Color Blind

Chapter 2

My first year in high school was a blast. Tia finally talked me into trying out for the cheerleading squad with her, and like she said, we both made it. I was wary in the beginning when I saw how...extra...the girls at our first tryout were, but later found most of them to be ok. They were just like any other high school girls, only waaay too excited. And I mean 24-7. Sometimes they got on my nerves, but for the most part, I was already used to putting up with Tia acting this way all day every day, so I figured a few more gigglers in my life wouldn't hurt...much.

Tia tried to hook me up with Scott a few more times before I got to high school, but I would always catch her in the act and pull a no-show. Eventually, she left it alone and introduced me to my new boyfriend, Lance. Everyone called him Lucky because he had cheated death three times...twice without so much as a scratch on him. The first two times were in car accidents when he was in middle school – don't ask me why he had been the one driving – and the last time was when a girl stabbed him in the back because she caught him cheating on her.

I thought this last story was hilarious when he told me, but he didn't think it was quite as funny. From the minute I met him, Lucky had me wrapped around his little finger. He said all of the right things and did everything that I ever asked him to do. I never asked for a lot, but he was always right there when I called. The only problem was that he was also always trying to get me to have sex with him. It wasn't that I didn't want to, I just didn't want to right then. I was only fourteen years old and had only been going with him for a month or two. I at least wanted to wait and see if I could trust him first. I mean, I had only known this guy a couple of months and already he was acting like I had no choice but to give it up to him sooner or later. This was our only real issue, though.

I was so happy in the beginning when I found out that he liked me. Lucky was the kind of guy that all the girls wanted, and none of the guys were mad at him for it. Like Tia, he was also the type to have no stigmas about dating any race and, aside from my cousin, he was probably the most popular kid in school. I was actually surprised that he didn't end up liking Tia instead of me. She seemed more his type. Before I started dating him, I had only seen Lucky with really cutesy girls that grinned a lot and worshiped the ground that he walked on. Of course, I'm not saying that Tia would have worshiped the ground that anyone walked on, because that would have never happened. I'm just saying that she was the cutesy type and she grinned a lot. Lucky always said that he liked me, though, because I was "fine as hell" and didn't try to "swing from his nuts" like everyone else.

Whatever that meant.

Whenever he came around, all of the girls would run up to him and all of the guys would dap him up. For the most part, I would kind of get moved to the side when all of this was going on until Lucky would reach back and grab my hand. That's what I liked about him. He never forgot that I was around, and he never disrespected me...unless we were having an argument about sex. But after a while, we even stopped arguing about that, too, so I figured that we must have had the perfect relationship. Of course, that was only because this was my first "real" relationship and I still didn't know any better.

One day, I told Tia that I was thinking about having my first time with Lucky. She looked at me for a super long time and frowned up her nose. "Are you sure you're ready for that?" she asked doubtfully. "And with Lucky, Rica...I don't know..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean, one day you're talking about you want to wait until you get married and the next day you're talking about doing it with a guy you just met this year."

"But you did it with Lafayette and you just met him this year!"

Lafayette was Tia's new boyfriend. At first I figured there was no way that could be his real name. I thought she just called him Lafayette because he was from Louisiana, and because he looked and sounded like a brown-skinned, light-eyed Creole. I came to find out later, though, that it really was his name and that he really was Creole. He laughed for days after I finally told him about that one.