I'll Forget About You

“So… Alaina. Any plans this Friday night?”

“Um, not especially. Homework and stuff, I guess.”

“Really, homework? You do homework on Friday nights?”

“Well, I mean, I guess. If I’m not going out or anything. Getting it out of the way early is always nice.”

“So… you’re not going out this Friday then?”

“Well, no. No I’m not.”

“Do you want to go out this Friday?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t think anything is really going on. No one’s asked me to hang out or anything…”

That conversation could pretty much sum up my entire senior year.

No, I am not as completely socially inept as that last line would have suggested. I am pretty inept at anything involving social skills, but I know how to avoid spending time with someone when I don’t want to. Especially boys who I am not attracted to.

There was all of one boy during my high school career that I had been honestly attracted to. My job this year however was to forget about him.

My best talent seemed to be sabotaging myself, however. For I could not even count the number of times that I had turned down offers to hang out, or even a hint at going out on a date with some guy. I simply wasn’t interested. Perhaps it would have been a good idea to just stop caring that I wasn’t going to gain any interest in my fellow male classmates and give in. Maybe I should have just decided to go out with them and maybe even have a good time, so that I could further work on forgetting the kid who drove the yellow Chevy.

He’d been gone at college now for the entire year. I assume he’d been thoroughly enjoying it, from the here and there updates I’d caught on Facebook. I hadn’t walked by his house at all since the end of the summer. I’d made a promise to myself that the walking-by-his-house-everyday-with-my-dogs business had to end by the time my senior year rolled around. That was probably the one promise I’d kept.

But I hadn’t given into the boys who tried to talk to me. I barely even gave into my friends. School became my life, as I was focused on keeping my grades good and my hopes high that I could get into a great college and get the hell out of this town.

That’s all I wanted, really. I wanted a good college that was far away, to allow me to forget how little I had enjoyed living in this town, living with all these people. Was it so much to ask for a new life every now and again?

I found myself dreaming more often than not what it was going to be like once I found out which colleges I got accepted to, what it would be like when I would pack everything up and leave, what it would be like once I was living somewhere else, busy forgetting about what it was like here.

And then when I finally did find out which schools I had been accepted into, that just made the year tick by even slower. Graduation was still weeks away, and getting out of Arizona was months away. I had hope that it would just fly by if I didn’t put too much thought into it. That’s what I’d found worked the best when I had come to realize one day that the first time I had ever seen Garrett was a year ago. Time flew by pretty fast, it seemed.

Now if I could just make the next months go by that quickly, I would be in New York quicker than I could ever imagine.

Yes, New York. There was an art school there that I had been set on from the beginning of my senior year. Now, all I was doing was waiting for the moment I could pack my belongings and get on that place. This was what I had been dreaming about all year.

Unfortunately, my mother had different views on it.

“Alaina, I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said, sighing and rubbing her eyes.

“Why not?” I asked, irritation in my voice.

“Sweetie, New York is so, so far away. You’ll get homesick. Then you’ll just end up spending money on plane tickets coming back here, or maybe you’ll just end up transferring back to an in-state school, anyways.”

It was easy to tell that my mother had never been completely supportive of me and my dreams, especially when it came to moving miles and miles away from her.

She just didn’t understand what I wanted.

“But this is what I want. I want this more than anything. I’m not going to get homesick. I’m actually really excited to get out of here,” I told her, pushing my voice to be as convincing as it could.

It was hard to win this argument, when she was the one who decided where the money was going to go.

“This is just going to be a big waste, Alaina. You’ll get everything out there and maybe last a semester. Then you’re just going to have to pack it all up and ship it out here and get things figured out about going to another school closer to home.” She looked at me, papers in her hands. My registration papers that we needed to send in soon. All the valuable information on my art school in New York rested in her hands as she looked over it.

“Well, so what. What if I do go out there and have fun, but miss it here so I decide to come back? How is that a waste? I’ll be gaining experience and finding out what I like and what I don’t like,” I rushed out, spilling the words from my mouth as I urged my mother to just give me a chance at what I wanted.

“I think it’s just a safer move if you decide to go to an in-state school, even if it is a few hours away. It’ll be easier.” I couldn’t believe she was trying to get me to stay here for the next four years of my life while I grow into adulthood.

I don’t think so.

“So are you saying that you’re not going to pay for this if I go to New York?” The words burned on my tongue, laced in frustration and exasperation.

“No, I’m not saying that at all, Lainie. I want you to do what you want, but I really think you’d be better off staying here.”

She probably should have realized that I wasn’t going to give this up. New York was where I was set on going. It was where I was going to go. That was the only thing I was positive of right now.

“Well then I’m going to go to New York!” I said, my voice rising as I just wished my mother would drop this. We’d had this argument so many times already once we found out I’d been accepted to the art school. This was just a repeat of every other night my mom wanted to fight and make me feel bad for leaving her all alone here.

I know she doesn’t want to live in this big house all by herself. But I can’t stay here. I don’t want to be around the place where I don’t get along with anyone.

“Alaina, you hardly have any friends now,” she said firmly. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to make friends in New York? You don’t even know anyone out there! You’ll get lonely, sweetie. I know you will.”

“Who gives a crap if I don’t have friends here! I don’t want friends here, because none of them are good friends!” I had let my voice escalate to a full on yell at this point. “I’ll make friends there, because I actually want to be in New York! I hate it here, mom. I hate being surrounded by crappy people who I want nothing more than to never see again.”

She just sighed, looking down at the registration papers that I needed to put in the mail within the week if I wanted everything to go smoothly for me when I arrived in New York at the end of the summer.

“Fine,” she said softly, her voice almost a whisper.

She set the papers down and walked out of the kitchen, heading upstairs. I heard her shut her bedroom door, likely going to lay down in bed for the next hour.

I knew that this wasn’t over. She would fight me every single chance she got to keep me here, I knew it. The only thing I was waiting on was her signatures on the papers, and everything would be good to go. I hoped.

I hoped she wouldn’t sign them, and decide months later that she didn’t want to pay for my education if I was going to leave her all alone here. I knew this is why she was so angry and upset about me leaving.

Everyone else had left her in the past. Surely she wouldn’t be able to handle it if her only daughter left her. She could handle it though. She had a job that she enjoyed and a house in a desirable part of town, in a state that had amazing weather. Whether my father was still with us or not, this probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Whether her family was still in tact or not probably wouldn’t have made a difference either.

She was always fighting to control my life, and for once, she wasn’t going to be able to do it anymore. My mother would have to give up and realize that I was an adult now, and soon enough I had to take responsibility and do the things I wanted to do.

My senior year summed up to be me avoiding conversation with boys who tried to ask me out, and then tumbling my way through numerous arguments with my mom about New York.

The year didn’t pass as fast as I hoped it would.