Michael and Steven Hendershot were brothers and our only experience with people in public schools.  They knew so much more about the world than we did and that summer we became infatuated with them.  Steven was our age and Michael was a year older; both played football and basketball and had looks to die for.  We would spend hours sitting in my driveway watching them play pick up games of basketball, street football and roller hockey.  On the rare occasions we were asked to join in we used the opportunity to “seduce” them.  I was after Michael, and Jessica was after Steven. (This was the first in a long history of Stevens)  The boys had no idea what hit them, but something changed in the way they would play football and basketball with us.  No longer were they just trying to run us over and beat us, suddenly they cared about the way their hair looked, the way they smelled, and how many times they could “rub their skills in our face.”  Unfortunately they didn’t respond to our charms quick enough and we went back to our good old friend Trent for one more go around.  By the time we were done with him Jessica had been with him 7 times while I enjoyed the fortune of his company 3 times.  We finally ended things about the time the school year began.  He thought he was big and bad because he was no longer a high school freshman, while I was beginning my freshman year and Jessica was still in 8th grade.
 

 As I was preparing for my first day of high school, I wasn’t scared at all.  I was still attending Pine Drive, the same school I had been attending since I was in kindergarten.  So I didn’t have to worry about the usual new things like a new building, new classrooms, and new teachers.  I just walked into the same building I had spent the last nine years of my life and found the name of my homeroom teacher.  I had a lot of fun my freshman year.  All the girls in my class were finally getting along and we were all friends. In junior high we spent most of our times ignoring each other and developing our own little cliques.  A lot of the girls had left for public schools so the few who were left bonded together.  The twelve of us all sat at the same lunch table and passed notes back and forth during class.  We made fun of our teachers together and wondered what homecoming would bring.

 Homecoming was an exciting time in Texas.  Football is a way of life and homecoming was the celebration of this passion.  The girls vie for the title of the “queen of the mums.”  The object in this game was to have the biggest mum with the most ribbons, charms, and bells that would make the most noise during the day.  A mum is a flower similar to a carnation, but much bigger.  We would decorate the flowers with streamers, glitter, charms, and bells.  Often the mums would become so big that holes would be ripped into shirts and ribbons would end up getting stepped on.  It was the first year that my high school had a football team.  The homecoming celebration was huge.  After the mum fiasco at school we all went to the bonfire.  The cheerleaders were there and they had no trouble rousing up spirit in the crowd.  We all walked over to the football game and cheered our team onto victory.  The freshman girls all sat together and ended up ignoring the game.  Instead we just sat there and shared the latest gossip.  After homecoming things died down for a while until I became friends with Robert.

Robert Bridges sat in front of me in History class and we became great friends.  He was obnoxious and cute and adorable all at the same time.  We joked around endlessly and soon I developed a crush on him.  This quickly left when I saw that he was in no way shape or form interested in me.  In fact he seemed to be interested in my best friend Jessica.  Jessica went to school with one of his friends Mike Fink.  Mike was a doll baby and totally in love with Jessica.  Unfortunately, she did not share his interest.  The four of us became our own little group like Trent, Bob, Jessica and I were.  We would talk on the phone constantly and once we even decided to go see a movie.  At our age it was a huge deal to go see a movie with a boy and even though they were just Robert and Mike, we were nervous.  Our mothers drove us to the mall where we met up with Robert and Mike.  The rule was we had to sit in front of our mom’s so they could spy on us.  This was their way of staying in control.  We decided to be sneaky and sit in the last row thinking they would have to sit in front of us.  They realized what we had done and sat beside us.  After a few minutes we relented and moved to the front row, thinking if we were far enough away they couldn’t see us.  After Mission Impossible we dropped the boys off and went on our way.  The movie was a fun time, just a chance for all of us to get together.

 On the last official day of summer Jessica and Robert became a couple.  They shared a few happy weeks before all hell broke lose.  I don’t know what came over Robert but suddenly he turned evil.  He no longer cared about what she was doing or how she felt.  He thought it would be a good idea to tell her that he fell down the stairs and broke his leg, just to see what kind of reaction he would get.  She grew annoyed with him, and he thought that he could do better than her (which he couldn’t) but he was determined to try.  They broke up and he pursued a girl named Juliana.  She wasn’t the right girl for him, but he was obsessed.  I was caught in the middle.  Robert and me were really close, but Jessica was my best friend.  They couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other, which made us all hanging out together a bit unrealistic.  I had to split my time up for both of them.  Things came to a head on November 7th.

 By this time I already knew that I had to leave Houston and move to West Virginia.  Bryan White was coming to town for a huge concert.  Jessica and I loved him and my mom agreed to take us to his concert as sort of a going away present.  The concert was awesome but Robert was there and he brought Juliana.  This did not go over well.  He spent the whole time being all “in love” with her and rubbing it in Jessica’s face.  This forever changed my impression of him.  No longer did I see him as the “ideal guy.”  Now he had flaws.  We grew apart quickly after that and once I moved, we never really spoke again.

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