Out of the Bayou: Secrets

Magnolia "What do you mean you're leaving?" Magnolia hollered at her best friend since grade school. "I'm so sorry, Nola. It is not my fault. My mom is making me move with her and her new boyfriend. Baton Rouge is only an hour away." Savanah tried to explain. "What am I supposed to do with you gone? You are the only friend I have in this horrible school." cried Magnolia. “I know, but we can still see each other on the weekends until we graduate. Then, we can be roommates when we go to LSU next year.” Savanah replied as she began walking away. “It’s not like I’m happy about this either Nola. Do you really think I want to start over at a new school, during my senior year that has already started?” That was the last time I had seen my best friend, Savanah Hebert. It'd been months since that day and there was always an excuse for us to not meet up. She started school at Tara High School in Baton Rouge during October. Here we are at the end of March, Good Friday being tomorrow and the start of Easter break. We send each other random texts here and there and talked on the phone over the holidays, but it hasn’t been that same. Neither of us have gotten an acceptance letter from LSU yet. Although Savanah hasn’t told me yet, I think she plans to skip college since she found Tim, who works for Exxon. Apparently, full of money and full of crap if you ask me. Here I am, Magnolia Bourgeois, walking through the halls of Assumption High School deep in the bayous of Louisiana. I hate this place. Who in their right mind wants to live in a place that has stifling, humid heat for most of the year? Up north they still have snow, here just a horrid case of the swamp ass. Mosquitoes have already been biting with the lack of cold weather this winter. My school, in Napoleonville, Louisiana, is the only high school for all the small towns in Assumption Parish. Fun fact that I learned growing up, Louisiana has parishes, not counties, because in 1807 it officially adopted the ecclesiastical term due to the boundaries that divided the territory syncing with the church parishes during both France and Spain’s rule. I’m full of random historical knowledge. For some reason, I have always enjoyed learning history. It has also been one of the reasons why I have had a target on my back most of my life. The other reasons are due to the fact that I wasn’t blessed with the ability to fix my hair or make-up the right way. I do have my mother’s beautiful dark brown eyes, but they are covered with my thick eyeglasses. Along with this pale skin and frizzy dark brown, almost black hair that I keep tied back in a low ponytail, which screams nerd as I walk down this hall with a stack of books in my hands. LSU was my ticket out of the small town of Pierre Part that I lived in. I lived off Bayou Tranquille Rd. which is a nice neighborhood that my parents worked hard for us to afford to live in. My father, James, works in the oil field, while my mother, Elizabeth, is a teacher at Pierre Part Primary. I love my parents, they are kind, hardworking, and pillars of the community. But they will never understand my need to leave this small town. My father gave me my love of history, with his explanations of why things out of the bayou, spillways, and swamps were the way they were. Usually, these details came while we would set crawfish traps in the bayou on his days off. He loved folklore, swamp pop music that he put on the radio every Saturday morning and his dad jokes, that he would crack himself up with. My mother was quieter and more reserved, practically the complete opposite. It often made me wonder how they found the deep love and connection that they have. I hope that one day, I will find someone that looks at me the way they look at each other. My neighbors were the popular kids of high school. The fact that we grew up together in the same elementary school did not stop them from ridiculing me once we went to high school. Savanah was my next-door neighbor before they moved to Baton Rouge. Everett Landry’s family moved in when they left back in October. My mother wasn’t happy the day she found out the Landry’s were moving in, but my father, being who he was, calmed her and made a point to try to keep the peace. Everett’s parents, John and Lucille Landry, owned a gas station that most of the fishermen used in town. So, I was always confused about why my mother was so upset with them moving next door. His parents were a little weird, but so were the other people in our neighborhood. Everett Landry was the star football player for the Assumption High, the fighting Mustangs. I didn’t care much about football, but seeing him and his friend Eli Boudreaux throw the football around in his backyard from my window always drew my attention. Everett would always take off his shirt and steal a glance at my window as if he knew that my eyes were drawn to his rock-hard sweaty abs. “Hey, watch it, dork!” shouted Laura Broussard as I fell to the floor scattering my books and flinging my glasses across the floor. Laura Broussard is the cheer captain, goddess of the bayou, and my main tormentor since arriving at this hell hole of a high school. She was the ringleader to all of Satan’s spawns, driving my misery. She had golden blonde hair and bright blue eyes, not to mention the perfect body that she made a point to show off anyway she could even with mandatory uniforms. And, of course, she was none other than the girlfriend of Everett.