Ella hated the hallways of Emerson Middle almost as much as she did cafeteria fish sticks and using the girl’s downstairs restroom. Unfortunately, like having to pee during third period, she just had to grin and bear it. She followed the universal rules of junior high social survival: Keep your eyes down, your mouth shut, and just focus on getting the hell out of the catastrophic tunnel filled with slamming lockers and wrestling boys. The main challenge was to avoid getting caught behind a group of giggling girls that much resembled a school of fish with no mind of its own, each girl following the others mindlessly.
She reached classroom 2B, greatly relieved that she hadn’t been knocked over for the third time this week by some irresponsible and highly inconsiderate passerby. She slipped into a third row seat and sat back, looking up at the clock. It was break, and they had 10 more minutes until class started, but who would want to risk losing a limb in the midst of the hallway hurricane was a mystery to her. Pulling out a book, she waited for Kendall to show up, and hoped that she would make it here alive.
At a minute to twelve, Kendall finally waltzed in, wearing a skirt and crop top, a new attire that she had adopted this year, along with most girls in the school. “Where were you?” Ella asked. “Sorry, got caught behind the masses,” Kendall replied. Ella motioned for her to take the seat next to her. “I have to sit up front today,” Kendall said, “I can’t see the board well enough from the middle of the room.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know. You can sit up here too,” she replied, which she knew was an empty gesture, as Ella would never sit up front with the fish. She just rolled her eyes and got out her notebook.

“Class,” Mr.Stewart stood in front of the room, his glasses hanging perilously at the tip of his nose. He was a very small man, and he had to stand on the tip-toes of his leather shoes to write on the top of the chalkboard. It would be an understatement to say that most of her peers would thoroughly enjoy sticking him under the school buses and leaving him there during afternoon rush, but Ella loved English class. She had notebooks full of stories and poems that she had never even had the chance to turn in. “Over the weekend you will be writing a short story.” The class groaned, including Kendall, for which writing had never been a strong suit.

“I swear to freaking god,” Ella heard the unmistakable voices of Madison and Jade, two girls that she had never been very fond of, in front of her. “Is he trying to ruin our social lives? God, I wish they’d replace him already.” said Jade. “I know,” Madison replied, “I have my birthday party on Sunday, I don’t have time to write some crappy story.”
Ella zoned out at this point, dreaming up ideas and plotlines, her hand itching to write them all down. “This assignment is a bit different,” Mr. Steward began. “The best story will be submitted to a contest, and will have the chance to be published in a young adult literary magazine.” Ella’s head shot up as he said this. She subscribed to just about every teen writing magazine that existed and had always wanted to be featured in one. She wanted people to read her story and think “wow, she’s going places.”
As class was dismissed, she stayed in her desk, lost in thought. “Yo, daydreamer, get up, the lunch line’s getting longer by the minute,” Kendall said, pulling her up by her arm. Once they were out of the classroom, Kendall dragged her aside, “I need to ask you a humongous favor,” she said. “And it’s, like, totally okay if you don’t want to, but I really need you to help me out here, Elle”
“With what?” she replied. The hallway wasn’t crowded anymore, and now Ella was scared we weren’t going to have time to eat lunch. “I need to borrow one of your short stories,” she blurted out. “I have family in town this weekend and I’m so freaking busy. I couldn’t even write a decent story if I had the whole weekend free.”
“I bet you could.”
“Don’t even pretend. You know I’m terrible, but I have to make an A in this class. If I don’t my mom will make me quit the tennis team, and you know how much I love it.” She had just taken up tennis this year and was constantly complained about practices. Ella’s personal opinion was that she was more interested in the cute outfits and the hot college guys that played one court over than the actual sport.
“I am just asking you to let me use one of your old stories. You have, like, millions in those notebooks of yours. It would be a shame to not show them to anybody. You can give me the worst one; it will be better than any crap I could write.”
Ella hesitated, tugging at the strings on her hoodie, trying to make them the same length. Kendall had been her closest friend since second grade, and even though her actions were often questionable, her intentions were usually good.
“I don’t know, won’t we get in trouble?”
“Mr. Stewart doesn’t have to find out. It’s just for this one assignment, I swear. Elle I’m begging you, please do this for me. I promise I’ll pay you back.”
“You said you have a family thing?”
“Yeah, I can’t get out of it. I need your help.”
“Fine, I’ll give you a few pages after school, but you need to rewrite them so that he doesn’t suspect anything.”
“Of course. Thanks Elle, you literally just saved my life.” She leaned over to hug Ella. She had to bend down, since she was wearing wedges. “Yeah, I do that sometimes,” Ella said. “Come on, I think we may have missed lunch.”
Sunday night Ella sat at her desk writing. She had a solid story, and was just touching it up. Her mom had yelled for her to come downstairs about ten minutes ago so that they could drive to dinner, and she could hear her making her way up the stairs. Her mom opened the door, "Come on, Ella, I'm starving. You can finish your story later. We're going to Chipotle."
"Fine, I'll write in the car," she said, grabbing her notebook. Her mom rolled her eyes, "of course you will. Grab your shoes they're by the door."
On the way home, Ella switched between writing and taking bites of her jumbo chicken burrito. "Hey," her mom said, pointing at a large house that was lit up down the street, "are the Keeler's having a party tonight?"
"That's Madison's house. It was her birthday on Wednesday."
"Do you know anyone who's going?"
"Nobody important. Just a bunch of fish."
"A bunch of what?"
"Never mind, you wouldn't get it."
"Well, were you invited? You and Madison used to be best friends."
"That was when we were five, Mom, things change."
"Was Kendall?"
"No, I don't think so, why?"
"Isn't that her getting out of the blue car?" I looked up from my burrito. Sure enough, some girl with shorts that looked like that had been painted on without enough paint was walking up to the enormous house. She blended in perfectly with everyone else. She was almost unrecognizable. "Yeah," Ella said, her voice shaky, "I guess it is."

The second they pulled into the garage she ran upstairs to her room and fell on to my bed. She couldn't believe Kendall. What kind of person takes their best friend's story so that they can go to some party filled with the exact people that she used to hate? Ella pulled out her journal and wrote aggressively, her hand practically ripping through the paper. But for once, writing didn't make her feel better. It didn't calm the anger inside of her, or the tears that burned her eyes and fell, heavy, onto the page, smearing the ink.


Ding. Ella woke up to her computer going off behind her She would have left it alone and gone back to sleep, but she knew that Mr. Stewart was sending out the winner of the short story contest and for some reason she had a feeling she would win. Honestly, while most kids were at Madison Keeler’s birthday party and probably putting off their homework until twelve o’clock last night, she had been writing all weekend. Her chances were high. She blew her nose and opened up her laptop. The email read:



Students,

I was impressed by all of your short stories, but the one that I have chosen to be
submitted into the literary magazine is Kendall Parks’. The story will be posted
outside of classroom 2B if you wish to read it.
See you later,
Mr. Stewart

Ella read the email over three times, taking it all in. That was her story. Her story that had won, but it wasn’t really her story anymore. She had given it away, and it wasn’t her name on the email or on the submission that the magazine would receive. No, it would say Kendall Parks. Kendall Parks. The name that would be posted outside of the classroom. The name that everyone would be talking about. The name that Mr. Stewart would think was the best writer in the class. Kendall Parks, Kendall Parks, Kendall Parks. She stayed lying there in her bed, the name chanting in her head until the yellow light filtered through the blinds, forcing her to accept the morning.

Ella had to plod her way through the crowd surrounding classroom 2B. “Kendall!” She called, trying to get her attention. She was twirling her hair around her finger, giggling with Madison and Jade in the center of the mob. Ella planned to confront her and make her tell Mr. Stewart what she had done before this thing could blow up any more. “Kendall!” She turned to look at Ella and smiled at her. Ella motioned for her to come into the classroom. Reluctantly, she apologized to the two girls and slid through the group like a minnow upstream. Kendall tried to hide her smile as she reached her. "What are you going to do?” Ella asked, trying to conceal her anger. “I mean there’s nothing we can really do now.” Kendall said. “If we tell we’ll both get in trouble. I mean, it’ll be on your record as well as mine. You gave it to me. I guess it’s just best to not say anything.”
“Still, Ken, this is a big deal! You could get into a magazine with this story, which by the way, you didn’t even write in case you forgot.”
“You’re looking at this all wrong. Honestly, I think this whole thing turned out pretty well,” she says without the slightest bit of hesitation. "If you had won you would have hated all of the attention. You don't even want most of these people to know your name."
"If you had just taken the time to write your own story instead of going to Madison Keeler's birthday party, then we wouldn't even be in this situation!" Ella stormed out of the classroom, not bothering to look back at Kendall’s shocked expression, probably contemplating how on earth she had seen through her foolproof plan.
Why did Kendall seem to get it so easy? She won a story contest without even having to work hard at all. She got to go to parties with people that, as much as Ella hated to admit it, she admired with slight jealousy from time to time. Ella had never invested much of her time into social interaction; She preferred to keep her distance and blend in as not to draw any attention to herself. She had always believed this was the way to survive, but judging from her current situation, there were some serious flaws to her plan. While Kendall got to go to parties and sit with Madison Keeler, Ella was sitting alone in the cafeteria staring at a bowl of congealed chicken noodle soup. Life was simply not fair, not the slightest little bit.
She didn't see Kendall again until the end of the day in last period, when in the middle of class, the PA system went off: We have gotten word that Kendall Parks' short story would be featured in the next issue of the Stone Soup magazine. For some reason, Ella wasn't even surprised, everything was playing out perfectly in a fairy-tale sort of way. Except the bad guy was winning, and the good guy was losing, but she supposed that there weren’t always clear lines defining each character. Sometimes one's position was decided by whatever light they were cast in.
Madison and Jade squealed as they hugged Kendall and the teacher smiled while tried to calm the class down. Ella walked up to Kendall, mindlessly shoving through her surrounding classmates. Kendall’s smile quivered a bit as she made eye contact with Ella. “Good job,” Ella said, her voice surprisingly calm, “I hope you’re really happy with your work.”
“Thanks,” Kendall contemplated her answer slightly, “that means a lot.” Ella turned away from her and kept walking until she was out of the door, her teacher not noticing her exit, due to all of the excitement in the classroom. Ella walked into the hallway, which was eerily empty compared to the chaos that usually filled it; It was oddly peaceful.
As she walked down the never-ending tunnel, everything became clearer, as if she was looking into the world through a different lense. Kendall got all of the attention and acclaim, and the story would probably have her name on it forever, but Ella had written the story, and it was her work that had gotten into the magazine, not Kendall’s. She might not get the credit this time, but she would next time, and the time after that, because now she knew that she actually might be good at this whole writing thing. Kendall might get temporary popularity for this story, but it would fade, and it may never happen to her ever again. Ella was going places, she wasn’t caught up in her classmates’ hopes to sail through life on their middle school social status. She saw past all of that, and she was tired of hiding and concealing herself to fit into a system that she had lost all respect for.
So, as she approached the end of corridor, she turned around and began heading back towards the classroom, and if you had seen her from afar, you would have seen a girl holding her head just a bit higher.