From the 2nd Year

V

My group of friends started to become more exclusive. And by that I mean that Genesis was doing other things because her friends were having drama and everyone else except for Logan, Xavier, Zeke, and myself didn't have anything going on.

The four of us got together and started hanging out almost religiously. We were the tightest squad I'd ever had. In the mornings before school I stopped going to the library to see my old friends because my priorities were skewed.

In that time frame, my friend Logan and I got closer and I started sitting with him and his friend Karla at lunch. Karla was really uninteresting, to be quite honest, I was strictly there for Logan.

Logan is a very important character in my story, so he's not easily overlooked. He was very tall- about 6'1", his hair was very short and a light brown color. His eyes were the most stunning part of his face. They were like portals into another world- just so blue that they made the sky look less than perfect. He was a white boy if you couldn't have guessed, but he wore the funniest clothes sometimes. He looked so preppy- wearing his vests and khaki pants with a pair of converse. But what I enjoyed most about him was his sense of humor and his 'fuck it' attitude.

Now Zeke... He was something else! He was short, and when I say 'short', I mean as short as I am, and I'm 5'4". He was a freshman, so it made sense, but I don't think he hit puberty yet because his voice was a little high pitched. He was also Hispanic, but came from a wealthy family, so he acted really white. Zeke wore his hair like a little emo kid, not only that, but he always had on a pair of black pants and black vans with a graphic tee. You never saw the shirt he was wearing because he never took his jacket off. One of his quirks, I suppose. Although, his style didn't dictate who he was, his personality was so colorful that I'm surprised he didn't dress like he was colorblind, but when he laughed it gave me life! He acted very mature for his age which is probably why he hung out with us in the first place.

Did I explain Xavier yet? No? Well, there was a picture of him and I at the beginning of one of my chapters... Chapter 5, actually. Anyway, he was part white- part Hispanic and his hair was dark and curly. He dressed like a normal person, very casual and comfortable. Remember when I explained him as being too cool for me to be his friend? He wasn't cool at all! He was a weirdo, but in a good way. I loved his sense of humor- except sometimes he got too political. He would say things like, "Feel the Bern- 2K16..." And then grin from ear to ear and laugh at his own joke! Then he'd explain why he thought every presidential candidate for 2017 was an awful choice.

Those guys were like my brothers. Never was I ever able to talk about my girl problems openly with guys until they came along.

Like brother like family, personal conflicts started to arise in the family. They didn't involve me- not yet anyways, but my uncle Trey was really good at stirring shit up in our family. I guess you could think of him as 'the bad apple that ruined the whole bunch'.

My cousin Ty many years ago wanted to get to know his father... Ty lived with his mother who divorced Trey shortly after Ty was born, so Ty didn't know much about his dad. My family actually tried to hide the truth about his father, so he grew not knowing much about him. Until Ty turned 15 he decided that he desperately wanted to get to know Trey- and with his mother's permission he could, and so, he got what he asked for. But we warned him that Trey wasn't exactly the most stable and despite our advice, he chose to go live with Trey anyway- which is understandable- to a point.

The town they lived in was very small- 5,681 to be exact, but in a town that small everyone knows everyone. And Trey was known as the town's tattoo artist, so he had shady characters coming in and out of his illegally run business all the time. When Ty started school he was known as 'Trey's kid' which got him a group of friends that were toxic for him, but basically what I'm trying to say is that it's easy to get in trouble in such a small shithole of a town because generally the law looks the other direction.

Trey had a wife, I don't know... My family never really knew what their relationship was. She was 20 and he was 38. Gross. Whatever... At this point, Ty was now a senior in high school in this awful town, but this horrible lady was really good at verbally abusing Ty even though they were barely three years apart in age. And when I say 'good' I don't mean it as a good thing- I meant that she had perfected her cruel ways.

The woman herself was trash. White trash. Even court didn't find her fit to be a parent because the bitch was fucking crazy. I swear, my family was positive she had multiple personality disorder. Maybe even a bit of bipolar disorder... She had severe issues. She always put forth the effort to dress like a hooker every time we saw her, for instance, she would do her hair in lose curls and wear large hoop earrings and a super short dress that rode up her ass with makeup that was done way too dark. She was just pure trash.

Word got around in the family- mainly to my poor grandmother- that she and Trey were forcing Ty to do unrealistic tasks, so my grandmother got involved somehow (because that's her specialty) and tried to soften things up. Her efforts failed and they blocked Ty away from my grandmother.

Everyone except for myself in this scenario lived within 15 miles of each other. My grandmother got involved because she conveniently lived about 10 miles outside of the town my uncle and cousin lived. News traveled to her fastest unless I heard from my cousin first and then told my mother about it, who then told my grandmother.

There are no secrets in my family. If you do something, everyone finds out about it...