When I found out we were going to move it was the first thing I brought up.  I knew that I would want to see my friends from Houston again that summer, so even before we left we had tentatively planned my trip.  It was the first time I got to ride in a plane by myself, but I wasn’t scared.  I had flown before and loved it.  The only difference was that I had to be responsible for my luggage, plane ticket and general well being.  I met some nice people on the plane and when I finally reached Houston I was overjoyed.  Stepping out from the airport terminal into the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast was like being wrapped in a warm, fuzzy blanket.  I had missed the slow southern drawl in people’s voices, which matched the leisurely pace that they followed in their lives.  During my week in Houston, Jessica and I visited all our old hangouts, met up with old friends and met some of her new ones including her boyfriend Jarod.
 Jarod Langston was a rebel, but a nice one.  He was usually just the victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong illegal weapon in his hand.  During his last few weeks at Creekside Middle School he was caught in the boys locker room with an empty can of mace.  Apparently some the guys in his gym class thought it would be neat to spray the locker room full of the stuff.  When they heard the teachers coming they shoved the can at Jarod and ran away.  No one believed his story.  They thought of him as the bad little rebel, and he was expelled.  He was good for Jessica though; he gave her the little push she needed to start rebelling away from the ideal little girl her parents created her to be.  Her parents never approved of Jarod and when they caught him kissing their baby girl a week after I flew back home, that was the last straw.  Jessica was forbidden from ever seeing him again.  That only made her desire for him to grow stronger.

A few weeks after the separation, she ran away.  There was a huge panic because another girl had mysteriously disappeared from our neck of the woods, but Jessica was lucky.  She only wanted to spend the day with her boyfriend.  She ran around with him all day and was going to spend the night with one of her friends.  Once Rebecca’s mom realized that Jessica had run-away she made Jessica call her mother.  Her parents traced the call and notified the police who ran and got their daughter from the evil grip of her boyfriend.  During this ordeal I sat hopelessly in my room 1500 miles away with my eyes glued to the television praying they wouldn’t stumble across her body in the woods.  When her mom finally called to let us know she was ok, I was relieved.  I wanted to talk to Jessica to see what really happened, but I wasn’t allowed to talk to her.   Her mom had somehow managed to blame me for the fact that her daughter ran away to spend the day with her boyfriend because her parents had ripped them apart.  If Mr. and Mrs. Nichols had just let things come to a natural end things would have ended happily.  Instead Jessica continued to rebel and when she ran into Jarod at the movie Indiana Jones six months later, they fell for each other all over again.
 

 After hearing of Jessica’s adventures on her “escape,” I headed off to my first day of soccer practice.  I hadn’t played since I was in kindergarten, but I knew the basics, which was more than most of the other girls knew.  It was the first year my school had a team and our coach was from Nigeria. His accent made it difficult to understand him, and he was ignorant of American customs.  He had no idea how to coach a bunch of high school girls who had never played the sport before.  Johnson would often get frustrated with our lack of abilities, and once he got mad at my teammate and threatened to “break her leg.”  I was not having a good time, but my parents insisted that I stick with it.  They said it would look good on my record and it was a good way of meeting new people.  I played soccer for two years before growing tired of dealing with my coach and quitting the team after my junior season.

 Since I no longer had practices every afternoon, I was able to put more time in at my new job.  I had worked occasionally as a substitute at my gymnastics center, but after soccer I was putting in a lot more hours.  I had been “bitten by the gymnastics bug” when I was eight years old and despite several attempts to get out of the sport I always ended up back in the gym.  Coaching was a happy compromise for my body.  I no longer put it through the strenuous workouts but I was still in the gymnastics environment.  I would often stay after the classes were done to play around on the equipment.

 Through coaching I gained a lot of experience dealing with many different people.  After many tries I came up with a relatively easy way of dealing with cranky toddlers who refuse to sit still.  I’ve also learned how to deal with the parents of these toddlers who don’t understand why I put their “little angels” in time out.  I only had a handful of these brats and I actually had a few perfect little girls who would listen to what I said.  They quickly became my favorites because they would sit still while waiting to take their turn, and when their turn came they would know what to do.

*    *    *

It had been a long day at work.  I had to put two little ones in time-out and had another girl sprain her ankle.  I called Jessica looking for a distraction from my work and when she came to the phone she was breathless.  It had been so long since she had seen Jarod that she almost didn’t recognize him when he sat down one seat away from her in the crowded theatre.  Their eyes met and the months they had spent apart vanished in the blink of an eye.  They spent the whole movie in the lobby of the theatre talking and catching up on the past 6 months.  After Jessica’s friends came out of the movie they took both of them back to Jarod’s house where Jessica got a few more minutes alone with him before leaving once again.  That was the last time they saw each other.  The last memory she had was of him standing in his driveway saying goodbye.  While she was in driver’s education she would often drive through his neighborhood just on the off chance that she would catch a glimpse of him, but it never happened.  She always kept his memory in her heart even when she met the next Steven.

She met Steven in the cafeteria at school.  He fell in love instantly, but she was wary of him.  He looked older, more mature and she just wanted to have fun.  After pursuing her for a few weeks she relented and they became a couple in mid November 1997.  He was good to her for a while but like most men he changed into an evil creature.

She left for a cruise with her grandparents around Memorial Day.  She had a blast touring the Caribbean and when she got back she called me to fill me in on ever little detail.  But as excited she was about the trip she was really mad at Steven.  It turns out that while she was away he got back together with an old girlfriend.  Of course he regretted it, but the damage was done.  Eventually she forgave him and they got back together.  While their relationship had its ups and downs, my new relationship with Tommy was holding steady.
 

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