Chapter 1 - Girl Meets Girl Pt. 1
I remember when I was in the nineth grade living in rural North Carolina in a small town with a population of six thousand people. A girl in some of my high school classes with bleach blonde hair, Amber White, fascinated me. I'm not sure what it was specifically about her that I was attracted to; maybe it was how she could manage to look cool in a pair of overalls and a white vest top; or maybe it was that she was the only girl in a group full of boys who were known around the school as the "tough guys," "the bullies," "the assholes". I envied her. I would see her sitting at the back of the school bus, where all of the 'cool kids' stayed every afternoon, surrounded by four or five of her muscle jock bullies, and wonder how she did it.
Despite wearing little to not make-up, Amber was a complete and total knock-out. Her blue eyes were the first thing that grabbed your attention against her pale complexion that was almost porcelian like and glittered just like the pink Smackers lip gloss that she always applied at least ten times a day. She was not as fragile as the porcelian doll that she resembled, however, and also had a reputation of being tough and rude because of the guys she always hung out with. I even remember her being suspended for a couple of fights that she started herself. To a plain, 13-year-old girl with glasses, I found her to be amazing, and aspired to be just like her. I wished that I could walk around our high school as if I owned it, just like Amber did.
I spoke to her once in art class. We were making paper machet face masks, and she was sitting to the right of me poking the eye of her mask with a wooden popsicle stick.
"This shit is stupid," she said out loud to nobody in particular. I took it as an opportunity to make conversation with the girl that I looked up to so much.
"Yeah, tell me about it," I replied, trying to have the same annoyed tone in my voice.
She looked over to me for the first time of the entire school year, but stayed silent.
"I mean, it's not like we're actually going to need any of this shit in the real world; you know, unless we plan on being a sculptor our whole life," I continued, amazed at myself for saying the word 'shit' out loud.
She laughed a little, and a part of me smiled inside knowing that I just made Amber White laugh.
"That's true, but who wants to be a fucking sculptor for the rest of their life?" she said, and pushed her chair back and walked to the door grabbing the bathroom pass as she went out. When she returned, she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and we didn't speak for the rest of the class.
I wish I could say that that was the defining moment which brought us together as lifelong friends, but sadly, that would not be the case. I think the only thing it guaranteed me was to not be the next victim that caused her to be suspended from school for another five days. No, after that very brief conversation, the only time Miss Amber White and I would speak would be in geometry class when she wanted to know the answer to a question that Mrs. Durr had given us. Considering that my mathematic skills didn't go any further than the basic multiplication table, Amber found me to be useless and would turn around in her chair rolling her eyes. It made me hate myself for not being a superior geometry expert.
It wasn't just Amber as a person that intrigued me, but rather her way with the guys that she encountered, whether it was the muscle jock bullies that always surrounded her like bodyguards, or even just our teachers. There was something captivating about the way she would subtly manipulate them, and I would watch them fold and bend under her womanly fingers that didn't look like they would ever form a fist and slam up against the face of another human being -- but they did, and on many occasions. I observed her gentle body language, how her voice would change to a higher pitch and sound more like an innocent girl rather than the hard image she portrayed, and then watch the men she was speaking to collapse like an old city building under her charm. At the time I didn't understand the power that she possessed, that even I possessed if I ever took the time to harness it; but seeing each and every one of her male victims crumble to her non-physical force made me sit up and pay attention to how she interacted with people of the opposite sex.
While I longed to be a part of Amber's selected group, the people that I regularly hung out with would probably be considered the "leftovers". We all could have fit into a group, but didn't really put that much effort into getting to know the people we meant to be related to, and therefore were cast aside and eventually forgotten about. My friend, Lauren, played the flute and was never fully accepted by the rest of the band geeks. She spent all of her free time educating herself on anime comic books when she wasn't practicing the new song they were assigned in her music class. She always wore her hair down parted right in the middle, and had a different t-shirt on each day that had some kind of fantasy scene on it. I thought she was weird, and I never really considered her to be a good friend, but she had the same lunch as I did and she was someone to sit next to in the cafeteria.
"See this?" she said to me holding up her right hand.
"What? I don't see anything," I said to her.
"My fingernails. I'm trying to grow them out so that they're all the same length. They're a little translucent for my liking, but I'm taking these vitamins that my mom takes for the wrinkles under her eyes. Apparently they're supposed to help your skin, hair and nails. I've been taking them for a week now. Can you tell a difference in my nails?"
"Um, yeah, I guess so. To be honest, Lauren, I haven't really paid that much attention to your fingernails."
"Well, that's what these vitamins are supposed to do then; help people notice my nails." She tore open her chocolate milk carton and broke her right index fingernail.
"Shit!" she screamed out. "Well there goes a fucking week flushed down the toilet."
While Lauren reached into her bag to pull out her nail file, and mercilessly even out her fingernail right at the lunch table, my eyes glanced over to the opposite side of the cafeteria where Amber and her jock friends were sitting. She was perched flirtatiously on the table while all of the guys surrounded her on the little red, circle seats that looked like they might break under the sheer weight of their athletic frames. I didn't get it, how did she do it all the time? How was she able to carry herself in a manner that said 'don't fuck with me' but still be feminine and cute and pretty? She had all of the guys falling for her, and yet she stayed single. She didn't give them one morsel of her time, and yet their attention and eyes were always on her.
Everybody knew that Amber wasn't easy and there were even rumors about if she was a lesbian, because she never had a boyfriend. I knew better than that. She was just waiting for the right guy, the one guy that deserved everything that she was worth, and Amber knew that she was worth everything in the world. She wouldn't just give herself to any of those drooling fools that followed her around like a sad puppy. She believed that being with her was a privilege and you had to work hard for her approval.
Lauren finished evening out her fingernail and looked up at me, then followed my stare across the cafeteria.
"Oh god. There you go staring at your girlfriend again," she said.
I snapped out of my gaze and cleared my throat.
"Please," I retorted. "I don't like her that way. I'm not a lesbo. I just think she's really cool. I wouldn't mind being a little bit more like Amber."
"Yeah, yeah. I've heard it all before. Well, if you're not in love with Amber, then who do you like?"
I sat up a little straighter to this question. There was only one boy in the entire school that I liked and fell for the second that I saw him.
"What makes you think that I like anybody? This school is a deadbeat land for anyone with any potential to get out of this godforsaken town."
"Oh please. Everyone likes at least one person. Come on, tell me. I told you about me liking Dalton."
"Yeah, you volunteered that information. I didn't ask for it. Besides, you probably don't even know who he is. He likes to keep quiet and not draw attention to himself," I shuffled uncomfortably on my seat.
"Oh I get it. You're embarrassed of him? He's a freak isn't it? I wouldn't blame you to keep that information to yourself then," and she dropped the conversation, picked up her Papa John's pizza slice and started eating.
He wasn't a freak, and I certainly wasn't embarrassed of him. He was a skateboarder, a punk and made me believe in love at first sight. My immediate feelings for him started in the pit of my stomach and grew branches and limbs throughout my entire pre-pubescent body. I was paralyzed every single time he passed me by in the hallways, or whenever I'd sit behind him in English class every morning. While Mr. Griffin would drone on and on about his favorite authors, my mind would wander and I'd imagine scenarios of my crush asking me out on a date, and I would accompany him to all of his skateboard competitions, and we'd be the sweetest couple in school that nobody knew about because we both liked to keep to ourselves.
"Ugh, fine. It's Lenny Lukowitz," I blurted out.
"Ew. Yeah, I'd totally be embarrassed by him," and she carried on eating her lunch as if I didn't say anything at all.