It wasn't that I wanted to be shy, I just didn't know how else to be. At first, I guess, I blamed it a little on the fact that I'd switched schools. From second through eighth grade, I'd gone to a small charter school. So I was really comfortable with that group of people and that size student body. My new school was way bigger, though. And kind of overwhelming.
My first year out of the charter school I pretty much just stuck with my one best friend. And I kind of got the reputation for being snobby and stuck-up and shy because of that. Because we didn't really talk to anyone else. Not because we didn't like other people, but because we had each other, and I guess we were too scared to try to branch out from that safe place of our friendship.
But then in tenth grade I went to another new school. And boom, all of a sudden I had more than 1,000 kids in my grade. That was such a huge change from the charter school where we'd only had about 100 kids in the seventh and eighth grades. And what was even harder was that I didn't even have my best friend to lean on. I didn't know anyone.
