The chapters will get longer and better as we progress, just a reminder. Also! Please leave feedback, it gives me a sense of direction and it helps a lot. Please enjoy.
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Future Aida speaking here; I know it's confusing but bear with me ladies and gents.
Without seeming awfully cliche, in reference to that last bit, I didn't intentionally go into high school looking for someone to fall in love with. Contrary to popular belief, not every girl entering their freshman year wants a boyfriend. I don't think that's a popular belief but let's just make it a hypothetical situation. According to statistics that are unreliable, every 7 in 10 girls have once had a boyfriend or kissed a boy before sophomore year. These statistics are unreliable because I myself have gotten the data from 10 sophomore girls. Seven, including myself, have had their first kiss. The other three girls haven't because two of them are lesbians, and the other is my friend Alicia.
Alicia plays an important role in this story because she is my designated best friend. She actually doesn't apply to my unreliable statistics because she's.. done things. Pretty self explanatory if I do say so myself.
Anyway. This is how it all went down.
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It was the first day of sophomore year in this town that I have been in since I was about 12. I moved from the town over, but it was still a pretty large adjustment. It's a new school with new people, I think you catch my drift.
"Making friends" wasn't on my to do list. Coming into a new school in a small town means mingling with groups of friends that have been groups of friends for a long time. That's really what I was afraid of, stepping in where I wasn't welcome and not relating to inside jokes that needed explanation. That's when people usually say,
"You should've involved yourself anyway! That's how you make friends."
Easier said than done. Especially in a predominantly white school who treated you more like a history museum exhibit rather than an actual human being; questions constantly asked quietly amongst themselves but never presented to the piece because the piece cannot explain itself in the time of their short attention span.
So I've been here for four years and I've only latched onto three people and I barely hang out with them. Except for Alicia. Alicia has been to my house so many times I don't even consider her a friend but more a family member. Once you get sick of spending time with your friends, they're not really friends anymore. It would help if she were black though, my mother always questioned why I didn't befriend someone who matched my skin tone. It wasn't intentional of course. I didn't go into school thinking that I was only going to befriend "my own kind". I sort of follow the not judging a person by their skin color method but I digress.
So there I sat, in the back of the homeroom I had the year prior, my hair frizzing from the humidity coming from the open window behind me. Sun kissed girls greeted their friends with hugs and automatic spurts of over the summer gossip while I twiddled my thumbs, watching as the clock ticked. My homeroom teacher sat at his desk, new pictures of him on vacation with his family taped lazily on the walls nearest to where the new whiteboard was placed. He played some music from his Spotify playlist and greeted me with a smile as his eyes travelled to the corner where I sat, alone. And completely satisfied, might I add.
"Aida, how was your summer?" His smile was genuine and for a thirty-something year old married man, I found this unusual. I was only 16 and I felt like I got the gist of the dark corners in this world due to unnecessary research on serial killers and money hungry government officials. Just a brief explanation; I get really fucking bored.
I answered him with a shrug, leaning forward to place my elbows on the cold material of the desk and rest my cheek on my sweaty hand. "It was alright, Mr. Stevens. I spent most of it taking beautiful photos that clearly explain the contrast of value and apply to... most of what we learned last year." Mr. Stevens was a photography teacher who loved to fail his students. He was a pretty cool guy who didn't appreciate my sarcasm.
"Funny," he hummed, shaking his head, his genuine smile turning into an unwanted one.
"What did you do?" I laughed slightly, looking at the clock whilst grabbing my book bag to swing it around my shoulder and over my back, pushing my arms through the loops. I pushed some of my curly bangs back and crossed my arms, uncrossing them as soon as the heat from my black sweatshirt became too unbearable in the short time span of five seconds.
"I listened to that great Killers album you recommended last year." He squinted as he saw me struggling in the uncomfortable state I had been in. "And why the heck are you wearing a sweatshirt in 90 degree weather?"
I recommended Mr. Stevens a few albums because he was into alternative rock, and I thought it would be nice to have something in common with at least one of my teachers being that no one else in the whole town listened to music that actually made them feel something. By this I mean, they all listened to the popular songs that played constantly on the radio, meaningless bass drops along with repetitive lyrics. I was thankful that my father's car radio didn't work, but the aux cord came in handy during road trips which molded my music taste in a way. I never got used to hot and upcoming songs because I never listened to them. My dad was big on alternative rock so that's the only thing that I listened to when I was coming up. This contributed to me not relating to the blacks at my school which unfortunately puts me in the same category as a "weird" kid.
And my relationship with Mr. Stevens is not inappropriate for those of you who think I'm extremely close to him, he's just an easy person to talk to and it's exciting to chat with someone who doesn't necessarily agree with you at all times. -That was for all of y'all who thought I was grimy enough to attempt in having an out of school relationship with my married teacher.
I held up my finger to prove one single point because I could tell he despised the album. "1. Hot Fuss is one of their best albums and I don't appreciate you limiting them to the word "great"." I held up another finger, glancing at my exposed cuticles and grimacing, wondering if I had fifteen for a refill. "Mrs. Tracy's class is extremely cold at all times, along with the cafeteria and the library. I'm only in here for ten minutes and I think I can handle sweating out for those ten short minutes."
The bell rung and the kids started to empty out, excited to meet their new teachers but I on the other hand already studied them weeks prior. It's a well known fact the Mrs. Tracy's room is cold, because like Mr. Stevens, I had her class last year.
Ah, freshman year. In order for you to understand how my relationships stand, I'll give you a brief run down of what happened.
I had a boyfriend for a total of two months. We didn't do anything, in fact, he was horrible at communicating and that seems sexy the first few days of you knowing him because you're given the impression that he's extremely mysterious but in reality, he's frustrating. Poor communication skills didn't excuse the fact that he plainly ignored me in school. His name was Tyler. Now I'll inform you, I seemed to attract guys who wanted one thing and one thing only; head. They would string along throughout the year after Tyler and I broke up for the fifth time, and when it wasn't them, it was the other guys who'd only want to date me because I'm was an experience on their to do list. I don't know why I'm using past tense, it's still like that. Fetishization is a disgusting thing folks, and most guys don't even know that they're doing it.
Tyler and I broke things off multiple times. It's hard to list the reasons when there were multiple at a time. He'd always leave me to go smoke with his friends because weed was a big thing last year, you did it cause you wanted to "get away". I'm not making fun of him in any way, he had a troubled life at home so blaming him for wanting to feel good never crossed my mind. It was just that I was constantly being ditched for a drug that lasted him for a total of four hours. Long story short, we broke up because he'd rather get high than spend time with me. Oh, and he cheated. The fact that he cheated on me didn't get to me that much, I was planning to break up with him anyway.
The girl he cheated on me with was a friend of a friend, she's pretty irrelevant but if she comes up later, her name is Genevieve. I hold nothing against her or Tyler, I either get over shit quickly or I don't deal with it.
"For these ten short minutes, you're making them into a long twelve." Mr. Stevens interrupted my recap with a snap of his fingers. His first period class was beginning to sit down, and I had been standing in the way for about two minutes. "Would you like a pass?"
"No thanks Mr. Stevens," I smiled politely, remembering who was in my next period class. "I can make it to class on time."
Now you're going to meet Alicia, my designated best friend and my designated high school crush, Nathan. And don't worry, I was aware that I didn't have a single chance with him.