A Life Like Mine (3 page)

“What would the other one be?” Liz asked, unable to stop herself.

“It was also devoted to sticking to you because it’s super glue.” I smiled at how they both wanted to charge at me, but knew they couldn’t. “Tah-tah, girls!” At that moment I was happier than I ever thought I could be. I had finally gotten revenge against Lena to the point where she couldn’t pin it against me. There were so many people there, that anyone could have done it.

The next day was kind of a blur with all the action that was going on. I’d never seen so many popular people look at me with these severely arctic glares. They knew what I had done, but no one could really prove it. It was the best day of my life. All my friends were praising me, and begging me for details. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing because if I did someone might overhear me. Or worse, they might even record me without my knowledge.

I was expecting Lena and Liz to stay home sick from their injuries, but I guess they weren’t as ashamed as I’d have hoped. They looked a lot worse than I was hoping too, which made my victory twice as sweet. Let me just describe as vividly as I can for you how overly dramatic and wimpy these girls are.

Lena had her hair up in a tight pony tale with as much make-up on as possible. She must have had some shiner on her eye because there was a purple ring that was still visible even though she tried to hide it under fifty layers of foundation. Although, I think she got that from Liz, and not from her rather embarrassing fall. Her neck was enclosed in a brace. “Doctor’s orders,” She’d say in a flirty/giggly way. She was wearing an extra tight halter-top. Which just made me realize that no matter what; Lena was always going to be sleazy. Then she had on really tight pants and two different shoes. One was normal size and the other one was a type of sandal cast thing. Her foot had swollen like a balloon from trying to kick Liz.

Then Liz’s appearance was twice as sad. She had her hair down in a loose braid. She had it at the side of her head in an attempt to cover up the fact that she had bruised the entire right side of her face. Her neck was fine and she had on a normal T-shirt. Her hands were wrapped in at least twelve inches of first aide bandages because the removal process of her hands from Lena’s shoes was partially “unsuccessful.”  All day I heard her yelling at Lena, “Open my purse for me! I can’t use my fingers!” And then Lena would say, “Well, why should I? You made fun of me!” But Liz would yell back, “I thought we’d gotten over that, already!” Liz then had on tight black pants and regular high-heeled shoes.

I walked up to Lena and said, “Well don’t you look absolutely ravishing today, Lena!”

“Bite me!”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say! Why I think that neck brace really accents that beautiful purple hue you have around your eye.”

“You can’t see that! I covered it up.”

“Then you must have done a bang-up job! I can still see it,” I walked away as Lena struggled trying to get into her purse and pull out her compact mirror.

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the dirty looks I received from the queens of skankiness. Now, I know what you’re thinking. The girls may be awful, but they didn’t deserve this, right? Well there are some things that you don’t know. So please don’t just side with them because you think what I did was low. They were really awful to me in fifth grade. There are some things that I just can’t bear to relive.

The day was really going well until I got called down to the Principal’s office at the end of the day. Other than yesterday, I hadn’t done anything wrong. There’s no way that anyone could have known about what I’d done. I looked to make sure that no one saw. And also, I could blame it on anyone that was actually at the game, plus everyone hates Lena and Liz.

Still, I had been called down to the office so I went. I noticed that anytime that someone is called down to the office that there’s always a secretary sitting outside of the office that tells you to wait in a chair until the principle is ready to see you. Also, there’s always someone sitting in the other available seat waiting for the same thing you are.

“What are you in for?” this guy with a pink Mohawk asked me.

“I’m not really sure. I haven’t done anything lately, so I don’t know what I should be worried about.”

“That sucks. I put a stink bomb in the teacher’s bathroom.”

“Well how did you get caught then?”

“Um…”

“Well?”

“Miss Rosemary was in there.” He looked at me with sad, defeated eyes. I started laughing right in his face. “Hey don’t laugh at me. How was I supposed to know that the principal would be in there, huh?”

“I’m sorry. I think that it’s just a little too perfect don’t you? I mean of all the times that you could’ve done that you had to choose when the principal was in there! I feel for you, but at least you know what kind of sentence you’ll get.”

“No I don’t.”

“Oh, well, you’ll probably have to write a one-hundred word essay, clean desks for a month, and serve detention every Saturday for a month.”

“How would you know?”

“I’ve been there before. You see…”

“Ashley?” I turned to see Miss Rosemary staring at me from underneath her geeky glasses.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I can see you now. I think we need to have a talk.” She closed the door to her office.

“Yes Ma’am.” I said a little too late. I looked over at the Mohawk dude. “Nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, whatever. Good luck with…well…whatever you’re in for. I’m sure it can’t be good if Rosemary asked you to come in after school to ‘talk.’ You know?”

“Yeah, well, bye.” I walked into Miss Rosemary’s office to find her sitting at her desk typing into the computer.

“Have a seat, Ashley.” She removed her glasses. I went to sit down and found what was left of Lena sitting in the other chair. My eyes widened, but I carefully sat down as Lena stared at me with a smirk on her face.

“So I hear that you’ve been causing some trouble, young lady.”

“Me?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes. Lena tells me that you put super glue in Liz’s lotion to purposely harm them.”

“Do you believe everything Lena says?”

“Ashley,” Miss Rosemary said in a warning tone. “I’ve had trouble with you two before. I don’t know what made you two hate each other as much as you do, but I thought you were past these childish pranks,” She frowned at me.

“I am Ma’am, but-”

“And I thought that this whole thing was over with, and you had matured enough to know that these kind of things aren’t funny. They hurt people.”

“I understand that, but-”

“I don’t want to have to punish you anymore and I hope that we can put this behind us and move on without any more problems?”

“Yes.” I said.

              “You’re not going to punish her, Miss Rosemary?” Lena asked indignantly.

“No. I believe that Ashley doesn’t want to take this matter any further than you do. Right, Ashley?”

“Right.”

“But I-”

“That’s enough, Lena. You’re both excused. And no more of this nonsense.”

“Yes Ma’am,” we said together as we both left.

“You’re not getting off that easy, Ashley!” Lena had fire in her eyes. “I’ll get you back for what you did to me.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, Lena. Once a baby, always a baby. And a tattle-tale is also part of your résumé now too, huh?” I looked at her coldly as I walked away from her. I had a feeling Lena wasn’t going to stand for this, but what was she going to do to me?

“I’ll get you. Don’t worry about that. One way or another I’m going to get you!”

“Nice. Why don’t you go steal the lyrics from another song Lena, at least take one from someone who’s popular today.” I yelled over my shoulder. And as I walked away I could feel her eyes boring holes in to my back.

Chapter 2

Homecoming Week

Homecoming week is one of the best and worst weeks that anyone could ever go through.  It’s the week where seniors think they’re hot stuff, and freshman pee in their pants. Many freshmen will object to this, but come on; during homecoming week you can’t go anywhere without hearing some freshman say to another, “I hear that all the seniors are planning to egg us as soon as we leave the school grounds!” If that isn’t paranoia, I don’t know what is. Each day before the homecoming dance has a certain theme. Today’s was Color Day.  This was a day where each class was assigned a certain color. Seniors were black, juniors: red, sophomores: blue, and freshman: brown. This was the day that seniors tried to knock the freshman down by giving their year a bad color so that they would know how low they were.  I’d done the same thing every year. I’d wear black.

              “Good morning! How are you-Whoa! Black! I like it!” Keri’s opened her coat to show me her defiant black outfit.

              “Keri!”

              “Great minds think alike. All the freshmen said they’d wear black, but they probably won’t,” Keri looked at me, her eyes laughing.  As we reached school, I noticed no freshmen had worn black, like Keri had predicted.

              “I told you so,” Keri read my mind.

              “Yeah.”

              “Why do you think the freshman this year are so gutless? It’s just a color,” She glanced at me.

              “You’ve heard the rumors,” I gazed at Keri.

              “Oh that’s true. Did you hear the one about how all the freshman are going to get egged after school?

              “Yep,” I laughed. (Am I right, or am I right?) As we walked into the cafeteria, we went over to sit at the table where all my friends met before school. We were the last of the group to show up.  We took off our coats, and as we did this, everyone turned to gawk.

              “What are you doing? Do you know what the seniors will do to you?” Jennifer whispered in an urgent tone.

              “Can it,” Keri rolled her eyes, “It’s not like we’re freshmen. Do you know what happens to them if they do anything to us?”

              “They’re going to! I’m friends with them! You don’t understand. They’ll get really mad,” Jennifer bit her thumbnail with anxiety.

              “They’ll get expelled if they do anything to us,” Keri and I said together.

              “No they won’t.” Jennifer argued back, “They’ll get you.”

“Quiet. I’ll go right over to the senior section of the cafeteria and yell ‘I’m not a senior and I’m in black’ and we’ll just see what they’ll do,” Ben raised his arms to silence us, and looked directly at Jennifer.  He went over to the senior section just like he said he would.

Our school has this thing about separating into classes. The seniors get the biggest chunk of space to sit, the juniors get the second most, and so on. Obviously, the freshmen practically get zilch. If you even tried to sit in the other sections, you’d get pushed out because that wasn’t where you were supposed to go. Although this wasn’t really done all that much unless you went into the sophomore’s section or the senior section and you were a freshmen.  I talked about this with Allie once and she told me something that I thought made total sense. There’s a little description that goes with every class.

              Freshmen- They are scared to death of all of the older people, yet they make big talk when they are challenged. Most of them have a scared wide-eyed look to them that makes them easy to point out. That and their height help others determine what year they are.

              Sophomores- They are the major buttheads of the school. They’re so happy that they’re not freshmen anymore that they treat the freshmen like scum. Even though they themselves are still scum because they’re not upper classmen yet, they still think they’re all high and mighty.  If you looked up in dictionary what “sophomore” meant, you’d see the words “foolish” and “moron.” It’s true. Funny how that definition so accurately illustrates them, isn’t it?

              Juniors- These are the people that really don’t bother anybody. (Kind of like the third tier of my social cake.) The juniors don’t torture freshmen because they’re just too happy that they are finally upper classmen to notice the little people.

              Seniors- These people are kind of a hit or miss. They’re either as a whole nice, or as a whole major pains. They really don’t care much about age politics. It’s the sophomores that really hype it up.

              Anyway, Ben sauntered over to the senior section and yelled what he said he would. People looked at him for a moment, and then they returned to the conversations they were having. Ben came back to us and gave Jennifer a see-I-told-you-so nod.  She frowned and walked off to go to her locker when the skank patrol walked by us.

              “Sleaze alert,” I whispered to Allie and Tina. They both laughed and we started to talk about things that didn’t matter to look as if we hadn’t noticed they were walking by.

              “Ashley,” Lena’s cold voice called my name. I kept on talking to my friends as if I hadn’t heard her. “I’m talking to you, tramp!” All the guys’ ears perked up to see what was going to go on.