Freshman Year

When i entered my freshman year of high school, I had three limits I told myself I would never cross. Number one: never get physical with a girl. Number two: never have oral sex. Number three: never have anal sex. By the time I graduated high school, all of this had gone out the window.
I was fresh out of 8 years of catholic school. Years of being told that sex was a sin, masturbation was a sin, homosexuality was a sin. Uniforms, prayer three times daily, nuns, and a graduating class of under 30 students. I wasn't prepared for public high school at all.
I was originally not even going to go to public high school. I had gotten accepted into two different, all girls, Catholic high schools. Both had offered me partial scholarships, and I had already chosen to attend one of them. My mom had the paid the deposit and I had already registered for my classes.

Then I changed my mind. My parent were in the middle of a custody battle at the time, and my brother and I had decided to side with our dad. Ultimately the court order stated that our parents would retain joint custody. In the months leading up to the decision, however, my dad had convinced my brother and I to go to public school.
My brother was a year older, and had already spent a year in an all boys catholic high school. He had also gone to the same catholic school that I had just graduated from. He didn't like the high school he was at, and was more than willing to transfer to public school. I was unsure, though, and debated it mentally. My dad said that public school was closer, and the money saved could be put towards college instead. Looking back as a college freshman who's putting herself through college, with no help from her parents, that argument strikes me as sadly amusing.
It did the trick though. With only two weeks left till the school year started I was withdrawn from a catholic school three towns over and registered at my town's public school, a mere 15 minute walk away. Maybe if I hadn't made that choice, and gone to catholic school, things would have turned out differently.
I started the school year knowing only three people there. One was my brother, the other two were kids who lived on my street. I was friendly with them, but wasn't necessarily friends with them. I started off high school essentially along, and was afraid I wouldn't make any friends
During 5th period biology, I stopped worrying about making friends. After telling us the initial information about the class, the teacher said "Ok, now turn to the person next to you and make a friend." I turned to the girl next to me and introduced myself to someone who would become one of my closets friends.
Ivy and I had a lot in common. We had both gone to catholic school. Neither of us knew many people at the high school. Both of us were originally headed for the same catholic school, but had changed out minds last minute.

Freshman year passed by in a blur of student council meetings, hockey and football games, fundraisers, and studying. I was shy, young, and very inexperienced. At that point in time I had not had my first kiss, and have never had a boyfriend. It was during my freshman year that I met the boy was technically my first boyfriend.

James and I had 7^th period freshman seminar together. We were supposed to spend the class learning how to pass a state exam. Instead we spent the period talking, flirting, and getting to know each other. He was the first guy to ever really show an interest in me, and I was eager to take advantage of that.

James wasn’t the best looking guy ever. He had dirty blonde, curly hair that always had the appearance of being uncared for. He was scrawny and looked like he was underfed. His teeth had an odd color to them, a greenish sort of yellow. There were thin, red scars on his forearms, that looked fairly recent. The only true attractive quality about him were his ice blue eyes, but they always had a hard, cold glint to them.

I knew that James was trouble but I didn’t care. He drank, smoked, did drugs, and was always in trouble at school. There was something about him though, and the attention he gave me, that drew me to him. He even scared me in some ways, but I really didn’t care.

He asked me out one day in class. He had stolen a pad of detention slips from a teacher, and was using them to pass notes to me. At the end of the class he gave me one and told me not to open it until he was gone.

When I got to my next period class I opened the note. It asked if I would go out with him, and told me to call him with my answer. I called as soon as I got home from school, and told him that yes, I would go out with him. Like that, at an age when my parents still didn’t consider me old enough to date, I had what can be considered my first boyfriend.

James and I didn’t stay together long, and we never went out on an actual date. The only time we ever saw each other was in school and it was rare that we would talk on the phone. I had to keep him a secret from my parents, and since I wasn’t going to lie about where I was, I couldn’t see him after school.

I only saw James once a day during school. There was only one time that we got a change to hang out for a few hours. Someone had called in a bomb threat at school, the third one that week, and we had to spend the next few hours in the bleachers as they searched the school.

My biology class was in the schools computer lab when the school was evacuated. Ivy and I had just started research for a PowerPoint, when a sophomore I slightly knew ran into the room and yelled “Bomb threat! There’s another bomb threat!” Next thing I knew, students were flooding through the library and out into the courtyard. Ivy and I followed the crowd as the teachers herded us into the bleachers of the football stadium.

We were sitting up in a corner at the top when James found us. It was a hot, sunny day out, and I had on a long-sleeved shirt. We were out there for over an hour, and James spent most of it hanging out with me. For the most part he seemed perfectly normal, till he took out a blade. Then, after a few minutes, he looked straight at me and slit his finger open.

That was a moment I remember with definite clarity. The sun was shining, and glinted off of the drops of blood that started welling up. Jason had a cold, defiant look in his eyes as he watched me, waiting for my reaction. I was in shock over it. He had been joking earlier about cutting himself, but I hadn’t figured that he would actually do it.

As I asked him why he did that, he carelessly shook the blood off his hand. It hit the concrete part of the bleachers, and stained it a dark red. I’m certain that if I were to go back there now, I would find the stains still there.

All he did was shrug in response to my question, and stare off into the distance. He put the blade away after that, and went back to just talking, but I was unnerved for the rest of the day. Later on, friends who were with us in the stadium told me that he seemed dangerous and that I need to break things off with him.

Even without them saying that, I had already reached that conclusion on my own. That was the point where I realized that it was actually a bad idea to be around someone like him. If I was scared of someone, then I shouldn’t be with them.

Since I was still young and unsure of how to say it, I turned to a friend, who called him up and ended it for me. She told him not to call again, and not to talk to me anymore. I felt so relieved afterwards, but didn’t know how he would react to seeing me in class.

At first he seemed angry towards me, and glared at me a lot. After a little while we got on friendly terms and went back to talking. Then one day he left. I don’t remember if it was because he moved or got expelled. Maybe he transferred to the alternate school for social misfits. All I knew that he was gone and for some god unknown reason I missed him.

I never understood why I missed him. More than likely because I missed his attention. Especially whenever I heard the song “Sexy Back” by Justin Timberlake, which was popular at the time. No, not because I thought James sexy. There was one time in class though, that we were listening to that song, and from then on it stuck as a reminder of him.

The relationship with James lasted for less than a month. We never kissed, never even almost kissed. Hugging was as physical as it got between us. I left my first relationship with no more experience than I entered it with. I was innocent and naïve, and had yet to be truly hurt.

Its important to note that while I was lost in la-la land with James, Ivy had been talking to her own guy, Sean. Sean went to a local all boys school, the same one my brother had spent a year at. Eventually they stopped talking, because she felt that he only called her when his friends were around, as if to show off that he could get a girl. Anyways, don’t forget Sean, he’ll be important in a few years.

There is only one other event from my freshman year that was relatively important. That was the beginning of my friendship with Fernando. We met during lunch through a mutual friend. I immediately thought that he was pretty cute. He was what I considered my type at the time: blonde hair, blue eyes, thin build. We hit it off fairly quickly, and I thought that there was potential for a relationship.

Fernando creeped me out a little though. After I gave him my number, he called me that afternoon, three times in under five minutes. So I got slightly creeped out and had a friend call tell him not to call me anymore. He took it really well though, and apologized to me the next time he saw me.

Fernando and I quickly became good friends. We sat with two other kids at lunch, and eventually had nicknames for one another. I was known as the Diabolical Drug Dealer, and Fernando was the Purple Pimp. Our other friends were known as the Lusty Lesbian and the Preppy Prostitute. None of our names really fit us, and the reasons for them have faded far into memory, but the time spent with them made the rest of my freshman year a good one.