The Roses (Part 1)

By Monica Shah

When Carlie* walked over to the lunch table she had been eating at with her friends for months, she couldn't find a spot. The first chair she approached was "taken" according to Zahara. The other empty chair was piled up with all the girls' backpacks and no one made a move to clear it. Carlie was puzzled by her friends' polite but firm remarks. No one was outwardly rude, but there was a definite unfriendly undertone that made Carlie decide to find another table.

A few days before Carlie's snubbing at lunch, she had gotten into an argument with Bethlin. Carlie wasn't even sure she could remember the details of the fight—something about a phone call that hadn't been returned on time. She talked to Bethlin about it during homeroom and thought everything was cool. But now this. The other girls were, if not exactly ignoring her, not including her either.

The Roses' Rules

	Movies that feature girl cliques through the decades: Carrie (1976): An obvious outsider and victim of many jokes and cruel taunts, Carrie (Sissy Spacek) also has psychic powers that allow her to move things with her mind, which makes this a little more interesting than your typical teen-being-bullied movie. Heathers (1989): A dark comedy in which a powerful group of girls called "The Heathers" rules the school until a new member of the clique decides to start killing the Heathers off. Jawbreaker (1999): When a prank involving a jawbreaker turns fatal, the four pretty and popular girls involved show their true colors as they try to cover up the crime. Mean Girls (2004): Lindsay Lohan plays a girl who moves from Africa to Chicago, discovers the rules of the jungle might not apply to a high school clique, and turns the table on the mean girls she encounters there.

Carlie attends high school in a quiet suburban town in Maryland. She claims she doesn't consider her group of friends to be a clique but her group has a name—The Roses. The Roses have rules which all the girls follow religiously. The "color rule" is about wearing certain colors that are "in"—currently pinks, purples, and apple green. Black, which was required just a few months ago, has now become passé and off limits—even for shoes.

Another rule is about guys—they are divided up and classified by "date" list, "buds" list, and "loser" list (which is by far the longest list). Carlie and her friends are not allowed to date anyone who is not on the date list and may not be friends with anyone not on the buds list.

Roses Retaliate

During the next few days after the lunch table snub, things got weirder. None of the other girls spoke to her unless Carlie spoke up first. They began sitting at a different lunch table and never invited Carlie. Torn between just joining them or asking them if she could join them, Carlie realized that neither choice was appealing. Going over and sitting down uninvited meant possible rejection. But asking permission would further lower her status in the group. The one time she tried to find out what was going on, Jessica told her she was imagining things.

Spinning Out of Control

Then Carlie's friends would take turns coming over to her and asking her silly questions in gravely serious voices or passing her written notes. The questions and notes grew from odd to lewd. These notes and bizarre behavior made Carlie increasingly uncomfortable and in the end devastated her as she found out the reason for them.

Photocopies of these notes, which all included Carlie's name and some sort of sexual implication, were plastered around the school—not in obvious places where teachers were likely to notice and pull them down immediately—but inside the girls' and boys' locker rooms and bathrooms, stuffed into random hallway lockers and taped underneath desks in the study hall room. That's when Carlie knew a full-out war was on.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of "The Roses" to see what happens to Carlie.

*This story is true but names and identifying details have been changed at the request of "Carlie."