Whatever. (on hold)

Chapter 1

        It was windy for a Tuesday. Now, I know for a fact that days of the week can never be inherently windy or non-windy and that prescribing how windy it is outside would generally be dependent on the season or the location, but in all of my years on this planet I can most assuredly say that Tuesdays have not been all that windy. Does it really matter if it was windy or not on this specific Tuesday? Probably not. So why am I including this? Maybe someone will find some deeply hidden symbolism in the nature of my life. Or maybe I just like to take note of random observations so when I’m on my death bed I can remember this specific Tuesday, when it was oddly windy. I think both options are equally strange.

        It was the last day of school. Or at least it had been, less than six hours before. However, it was now officially summertime and in honor of that someone was throwing an end-of-the-year bonfire. I think it was technically Alicia Powell’s bonfire, but on occasions like this generally more than 30 people showed up, so it didn’t even matter whose original idea it was.

        The sun was just setting beyond the small waves of the lake—if you could even call it that. It was probably more along the lines of an exaggerated pond. I pulled my gray Lincoln Town Car into the dirt parking lot next to a large red truck and scrunched my nose in disgust. I never knew why I had such a problem with trucks. Maybe it was because the boy I lost my virginity to drove me home in his truck and he cried the entire way there. Or maybe it was because they were big and loud and nothing scared me more than big and loud things while I was driving. The latter was probably the cause, but the former was still mortifying.

        “If they’re smoking down there we have to leave.” my friend Marielle Jones said. Well, maybe friend was an overstatement. I didn’t have many friends at the time. No, that’s a lie. I had friends, but they didn’t like me much and I didn’t like them much either.

        I didn’t say anything, but instead opened my car door to get out.

        “My parents will freak out if they smell smoke on me. I didn’t go to rehab for six months to be sent back less than three months later.” Marielle said. She had a habit of roundabout bragging. More often than not, the things Marielle bragged about were not things most people would be bragging about, but Marielle didn’t care. She wanted everyone to know she went to rehab for smoking. Once. I’m not even kidding, she got caught smoking a cigarette once. It was literally the first time she had tried smoking and she didn’t like it but when she came home her parents could smell it and they confronted her about it and she lied and said she smoked all the time. Who would even lie about something like that? Why would you realistically want to get sent to rehab?

        “It’ll be fine. The cops are all over the lake; school just got out. They want to bust anyone and everyone. None of us are dumb enough to try to do any of that shit here.” I said.

        Marielle got out of the car without another word. I locked the doors and followed her out, swinging my lanyard in circles in the air as we approached a large group of people gathered around a fire on the sandy beach.

        Social gatherings never seemed to go over well for me; not because I was shy or overwhelmed by crowds, but because I was mean. Not like an in-your-face bully from seemingly every teenage rom-com, but more of an intimidating, overly sarcastic, and tall-for-a-girl girl with a very damaged reputation. To put it in layman’s terms, people didn’t like me, so it was hard to socialize at these events.

        That was another thing I didn’t understand about Marielle. She was fairly popular and could easily find anybody to drag to social gatherings, but time and time again she asked me to go with her. I hated being stuck at home with nothing to do, and surely nobody else would want to come hang out with me, so time and time again I agreed to go.