Him

Chapter 3 - Freshman Year

Freshman year... Probably one of the scariest moments in my life. It was bad enough starting at a new school months prior to being sent to another school that you had still managed to get lost in. Going to a new, much larger school? God, that was worse for me. Even as I write this now, I can honestly admit I probably still would manage to get lost if I had to go back there!

My class moved up to high school in 2009. For them, they had a slight idea of the school. From what I had learned along with some other new students, the high school was actually to separate buildings that had been combined. One building was originally the middle school while the other half was the high school. But seeing as there had been so many students coming in, the school board decided that it would be best to combine the two buildings with a long hallway that spanned partially through the woods that we all called "The Connector". It was a long hallway with all glass windows that we would take daily to get from one building to another. For us freshmen coming in and seeing the new hallway, it was typically where we would cause the most trouble.

 On the first day, we would be getting dropped off in the old building and waiting in the gym before we would make our way to the auditorium to be welcomed into the school. I still remember to this day how that went down. My mom and I had been sitting in the car together, I was too scared to get out and nervously texting my friends asking them where they were and how long until they got there. They took the bus while I got driven in, much easier than waiting for the bus at 5:45am and being on the bus until we got to the school for 7:45am. What we would learn is buses dropped students off in the main entrance while students getting dropped off by parents or siblings would get dropped off in the rear.  So I knew I wouldn't be seeing my friends and was begging my mom to bring me to the main entrance or I was going to walk there myself. But before we could, there was a gentle tapping on the window of our car and a woman in her 40's had been there with a friendly smile. It turned out that her son was like me and had been too nervous to go in himself. We had been the same age, but he was in a different class in middle school so we never really met. And before we knew it, my mom and his mom were planning for us to meet and go in together. A bit awkward, but he turned out to be a nice guy and someone I would be in homeroom with as well as in some classes our freshman year.

Along with him, I found some of the people I made fast friends with were in classes with me as well as a boy I had known from homeroom in middle school, Kyle, who was pretty much one of my best friends at this point. Kyle had also been the one in 8th grade who had been in chorus with me and had professed his love to me and I told him I loved him like a brother. At the time, a lot of girls had assumed he wasn't really into women, so it was no surprise when he would talk to girls and immediately get friend-zoned. But even after that, Kyle and I are still the best of friends to this day, who I affectionately call "Big Brother" and I'm his "Lil' Sis". Even so, he has still not given up after knowing each other for 11 years, he'll still try to confess his love to me and get one date. He knows I won't date, but we still have our hangout days where we'll go to Dunkin Donuts and sit in one of our cars, sipping coffee and having our little rant sessions.

~*~

With 9th grade came new opportunities and friends. I had been active in chorus as well as the high school's agriculture program. I made friends quicker than I would have expected, and even made friends with some I didn't think I would have. One thing we found we had loved was study hall. It had been something my friends and I grew to love. Every day we had study, we would find ourselves signing out and going to spend the period in the library. 

Did we actually study?  Well... Sometimes we did. Most of the times it would be more so that we would go play on the computers and play some online games we found. At the time, Plague Inc. was the obsession for us for at least a year and a half, and a few alchemy games until the librarians caught on and tried to ban the sites. There was that, or we would all gather in the back of the library at a table and play Bullshit. The name of the game says it all; The goal of the game was to get rid of all of your cards and try to lie your way into getting rid of them all. But if someone caught onto your lie, they could call "Bullshit" and check. They'd draw if you were telling the truth, and you'd have to draw if they caught you in a lie. The other trick was you had to try keeping quiet so the librarians didn't catch on or they'd take the cards for the period!

When we had our study period games, other classes tended to come in to use the library as well. Sometime it was fine, other times you'd be hating it because you'd see someone who had been in there that you didn't want to see. This included those in study period as well. One day in particular, two freshmen boys had been bugging my friends and I nonstop, mostly coming at me when I would tell them to back off. This had been going on for a few weeks and this happened to be when there was a class in. Who was in the class? Well, the boy who teased me relentlessly in 8th grade after school! Not only him, but the boy he lived with. At the time, I still had no idea what his name had been since he rarely spoke. But he was a taller boy with dark blonde/light brown hair and dark brown eyes. His brother, who I knew as Rich, had been much different. Very charming, social, and would proudly announce that he had foreign blood. Rich normally was the one who would come over if he saw the other boys teasing us. He'd casually walk over, sit down, and throw his arm over my shoulders and act as if he had been there the whole time. And every time, he'd ignore the fact my face would turn bright red or that his brother would just be watching him from his spot at the computers.

At the time, I really never realized that the boys seemed to just hang around me more for other reasons than just hanging out. 

~*~

About midway through the quarter was when it was clear that certain boys would be more friendly to certain girls. I happened to be one of the girls (and still have no clue what they saw in me), but I had gotten a lot of attention from boys. But I really didn't have an interest in boys. I really just wanted to focus on my grades and ride my horse, nothing really made me feel drawn to the boys. But I found I had gained some popularity after some students found out my dad had a classic car (still does). One boy in particular, who had been the one who annoyed my friends and I daily in study, had met my dad one day and they talked about his car. Like my dad, he was obsessed with this car in particular, Mustang. One thing led to another and I found out he had a video he was showing off of my dad doing a burnout for him. After that, he and his friends started to try and get my attention. From being asked to dances to being asked to have lunch, they tried their hardest. One was even bold enough to slip me his number in study as he passed me. But I wasn't interested, I knew they had just wanted me for something I had. I had hated that and I refused to get involved with any of that.

But it wasn't just these boys who liked me for my dad's Mustang doing this. There were boys in other classes who had been asking me out all of a sudden. One that had been the boy I walked in with on the first day of school left me a note on my desk in history to say he had really liked me and wanted to go out. I didn't know what to say at the time as it was all so sudden. I was 14 years old, I really hadn't been looking to date. 

Then there was the best one: An email asking me out. A science partner in a group had my email for a project we did at the beginning of the year. He used it to his advantage to ask me out. I had been caught off guard again and didn't even think twice as I quickly emailed back "I have a boyfriend".

With this going on, I was finding myself getting more distracted again. Like the year before, I found my grades were suffering. Along with my bad grades, I also had to say goodbye to Tiegs after she had an accident outside while racing around with another horse. She had come running into her stall and ended up losing her footing. As a result, she ended up falling and her career as a riding horse came to an end. She was still able to move and get around, but the vet told us a saddle and even someone my size on her back would cause her pain. It was a tough decision, but we had decided Tiegs could live out her days with one of my aunt's friends on her farm as a companion. Having to give away my horse had been the hardest thing and affected my grades. As the quarter ended, I found I had failed Algebra and my Digital Portfolio was not completed. Then came the decision my parents made for me to do summer school. It wasn't exactly how I wanted to spend my summer, but I had no other choice in the matter. 

Summer school had been 5 weeks of sitting in an empty school, spending our break time trying to find out ways to wander through the entire high school, and making friends with older students. By the end of summer school, we had felt a little more confident in finding our way through high school. 

With summer school over, we still had another month and a half of summer to look forward to.