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From WikiStory

          Jennie had a way of understanding the coolness of kids in her school. That is, who was cool, who wasn’t, and all the levels in between. Not that she meant to be judgmental or anything. She certainly didn’t consider herself to be one of the coolest. She simply knew, and accepted, that this was the structure of life in 5th Grade. No doubt about it.

          Her parents and other well-meaning adults could lecture her ‘til the cows came home about not to calling those girls “popular”. Her parents would say, “If you don’t like them, then how popular could they really be?” Or they would say that Jennie and her friends could just as well decide that they themselves were really the “popular” girls. Jennie appreciated that adults wanted to help, but honestly, they had no idea. Get real, she’d think to herself.

          It was a visual image for Jennie, of circles within circles, like a dartboard. The ultimate coolest, smoothest, hippest girls stood in the solid red center, and were worth a lot more points, of course. Jennie could close her eyes and imagine these exact classmates standing inside the smallest round enclosure. Not just standing, but sort of strutting proudly, knowing they were envied. The next ring contained the girls who were also extremely cool, almost to the point of being in the center, and still worthy of envy, but not quite dead center. There were several layers of these rings in Jennie’s picture, and of course the outermost ring contained the loser girls, the rejects, the ones with the fewest points. Jennie placed herself somewhere in the medium range. Not a total loser, but not totally cool either.

          Jennie would have liked to be able to throw real darts at some of the girls in her imaginary target. Still, if they had ever deigned to invite her into the center with them, she would have been elated beyond description.

          The boys in her class were nice enough, but they were not part of this intricate web. They might show up here and there, but they didn’t have the power, and they weren’t ever in on the plans. Sometimes the boys were props, unbeknownst to them, abetting complicated strategies, innocent on the surface, but meticulously managed and guarded by the most skilled of the inner circle girls. Jennie rarely felt mad at the boys. They didn’t have a clue anymore than adults did.