Upon entering the ninth grade, I was one of approximately one-third of our new class that had just graduated from the Cranbrook-Kingswood Middle Schools. Although the barest of social distinctions lingered from these CK middle school graduates, there were still vast holes the hindered the completion of each clique. This was an opportunity for new and returning students to transition from one social group to another if they so desired. Though the founding members were present to represent, a supporting team still needed to be drafted.

One particular experience sticks out in my mind as to when the social formations began in earnest. Shortly after the new school year began, there is ritually a spirit week that is meant to heighten a sense of community and school pride between individual people, their grades, and the school as a whole. On the last Friday of Spirit Week is the junior-senior Powder Puff game, preceded by a bonfire for the entire upper school later that evening. For the freshmen in the stadium stands, it wasn’t so much about the football game, but the excitement of the night to come. Throughout the course of the memorably very rainy game, plans were made with close friends to meet before the bonfire so no one would have to arrive alone.

Because we were all freshmen, no one had a license to drive, let alone a car. The majority of the kids had arranged for parents to take them home before returning for the bonfire. However, many students had parents who worked, or they lived too far away from school to make the drive home and back worthwhile. I was one of these approximately twenty freshmen, girls and boys alike. In retrospect, I laugh at how awkwardly we began getting acquainted. Though a few had friends with them, most of us were only on a first name basis with the others, if even that. The rain kept us together, sheltered in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center. Quite clumsily, each girl or boy was hesitant in testing the water, to see if these other kids might have something in common, enough for the basis of a friendship. At the time, the fact that none of us had a ride home had to be enough.

The next few hours drifted by as darkness and the bonfire approached. When the time had come to walk down to the lower fields, our new circle had taken the walk together. Looking back, I had made only one friendship that is still strong today; I had found a true friend. The friendship was the rare kind that transversed any social formations that were established that night. Even though today this true friend and I run with different crowds, this friend still looks out for me.

Going back to that night, the process of forming cliques was rejuvenated and amplified at the bonfire because now, nearly every freshman had arrived. We apprehensively stood in nearly perfect circles, migrating slightly toward the light of the fire so we could see the faces of the voices that we would want to remember at school the following Monday.

Our circles were like bubbles. Two groups would merge; introductions were made if necessary. When the moment felt right, a small bubble might float off to join another group. It was almost as it you could physically watch the cliques form.

Four years later, with only my friendship with what has become to be my protector remaining, I sometimes laugh at that night. Most of the cliques that had formed are now disrupted. A student who arrived in a later year would seriously doubt the sanity of someone who spoke about how befriended who that night. However, despite the fact that those particular clique members have parted ways, the intangible thing that had united them remains. Each time a kid felt they belonged with a different social group, they would soon be replaced by another floating in. Eventually, all members have changed, with few friendships remaining intact, yet the clique still remains.