xx48.11.03 / 12:46 / Still Wednesday

Today I learnt a valuable lesson about 'not judging people on first appearances'. The morning classes were okay, nobody noticed me and the work was so easy that the hardest thing was staying awake. Then it was lunchtime, and on the way to the lunch room I was ambushed by Veronica Flux and her seventeen friends (there are precisely seventeen of them, I counted). At first I almost tried to run or hide or something, but then something amazing happened! She was NICE to me! I mean, REALLY nice! I'll write down exactly what happened, because I definitely want a record of this.

First I think I was kind of cringing and looking fairly unhappy, so Veronica—Ronny!—smiled at me, a really nice big bright smile and she said:

"I'm so sorry about yesterday, Charlotte."

She found out my name! I don't think I've even told it to anyone, she must have made a special effort to go to the admin office or something to find it out! That's so thoughtful!

"I was thinking about it later," (she was continuing while I kind of swooned a bit over her specially finding out my name) "and I realised you could have taken my actions to be rude—I really didn't intend them to come across like that, it was just that with your hair such a mess and everything I honestly wasn't sure 'who' you were. We have all sorts in this school, you see, some of the boys prefer the girl's uniform—and some of the girls like the boy's uniform."

Of course. Of course, that makes so much sense, I've seen that kind of thing on about a dozen TV shows. She wasn't being mean, she was just trying to be, what's the word, 'inclusive'? Or anyway her intention was to genuinely find out whether I wanted to go to the boy's bathroom or the girl's bathroom, she was just being nice!

"Anyway," she said, while I was still just standing there dazed and happy, "to make it up I wanted to invite you to my table at the cafeteria, you're new here so you must be a little lonely and nervous about things. Don't worry, we'll take care of you. By the way, I'm Veronica, we didn't really have a proper introduction yesterday. You can call me Ronny, all of my closest friends do."

So, guess what? I got to sit at her table and eat lunch with her and all her seventeen friends! It was AMAZING, I was actually in such a happy daze about it all I can't remember much, I'm actually in one of the toilets now just to write this down, I couldn't hold it in—um, I mean I couldn't hold in 'writing about my amazing lunch' not, y'know, Other Stuff. Anyway, I'm going to go back out now, there's still some time left before lunch ends and I want to enjoy every minute.

I think I have my first friend!