Changing With Autumn

Chapter 2

Me and Erika met in the second grade. I had moved to this crappy little town in the middle of no-where and I started at a new school in the middle of the year. I didn’t have friends because everyone in that school had known each other from preschool or something. No new faces come in and no one leaves from this dark hole. Outsiders are seen as some form of aliens and therefore, I was left alone and outcasted. 

As if being shunned by my peers wasn’t bad enough, the kids really were little asswipes. Most of them just left me alone, but there were a few that just seemed to get some kind of twisted pleasure out of messing with me everyday. I came home from school pretty often with scraped knees and hands after being pushed to the ground by some of my fellow loving classmates. Recess was the worst, but most days I could avoid the other kids by sitting in a corner somewhere and reading.

One day while the class was on the playground I had gone to my usual corner but instead of spending my 30 minutes wrapped up in a book, I had brought one of those quarter machine bouncing balls to school to occupy my time. At some point some older boy had spotted me and felt compelled to come over and steal my ball. Feeling especially brave that day I puffed myself up and told him to give it back. Of course, unintimidated he laughed and held it over my head. So that led me to the only rational outcome in that random adrenaline fueled situation; he stole my ball so I punched him in his balls. 

Erika was standing off to the side a little and saw the whole thing and when the boy told the proctor that I punched him, Erika covered for me and said I accidentally fell into him when I tried to jump for the ball that he took from me. Naturally, that kind of unobligated loyalty and blind disregard for the threats from biased authority created an olive branch and we have been inseparable ever since. Even when she moved away two cities over in the seventh grade we still talked on the phone everyday after school and started going over to each other’s house on the weekend. Well, mainly I went over to her house because my parents preferred to keep socializing with others at a minimum, and a major bonus was that we could get away with doing stuff at her place that I would never be allowed to do at my house. 

I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I had been at her place for the last three weekends. I tried to hide out as much as I could with her. Everything was so stiff at my house. I didn’t really fit in with my family and it wasn’t hard to see. They were the stick with each other, outdoorsy, sporty types who wanted to go on adventures and try new things as a family unit. The only adventures I wanted to go on were stuck between pages in books, well, that and whatever mayhem Erika drug me into. I lived vicariously through the people I read about in books that I would never meet and would never know, and it seemed fitting to the recluse inside me. 

With Erika though, it was different. I was happy; I was different. I laughed, and played; I danced even though it was very, very bad. I wailed into hairbrush microphones to 80’s music that no one even remembered the words to. I made a fool out of myself every chance that I got because I didn’t care how insane that I looked. In those stolen moments with Erika I wasn’t a recluse, I wasn’t an outcast, I was just a dumb teenage girl without a care in the world and acting like a fool. So as often as I could I would run to my home away from home where I could become someone completely different, even if it was someone in a Cinderella story countdown. 

Maybe it was just Erika that brought it out in me. Erika was the outgoing and energetic type. Always spunky, perky and popular. She was the kind of person that other people gravitated towards, and not in the evil posse kind of way, but more in the she’s the one to go to and have fun with. So of course, with a personality like that it meant that she had to become a cheerleader as soon as she got to high school. Very stereotypical and very, very not me. I was more of the grungy, emo type. The “black is the color of my soul” kinda girl. I tried to stay as far away from the public eye as possible and tried to stick to myself. I mean, yeah I knew people but I didn’t ever really feel like I belonged with any of them. 

Old habits die hard and after years of being the outcast and being the freaky girl that everyone picked on, I learned to stay away and keep to myself. Things had changed over the years and I wasn’t entirely the freak anymore but I definitely wasn’t the Erika type. I was the “Hi” and a tight smile in the hallway kind of girl. I was the sitting in class next to people that you could talk to but the conversation never left the classroom kind of girl. I was the acquaintance that some people from each group would talk to, but it was nothing more than a little bit of small talk. Plus, I was a b***h, so that was kind of a main factor and I also had that whole “Don’t talk to me” vibe going on that prevented the approach of the few brave souls that might be interested in the attempt. 

Unlike Erika, I didn’t want to get into any sports going into high school. I literally only wanted to get through school and go to college to move as far away from this crappy little town, but my hate for running the mile won out. I found out that you could take sports classes instead of P.E. so I decided to take tennis, which I figured would be the easiest “A” I could ever get. I mean, a for real easy A. All I had to do was swing a racquet and hit a ball for an hour everyday. Of course, my plan backfired because on the first day of class we were told that we had to try out for the team in order to stay in the class. That didn’t burst my bubble though; with no skills whatsoever I was a shoe-in for a loophole. So after confidently knowing that there was no way I would ever in a million years make the team; I went to try-outs and I made the team. 

Ugh, the shock; the despair. How? How was it possible that I could make the team? They swindled me. I found out afterwards that everyone who tries out gets a spot on the team whether it be varsity, junior varsity, or as an alternate. They loopholed the loopholer. Ugh, the deception. Here I was innocently trying to find an alternative to general physical education classes and perhaps trying to learn a new skill, and BOOM! Slammed in the face with a deceptive drill coach and a commitment to 6 months of tennis classes during school, tennis during after school practices and tennis matches every week.  

I should have just stuck with the mile. That’s not even the worst part though, even more “ugh” than all of it... and let me tell you, prepare because it’s not for the faint of heart… the worst “ugh” in the history of “ugh’s”; the gross, teenie, tiny tennis skirts. Each year the team would collaborate to pick out the uniform and naturally, my vote was for the boy’s team's traditional and classy shorts and t-shirt combo proudly displaying our school colors. Before my vote was even considered my overly bouncy coach and new teammates had decided that the “basic” look was just not cute enough. So instead I was outnumbered and outvoted and the team (minus me, of course) decided that the perfect team uniform was a mid-stomach tank top and a skirt. First off ew, but seriously, a skirt and tank top during tennis season, which lasted from the beginning of September through the end of February. That’s not all though, the team chose a skirt which could be personalized with writing across the ass. The ass! Like that wasn’t the perfect gateway option for s****l harassment and pedo-s. 

I had learned to accept my fate of my forceful and deceptive entry into high school athletics, but I drew the line at the jailbait tennis skirts. I fought like Hell to change the uniform. So after several arguments with the coach and multiple dirty looks from the barbies of tennis, my coach made her decision to make necessary alterations and I was confident that she had all of our best interests in mind with the alterations she had made. So when the uniforms came in and she proudly passed each player their outfit, I rather happily received my uniform package and tore into it. I confidently knew that there was no way I would ever in a million years, and not even if I was being tortured in the hottest pits of Hell, be caught dead wearing a slutty shirt and a skirt with an advertisement across my ass. 

Clearly, all of my hard work and planned arguments were very effective because instead of skirts with writing across our jailbait asses, the coach made her alterations and we went to practice freezing our advertised asses off in skorts because, as the coach proudly stated, “it would be so much more efficient now that our uniforms had pockets that we could hold the extra balls in.” 

I really, really should have stuck with the mile.