Confessions of a Private School Mean Girl

When I was eleven my parents had my whole family move to the United Arab Emirates. I had been homeschooled my entire life beforehand, so my first ever school experience was in a private school. The first friend I ever had there was a girl who I'll refer to as Z, because if she ever finds this I'll be very embarrassed.

Like every typical school, there were different cliques made up of certain types of people scattered throughout the school population. Our year had the few obvious groups, so there were the popular ex-pat girls, the sports-involved guys, et cetera. Z introduced me to her group, which unfortunately I later identified as the popular, egotistical girls who gossiped nonstop. Being eleven and completely new to the social hierarchy, I gratefully accepted their invitation to join their group and then I was stuck for the next eighteen months.

People are always shocked when I tell them the stories of our social activities as a group. I genuinely think that none of us really liked each other, we were endlessly sizing each other up and stabbing one another in the back in a bid for popularity.

Z was my best friend for the entire time I was at school. I backed her up no matter the risk, and I never once took sides against her. People used to tell me I was like a puppy, following her everywhere she went and doing whatever she said.

They were right, of course- I did everything she said. That one time when we got caught passing a note across the classroom, in which Z had written containing something particularly vulgar, our whole group was placed under investigation by the head of secondary. Z fed me the lie that would keep us from suspension, and I in turn fed it to the teachers who called me out of math class for 'casual questioning'. I delivered my lines perfectly, barely considering that lying to authority figures went against all my personal morals.

When I entered private school I was clean, never cursed, never used social media. It made me the odd one out of my friends, and I hated it. And so, over the course of the school year I grew more and more like them, talking behind people's backs and using words that my mom would have washed my mouth out with soap for saying. I was mean to people who didn't deserve it, and nice to people to would have stabbed me in the back if I messed up and wasn't careful.

There was one time in social studies where I was sitting across from a girl who I'd had issues with since the minute she stepped into our school. I'll call her M. I had become a teacher's pet and a stand-out in the crowd of students as I was pretty diligent with my studies and one of the only two asian girls in our school. M was always trying to break up Z and I, because Z was the school celebrity (she was the star singer of our school) and I was her best friend. Consequently, I hated M for trying to take my place. M was showing off to our table that day, making a big deal of pranking our teacher in imitation of my prank on the same teacher earlier that week. She kept knocking her pencil case off her desk, causing her things to roll over the floor and disrupting the lesson as she loudly apologized and picked up her belongings. After the third time, I knew that the teacher was getting sick of M so to push her over the edge I knocked M's things off the desk a final time. She got a referral.

I remember when my friend's (who I'll call A) ex boyfriend transferred back into our school after spending a year away. He sat next to me in almost all my classes, mostly because our teachers had a habit of placing the laziest students with the hardworking in an attempt to fix their work ethic. One day, my friend heard that her ex had made a move on me, which wasn't true. She enlisted our help to get revenge on him, stealing his backpack and tossing it into the toilet of the girl's bathroom. He was furious, and she laughed in his face when he demanded to have his belongings back.

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This was part 1 of horror stories from my private school life! I hope nobody who was actually there reads this, if they do please don't kill me, this is just how I remember it, keep in mind this all was five years ago so maybe the details are hazy. Either way I enjoyed writing all of it out, I hope you laughed at some point reading these ridiculous anecdotes.

Much love!

- Charis