All of My Firsts

Prologue

All of my firsts were with James Stevens. First love, first drinking buddy-- that sort of thing. In a way, he was the one who broke me out of my shy, quiet girl shell. Before I met him, I was terrified of him. I was scared of the way he and his friends would skip school, because I had had perfect attendance my entire life. I was also scared of the way he treated girls, because he was always teasing the people that he liked. Not that I assumed that he would ever like me, but seventh grade me liked to dream about everybody liking her. On the very first day of eighth grade, James came up behind me in the hallway, grabbed my arms and twisted them, making me vulnerable for a second, and hugged me so tightly that I couldn't move easily. The shy girl in me died that moment, and a new, brave, girl took her place, for I turned around, threw the contents of my hands at his head and punched him hard in the chest. He had fallen to the ground, wincing, and I was predictably sent to the principal's office. I received the standard "punching is wrong" speech and got a detention. I took the fall for James regarding the principal, but only because I intended to deal with him on my own.

I know what you're thinking; I wasn't planning on punching him again.

I had confronted him after school that day in the parking lot.

"What the hell!" I had yelled in his face.

"What the hell yourself, Haley," he said, smiling at me. I swear to God, that kid had nerve.

"Do you walk up to all of the girls and strangle them, or just me?"

"I only do it to the pretty girls." Ugh. (I remember calling him a "douchebag" to my friends because I had just learned what it meant. I thought I was the coolest eighth grader out there.)

I left after that, flipping my curly brown hair over my shoulder. I couldn't believe him, nobody had ever been that rude or up front with me in my life. Naturally, I was freaking out. I ran all the way home and cried in my room for the next few hours. I didn't look James in the eyes for two years after that. My friends informed me the next day that they had overheard James and his friends mention that James had a crush on me, and I was pissed off. I didn't even want James looking at me by that point, let alone thinking about me in that way. I didn't look him in the eye for the next year.

Once the beginning of ninth grade hit, James began to fight for my attention again. Ninth grade was the year I discovered that boys weren't so bad after all, and I was flattered. I was standing at my locker one day with my best friends, Casey and Big, when James ran up behind me out of nowhere and picked me up, flung me over his shoulder. He ran through the halls with me like that and he finally set me down in an empty classroom. There, he professed his undying love to me (maybe that's not exactly what happened, but he definitely told me that he liked me), so I decided to give him a chance. We dated for the rest of the year. We would hang out almost every day after school, and he would take me out to ice cream if I had a bad day, and we would go to the park at midnight and sit on the swings so we could just talk about life. It was the best year of my life.

At one point, there was another guy in our grade who had a big crush on me. His name was Cameron. Cameron would flirt with me and try to put his arm around me in the halls, and no matter how much I would tell him to stop, he would just persist even more. During lunch one day, he found me alone and pressed me up against the wall and kissed my neck. I remember trying to push him off of me, but Cameron was too strong for me. "You're hurting me! Stop it!" I had yelled in his face, attempting to spit on him. He chuckled and continued, wiping my spit off of his forehead. Cameron worked his way up my neck to my face and then my lips and shoved his tongue in my mouth. I shrieked and tried to escape, but I didn't succeed. I remember feeling his hand creep up my thigh, lifting the hem of my skirt. I desperately looked around for help, yelling for a teacher, but nobody else was in the hallway. Right when I was beginning to lose hope, Cameron fell to the ground, freeing me. But then I saw James on top of Cameron, both of the flailing on the ground. James was punching him and pulling his hair. Cameron was crying and screaming.