Back To You (2 page)

*****

There I sat in third period English with Mrs. Laurent (the rumored bitch).  So far I thought she was pretty cool.  Don’t get me wrong, I figured she would be tough, but there was something about her I liked.  Maybe it was that she had a pretty face with bright grey eyes.  She was actually quite pretty for her age.  Yeah, I knew it was only the first day, but I just had a feeling that I would truly like her.  And I found out that Mrs. Laurent was one of the librarians too.  Maybe she could help me find interesting books to read for class.

I tried to pay complete attention, but I could not stop thinking about that guy I bumped into.  I felt so stupid!  He just looked at me and then seemed to dismiss me.  But he was cute!  In a sort of serious, non-smiling way.  I swear, it was only third period and my brain was already swimming!  So much to take in and learn.  So many new people.  At least my stomach wasn’t doing backflips after being blasted with so much at once.  Ho
wever, I just realized my fourth period algebra class was the furthest classroom from the cafeteria.  Great.  Not like I would have much appetite to eat anyway, but I wasn’t too thrilled about the mad dash to eat school food.

Back to the reading list for the semester.  I had not read very many listed, so there were lots to choose from.  Maybe I would try to read
Gone With The Wind
...

He was cute, wasn’t he?
  I wondered what his name was.  I wondered if he was a freshman.  I wondered if we would have any classes together.

FOCUS Suzy!
  Yes,
Gone With The Wind
was definitely a book I had always wanted to read.  Nothing like a good southern romance with a bitchy but feisty heroine.  Sometimes I wish I could be more like that myself.

I wondered if he noticed me or thought I was nothing special like most of the guys thought about me.  I wondered if he thought I was pretty.  I wondered if I would ever stop wondering this kind of stuff.  Doubt it.

After three weeks, Mrs. Laurent suggested that I change classes to the college prep class during fifth hour.  I realized very quickly that I was much more advanced than the students in my original class, so I was glad when she talked to me about it.  I had to rearrange some of my classes to get it done, but I was ready.    It was like I felt something better was coming.

So far high school hadn’t been too bad.  I adjusted well and quickly to the changes.  Changing classes, increased hom
ework, new faces and names to remember.  It all came pretty easily to me.  School was actually not too horrible.  I was meeting new people and making new friends in addition to my old ones.  I even felt like I fit in a little better.

Reneigh sat in front of me in Mrs. Laurent’s class, which
was both good and bad.  As long as we controlled how much we talked and passed notes, then we would probably stay out of trouble.  However, I was relieved that she was there to help break the ice.  There were a lot of people from Holy Cross, the catholic school in town, and I didn’t know very many of them.  I usually liked to sit up front or close to the teacher in class because I was a total nerd.  But in a college prep class, I was not the only nerd in Mrs. Laurent’s class, so I was stuck at the end of the row in the back of the class.  And sitting directly across from me was Jack. 

Jack Schlosser.  The guy that I bumped into on the first day of school.  At least he smiled at me when I sat down.  Hes
itantly.  Hmmm.  He was so cute!  Dark blonde hair kind of spiky on top and curled slightly around his ear, warm hazel eyes, crooked smile with a slight gap in between his front teeth.  He didn’t dress like everyone else really but he didn’t stand out either.  Maybe that was what made me realize he wasn’t like everyone else.  Most people, including guys, got into the 80’s with bold colors and wild hairstyles.  Jack was a bit more understated.  His clothes were nice, but he kept his shirt untucked over jeans that weren’t too loose and weren’t too tight.

H
e smiled at me.  I felt a little nudge in my heart, but quickly dismissed it as being a bit nervous about missing the first few weeks in there.  I just wanted to sink into my chair and keep quiet.

I suppose I dismissed his smile for a few reasons.  One:  I couldn’t focus on much that day except catching up and fitting in the class and all that crap.  Two:  I figured he was just being nice.  And three:  I was head over heels in love with Pete, a guy from a rival schoo
l.  The only problem was that Pete didn’t really know I existed.

*****

He couldn’t believe it.  The day had been fairly boring so far, until he got to Mrs. Laurent’s class.  And SHE walked in.  She just had a way about her.  The way she walked, the way she smiled and, just simply, the way she just WAS.  He’d gotten so used to seeing the girls he had known forever, that looking at her was like a breath of fresh air.  Today she switched classes and now she sat right across from him.  In a way it felt like all of the air had left him and he was left feeling as if he was lost in a dream. 
Perhaps English won’t be quite so boring now
, he thought with a smile.

He was used to daydreaming in class.  His visions usua
lly started out with Beth Anne, but recently the image of Suzy infiltrated his reverie.  He had seen her here and there at school.  She wasn’t just cute to him.  She was beautiful.  She was graceful.  She was smart.  Each time he thought of her, he felt a slight tingle shoot through him.  He was beginning to wonder what it would feel like to run his fingers through her crazy hair.  He wanted to get close to her so he could look into her eyes and see the smile that was always hiding just behind the surface.

This wasn’t good.  He
desperately wanted the courage to ask her out, but he struggled with the fear of rejection.  Most guys did.  He knew that even though she would smile at him, she probably didn’t really think much about him.  He wasn’t sure he could handle the same kind of heartbreak he had received from Beth Anne.  Maybe he just wasn’t attractive. 
Do I smell funny?  Have food in my teeth?
  It didn’t matter, he just didn’t have the guts to do it.  Not yet anyway.  Until then he would sneak a peek at her whenever she was reading or asking a question, or even passing a note to Reneigh.

*****

The year before, a teen dance club opened in town.  It was called Monopoly’s.  It was so cool inside!  Basically it was a large metal warehouse that had exposed beams and supports.  It was decorated in the theme of the board game. The walls were covered in huge pieces of plywood painted to look like property cards.  The dance floor was painted to look like the actual board with all of the properties and stuff.  The DJ booth was “jail” and was up a flight of steps looking over the dance floor.  The rest of the place was painted black and red.  The concept behind the club was to provide a really cool social outlet that would keep teens off the streets and away from drinking and drugs.  No one under the age of thirteen or over the age of eighteen was allowed in.  The music was loud, lights were dim, and it was the perfect place to be on the weekends. 

And we were there.  Every weekend.  Most of the time I went over to Reneigh’s house, or she came to mine so we could get ready to go out.  It was a huge process!  Wash the hair, pick out the clothes, put on the makeup and fix the hair.  Curling irons were ev
erywhere, clothes thrown around the room as we tried to find the perfect outfit.  We would emerge in clouds of hairspray and perfume, ready to meet the boy of our dreams. 

By this time, I was beginning to notice that Donna and I
hadn’t been spending as much time together.  We didn’t have any classes together that year.  Plus she had a serious boyfriend.  Sure, we still spent the night here and there, but this was where the separation began.  I missed her, but was getting caught up in the social events and some of the popular people.  I had never considered myself popular, and truthfully, although I envied some of the girls who seemed so popular, I didn’t really like many of them. 

Teenage girls were a mystery to anyone who tried
to figure them out, including ourselves.  Popular teenage girls are even harder to figure out.  Some of them are popular because they are obviously sweet and smart and cute and all that crap.  Others are popular because they “put out” according to what is spent on them on a date.  And then you have the bitches.  They are popular because people are afraid to make them mad.  They are usually hanging out in packs, talking about people behind their backs.  Our school was no different.  We had leaders and we had followers, make that “worshipers”.  I think it was the worshipers that got on my nerves the most.  The worshipers always seemed to be in competition for attention, doing everything they could to gain approval from the “beautiful ones”.  This process really brought out the worst in them.  Seriously.  Some of those girls were just nasty, mean and hateful.

As for me, I guess I was sort of in my own boat.  Like I said, I never thought of myself as popular.  I had gotten to know a lot of the girls at school but chose not to hang out with most of them.  Not because I was being a snob, but I was just not up for the competition, and I hated two faced bitches who don’t know what being a friend meant.  I would rather be a good friend than a worshiper.  I was stuck someplace between wanting to be pe
rfect and doing everything I could to make everyone like me.  And yet I just didn’t want to be like them.  Besides, I figured I wasn’t good enough to be part of the pack.  I had always been petrified to find out that someone didn’t like me.  It would haunt me for days, weeks, months.  Why?  Why wouldn’t they like me?  What did I do, or didn’t do?  What could I do to change their mind?  I would toss it all around in my head, tormenting over not being pretty enough or smart enough or funny enough or mean enough or or or...  It was truly torture what I put myself through.  I guess that acceptance was a stronger drug than anything you could buy.  Mom said sometimes girls are mean when they were jealous.  I had no idea why they would be jealous of me.  Self confidence was what I lacked the most.

I could have blamed lots of things on my total lack of
self esteem.  Was it because my dad left home and remarried when I was eight years old?  Of the three of us, Dad spent more time with me, the baby.  The oldest, Andrea, was ten years older than me.  Kim was eight years older.  And by that time in my life, they had moved out on their own.  Before the divorce, I would sit outside my parent’s bedroom door listening to them argue.  I don’t remember what the arguments were about.  I think they just argued about anything and everything. 

My parents were a teenage statistic.  Dad and Mom got to
gether, then got pregnant. They got married.  Andrea was born two days after Mom’s eighteenth birthday.  Life wasn’t easy, but they managed.  Kim came along and changed the perfect child image of Andrea.  The resentments started.  Kim seemed to instigate irritation.  She was once described as a roomful of people all by herself.  Andrea was quiet, more reserved.  Both got decent grades but didn’t love school.  And both were beautiful.  Long dark brown hair, green eyes and stunning in their own right.  Andrea was thin.  Kim wasn’t.  Actually Kim wasn’t fat, she just wasn’t a stick with big boobs like Andrea was.  And for some reason, this was a thorn in Dad’s side.  He constantly harped on Kim about her weight.  She wasn’t perfect by his standards. 

A
nd then I came along.  Call me the “surprise” baby.  Or maybe I was the last attempt to hold the cracking marriage together.  Didn’t work.  Here was this white-headed baby that had a perky personality.  Theatrical, musical, ambitious, and determined.  And all packaged with a beaming smile.  Both of my parents separately called me their “little ray of sunshine”, not knowing that the other called me that too.  Mom threatened Dad when he tried to force me to NOT be left-handed.  I guess he listened because I was about as left-handed as they get, except I could do just about everything right-handed too.

I am pretty sure the beginning of the end of their ma
rriage was when Dad decided to move the family from Southern California (and everything they knew) to Little Rock, Arkansas.  His reasoning?  Mom says he wanted to hunt.  Seems like a goofy reason to move your family as far away from everything.  I imagine there was more of a reason but I never heard it.  I was six months old.

By the time I was five, my dad worked as a salesman
, and my mom was sick and tired of being a housewife.  Money wasn’t flowing in because my Dad was pursuing a career way beneath his abilities.  Mom got a job at a local five star fancy steakhouse.   She started working, and the fragile life we led went downhill fast.  Dad traveled a lot for his job.  Mom found a new social life with her friends at work.  Andrea always had a boyfriend.  And Kim?  Well, she got stuck with me.  It was a pretty typical middle child syndrome for her.  Add that to an explosive temper and bigger than life personality, and you had a pretty volatile situation when it came to Kim.  Needless to say, although we had a good relationship, she wasn’t always the NICEST babysitter.

When Dad was home, my sisters
disappeared.  So did Mom.  For the first time since Dad became a father, he was responsible for one of his children.  He was pretty tough sometimes.  Only one toy allowed in the living room at a time.  Nothing that made noise or it would be “de-noised”.  He didn’t know how to cook much of anything, so we usually ended up eating eggs of some sort.  He really liked fried eggs over easy.  Me too.  After eating, we would sit in the living room watching football or some nature show on PBS.  I learned a lot about the habits of many animal species at a young age.  Here was the best part though, when I started getting tired, I would crawl into his lap and he would just let me lay there, snuggled in his arms.  He smelled like cigarettes and deodorant.  My father wasn’t perfect, even if he expected perfection, but I knew he loved me.