• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Well,” Danielle said, stalling. “I would probably first talk to my manager, but if that wasn’t an option, I guess I would . . . make them a new one?” The interviewers looked at her with expressions that told Danielle that the question she had heard was not the one they had asked.

When she got home, she looked up blogs about fast-food interviews that recommended techniques for interviewees—which Danielle hadn’t used. Fifteen kids had applied for five slots, and she was convinced she wouldn’t get the job.

As Danielle complained to her mother about the interview, the phone rang.

“Hi Danielle, this is [the manager] from Dairy Queen.”

“Oh, hi.”

“We were wondering if you would like to work for us.”

“Oh, wow. Yes, I would. Definitely.”

“Would you be able to come in this Saturday at three thirty for a training session?”

“Um, Saturday . . . Yeah, I think I’m free then.”

“Okay, Danielle, we’ll see you then.”

“Okay. Thank you so much!”

Danielle hung up the phone and grinned. She couldn’t believe it. Maybe she wasn’t so bad at interviews after all.

IN DANIELLE’S CREATIVE WRITING class, each student was assigned a day to bring in snacks. On her day, Danielle came in late. When she walked into the room with a box of cookies, the teacher looked up and said something, but Danielle was too embarrassed about arriving late to pay attention to him.

That period, Danielle made an effort to be more social. She talked to Max, a sophomore whom classmates saw as loud and somewhat obnoxious. Danielle thought he was funny and smart; he read books on Taoism and got As on Spanish tests without studying. She sat by him for a while as they waited for the computers to boot up. He seemed receptive.

At the bell, two preppy sophomores, Bree and Kristy, walked out of the room in front of her, glancing at her and laughing. They were also in Danielle’s Spanish class, but she hadn’t talked to them before. Danielle couldn’t make out what they said through their laughter.

Bree turned around. “You know what we’re talking about, right?”

“I think so,” Danielle answered. She did not.

“When you walked in, we didn’t know that you had cookies,” Kristy said. “So when [the teacher] said, ‘Mmm! More deliciousness!’ we thought he was talking about you.” The three of them laughed.

When Danielle walked into Spanish the next day, Bree and Kristy cracked up. “More deliciousness!” they exclaimed in unison. Danielle thought she might as well talk to the sophomores if it made the class go by that much quicker. But over the next several days, she still couldn’t break through her shyness to initiate conversation.

BLUE, HAWAII | THE GAMER

Despite their shared class, Blue’s teammates previously hadn’t hung out together as a group. Now that Blue regularly took them on adventures around town, however, they were gradually leaving their old social circles to form a new one.

The first time the group convened at Blue’s house, the students were amazed.

“This room is so nice!”

“Look how organized!”

“Look at the cable management!”

“Oh my God, look at his computer,” Michael said. He fingered the customized headphones that Blue had designed and surveyed the others, which hung neatly in frames on the wall, each pair illuminated by picture lights. “Wow, your headphones are like artwork.”

The girls peeked into Blue’s walk-in closet and gasped in admiration at clothes and shoes meticulously organized by color and style. When they saw his mechanical models, they called his craftsmanship “impeccable.” They were riveted when Angelique made him demonstrate a speedrun of Portal.

The smart kids’ reaction to Blue’s room was the polar opposite of that of his old friends. Jackson, Stewart, Ty, and the rest of them incessantly made fun of Blue’s cable management, high-end electronics, and room decor. Blue was astonished that these new friends actually liked him because of his differences. When they weren’t preparing for SCH, they accompanied Blue to beaches or to the playground to stargaze. With this new group, Blue was