AWKWARD JENNA HAMILTON'S DIARY

That Girl

When I was initially charting my course to visibility, I really should have defined the kind of visibility I wanted. For two weeks I tried to explain that my accident was just that. An accident. The more I denied it, the more everyone assumed I was in denial. It was a vicious circle.

The one person who was noticeably absent from gossiping about my life was Matty McKibben. But I finally had contact with him. It was the first time we had seen each other since my deflowering…and I’d almost forgotten how jacked I looked. He asked if I was okay. It was a complicated question. Even if he hadn’t been pulled away by his posse, there probably wasn’t time for me to explain everything I was feeling.

But luckily for me, apparently I was gonna have a lot of time to talk about my feelings with my new guidance counselor. Color me excited. We apparently are set to have weekly meetings.  And she’s “special”.  She spit my breath mints back in their container and then tried on my lipgloss. Valerie needs her own counselor. She asked me if I had any questions for her.  I had about a thousand, but not one of them seemed appropriate. I could only hope that someone would let me off for good behavior really soon so I wouldn’t have to spend the entire year dealing with her special brand of insanity.

And then there was Sadie, who I guess was disappointed that I wasn’t dead. I never appreciated Sadie’s bitchiness, but I understood it. She was hungry.

And she was gonna be in my line of sight for all of lunch because she was in the pep rally. With Matty. All over Matty. But, I was fine. Okay, that’s was a lie. I wasn’t. Despite all my external wounds, my heart was probably gonna take the longest to heal. And I was tired of the pain. So, rather than wait it out, I had the brilliant idea to jumpstart the healing process.  I volunteered for the pep rally.  I mean, I totally knew what I was doing.  Confession: I had no idea what I was doing. But I couldn’t look back. At all.

Yet somehow…having people pay even more attention to me was the best stupid idea I ever had. I got in a guy’s pants and came out a winner. And more importantly, people saw me as someone other than a total freak.

Except for Sadie, of course. I tried to be nice to her after she lost. She responded in the typical Sadie way: by being an ass. It’s true when they say no good deed goes unpunished. But I wasn’t gonna let get to me. Things were looking up. Besides my arm.

Being “That Girl” was my new identity. But I won’t let it define me. I will define it.