August 20th, 2012

Nine days away.

School registration. Hanging out with the old clique.

Back to being fake.

Back to a snake.

Everything had been a mess.

I lied in the beginning when I said it was because I wasn’t miserable and felt alone. I did. But I was also afraid of everything that came after this summer. By far the best summer I ever had; a pity it had to end the way it did.

I lied when I said it wasn’t Cody’s, Andrew’s or Lyle’s fault. It was. In the end, I was the one who was at most fault. I also did it for revenge. Not on anyone in particular, but avenge the sins I had committed. I was far from a good person.

It had barely been twenty days but I could feel what was growing inside. There was the guilt to live with. My own beliefs values all life which is a contradictory statement as I didn’t seem to value current life.

But If I had to put it all in a bag and slap unto a sole reason, it would be this:

In eighth grade, I was learning how to be popular. In fact, all of us were learning too. Even in middle school, there was a social hierarchy. At the top? Emily. She was the one who hit puberty first out of all of us so she looked the oldest. This made her very popular with the boys. I wasn’t ever really good friends with her but I always around. I absorbed that splash and eventually used it to my advantage in ninth where Emily stopped caring about it.

But what stuck out with me was towards the early weeks into the school year.

There was a new kid that was getting picked on by some kids. This was right after school where all the kids were getting out. I was walking behind me friends down a trail that was a shortcut into the main and biggest street of Darkwood. This new kid was running away from the bullies down the trail. Of course, he would get too far because he was fat. Emily and Cody were slightly ahead of them when the guys jumped the kid.

“You better stay out of it, Cody!” they yelled. No, the person who yelled was Andrew. He was one of them. Cody stood back and watched as one of Andrew’s friend locked onto the chubby kid. Andrew got a spray paint can out of his backpack and got it ready.

I remember Emily scoffed and told Andrew to stop, putting herself in front of the kid. Cody smirked and walked away, assuming everything was going to be fine.

As I got closer I could hear what they were saying more clearly. “Why don’t you find something better to do?!”

Andrew laughed, “I’m not afraid to fuck you up, Emily.”

“Yeah, and if you do, I’ll fuck your mom.”

“Suck my dick.”

“Sorry, I only suck dicks longer than three inches.”

Andrew’s friends laughed at him and released the fat kid. Andrew let him go and there was this tense moment where all the kids stopped walking to see what was going to happen next. Andrew had never hit a girl before and we knew this would change everything.

Emily was the tallest girl in our class but she was still an inch shorter to Andrew, yet she held her ground. I could see Cody stopped walking and he was waiting at the end of the trail.

It was at that moment where I truly looked up to Emily. She was the girl I wanted to be. She was the girl who I would eventually become. But then Emily became different over summer and stopped being that girl who had that confidence. I can see now that I was simply following behind her, always and forever.

As for that fat kid, Andrew would stop picking on him and he would lose all the weight during the school years. By the summer he would become Connor Hayes, star running back. Everything seemed to be a snowball as Andrew’s middle school friends would become Connor’s friends. Then Cody became friends with Andrew and would lead to me becoming friends with him and that would lead to me fucking him in the backseat of a shitty Toyota Camry.

This is what I think about when I hear the rambling on Megan O’Hare to Alyssa Ibarra and Jana Kramer.

That night, I slept over at Jana’s house because I still afraid of my own. Everything is still where it was left. Jana was wearing these pink pajamas where it made her look like she belongs in one of those teen comedy movies.

“My brother is going with my parents to visit some family in Oregon, should I throw a party?”

“You’re the only one who hasn’t, no reason not too.”

“Okay, who shouldn’t we invite?”

The first person to pop into my head is Cody, then Emily, then Andrew. I rolled over Jana’s bed and pulled out my phone to read the text Emily had sent me days ago:

I’m really sorry about what happened. I talked to Cody, he’s sorry too. Want to hang out soon? I have an apology ice cream waiting…

Emily almost never uses correct grammar in her text. “Who’s that from?” Jana asked.

“Emily.”

“Oh, she’s cool. I don’t like Andrew though, he shouldn’t come.”

I shook my head, “He’ll come anyways, no point in not letting him know.”

“Right. Well, I’m making the invite list right now. Have anyone in mind?”

Cody.

“No.”

“Cool.”

I was actually afraid of Cody now. I got an apology from Emily, but nothing from Cody. He had been silent, like a ghost. I scroll down his facebook and see the post he’s tagged from Andrew and Emily. Past those are photos from parties where he’s with all his friends including Sara and Chris. There is nothing from me simply because it had been deleted.

I switched over to Sara’s profile where it’s nothing but odd facebook status that makes me feel like there’s something deeper going on with her. Of course, I always knew but I didn’t really want to delve deeper in that hole. There was this photo where she tagged by Lucas. She had deer in headlights looks towards the camera holding a bottle of shitty Smirnoff. I was in the corner, laughing at something as the person next to me was cut off, but I’m sure it was Cody.

Then there was Emily and her sea of photographs taken over the summer. All of them were from nights I remember and some that I didn’t. It reminded me of how good this summer had been and that future wasn’t so bad.

Then I get a text from an unknown number, but one from Seattle.

U do realize that in the end, you’ll have nothing and be shit from where u are rite now.

I stare at that text far too long than I should have.

But it was right.

I had fucked up and I didn’t know what to do.