(Book One) Do you ever feel as if your life has yet to begin? I've been alive for almost seventeen years now and absolutely nothing has ever happened to me. Not until I met a girl who kick-started my life. She introduced me to love, sex, scandal, ex...
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I stopped hanging out with Kris and Katie.
How could I ditch my friends, my best friends, after one lunch with the cool kids? Well, I tried to sit with my friends at lunch. However, our friendship dynamic had fundamentally shifted. But it wasn't them who'd changed, it was me.
My friends didn't try to push me out. But they went back to gossiping about Ari and her friends, despite my presence.
After one lunch with Ari, I couldn't stomach listening to them. I started to ask myself, "Why had I chosen to hang out with them?". Then it occurred to me. I hadn't chosen anything.
When I'd first started attending Sunny High, I didn't have any friends. The dean had assigned me a friend and I'd gone along the path of least resistance. Like I'd always done because it was easy and drama-free. After I made this realization, I sat with them for the full lunch period—I didn't want to be rude. But when lunch was over, I left with no intention of returning. And I didn't.
The plan wasn't to cut them out of my life completely, only lunch. But I got busy. I started practicing with the dance team before and after school. I was falling in love with dance again.
And my boyfriend, well he loved it too.
Yep, you read me correctly. The other reason I'd started neglecting my fraying friendships. Cameron was back in town and we'd made it official. We went on dates and hang out pretty much every day; including school nights. And we may have even played a little baseball.
Not literally, metaphorically if you know what I mean. No home runs yet, but we were dancing over the third base. We'd come close to rounding the base a couple of times. I'd stopped it. Cameron was always respectful and never pressured me.
I was also spending a lot of time with Ari, which meant I couldn't spend time with Kris and Katie. As a result, text messages from them were left on read. Eventually, they stopped texting.
In my defense, the time spent with Ari wasn't fun. Scratch that, spending time with Ari was always fun. It did at least lean in the academic direction. Her hoverboard idea was far more difficult than she'd originally thought. Any extra time I'd had, we spent working on it.
We spent hours talking and laughing while we worked. We took "breaks", spending them going out to eat, going to games, or down at the skatepark. We probably would have finished early, had we not taken so many "breaks". I'd mentioned this to Ari, and she said I was wrong and then proceeded to practice a kick-flip on her skateboard. I might've been right on this one.
Today is the last day to get the hoverboard finished. It's due on Friday along with the presentation. Saturday was our party but today it happens to be our birthday. Because of this, I'm a bit whiner than usual. I wanted to spend my birthday with my boyfriend; instead, I'm in Ari's stuffy garage playing with power tools.
