Popularity is Complicated

　　"Um, why are we going out for dinner together?"

　　"Well, three reasons. First, because I've been thinking about our Theorem and I have a question. How does it work if you're g*y?"

　　"Huh?"

　　"Well it's all graph-going-up means boy dumps girl and graph-going-down means girl dumps boy, right? But what if they're both boys?"

　　"It doesn't matter. You just assign a position to each person. Instead of being 'b' and 'g', it could just as easily be 'b1' and 'b2.' That’s how algebra works."

　　"Which would explain my C-minus. Okay. Thank God. I was really worried that it would only help the straights, and that's not much of a Theorem. Reason two is I’m trying to get Hollis to like me, and she likes you, so if I like you, she'll like me." Colin was looking at her, confused. "C-minus in algebra; A-plus in coolology. See, popularity is complicated, yo. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about liking; you have to really like being liked, and also sorta like being disliked." Colin listened intently, nibbling the inside of his thumb. Listening to Lindsey talk about popularity made him feel a little bit of the mysterium tremendum. "Anyway," she went on, "I need to find out what's going on with her selling land. That guy Marcus built this cookie-cutter house subdivision south of Bradford. I mean, it's vomitous. Hollis would never stand for that shit.'

　　"Oh, okay," Colin said, feeling a bit like a pawn.

　　……

An Abundance of Katherines, P138
John Green
ISBN 978-0-14-241070-7