something i didn't understand

I was in the 5th grade at my new all girls school, The Hockaday School. I was a very shy and timid girl. I was never the one to go up to an unknown and strike a conversation with them, it just wasn't in my nature. If it weren't for my best friend, who also transfered from Christ the King School, I probably would have spent my first week eating lunch alone. When lunchtime came around on that next Monday afternoon, a "lifer," as she was called walked up to me in the lunch line and wanted to know if I would like to sit with her and her friends at their lunch table.
Although we were only in the 5th grade it seemed that this girl had the whole middle school at the tips of her fingers, and still to this day is struck me odd as how her and her friends had their own lunch table. It was unofficially theirs but all the girls who ate in that cafeteria knew that it was Danielle Smith's and her friends' table. When Danielle asked me to sit with them at their lunch table it was her way of inviting me to join her group of friends.