Crushes

I had two very distinct crushes that first year. I was shy and awkward and I never would have dreamed of acting on these thoughts. I wasn't that girl, I didn't know how to flirt yet and looking back now, I realize that I probably shouldn't have known how. Even though I'd come from a school where girls my age were already sneaking around with boys and some were even already sleeping with them...the idea of even kissing a boy made my throat close up and my stomach tighten so much I thought I'd keel over.

The first crush: Mike. He was friends with my brother and a year older then me. Friends with my brother = bad boy. I'd sit in my room and wait until I knew he was in the living room, I would then make an excuse to go out and talk to my brother. I'd perfected this, or so I thought, over the years. My brother had no shortage of friends, some of which I liked more then others. Looking in the mirror before leaving my own bedroom had become habit. Checking my hair and my makeup, seeing if my shorts were just short enough and my tank just low enough. I wasn't one of those girls that had the body of a 16 year old. I, sadly, had the body of a 12 year old so there really wasn't much to show off.

All of my friends knew about my crush, he was cute and bad...and the kind of boy your mother told you to stay away from. Of course, not my mom. My mom was the one that told me for as long as I could remember not to settle down, to date around, to explore my options.
I went to my locker one day at the end of the day and opened my locker to find notes and streamers and signs inside with hearts and Mike's name all over them. My face turned bright red instantly and I again cursed my pale skin and Irish heritage for giving me away. I slammed the locker shut, looking around to be sure that nobody had seen. Everyone seemed lost in their own hustle and bustle of getting out of class that it seemed I was in the clear. I tried to open my locker a tiny bit to get my bag and my books without anyone noticing. Mike walked by, he smiled at me and said hi. I almost died, my whole body resembling a lobster at this point only to see my friends off to the side holding their sides from laughing so hard.

I don't know what happened to Mike. Our middle school was 7th and 8th grade, so the following year he was in the high school and at some point he and my brother stopped hanging out. It was probably for the best, really.

Phil: Phil was in my class. He was mysterious and polite but again, kind of a bad boy. I didn't know a lot about him, but he lived in my neighborhood and I'd sometimes get to sit by him on the bus. On the rare occasion we ended up in the same seat, I'd sit there silently trying desperately to think of something to say...and when I did, I generally would wish I could take it back.
My friends and I had a nickname for Phil, which was PopCorn. We thought we were so clever. Of course I realize now that everyone probably knew what/who we were talking about, but at the time, it seemed like the best thing ever.
We'd spend hours in my room, talking about Phil and Bryan, the boy Katie was crushing on. We'd talk hypotheticals about 'going out' and about kissing boys. Swapping stories of first kisses, of course mine was fictional because I couldn't admit that I hadn't had my first kiss. That seemed like the worst thing in the world. I mean, everyone else had kissed someone and since I was the new girl, I had the luxury of making up a story that seemed believable. I'd kissed a boy while at a wedding, he was 16 and we danced all night while he slipped me glasses of wine. Now, that part of the story was true....but in my version, he kissed me before we left. I had to drive home with my mom and my grandparents, my grandma insisting that he had his hands on my butt while we danced. I claimed he did not and then pretended to sleep the rest of the way home. I most certainly was not discussing where anyone had their hands with my mother and my grandparents!

Part 1

I survived that first day...and the days that followed. I can't say I survived unscathed, but I think I came out a better person then I was going in.

I eventually gave up on hating my parents for moving me away to places unknown. Although, I'm not sure my dad has forgiven me for the phone bills I wracked up calling my best friend. What did he expect? I was, after all, a 13 year old girl.

Katie and I became friends almost instantly. I'm not sure what it was but we just clicked. It turned out that we'd met 2 years earlier at a church group with a mutual friend. We were pretty much destined to be best friends.
Tara was quiet and sweet, we had English together and she later told me that she thought I was kind of a snob because I didn't talk much. It didn't take long before the note passing and laughing between classes started.
Natalie was always the independent one, the girl that loved her friends but knew how to deal without us. I always envied that about her.

The four of us quickly became our own little group. We weren't the popular girls and we weren't the outcasts. We had each other and in the 7th grade, that was enough.

The first few months were still rough, even with new friends. It got to the point where my parents were pulling me aside, asking if I was okay because I went to school and then came home and hung out in my room. Truth be told, what else was I going to do? Of course, within a few weeks they probably wished they hadn't brought it up. It didn't take long before I was begging for a sleep overs, asking my dad to drop me off someplace or wanting to know if I could walk to Katie's house.
That's something else I should mention, my mom. She didn't drive then and doesn't now. It was always up to my dad to do drop off and pick up...and it wasn't always an easy task to get him to agree to. Still, he'd take his turn piling all of us in to our family car to trotting us off to the football game or the movie theater. I would secretly hate it when it was my turn, I would pray that he wouldn't be wearing his cut off jean shorts, smelling of cigarette smoke and beer. I'd keep my fingers crossed that we wouldn't run out of gas or pray that he'd actually remember what time to pick us up.

The rest of that year was rather uneventful. My friends parents were still trying to feel me out, trying to figure out if I was the bad seed. To some, I most certainly was and to others I was just that nice red headed girl. The reality was that I was somewhere in the middle. I was certainly no angel, but over all I was just too paranoid to truly be bad. My brother had done a pretty good job of scaring me into behaving, and no, not because he was such an exceptional big brother. More because I saw how difficult he made everything on my parents, I saw him drink and do drugs and I saw him scream and storm out of the house. I learned all 4 letter words from him and I watched as my parents would shake their heads and talk in hushed voices not knowing what to do. While I didn't know who I was or what I was going to be, some where I knew I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be that girl, the girl that put my parents through that again.

That first year in a new town with new friends and trying to be a new me, probably impacted my life more then I realize. The year was a bit of a blurr, lots of half memories...boxes of notes and note books filled with hearts and boys names that I would keep hidden beneath my school books. It wasn't until the following year that I actually started on the slippery slope that is "going out".