The Ups and Downs of Becoming a Recluse.

Contrary to popular belief, I was actually a relatively normal teenager at the beginning of the summer. I went out with my girlfriends, and I went to parties, and I lived a normal life. I didn’t lay around in a t-shirt and boxer shorts all day, and I didn’t stay up late on my own and look outside at nothing in particular, just because I didn’t have anything better to occupy myself with. I went out to the mall during the day, and - much like my sister - I went down to the pool during the day for a swim when the air conditioner went on the fritz.

However, it seemed like, more than Garrett had changed me, I had done it all on my own. If I had a say in it, I honestly wouldn’t have brought it upon myself. Hell, if I had a say in it, I would have continued to tell Christine ‘no’ after she asked me to go with her to Jim’s party. I would have told her that I honestly didn’t care that it was his last party before he had to move to Colorado for college and she’d never see him again. I would have told her that I had no interests in accompanying her in her quest for his love, the quest which had been going on ever since Freshman year. And even though she probably would have gotten mad at me and told me that I was the one who was ruining her life by not going, if I would have known that my answer would be the deciding factor in the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have given a damn whether or not she’d have gotten pissy. Because God knows she was always pissy.

Christine was quite a character. She had this hair that she always told everyone was dark brown, but I know that it was black; her hair dye was screwy and I didn’t have the courage to tell her that. She had bright blue eyes that sometimes changed in color, from deep blue to a hazy gray. She was so tiny that whenever she dragged me to rock shows with her, she always managed to get lost in the crowds due to her minuscule stature. She wore skinny jeans and brightly colored t-shirts and moccasins, and her fingernails were always painted different colors, each one a different shade of neon. She was quirky and oftentimes quiet around people she didn’t know, but when she got around me, it was difficult to shut her up. She was fantastic at holding grudges and she lived with her mother in an apartment not too far from my house.

We’d been best friends since birth, and even though we’d both gone in relatively separate directions, we’d somehow managed to remain the best of friends.

Anyway, her personality was really what was so different about her. I swear she was bipolar, but then again, it might have been the fact that she was a hormonal teenager - more hormonal than I could ever imagine being - and whenever she got mad, reallymad, it was usually just because she was on her period, or something.

She was the reason that Garrett and I had met, actually - and if she wasn’t the direct pretext to what occurred between the two of us, then she was definitely a contributing factor.

Or, maybe she wasn’t. I just didn’t like the blame always being only me, so I tried to put some of it on her because I could usually convince myself that I couldn’t have become such a wreck on my own.