A Real Disaster (2 page)

“I’ll see if I can make it,” I said even
though I knew I wouldn’t go.

I didn’t need a concert welcoming me to
school in an attempt to make me feel included.

“I won’t make any promises though. I’m
pretty busy right now.”

We could both see through the lie but
Turner smiled anyway.

“Well I hope that you can come. It’s
going to be a lot of fun,” Turner said.

He shuffled the papers around and then
looked at me.

“I have to go finish handing these
things out. See you around?”

“Yeah, see you around,” I said.

I watched him trot down the hall before
I closed the door and returned to my desk. I laid the flyer down and stared at
it.

Don’t
start your new school year off with a thud…start it off with ROCK!

The
beginning of school only comes once a year so let’s make it a great one!

The
Banger Boys are performing, one night only, to begin this school year right.

FREE
BOOZE to anyone and everyone! Come get a drink and bust a move!

August 31 at 9 p.m. on the great lawn.
Be there or forever be known as a loser!

Don’t
be square…rock out!

The flier was kind of lame. Whatever
printer it was printed off of was running out of ink and the colors were dull
and faded. I could barely make out the words and the paper itself was crumpled.

“Like I would be
caught dead at some rock concert.
Yeah, right.”

Crumpling up the paper, I tossed it into
the trash and then climbed up on my bed. If that made me a square then I was
okay with that. I wasn’t going to conform into someone I wasn’t just to ‘fit
in’. Fitting in wasn’t going to get me anywhere in life.

With a sigh, I grabbed a book from my
make-shift bookcase, pulled a blanket on top of me and began to read. Or at
least I tried to read.

My mind kept going back to the flier and
the guy who gave it to me. He was cute, I would admit that much. His eyes were
to die for and his smile was infectious. But it didn’t matter; good girls never
get guys like that. Good girls got the good boys with the pocket protectors and
the degrees in accounting, psychology, or some other kind of typical major. Even
though that should be what girls want, it’s hard not to be somewhat interested
in the sexy bear drinker.

Against my own better judgment, I
climbed out of bed, grabbed the flier out of the trash, and worked on smoothing
it out. Reading the flier for a second time didn’t change the lame writing or
pathetic attempt at clip art. Still, I folded the paper in half, and then
quarters, until it was small enough to fit into my palm. Then I slipped the
paper into the pocket of my notebook, out of sight but definitely not out of
mind.

Now that I was up, I took the time to
log into my computer and get on Facebook. I wasn’t the only one of my friends
to go away for college. My group of friends were scattered across the country,
none of them wanting to stay in the small town that we grew up in.

After Facebook finished loaded, I was
greeted with a page full of pictures. My friends were already off making new
friends, experiencing new things. They had pictures with boys, on boats, and dancing
at some club. My friends were living their lives, shedding their own
goody-goody images. I, on the other hand, was clutching to my image with as
much strength as I could.

But why?

 
Beginning
to feel sad that I wasn’t having as many experiences as my friends were, I
closed Facebook and stared at my wall. It was not even ten o’clock and I was
going to get into bed to go to sleep. There were parties going on all around
campus but I kept myself in the room. How pathetic was that?

I was a loser in high school and I was
going to be a loser in college too. I was going to go day by day, watching life
pass me by, and I wasn’t going to care one bit. But aside from good grades,
what was I going to be bringing with myself out of college?
A
degree, a possible future?
That’s fine and dandy but what about
everything else? What kind of stories, memories, would I have? Getting that ‘
A
’ in class or staying up late finishing the award winning
paper? What about the rest of life?

My stomach twisted as I watched my
future flash before my eyes. I was old and wrinkled, sitting in a rocking chair
and reading with thick, coke-bottle glasses on my face. My husband would be
sitting next to me, his glasses matching my own. We would sit there silently,
neither of us trying to have any type of conversation. The silence wouldn’t be
new; the two of us would have the type of marriage we would have; a marriage of
convenience. We would have children who we never saw and my mind would be
wrapped around the “what if’s” and harboring on the experiences I never had.
The thought made me… Sick.

That night, as I sat alone in my dorm
room, was the first night that I actually questioned my good girl status.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, but that night was the night that I
decided, subconsciously, that I didn’t want to be a good girl anymore.

Chapter
Two

“So, like, this guy comes up to me and
he’s, like, ‘hey you can be a model, have you ever thought of it?’ and I told
him that I wanted to be a model,” Sabrina said to another girl from our dorm,
Elizabeth. “Then he gave me his card!”

They squealed and I rolled my eyes,
pressing my head phones harder against my ears. No matter how loud I turned on
the music or how thick my head phones were, I could still hear the shrieks
coming from the other side of the small room. Their voices sounded like nails
on a chalk board and our small dorm room was beginning to feel a little too
crowded for my liking.

“You are so lucky!” Elizabeth said.
“What I wouldn’t give to get a real modeling agent’s number!”

“I know!” Sabrina agreed. “I’m at
college for only four days and already it’s becoming the best time of my life!”

I wanted to lunge across the room and
wring my roommate’s neck. Usually I wasn’t a violent person. I actually tried
to be as calm and as patient as I could most times.
But
today…
Today I had to dig my nails into the palms of my hands to keep
from screaming.

Was there any way to move into a
different dorm
room.
Maybe a
singular dorm room?
I should have listened to my mom and stayed home for
college. What was I thinking? It’s hard to not second guess decisions
sometimes.

Really hard.

“So are you going to the rock concert
this weekend?” Elizabeth asked Sabrina.

I discreetly turned down the volume of
my iPod to hear Sabrina’s answer. If she said yes, then I would have the whole
room to myself again. But if not…well then I wouldn’t be starting off college a
very happy person.

“Obviously,” Sabrina replied. “Who
isn’t
going to the concert? Well except
maybe my lame roommate.”

Sabrina raised her voice when she said
‘lame roommate’, obviously hoping that I would hear her. This had been going on
for the past few days.
 
I wasn’t going to
let her get to me. She would not determine my self-worth.

“Hey lame-o,” Sabrina called out.
“Hello?”

I could hear Sabrina but I chose to
ignore her, keeping my nose deep in my book. Suddenly a pillow hit me square in
the face. Was she fucking serious? What were we, children? Though rage was
boiling inside of me, I took my headphones off with steady hands and turned to
the two girls opposite of me.

“What is it Sabrina?” I asked.

“Why are you so lame?” she asked.

“Because I’m not
a tool.
I don’t like to fit in because it’s the supposedly ‘cool’ thing to do.”

Unlike you.

Even as I was saying those words, they
began to feel like a lie.

“But that’s so… Weird,” Sabrina said.
“Why did you dorm here if you’re going to be a hermit? The whole point of living
in a dorm is to get out of who you used to be and become someone completely
different!”

I paused, taking Sabrina’s words in. The
girl who collected My Little Pony dolls was telling me to fit in?
To have the ‘whole college experience’ and not to be a ‘hermit’?
Part of me wanted to yell at her, tell her that she knew nothing about me.

Another part of me, a bigger part of me,
wondered what it would be like to invent a whole new person. To shed the good
girl image I carved so lovingly in the past and embrace another side of me. I
went day by day being a good girl and questioning nothing. But now, miles away
from my house, my good girl image was becoming suffocating. Good girls got good
grades but I wasn’t having fun.

“So, let’s say that I didn’t want to be
a hermit and I wanted to be someone different. How would I go about doing
that?”

Sabrina and Elizabeth looked at me,
surprise written all over their faces.

“But you like being the goody two
shoes,” Sabrina said. “You said so yourself.”

“I can change my mind, can’t I?” I
asked.

Neither girl said a word, they just
stared at me,
and
I sighed.

“Listen I’m a good girl because that’s
all I know... I never thought about being anyone different. I never wanted to
be anyone different. But that was in high school and I’m not in high school
anymore. I chose a college far away from my home so that my status wouldn’t
follow me only to realize I brought it along with its own luggage.”

They continued to stare.

“So…”

I swallowed…gulped really. I couldn’t
believe what I was about to do.

“So I don’t want to be this way. I don’t
want to go through college with no real adventure or experience. I want to have
stories when I graduate, not just good grades.”

Sabrina looked at Elizabeth and I was
sure that she was going to turn to me and throw some nasty comment my way. To
my surprise, though, she didn’t. Instead, Sabrina crossed the room and flopped
on the bed, throwing her arm around me.

“I can help you,” Sabrina said. “Isn’t
that what roommates are supposed to do?
 
And anyway, all I wanted this whole time is to be friends with you.”

Yeah
right
.

“You have a funny way of showing it,” I
said and Sabrina took the comment as a joke.

“Yeah well I’m a bitch, what do you want
from me?” she said.

She pointed at Elizabeth.

“How about going out with us this
weekend?”

“This weekend?”
I repeated.

“Yeah…
The concert.”

Sabrina wiggled her eyes suggestively
and my heart constricted. What did I get myself into?

“It’s the perfect way to get out of your
shell. Everyone is going to be at this concert, you know that. So if you go to
the concert with your brand new image no one will ever know that you were once
a goody two shoes.”

“Umm…”

“Come on. Just try to have fun for one
night. Please?”

“I guess,” I said, but wasn’t so sure.

Did I really trust Sabrina to help me?
What if she used my problem for her own gain and made me look like a blubbering
idiot after all?

“Don’t
worry,
I
know exactly where to start. Do you trust me?” Sabrina asked, grinning.

No.

“Sure,” I said and pasted a smile on my
face.

Sabrina started talking about my make-up,
hair, and clothes. She was naming so many things that I had trouble keeping up.
This wasn’t extreme makeover.
 
I was just
going to a party. Finally I tuned Sabrina out, realizing that she wasn’t
talking to me as much as talking to herself, and let my mind wander.

What would my parents say if they found
out that I was changing? What would they think if they found out that I was
going to concerts and
partying
it up? They would drive
here immediately and drag me back home by my hair. In the blink of an eye I
would be enrolled in the first all-girls college that my mother could find.
Neither of my parents would believe the ‘
it’s
all part
of the college experience’ story.

What would I tell them if they asked me
why I wanted to do it? How could I explain to my parents that I hated being the
good girl and I wanted to experience life? I wanted to meet people and have
fun. They wouldn’t understand that because neither of my parents tried to have
fun. They were okay with sitting at home any night of the week, doing nothing
but watching reruns of Wheel of Fortune and Golden Girls.

Would I tell them that, for once, I
wanted to fit in? I wanted to be going with the crowd instead of against it.
How did I expect them to understand it when I didn’t even understand it myself?
It was ludicrous!