Back To You (3 page)

Mom wa
s a wild child.  I assumed that since she got pregnant before she graduated high school, she missed out on some “party time”.  By the time I was five, she was ready to cash in on that part of her life.  First it was just work.  Then it was hanging out after work.  And before work or on the off days.  The drinking got worse, and Mom just didn’t seem to care about much of anything except her work friends.  Not that she was mean or anything.  When we were together, she was a good mom.  We could talk about anything.  But her friends, her men and her booze took center stage a lot.

After
a very nasty divorce, Mom had to get a second job.  She started doing office work for the restaurant.  On vacations and summer breaks I often went with her.  The restaurant was only open for dinner, so when we were there, I had the whole place to myself.  It was like a palace for me.  My imagination ran wild.  The only other people there were the kitchen employees.  And me being me, getting along with adults better than kids, I would hang out with them in the kitchen while Mom entered inventory or whatever.  I loved it. Sometimes Mom would come in and see me up to my elbows in dough and flour, or adding ingredients to their signature dressing, or coring heads of lettuce.  Whatever it was, I loved it!  I knew every square inch of that place.

As the afternoons wore
on and kitchen prep work was finished, the band would come into the lounge and set up for that night’s entertainment.  Cocktail waitresses and bartenders would start setting up.  And I would be right in the thick of it, stealing maraschino cherries.  Sometimes on Mom’s day off, she would take me up to the restaurant for dinner.  They didn’t mind if I went into the lounge area as long as Mom was there.  The band would play a special song just for me, and usually one of the bartenders would let me stand on his feet as he danced me around the dance floor. 

With Mom working there,
I happily ate escargot (yes, snails), filet mignon, Alaskan king crab legs, and cheesecake with strawberries.  I hated fast food.  Pizza grossed me out.  But I sure knew the menu at that restaurant backwards and forwards.  And the love affair with food began.

I didn’t have many friends my ag
e during that time frame.  Probably because I wasn’t around kids that much.  I always felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.  My hair was still almost white, and I had managed to grow enough hair to cover five people’s heads.  My hair was wild, frizzy, uncontrollable and explosive.  Seriously.  As my permanent teeth took over my mouth, they didn’t fit very well and created a dental disaster.  Teeth going every which way and an overbite so bad you could stick a thumb in the gap.  By the time I was nine, I stopped looking at myself in the mirror.  I chose only to see myself there as a famous singer while singing into my hairbrush, an actress acting out scenes or an extremely successful business owner (usually a restaurant).  Anything but myself.

By the time I was ten, I could (and did) clean just about an
ything in the house.  I was teaching myself how to cook.  And I was lonely.  Mom had quit the restaurant during the days and took a job at some financial place in downtown Little Rock.  She still worked nights a lot.  The nights she worked, I would stay up late to see what she would bring as leftovers and hear the stories about her night.  She hired babysitters for me.  My sisters would come over occasionally to watch me.  I went to Dad’s every other weekend.  The evenings that Mom and I had together usually ended up with simple dinner one of us made and watching TV.  Well, I watched and she often fell asleep on the couch.

By the time I was eleven, I was walking home from school
every day.  I FINALLY got braces, and babysitters were rare.  Mom quit working nights as much, but she wasn’t ready to give up the partying.  My dad and his wife Sharon were trying to get custody of me.  But I was happy with Mom.  She wasn’t mean.  She just wasn’t very attentive.  Which was okay because I enjoyed being by myself.  I could be anything I wanted to be when I was by myself.  I could sing my heart out and pretend I was a star on Broadway.  Or I could pretend I was running a successful restaurant.  Regardless, life was pretty good.  I even convinced Mom to get me a dog.  My best friends were the neighbors in the condos we lived in.  All adults pretty much.  It was a good world. 

I was stubborn at letting others teach me things like ri
ding a bike.  I would not, could not get my balance if someone was standing there with me.  It took me getting so angry with myself that I took my bike up a hill, lifted my feet, closed my eyes and just rolled until I hit the dumpster at the bottom of the hill.  After two crashes, I opened my eyes, put my feet on the pedals and rode that damn bike.  I was that determined not to fail.  But it had to be on my own terms.

School, on the other hand, was not so great.  I got exce
llent grades, but I looked like a white-headed, crazy haired, snaggle-toothed girl who just didn’t fit in.  If I wasn’t being teased, people talked about me behind my back.  My best friend moved away, and Mom sent me to a private school.  It was brutal.  My favorite people there were the ones who worked there, not the kids.  Why were kids so mean?  My voice cracked once in music and a girl asked me, “Why do you even bother?  You sound like a frog.”  Anytime I received an achievement, I was ridiculed.  I was advanced in math and reading, perhaps a little too advanced.  I tried.  Believe me, I really tried to make friends.  Most kids just made me feel ashamed to be me.

One day, Marcy was transferred to our school.  She was the funniest person I had ever met.  The “worshipers” latched onto her like flies to honey.  The sad part was that Marcy liked me for who I was, but the other girls did everything they could to keep us from being friends.  I was always kept on the outskirts of the “in” crowd.  Eventually Marcy and I started hanging out and she made the other girls accept me into the group.  Not that they ever really did.  They spent a lot of effort making me feel horr
ible about who I was.  Self esteem was nil.  I had no idea that it was jealousy that ruled their actions.  Come to find out, they couldn’t stand that I wasn’t being anything but myself, and Marcy liked me for that while they groveled to be just like her and better than me.

When I was t
welve, Mom met a man named Brent.  This was an important part of my life, but I tried to block out as much of it as possible.  Brent meant well, but he had issues.  Great big fat ugly issues that reared their nasty heads when he was drunk.  Mom started smoking along with her drinking.  Brent asked Mom to marry him and move to Louisiana with him.  Mom was desperate for a change, so we packed our stuff and headed to Hammond, Louisiana.  It was a “do-over” for us all.  By this time the braces had done a good job of making me look normal, even if I still had a mouth full of metal.  My hair was longer and I finally started getting it cut so I had bangs and layers.  I guess I finally looked and acted a little more normal.  I still made adult friends faster than people my own age, but I was thrilled to find Donna and Reneigh were true friends.  I had started growing boobs and getting zits and all of the fun stuff that goes along with being a pre-teen and new kid on the block.  I didn’t assume I was popular, but I made friends, was nice to pretty much everyone and had my first serious crush on Mike Coddard.  But his girlfriend hated me.  Everyone thought maybe it was because I had bigger boobs.  Who knew?

I had always been able to lose myself in music or books, but this started to change for me.  I wrote about how I felt.  P
oems, songs, stories, whatever came out in creative flow.  I couldn’t cry about how I felt inside (crying wasn't acceptable and was a sign of weakness in both of my parents' eyes), but music could bring me to tears faster than anything.  I refused to sing in front of anyone thanks to that horrible girl in music class back in fifth grade.  But when I was alone, I sang until I lost my voice, especially when the day was a tough one.  Since Mike didn’t seem to know I existed, I assumed the other boys were the same. 

So that
was me.  A shy girl with no self esteem whose emotions ran deep.  A girl who used creative and artistic outlets to express emotions.  Only I kept them private for the most part.  People liked to read my poetry, but some of that I kept all to myself.  I was a woman trapped in a girl’s body, living a life that no kid should have to endure with a drunk mother and an abusive drunk stepfather.  My thoughts went way beyond typical teenage silliness, and my opinions, although silent for the most part, were strong.  It was up to me to keep it together because my mom wasn’t doing a very good job of it.  She eventually took a job that sent her out of town a lot.  Leaving me alone with a man who was swimming in self destruct mode. 

The last time I was grounded was one weekend at Monop
oly’s.  When it came time to be picked up, Mom was almost an hour late. I was worried sick that she had gotten into an accident or something.  She was staggering and slurring her words when she got there.  I was scared to get in the car with her.  In a burst of courage, I refused to get in.  I stood up to her.  She was pissed.  She raised a hand to slap me, but thought better of it as I stared her down.  Life wasn’t the same after that.

C
hapter 2

It was close to homecoming.  I dreaded those things.  Not because I didn’t want to go, but because I did.  I was so enamored with Pete that I couldn’t think of much else.  There was a group of guys from Ponchatoula, a nearby town and Hammond High School’s biggest rivalry, who went to Monopoly’s on the weekends.  If I didn’t go for any other reason, it was to get a chance to see them.  One night one of them asked me to dance, slow dance, and he knew how to hold a girl to make her quiver!  His name was Carlos.  And he smelled sooooo good!  He was nice too.  The next weekend, he took me in his arms and we danced again, but this time, he kissed me!  Oh my God.

The group that he hung out with included his brother, Joel and Joel’s best friend Pete.  Carlos and Joel were Hispanic
with dark complexions, dreamy dark chocolate eyes and bright white teeth.  Since I liked to read so much, Carlos took on the persona of the dark hero I read about in romance novels.  Unfortunately, he was three years older than I was.  He thought I was older than I was (I heard that a lot).  And soon after that knee weakening kiss, he acquired a girlfriend.  I pined away like a typical fourteen year old girl, until I really noticed Pete.  MMMMM.  Tall, blonde, the bluest eyes I had ever seen and a devil may care attitude.  I should have known it was trouble, but I couldn’t help myself!  Joel seemed to have a thing for Reneigh, so it was natural that the four of us would dance together.  Pete and Joel were sophomores.  And he never seemed to be attached to any one girl, so I kept my hopes up.

I had to have been pretty stupidly obvious to everyone that I had a massive crush on the guy, but at the time, I was just lost in the sea of confusion.  Do I tell him?
What if he laughs at me?  Why doesn’t he say anything?  He danced with me every weekend, but not the entire night.  He talked to me but never kissed me.  I wavered every few minutes between self doubt and daydreaming.  Anytime I smelled Polo, I thought of him.  Anytime I heard one of the songs he had asked me to dance to, I thought of him.  I had it bad.  Very, very bad.

There were lots of cute guys at school, but I just couldn’t get past Pete and all of my wishful thinking.  Oh how I wanted him to ask me to his homecoming dance!  Maybe, if he asked me to his, I could ask him to mine. 
I hoped that Joel might ask Reneigh so Pete might ask me too.   At the time, Joel was always asking Reneigh to dance.  I thought he was a jerk.  He joked around and acted like an arrogant son of a bitch.  I wondered how it was that Carlos could be so different from Joel.

I also noticed that Jack, although he would look at me
in class, tried to avoid my eyes whenever I looked at him.  I could feel him watching me sometimes, but when I would look over at him, he would look away and stare down at his paper.  I couldn’t figure out why he was looking over at me.  I figured he just thought I was annoying because I asked so many questions.  Or maybe he just thought I was weird or awkward or goofy.  Maybe he was just looking at Reneigh in front of me (just like every other guy did) and I was being paranoid.  He intrigued me.

*****

Crunch Time!!!  Homecoming was only two weeks away, and he had not worked up the courage to ask anyone.  Sure, there were plenty of girls to choose from, but he didn’t want to go with any of them.  He wanted to go with one of the three girls that sat near him in Mrs. Laurent’s class.  That seemed to make life unfair.  They were all friends, so he knew that they would probably laugh at him behind his back if he asked one, got turned down, and asked another.  He toyed with the idea of asking Beth Anne, but he was sure she had started going out with Fred and was probably going with him.  He (and most guys) thought Reneigh was pretty so she probably already had a date.  He knew that Suzy wasn’t dating anyone at the moment, but he also heard the guys talking in gym and around school.  She was pretty, intelligent, funny and intimidating as hell.  She was always friendly to everyone, but she also kept her distance.  Some of the guys thought she was stuck up, but most of them were just afraid of rejection so they went after the “sure things”.  “Sure things” were the girls who wanted to go so badly they would have gone with anyone who asked.  No fear of rejection from them.  But to ask someone as intimidating as Suzy was?  Not so easy.

Teenage guys are pretty predictable, even if girls didn’t
think they were.  Girls didn’t understand guys got really nervous when asking them out.  Guys had to take the first step which was harder than most girls could even imagine.  But mostly guys were controlled by a confusing mix of hormones and desires.  Caught between trying to impress girls and acting immature to impress guys made most guys act like complete idiots.  Mind games.  Human beings were terrible about playing mind games in the mating ritual.  Guys want to act macho because that is what gets the girl.  But when they do that, a lot of the time he comes off as a jerk.  If they show a sensitive side, which also attracts girls supposedly, they run the risk of being teased by fellow guys.  And for some reason, although girls are always saying they want a sensitive guy, they ALWAYS seem to go after the arrogant, hunky quarterback types.  If guys are shy (like he was), they are usually petrified to ask anything, even start conversations, let alone ask someone to a dance.

And
flirting!  Guys are supposed to know how to do this?  Maybe when they are two years old, but now?  Impossible.  Girls rarely go anywhere or do anything alone, so you face the ridicule of the whole “pack”.  If the girl is a loner, she is probably unattractive, a total nerd or falls into the “she’s so crazy no one wants to hang around with her” category.  Honestly, if a guy thinks she is any one of those things, he probably won’t do any asking.  It’s the truth, like it or not.  They should be teaching this stuff in school instead of algebra.

Then you have girls like Suz
y.  Anyone who had met her knew she was smart as hell.  That put her into a completely different kind of category.  That would be the “no way I’m gonna ask her out, because...” category.  Fill in the blanks.  “She is smarter than I am so I will feel stupid.”  “She is never going to look at me twice.”  “She probably had a dozen guys who had asked her out.”  “She will see right through me and know I am not as confident as I pretend to be.”  Blah blah blah.  Regardless, something about girls like Suzy made a lot of the guys think twice before asking her out.

But... he just wanted to be sure.  He looked at himself in the mirror that morning and basically told himself he was a glu
tton for punishment.  Doesn’t hurt to ask, right?  Riiiiiight.  He got up earlier than normal.  Took a little more time getting ready.  Made sure he had on deodorant and cologne.  Dug out one of his nicer shirts to wear.  And all the time he was worried about two things.  One:  she would say no (he expected that), and two:  she would say yes.  He wasn’t sure which option scared him more.  Oh well.  He had put it off long enough. 

Here goes noth
ing
, he thought as he waited for the bus.

*****

“Um, Suzy?”

I barely heard Jack call out to me before class began that day.  “Hi Jack!  How are you?”

“I, um, well, um, not too bad.  Do you have a sec?” 

He was looking at his shoes, around the room, ever
ywhere but right at me.

“Sure, what’s up?”  I knew what was coming.  I could just feel it.  Why did I have to get so stinking scared around guys?  I felt like a white hot bolt of lightning just pierced through me.  That and like cold water had been thrown on my face.  There was no other word for what I felt.  Fear. 
Oh why does this have to happen to me when someone acts interested in me or asks me out? 

“I was wondering if you had a date to homecoming, and if not, would you like to go with me?” he sort of stammered.

“No.”  That was it.  That’s all that would come out.  Anything else and I feared my last meal would come out too.  Pull yourself together girl!

“OK,
sorry if I bothered you.”  He started to turn away.

“I...uh, wait.  Jack?”  Good Lord, I can’t seem to do an
ything right.  “Jack, wait.”  But I saw it.  There was a look in his eyes that changed.  “I meant that no, I don’t have a date, but...”  But what, genius?  How did you tell a really cute guy with eyes as deep as the ocean that you were waiting for someone else, a total long shot, to ask you to go?  How did I say that I really, really wanted to go, but I was afraid of the brooding guy with guarded looks who asked me?  How do you explain that for some reason, something inside me moved when he asked, like a complete fear of something bigger than I could imagine?  Something gripped me and held tight.  It was an emotion that was so different than the fleeting crushes I’d had up until then.  It was so different than what I felt when I was around Pete.  And what did I feel around Pete?  Excited, giddy, and pretty sure that he didn’t realize it.  And around Jack?  I felt excited and giddy, but there was more.  It was so different.  Like I could feel the depth of his soul and it scared the bejesus out of me.  I wanted to accept, but my inner voice was telling me to hold off.

“But, I don’t think I will be able to go at all.”  It was
partly the truth.  I also didn’t want anyone to know that I was a chicken.  And I knew, right then, that I wouldn’t be asked out by Pete.  And I knew that there was just SOMETHING about Jack I couldn’t quite figure out.

“Oh.” 

Why did I have to do this?  What in the hell WAS I doing?  “Thanks though.  Maybe next time?”  I felt like such a bitch.  Low life.  I wait and wait for someone to ask me, and I chicken out at the last minute.

“Sure.”  H
e walked to his desk.

What in the heck
just happened?  Surprise attack.  I was so NOT expecting him to ask me out.  And what did I do?  Panic!  Pining away for a guy who barely knew I existed, and this gorgeous guy asked me out and I said no.  What was wrong with me? Idiot.  Dumb ass.  Fool.  I blew my chance.  Ugh.

*****

That was fucking brilliant.  You blew it
, he thought.  He just knew she wouldn’t want to go with him.  Did girls really know how impossibly hard it is to walk away from something like that and still hold your head up?  Or even be able to walk at all?  A punch to the stomach would feel better.  It took everything he had to get back to his desk.

He mulled around in his mind what her answer was about.  Not going?  Why not?  Isn’t that what every high school girl wants?  To be asked out to homecoming?  It was probably just an excuse and she didn’t want to flat out say no.  Well at least she was nice about it.  Maybe she really did have other plans. 
Wishful thinking buddy.

She was quiet the rest of class.  It looked like she was paying about as much attention as he was.  He still couldn’t help
sneaking a look at her.  Maybe next time?  Hell would probably freeze over before he would work up the nerve to ask her out again.  All of the guys were right.  Expecting a yes from a girl like her was stupid.

That’s it,
he thought. 
My days as a high school stud are officially over and they haven’t even begun.  Or are they?
  Maybe he would go out for varsity football next year.  He sucked at basketball and baseball.  He sure wasn’t good enough at an instrument to play in the band.  Besides, that was a total “non-stud” thing to do.

Even though she said no
, he couldn’t help sneaking peeks at her during class.  There was just something about her that he couldn’t resist.

*****

If there was some way to crawl into a hole and hide, I would have done it.  I felt so bad!  Why was I so afraid to go out with him?  Why did it have to feel so different when HE asked me instead of someone else I was pining away for?  This was possibly one of the biggest mysteries of my social life to date.  Hopefully it will get easier.

Homecoming week came and went.  I dress
ed up for all of the crazy days since it was also the week of Halloween.  Jack didn’t dress up.  He looked somber as ever, never seeming to look up from his desk, never asking questions, never acknowledging my presence.  As for the dance, I didn’t go at all.  No one else asked me.  I still felt pretty stupid.  If I had said yes to Jack, I could have gone to the one big school event that freshmen were allowed to attend.  I really wondered about my sanity.  Seriously?  If I wanted to establish SOME sort of social life, shouldn’t I be at least a little social?

Once again, I dove into my studies and worried about whether Pete would ever fall in love with me.  He gave me his phone number and we occasionally talked on the phone now.  I swear my stomach did flips when I heard his voice.  Flips and flops and I couldn’t resist a smile.  It was funny how he could talk to me for an hour on the phone, dance with me at Monop
oly’s and always give me his prize winning smile, but still never asked me out on a date.  Still never even tried to kiss me.  It seemed his best friend Joel was in love with Reneigh so Pete asked me questions about her a lot.  Odd thing about that whole situation was that Joel never asked Reneigh out either.  What was up with these “Ponchy” guys (that’s what we called the guys from Ponchatoula)?  I rarely saw Carlos, but when he was around, he always seemed to find time to dance with me.  No more kisses, though.