Chapter Two - Living The Life

Academically school was a breeze for Ivy but socially it was hell. She was kind and polite but no one seemed to like her enough to include her in anything that was going on. She had a few select friends but she rarely saw them outside of school. For this reason, she decided the less classes at the high school, the better. She switched most of her classes to online and just took a couple AP classes at the school.

 

Even though she promised herself she would work harder this year, she often found her mind wandering towards things like boys and especially this mystery boy and everything that had happened the two times she had met up with him. Because of this, she realized that her grades were slipping and that if she wanted to get into any good colleges, she had to shape up.

 

No one at school had any idea of her “extracurricular activities”. She made sure that her personal life was kept far from school. She conversed with her friends on the subjects at school, the sports, and even movies, games, and other crazy stuff that they came up with, but never did she ever talk about what her personal life was like.

 

Freshman year, she would have told her friends Sam and Bridget anything. Bridget was still her best friend but she didn’t talk about that with her. She knew she could tell her anything but at the same time she didn’t want her knowing. It would only lead to Bridget trying to talk her out of this rebellion or eventually resorting to going to her mother and informing her.

 

Today was no different. After school she went back with her friends to talk to a teacher and when they asked her how her weekend had been she lied and said that nothing really interesting had happened, that she had just hung out with a friend and had stayed home with her mom.

 

“Bridget, we should carpool to meet Alex and the band kids for bowling of Friday. I’m sure it will be fun. I just really don’t want to go alone.” Bridget nodded as they headed back to her car. Ivy sort of wondered if Bridget suspected that she wasn’t telling her something but decided just to ignore it. She didn’t want to get in trouble but she didn’t want to stop either. She felt like something was going good in her life.

 

They got in the car and she looked down at her phone, seeing missed messages from her mystery guy. She wanted to answer but she didn’t want Bridget to ask who she was talking to. She wished she didn’t have to hide what she was doing but it wouldn’t end up well for anyone.

 

She knew what he had texted probably wasn’t appropriate and decided just to wait until Bridget dropped her off to answer it. Bridget was an amazing best friend but she did get nosy at times, as did the rest of her friends. She knew she couldn’t truly trust any of them. It was sad that she couldn’t but she wouldn’t have chosen any other friends.

 

She stared out the window in thought. Her mind moved to another guy who interested her. He lived an hour away but he was great. She had met him online but to everyone else, she had said that she met him at UCF or at the mall. She had been tempted to tell Renee who lives at UCF about these guys but she was one of those girls with a super Christian view on the world. She didn’t want her to think badly of her.

 

Bridget’s voice shook her from her thoughts as she asked about them meeting up later and going to the mall to shop for a couple items. Ivy was still trying to hold onto her thoughts about the two guys but they were slowly fading away as she tried to figure out an answer to her friend’s question. She wanted to stay home and sleep for a while. She didn’t want to go out again. What could she say that didn’t make it seem like she was lazy? There was no good way to tell someone that you don’t want to hang out. The only people she wanted to hang out with were those two guys and she knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.