Already, one of my two friends, the meanest one, Callie, had ditched me to become part of the in crowd. The summer between freshman and sophomore year, Callie got a job at a community pool as a lifeguard. Guess who the other lifeguards were. That’s right. Irving kids. Apparently bonding occurred. And Callie left our friendship behind. Not a word or an acknowledgment. Just gone. Like the wind.

Let’s face it, we all knew she would drop anyone like a hot potato on her way up the rungs of the popularity ladder.

Now, my other friend, Sally Milhauer, she would have stayed my friend, and she and I could have held together in a kind of middling, not total loser situation.

But over the summer she switched schools.

I know!

Her mother decided to send her to a Catholic school, which was insane because Sally was half Jewish. I think she was trying to get back at Sally’s dad, who had moved to Omaha and married his SoulCycle instructor.

So, just because Sally’s dad couldn’t resist that lady jiggling around shouting affirmations in spandex, I was faced with the proposition of spending my time in high school alone. A total outcast, possibly the biggest loser in the universe.

But this was all changed, praise Jesus, when a funny thing happened to my biology requirement. You see, I didn’t realize I couldn’t take biology and computer science in the same semester. Why not? I mean one day obviously they will be one and the same. In the future, when we are all cyborgs. However, Lincoln Southeast High had other ideas for my education and they booted me out of the one, throwing off my entire class schedule and landing me straight into Mr. Eckdahl’s 10 a.m. biology class.

Now, this was the second day of school, so the lines in that class had already been drawn, the seats taken, alliances made. And yet, there I was forced to stand, in the doorway, with my paperwork explaining to Mr. Eckdahl that I had to not only interrupt his class but actually take his class.

As Mr. Eckdahl scratched his head, looking out over the sea of two-person tables, I saw a funny thing out of the corner of my eye . . . one student, in the back of the class, frantically gesturing to his tablemate. Swatting him away. Forcing him to move!

Then, as befuddled Mr. Eckdahl turned back to the classroom, he seemed to see an opening he hadn’t seen before: a seat free, there in the back. He gestured to me to take this very seat.

I took the seat, the seat that had just been frantically vacated, and couldn’t even bring myself to look up to see who the mystery person who had made sure that that seat was empty actually was. But as Mr. Eckdahl began his lecture about cell division, I managed to peek out from behind my newly acquired textbook to see who the guilty party was. And there he was. In the flesh: