Chapter 2

“It is better to be alone, than in bad company.” –George Washington

My first day of my sophomore year I don’t remember even saying a word. I sat silently through all my seemingly boring classes dreading them, dreading my classmates, and dreading the coming school year. I only remember a few of my classes that year.

2^nd period- Western Civ. (I only remember this because Mr. Miller is still to this day one of the most attractive men I’ve ever seen in my life.)

4^th period- Spanish II

6^th period- Chemistry

7^th period- Chem. Lab

8^th period- Geometry

The last four classes I remember for one reason and one reason only, Liz.

I knew only a few things about Liz from my general observations; she was fairly new, she dated my friend Lindsay’s brother, and she was quiet and always looked pissed off. On my first day of Spanish class Liz and I were seated next to each other and put into the same Spanish “family”. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about this because of the “always looked pissed off’ thing I mentioned earlier. She appeared about as welcoming as….something horribly unwelcoming. When Chemistry class rolled around, once again Liz and I were seated next to each other (I guess now looking back I can technically credit the method of alphabetical order for us being friends). We were also paired up as lab partners, which means we would be forced to spend 90 consecutive minutes working together everyday. Immediately following Chemistry was the last period, geometry. Geometry class would bring about the one moment where we both decided to ourselves that we would be friends.

Eventually Liz began to actually talk to me. Not just talk, but go on and on about how she hated her life, she hated her parents, she hated Ohio, she hated her ex-boyfriend, she hated her sister, she hated the color baby blue, she hated girls I won’t name, she hated chemistry, she hated girls with blonde eyelashes, she hated bad teeth, she hated the texture of yogurt, she hated basically everything. There’s a 90% chance she hated me too. This time I felt like Keith. The 90 minutes we were forced to spend together turned into 135 minutes as we added geometry class to the time frame. These 135 minutes consisted of Liz lying on the table, elaborating on exactly why she hated everything in life, and me doing our homework and listening. This never bothered me. In fact this was usually the highlight of my day, because no matter how much she complained, I never thought her reasons for hating everything were any less than justified.

If it weren’t for Liz I would never have been awake Tuesdays and Thursdays in Spanish class. Every Tuesday and Thursday meant she would get stoned before school, which meant that she spent 4^th period chucking sharp dangerous pencils at me from across the room trying to get my attention. We had a lot of fun in Spanish class. We completely ignored the fact that we were surrounded by a multitude of students and had our own conversations in the back as if class wasn’t actually happening. We asked the big creepy kid that sat in-between us who had better ears, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, fingernails, elbows, knees, thighs, toes, and wrists, everything we could think of. I think he always said Liz had better everything, but that’s okay because he wasn't so great himself. When we were really bored we would trade clothes. I would take off my shirt and toss it to Liz and she would do the same, usually discreetly. There was of course the one time we were in mid trade and I tossed her my shirt but she thought it would be funny to not do the same. So as soon as the bell rang I had to chase her down the hall in my coat and bra until she would give me my shirt back.

Good times.

When we weren’t raising hell in Spanish class we were doing so in Chemistry. We would usually steal the lab manual of a girl we knew who knew what she was doing, copy all of her labs, and then sit on the heater the rest of the class with the lyrics to “The Whole World” by Outkast in our hands, alternating singing parts. We pestered our friend Adam in everyway possible, drawing penises all over his book bag, everyday, and making fun of his ears. Any other time was spent in the lab actually doing work, usually mixing dangerous chemicals and setting things on fire. Other fun activities would include putting skittles and menstrual pills in the student teachers coffee, climbing out the window, and ordering pizza in the middle of class on our cell phones. The great part about this is that our teacher claimed she saw everything, “she had eyes in the back of her head” but yet, she never saw any of this.

Geometry class wasn’t quite as exciting, but by the end of the day we were getting worn down. Usually we would sit down and Liz would stare at me excitedly, waiting for me to open my book bag. When I would open my bag and pull out giant containers of miscellaneous acids that she would hide in my bag from Chemistry, she would burst into laughter. I would do our homework and then we would ask permission to go to the office and photocopy it, which we were always allowed. When I wasn’t dancing on a desk in the back with thigh high stripper boots on, we were usually crying, literally crying, about our lives. No one ever noticed us, no one ever paid attention to us, and so we just did what we wanted all the time. Our teacher was also a 500 pound man who never really stood up, just scooted around in his roller chair. Everyday Liz and I would leave class early because well...he literally couldn’t stop us. He certainly couldn’t run after us, so instead he just yelled at us through a giant megaphone he kept under his desk as we ran down the hall.

All of these times would make our year somewhat tolerable. But before the first semester was even over we had managed to make our Spanish teacher complete despise us. We still to this day cannot figure out what exactly we did that caused this. After all, I had one of the highest grades in that class, and probably spoke Spanish better than most of my classmates. Liz did well too, and we were both to quiet to really bother anyone, usually talking to no one but each other. Eventually a conference would be called with both me and Liz’s parents. The result of this conference would be my teacher telling my mother; that me and Liz scared the other kids, that there was too much of an age difference between us, that she thinks we are on drugs, oh and that she thinks we are lesbians. Though now that I think of it, this very quite possibly could have something to do with the changing-clothes-in-the-middle-of-class thing...Oh no actually, I remember, there was a girl who sat next to us who really WAS a closet lesbian at the time, and she DID make lesbian comments on a regular basis, though we had no contribution to this, the comments were just made in our vicinity, figures. As if we didn't both have enough problems at home as it were, this in no way made our lives easier. As if we didn’t both have enough problems at home as it were, this in no way made our lives easier.