The First Time

Prologue

I was walking down the hall of Blake Preparatory Boarding School (a.k.a. Blake Prep) with my brother, Alex, and my roommate, Serena. They were talking to each other about something I hadn't been paying attention to because I was thinking back to why in the world I was even here, walking down the hallways of a school I did not want to be at.

"You okay, Azalia?" Alex asked.

"I'm fine, Alex," I said. "Just thinking."

It was our first day of school at Blake Prep. And by first, I meant the first day ever attending this school, unlike my roommate Serena, who had been here since the start of her high school career. 

Our parents decided on our last day of junior year to spontaneously tell us that we'd be moving to a boarding school at the end of summer.

Fun, right? The downside to having spontaneous parents is the fact that they wait until last minute to tell you things, and they leave you with no time to prepare.

And when it comes to people moving, it's always the same sob story: You had to leave all your friends that you've known since grade school to come to a school all the way on the other side of the country because your parents are forcing you to.

This school, as defined:

Blake Preparatory Boarding School: (n) One of the best high schools in California, one of the best in the United States, and possibly one of the best in the world, known for its excellence of preparing students for the journey ahead to college and helping them decide on what they want to do for the rest of their life. Established in 1970, Blake Prep has been successful in producing the most students that get accepted into Ivy League and top colleges each year...

But in my mind the definition was:

Blake Prep: (n) A place of hell on earth. Known for the exceeding number of smart intellectual students, but also the hot, attractive, well-known bad boys/ jerks/ jocks and the cheerleading team, which consisted of half the team as sluts and the other half quite modest. Blake Prep appears to the world as highly prestigious, when it is actually like typical high schools full of drama, and students that put up a façade of properness and preppiness.

I'd like to say that the sob story didn't apply to me, but sadly, it did. I wasn't happy about moving because my life at home was absolutely great. I had great friends, a great family, and a great community since the town I lived in—Jasper, Massachusetts—was one of those little tight-knit towns with a population of about 400.

So you can see why I didn't want to attend this school when I could've been at home, cuddling in my fuzzy blankets and eating ice cream with the friends I've known for forever. But my parents wanted us to leave the town for senior year—something about opening up new opportunities and broadening our horizons.

The same thing happened to them when they found an opportunity to get out of Jasper and make a living for themselves. Of course, they left to do the things they loved and did succeed in making a living. When my parents finally thought they were financially stable, they moved back to Jasper to settle down which resulted in Alex and me.

I saw where they were coming from and knew that they were just trying to do what they thought was best for us, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

So here I was, one of the victims of the moving syndrome and moving sob story, trying to survive the first time I got out of the little safety bubble of the town I've lived in all my life. And when we got to Blake Prep a week ago, I was hoping it would change my mind about the whole situation. In a way it did, and it could've probably been worse, but it was actually more disastrous than you would ever think.