that good stuff. We would all have our little votes, commenting “J” for jester, “K or Q” for King/Queen, “P/P” for prince/princess and so on on each other’s pages. Whichever category rallied in the most points, that’s what you were considered as from that day forward until the end of the school year. The funny thing, teachers would never figure out what we meant.

     So there I was, snuggled up quite nicely between about three layers of blankets and pillows despite the fact that it was around seventy degrees out, and, much to my dismay, my laptop beeped. See, normally, I would’ve had my laptop laid out in front of me and I would have been scrolling down multiple blogs, admiring people and food I could never and would never have.

    But I made a solution- a resolution- in which I promised myself and everyone else who cared that I would try harder in school and sleep more and take advantage of the internet less. Sounds quite hard, right? Well actually, up until that night,  managed to keep that promise.

    Beep.

    Ignore it, one beep doesn’t mean anything serious. Besides, hadn’t I exited out all my tabs before closing it?

    Beep.

    Two beeps? Nothing to worry about; probably just emails. . Useless emails that deserve none of my attention until morning time.

    Beepbeep.

    Now I think I’m hallucinating. The only time my laptop beeps more than once is when I receive comments or messages from the school website. . Wait. Don’t tell me-

    Beep beep beep.

    Incapable of containing my curiosity for any longer than I already had, I lurched off my bed and immediately embraced my beeping laptop, clutching it to my chest as if it held my dear life. It was around one in the morning, and my dad was probably asleep by then so he shouldn’t have been able to hear the ferocious tapping of my fingertips against the keyboard or my foolish excitement that I chose to let out through muffled screams.

    For the past three years of attending this high school, I’d been classified as a “norm”. Thank God I hadn’t been bumped down a stage lower to the peasants- I could not afford having to follow the King and Queen around all day and tend to their needs daily. Nope; if I couldn’t do something as simple as walk to the grocery to pick up some chips for myself, there was definitely no way I would serve them.

    So I logged into the website with strong hope that I’d at least be bumped up as a lady. But what I saw surprised me greatly. There was absolutely no way this was happening- it couldn’t be happening. No. Fucking. Way.

    On my screen, in bright orange, there were multiple “P”s on my page. P for princess or P for peasant?

    Princess.

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