Remember What Went Wrong

There are many things that movies lie about regarding the subject of high school; the blonde girls strutting around, the cliques and the food fights, the fact that nobody does any work...all of those things do not exist.

Who am I kidding?

All of those things are true. I watched Mean Girls enough to know what to expect when I stepped into the doors of Dulaney High when I was fifteen.

What a movie didn’t prepare me for in high school was my senior year.

After all, all movies portrayed it as being the best time of a teenager’s life.

You’re not getting shoved into garbage cans like freshman year, you’re not trying to make new friends like in sophomore year, you’re not without a car like in junior year, in fact...senior year is the year that you have everything.

Free periods, access to senior parking, hot guys and beautiful girls, senior year was supposed to be the best year ever.

Too bad mine was nothing like that.

Actually, it was probably the worst year of my life.

It all began on September fourth, a day that had already started out horrible because my alarm clock never rang.

So after waking up twenty minutes late, having to take a two minute shower, coming down to find that my mother used up the last of our skim milk so I could not have the cereal I wanted and learning that my mother had a meeting to go to so she could not drop me to school, it made me want to cry.

Even though I had begged on my sixteenth birthday to get a car of my own, my parents had lectured me over and over again that they couldn’t afford to give me a car, leaving me the wonderful gift of the Toyota minivan that my mother had owned for at least a decade and a half.

A car, which, I could not even use on the weekdays because my mother had to drive it to work.

This meant that I could only use the car on the weekends, and well, the middle of the goddamned night, but I had as much adventure as a rock and sneaking out was never an option that I even considered.

Anyway, I grabbed a pack of cookies, figuring that that would have to hold me over. Yes, I ate a lot. No, I was not fat.

Well, that’s what my parents said, though they described me as ‘curvy’, which basically means fat in a nicer way.

See, I usually caught a ride with my best friend Alex, who lived across the street from me, but because I had woken up late, and Alex usually left on time, this made him useless to me.

“On time” usually meant ten minutes late to school for us, so I knew I was in some serious shit at the fact that it was well past nine.

Considering that my mother had to use the car, this meant that I had to fucking bike to school on my pathetic excuse for a bicycle that possessed brakes that didn’t even fucking work.

So, I biked to school, feeling utterly exhausted and sweaty and disgusting once I had reached the school ten blocks later.

My hoodie—which I had thought was a good idea at the time when I threw it on this morning—was now drenched with sweat, even though there was a slight autumn chill in the air.

I had spotted Jack and Rian, two of my close friends trudging up the steps begrudgingly, which brightened up my day slightly.

I called out their names and they turned around as I locked my bike and ran up to them, feeling awkward with my backpack on my shoulders.

“Eden!” Jack, a gangly boy of seventeen grinned.

He was the one always doing crazy things—from pretend-humping a teacher from behind to streaking his hair blonde—Jack was always one for adventure.

His arms, which were too long for his awkward body, wrapped around me in a tight hug, as he lifted me off the ground. Slowly suffocating, I attempted to breathe, while patting him awkwardly on the back.

“Hi Jack,” I exhaled loudly as he released me, tugging down my shirt and attempting to hide the sweat stains on my body.

Jack and I weren’t as close as Alex, and I hadn’t seen him for most of the summer. He hadn’t changed much, other than growing a couple of inches and getting even skinnier.

I opened my arms while turning to the shaggy haired brunette to the right of Jack. “Rian!”

Rian fell into my arms playfully, before wrapping his arms around me, though with less force than Jack. Eying the empty spot beside them, I let go of Rian.

“Where’s Alex?” I questioned, feeling lonely and a little more depressed now that I couldn’t see my best friend.

Sure, I had seen him a few days ago, but it wasn’t the same experiencing the first few minutes being a senior without him.

“I don’t know, I saw him with some chick.” Rian shrugged, gesturing towards the doors. “We better get to class, right? After all, we are an half an hour late.”

“Some chick?” I questioned, my tone sharp as I felt my eyes narrowing so much I probably looked like I had pink-eye.

Rian shrunk back slightly at the acidity in my voice, realizing that I completely ignored his question.

Jack coughed, causing me too look at him. Jack was the only one out of all of my friends that knew about my, uh, feelings for Alex.

He knew that I had a crush on Alex from the time I had met him, which was when I was around fifteen. Now, after three years of pining after him with unsuccessful results, it seemed as though my luck would never change.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Rian shrugged, inching towards the door. “He was walking some redhead to class about fifteen minutes ago. We were gonna go to class, but decided to wait for you.”

“Thanks guys,” I tried to smile sincerely, but it came out as more of a defeated grimace.

As we began to walk to class, my mind raced at the possibility of Alex with another girl.

I didn’t know any redheads in my grade...unless Amy Whitaker had dyed her hair yet again, though she had told me that she was going jet-black, not ginger red.

I sighed, figuring that I’d have to see this girl for myself, before following Jack and Rian to class.

______________________

By the time lunch rolled around, I was in the worst mood in the history of my high school life.

My classes pretty much sucked, and I only got two free periods that week while Jack claimed to have four. I had yet to see Alex in any of my first three classes, and I didn’t even catch a glimpse of his blonde-highlighted hair in the halls.

I had spotted our new table—as seniors we got to pick out of the best tables in the crappy cafeteria—and sat down in the empty space next to Jack. Rian and his girlfriend Kara sat and talked aimlessly beside Jack, while Jack sat excitedly, waiting for me to sit down.

It was your typical high school cafeteria, with a small salad bar next to the much less healthy cafeteria section, where lunch ladies served anything from hamburgers to chicken enveloped in grease.

Across from the cafeteria line was the cafeteria tables, disgustingly yellow and about the size of my mother’s minivan, which was pretty damn big.

Seniors generally got the best tables—which usually meant tables that weren’t covered in month old gum or straw wrappers—while juniors and sophomores got the average ones. The freshmen, seemed to get the worst out of them all, and were usually forced to sit in the dark, unknown corners of the cafeteria .

This year, it seemed that my friends had chosen a table closer to the door, which was good in case of food fights, with nice lighting and minimal litter. As soon as I placed my tray down, Jack laughed.

“You sure have an appetite,” he joked, gesturing towards my apple, sandwich, chocolate milk, salad and cupcake.

“It’s not my fault that you have the stomach of a girl, Barakat.” I smirked, “After all, I am a girl with an appetite.”

“And that’s what I like about you,” Jack joked, stuffing his face with his own sandwich.

Our table was mostly silent, as everyone settled down. The room was filled with sound, from people talking to forks scraping, to the small electrical fan blades rotating, but it seemed like our table was the quietest.

“Where’s Alex?” I asked conversationally, hoping Jack couldn’t hear the desperate tone of my voice.

He raised his thick eyebrows before smiling into his sandwich, “I don’t know. I saw him in my government class, but that was second period.”

“Oh.” I sighed disappointedly, picking at my salad. Lunch passed slowly, and soon my plate was clear with almost twenty minutes remaining.

“Hello, people!” I heard a familiar voice say, causing my head to whip upwards.

“Alex!” I grinned, like a little girl on Christmas morning, expecting a pony or some shit.

He smiled at me, greeting me with a simple hello, before sitting down. This was not the reaction I was looking for, which caused to frown slightly, but maybe Alex had a shittier day than I did, so I excused it.

It was only when his arm tugged downwards, and I realized that his arm was attached to the shoulders of a slender ginger that I was angry. She was skinny. So skinny that I could see the bones in her wrist, and the detailed lines of her fingers.

She smiled at us all, attempting to be friendly, which probably meant that she was new. She was beautiful, a petite redhead with large hazel eyes. Her small facial features held an innocent look upon her face, freckles trailing over the bridge of her nose and hair resting in slightly frizzed curls on her shoulders.

Her perfect bow-shaped lips were coated with a light layer of gloss, which seemed to glow under the fluorescent lighting, and she was dressed fashionably in a rhinestoned tank top, boots and skinny jeans. It was obvious that she was not from Maryland.

“Everyone,” Alex laughed, noticing Jack’s confused yet excited expression and my obviously furious one. I hated this girl. She was pretty, skinny and she probably had Alex already wrapped around her finger. “This is Audrey Sinclair. She moved here from Texas and I really think she could fit in with us.”

Of course you do.

“Texas, huh?” Rian asked, skeptically.

“What are you doing in Maryland?” I questioned, eyeing Alex’s hand which still rested on her body.

God, I hated this bitch so much. I had known Alex forthree fucking years a very long time and he had never touched me like that.

“My dad got, uh, a job transfer,” she giggled. She fucking giggled, as though it was the funniest fucking thing in the fucking universe. It’s people like her who become Miss USA or some shit. “So we moved here. I used to live in Wisconsin, and then we moved to Texas. Oh! Before that we,uh, moved from Boston...”

And then she continued to go on and on about where she had lived, bragging as though any one of us besides Alex gave two flying fucks about where she had lived.

It appeared as I was the only one who was livid though, Rian had tuned her out long ago and was conversing with Kara, Jack was listening, though eying the cafeteria line once again for more food and Alex seemed to think she was the best thing on this planet.

I on the other hand thought that she needed to go die. Alex seemed to be absolutely glowing, exclaiming about how cool everything in her life was. She just giggled and flipped her hair. This all was so nauseating.

What made it worse was when I glanced at her plate, and only saw a salad and a small bottle of water. No wonder she stayed so skinny. I looked down at my thighs, which seemed to be taking up my whole chair and frowned. Maybe I was really fat.

And then, once she had finished going on about where she had lived, she started talking about all the people she had met in Dulaney so far, and how amazing they all were.

Once she had finished her rant, Alex cleared his throat, earning the attention of our small group.

“So Audrey,” he smiled at her, and she grinned back at him, “these are my best friends Jack Barakat...” Jack smiled at her and waved excitedly, to which she hesitantly waved back, “Rian Dawson...” Rian nodded his head in acknowledgement, “his girlfriend Kara...” Kara smiled in a friendly manner, while saying hello, “and last, but most definitely not the least, Eden!”

Alex twisted his face in a goofy way, scrunching up his nose and twisting his mouth into an odd S shape. I couldn’t help myself and ended up laughing, causing him to grin goofily. Alex always made me laugh.

“I’m Audrey,” she said again, looking at me oddly.

“Eden,” I repeated, even though Alex had just said my name. I wasn’t sure exactly what to say and if she was repeating herself, I might as well too.

“Well,” Alex cut in, glancing back and forth between Audrey and I, though his eyes lingered on Audrey longer than necessary. “I think you two can become great friends.”

I tried to hide the grimace on my face just then, I honestly did. But the fact that I imagined me spending time with Audrey, and Alex and Audrey flirting, it made me frown even more.

“Cool,” Audrey giggled yet again, making my glare harden even more.

She must have noticed, because she frowned deeper then, almost matching my own.

Sure, she was acting all nice and innocent, but I knew she was a bitch on the inside. She seemed to have everyone else fooled though. I wasn’t going to let her take over my life, or take my friends either.

“Wonderful,” I deadpanned, slumping deeper into my chair.

I could already tell that the rest of my senior year would suck.

I honestly had no idea how right I was.