What an interesting thread. I will give my simplified version of school...
Had a very best friend in 6th grade... she moved away. (Then years later committed suicide.)
So at the beginning of 7th grade, I started hanging around with the "popular" kids. I was skinny, and pretty shy. But they let me hang around anyway. By mid 7th grade, this clique of so called friends were so two faced to each other it was unreal. I still stuck with my "friends", by 8th grade, it was so bad, but really hard to get out of. Each week a different person would be bullied so badly, and it seemed for me and my week it was worse. And these kids being bullied were in the same clique of friends that were doing the bullying to them. I have cried at the lunch table, where most of the bullying went on. I was called "leach" for sitting with these same friends.
By the end of 8th grade I couldn't take my "friends" any longer! I vowed to myself when I started 9th grade at the high school, I wouldn't give them the time of day. I made several friends in the 9th grade, that would give me a taste of what true friendship was about. Loyality, companionship, and sisterly love. I made a wise choice in the 9th grade and gained lifelong friendships. Here it is 25 years after the 9th grade, and the girls I formed a bond with are still close with me... and never a two faced day in 25 years!
And that popular group? They are mostly drug addicts, all wrinkled up, fat, and still talking about each other at our high school reunions... Lol, oh yeah, me and my friends are actually the reunion cordinators, and I am the treasurer... LOL My My how things change...........