I have always considered myself straight; no never really the boy crazy type like the other girls. But I have had my share of crushes on guys, not many, in fact I could probably fit the number of guys that I've had a crush on, on just one hand.
Yet when I started noticing girls more and more, and found myself actually feeling attracted to them, for some reason I really wasn't all that surprised. This, of course, all started when I was in the eighth grade. At first I wasn't sure if it could be the hormones that every 14 year old girl went through or what, but I just couldn't seem to stop thinking about it. I'd be walking down the hall and there would be some girl walking in front of me, long straight silky hair, small waist...cute little butt, you get the picture. I would find myself; I guess you could say, checking her out. Well soon this was what it was like when I saw a lot of girls. I mean I don't want to sound like a perv but I really did like checking out girls, a lot. So it was when a new girl, Nevada, showed up at our school, that I finally decided that I was definitely not straight.
It was the middle of the school year, and I was in my home room class waiting in my desk for the bell signaling that the school day had started. My home room teacher Mrs. Lindstrom, who also happened to be my science teacher, had mentioned earlier that week that a new student was going to be joining our house today (houses are groups made up of about 3-4 teachers, each one teaching a certain amount of classes, and everybody in that house had those same 3-4 teachers throughout the day for their various classes. There were 3 houses in all.) I was sort of eager to find out who this new student was. Knowing how painfully shy I was though, we would never become friends. The thing is, I'm one of those girls that is always left out, the one that never has a partner when partnering up for group projects and such in class, gym, etc. the teacher always ends up having to find someone for me to pair up with for me. I do have one friend though, her name is Hope. We have been friends for four years now but we really don't get along well, and she's not very popular, in fact I'd say she was all the way at the bottom of the school's social hierarchy, but then again so was I. Hope is sort of overweight, doesn't take care of her hair, causing it to look like a nasty snarled clumpy mud brown mess, it also didn't help that it was so long. She never had any braces though she definitely needed them, and she had a really bad case of eczema all over her body. I on the other hand was short, about 5'2, kind of skinny, with naturally wavy blond hair, but not the good kind of wavy, but the gross frizzy kind. My hair was about down to my breasts, which were maybe a large A or small B cup, not too impressive but it was more than what hope had to offer, she being pretty much flat. But the one thing on my body that I thought was my best feature, were my eyes. They were big almond shaped eyes, the irises a mixture of light green and blue. Everybody said that I looked just like my mother, whether that was a good thing or not, I'm not sure.
Lost in my thoughts of a new student joining our house, I was startled when a familiar three chimes sounded through the school's PA system, the bell. The last of the students that were out in the halls socializing snuck into the room and sat down in their seats. I looked around and spotted her, sitting near the front on the left side of the classroom was a girl I have never seen before. She had medium length curly brunette hair and was of a medium build. She had a little more weight on her than me but she definitely was not anywhere close to being chubby or fat. Over all, she was very cute. Mrs. Lindstrom went over to her and said aloud,
"Everyone this is Nevada, she is our new student." Nevada then stood up, smiling wide and said, "Hello!" I could tell right away that she wasn't shy at all, and seemed over all very friendly, in fact I was surprised later on in the day when I met up with Hope, when she mentioned that Nevada had talked to her during their reading class that they had together.
"Really?" I said as we sped walked down the hall together to get to lunch. "Yeah." she said. "She was so nice to me, I was really surprised." Yeah so was I. we were waiting in the lunch line now; Hope continued and said, "She talked to everybody, and she's already made friends with some of the popular girls." Great, I thought. Just what we needed, another one of those preppy, high strung, obnoxious girls, the type of girls that were always yelling and screaming down the hall with their other popular friends, laughing and being extremely annoying. I sighed, so much for the possibility of actually having a normal decent girl that I could actually be friends with in this school.
"Well hopefully she doesn't turn into another one of them." I whispered. "Omigod I knooow right." Hope said. After we both got our trays of food, Hope and I stood at the front of the cafeteria surveying all the tables, looking for an empty one to claim. Students chattered in between bites, talking about all the latest gossip. On the far right sat the "populars" being just as loud and obnoxious as ever.
"Let's just sit here" Hope said, and pointed to an empty table right in front of us. I frowned, but I guess we really didn't have any other choice. It felt so lame to be sitting there, just the two of us. I watched as people looking for places to sit passed by our table choosing to sit with complete strangers, rather than us. It was depressing really, I hated it. I hated that I was so god damn shy. I wished that I could be friends with someone else. I have known Hope Mudd for four years and I can tell you now, that she is not a real great person. Ok, first of all she is extremely rude, to me and to most other people, she's very selfish, she is extremely lazy, and she gets annoyed waaay too easily. God I remember this one time when we were in like, I don't know, 6th grade and we came back from a skiing field trip. We both got off the bus and it was in the middle of winter, winter in Wisconsin is COLD, so I said something like,
"Oh my God, it's like one hundred degrees below zero out here!" Now I know that may have been a bit of an exaggeration but cut me some slack, I was eleven years old. Anyway, Hope responded by shouting at me something like this. "OH MY GOD KRYSALYN, it is NOT one hundred degrees below zero out here!" I responded with, "Calm down Hope, I didn't actually mean one hundred degrees below zero, I just exaggerated a little it's no big deal." Then she yelled, "Well don't exaggerate! UHHG! You are sooo annoying!" She has always been that way, and I hated it, so god damn much. She was always calling me annoying like that for the most trivial things. I was just glad that next year I would have my other friend Tina coming to our district's high school. Tina currently attended a private Catholic school, and a few of her classmates were also going to come to our high school. She wasn't very happy about that, like Hope and I, Tina was also at the very bottom of her grade's social hierarchy, and was often bullied by the other kids. It was going to be nice to have someone else to hang out with and talk to besides Hope, then I could finally distance myself away from Hope and end this ridiculous friendship once and for all. The only thing was, Tina is extremely clingy; she had bad experiences with other friends in the past, and therefore was also very annoying. She got angry and her feelings hurt very easily; she was...sensitive, to make a long story short.
We met through our city's girl choir in 6th grade. I was new and participating in the choir's 5-day week summer camp, just to get an idea of what the choir was all about and to decide whether or not I wanted to join. I had been sitting outside, alone beside a tree during our break, munching on a sandwich when Tina came over to me and said,
"Hey I was just wondering if you would like to come over and sit with us." She smiled and motioned to another, heavier, girl sitting beside a different tree. "You just looked so lonely over here and we felt bad." She said still smiling. I shyly nodded my head, grabbed my things and followed her to where the other girl was sitting. We sat down and Tina immediately introduced me to the other girl. I recognized her right away but didn't say anything.
"This is Alicia," Tina said nodding toward her. "Oh and I'm Tina." She smiled, "What's your name?" I gulped and let out a barely audible whisper when I answered and said, "Krysalyn." Tina scrunched her eyebrows and said, "Kristen?" this time I tried to say it louder. "No...Krysalyn." I mumbled. "Oh." Said Tina, "Ok." I wasn't sure if she had actually heard what my name was, but I wasn't about to ask. Tina and Alicia continued talking to me for the rest of that week. During break time the three of us would play hide and go seek in the park's bushes, and would use sticks to carve our names, and things like Tina, Alicia, and Krysalyn BFF's forever in the white birch trees.
Well I ended up joining choir that year and Tina and I became good friends, soon Tina began calling me her best friend, calling me every day, and wanting to have sleepovers almost every weekend. I was no longer shy around her, and was able to be my true self. Which in return lead to her being her true self around me. I soon saw just how sensitive and emotional Tina could get, how clingy she was and how jealous she always got when I hung out with or talked about another friend. One example of another friend would be who I considered to be my best friend at the time, Amber. Amber was half Hawaiian with naturally tan skin and long thick dark brown hair, so dark it was almost black. She had beautiful almond shaped chocolate brown eyes and a very clear complexion. My mother often mentioned how attractive she thought Amber would grow up to be, which sort of made me feel jealous that she would talk about my best friend like that but not even her own daughter. My mom and I have been having a rocky relationship for awhile now, but back then it wasn't quite as bad as it is nowadays.
It's because I remind her so much of my dad I think. You see, my dad passed away when I was just eleven years old from drinking and driving. The two of them were always fighting and screaming, so loud that the neighbors across the street could hear them and actually ended up calling the cops once. It was bad, but that was the way it was my entire life. So when they were having one of their usual screaming fests late one night, my dad took off in our car drunk. He taking off like that during an argument happened all the time, so I guess my mom didn't worry too much besides the fact that he was drunk. So drunk in fact that when they tested his blood-alcohol level it was 0.45, which is more than five times the legal limit.
I don't remember much that night, I was always a very light sleeper, and so it didn't take very long for me to wake up to the wails and screaming of my mother after the police showed up and told her of my father's death in a car accident. I heard the entire argument they had that night before he drove off, but I guess after he finally left I fell asleep. So when I awoke to my mother's reaction of my father's death I wasn't sure what to think, but I was too afraid to leave my room and find out what was happening. Sometime after that I must have fallen asleep again because I remember waking up a second time, this time I could hear my grandmother out in the living room; my mom was still crying and it sounded as if my grandmother was trying to comfort her, then I heard my aunt Carly who is my mother's younger sister, talking as well. By this time I was confused and scared but I still didn't leave my bedroom. I remember thinking to myself at one point, my dad is dead, but as soon as I thought it I shook my head and thought, No, he isn't dead; he probably went to jail or something, that's all. Now go back to sleep and don't worry! So that is exactly what I did.
My mom never understood the way I thought, she always told me that I have a very strange way of thinking and that she just didn't understand me. I guess it was that and other things I did that made her think of my dad, which only caused her to like me less and less to the point where she got mad at me for eating chicken with ketchup. She told me that my dad used to have a weird obsession with ketchup and that once one night, he left the house at three a.m. just to buy a new bottle of the stuff because we had run out. I told her that I wasn't obsessed with ketchup and that I would never do something like that. I simply enjoyed the taste and I could definitely live without ketchup if I had to. It was such a bizarre conversation but ever since I haven't been able to eat ketchup without thinking about it.
I looked up from my tray of food, only half eaten and glanced at Hope. She sat there munching on a cheddar fry using only the right side of her mouth, staring off into space oblivious to the world around her. I said something to her, can't remember now what it was, nothing important. She didn't hear me though, and I shook my head in exasperation. Kids all over the cafeteria were getting up out of their seats to throw away their trays and head outside for recess, not even bothering to raise their hands to be dismissed. I did the same and Hope followed after me. When we got outside I saw Nevada talking to a group of girls. She turned her head and smiled when she saw Hope next to me and walked over to greet her.
"Hey chica what's up?" Nevada said. "Ohhh nothing much." replied Hope. Nevada smiled at me and said to Hope, "Who's your friend here?" "This is Krysalyn. "she said. "Nice to meet you," Nevada said. I choked out a small hello and smiled weakly.The three of us chatted for the rest of recess and walked inside and to each of our classes together. Nevada really didn't seem that bad and I decided that maybe we could become friends after all.
Thank you for reading my first chapter of "The Story Behind My Big Blue Eyes" I'll be posting Chapter 2 shortly.