Long Blue Line: Based on a True Story (3 page)

My scrawny little 13-year-old body was pumping with adrenaline. I peered over my shoulder and through my nerdy glasses to make sure that no one else in the class had noticed my shaky reaction. My G-rated literature days were over. I had never read anything so intense. It was like a first date - so nerve wracking but incredibly thrilling.

After losing my literature virginity, I started spending all of my free time cozied up in my little twin-sized bed obsessing over these novels. The characters were all young, beautiful girls in their teens. They all had a disadvantaged upbringing and faced horrible tragedy. Most importantly, they all ended up living in some immaculate mansion with a rich, distant relative that they never knew existed.

My young mind was incredibly influenced by these books. These stories started to create their own lives, building into my subconscious. I was suddenly and completely infatuated with tragedy as well as thinking up various ways of becoming rich like the girls in the novels. At the age of thirteen, I was going through the obituaries in the local newspaper hoping to find a rich relative that would leave me their estate. I also put together a flip -book of the future mansion I wanted to own in Palm Springs.

If I wasn’t romanticizing about death or tragedy, it was money I was thinking about or sometimes boys. The thought of boys would take over about a year later. To say I was a little mixed up would be an understatement.

I was always a sensitive kid. The most minor things would severely upset me, especially unexpected loud noises. I’ve been told that the vacuum, toilet flushing, and the blinds being pulled up would put me into a panic when I was a baby. On a night back in 1990, my mother was driving us all home from a weekend visit with my Grandma and Grandpa. First, I was already extremely upset over the fact that I had to leave them. They spoiled my twin and me rotten. Our older sister didn’t mind leaving as much as we did. She was a teenager and had more important affairs to attend to. My mom must have bribed me with candy of some sort for the four-hour drive home we had ahead of us. The candy was fantastic. The aftermath, however, was disastrous. It left me sticky. Even worse, the napkin my mom threw to me in the back seat was DRY. Little pieces of this napkin broke off as I tried with everything in my soul to get my hands clean. I was bawling my little eyes out.

Not only was I sensitive, I was also very imaginative and compulsive. Let’s go back to my very firsts.

My First Crush: We all have a first crush. I was only five years old. Seeing him gracefully fly around on his magic carpet, bravely leap from building to building, was all it took to have me completely in love. I had dreams of flying over the city every night. When I woke and realized that the only Aladdin I had with me was a Barbie doll, it practically broke my heart. I just knew that he would return one day to marry me.

My First Drink: Most all of us experiment with the beverage that so many adults elegantly held in their glasses. They refused to share a taste as they rambled on forever appearing to completely adore life and everything about it. Eventually, I got curious! My mom wasn’t much of a drinker, luckily. But other parents were. My best childhood friend, Holly, was just as curious and excited to sample our first drink. I brought a “water bottle” over to her house that night. It was the perfect night for this trial. Her dad was busy working late, and the only company sharing the space was her brothers. The vodka in the water bottle ruined our attempts to be discreet. We were dizzy in the hallway and giggling about how stupid we felt. Holly lectured each and every brother, three total, about the negative consequences of alcohol. They had expressions of fear in their eyes as if she’d gone completely mad. It was epic.

My First Time: How I cringe! I mainly cringe because I was just so young. He was my first boyfriend, and his name was Andy. Even though we were just kids, I still believe to this day that we were truly in love. Clearly, we wanted to move much more quickly than we were really ready for, physically and emotionally. We were together constantly for about a year. He lived with his grandparents, and his grandfather picked up a job out of town about four hours away. Eventually, he had to move. On moving day, my mom dropped me off at his house to help him and his grandparents pack. Another friend of ours, Jesse, was there too. The few hours I spent watching him pack his life away was utter heartache and torture. I had a lump in my throat and it took everything that I had in my soul not to break down and cry. I was too embarrassed at that age to show emotion, and for Andy, it had so much depth to it. We were both each other’s firsts - first in everything in the romance department. When my mom returned to pick me up, Andy pulled one of his childhood stuffed animals out from a box about ready to be taped shut. He then doused the bear with his cologne that I loved. Standing in front of his empty garage, with my mom and twin waiting to take me shopping down the hill with them, I had to make the goodbye as fast as possible before I broke down in front of everyone. Andy and I gave each other our last ever hug and a quick kiss with definite plans to be together again. For the next week I cried myself to sleep hugging and smelling the stuffed bear which was all that I would ever have left of my first true love. It took me about three months to realize that we couldn’t be together. We were too young, and having to wait for four years is a long time to a teenager.

My first year of high school was a long one. I was quiet and reserved and always thinking that my peers were looking at me and whispering behind my back. I had a boyfriend for most of that year. We were both loners and definitely anti-social. I would have, most likely, enjoyed my first year of high school more if I hadn’t been so caught up in being loyal to him. I had a natural desire to be submissive and completely faithful to any boyfriend I had starting when I was only twelve. It was almost as if I was living in another century where women were married off in their early teens and just had to accept their fate. I must have been born with an old and lost soul - not to mention a stubborn one. The last month of school that year was when my wild streak started. I impulsively broke up with the boyfriend who really didn’t take it so well as he punched the lockers in the hallway. I suppose breaking up with him after a whole nine months of dating wasn’t too nice of me. I decided that I was going to be much more popular than I had been. I started hanging out with more friends and I was feeling more confident than I ever had.

The snow had finally melted, the sun was just right, and the fresh mountain air brought me to the exciting thought of summer vacation! Something about the sun warming up our cold, icy town had the instant effect of waking me up and getting my blood pumping. The winters were always much longer than the summers. It is almost like becoming free after hibernating in a cold, harsh cave for half the year. For most of the school year, we were restricted to staying indoors and wearing snow boots with double layers of socks. Sometimes I would put garbage bags over my socks to make sure that the snow didn’t soak my feet as I trudged my way into the heated classroom. No more clanking chains on the tires of cars driving painfully slow down the highway. No more shoveling driveways and suffering through stiff, painfully icy hands, and no more stress over walking to the bus stop with fear of slipping on black ice in front of a crowd of students. Summer had finally arrived. The energy at school was elevated, and every student had an eager and excited anticipation for the last bell to ring. Three months of tank tops and beaches could easily put the most miserable person in a better mood.

On the last day of school, my rebellious group of friends and I thought it would be a great idea to acquire some forty-ounce beers and have a barbeque. I had a small group of friends, and just like me, they were pretty mindless and wild. My twin sister Merri happened to be tagging along. We were really nothing alike. Merri was usually not the type to hang out in a wild crowd. She was quiet and preferred hanging out with her pets rather than humans. Her room was like a jungle. She had a huge, obnoxious bird that I hated with a passion. Every morning at the crack of dawn, this thing would caw like it was being strangled. I wished I were the one doing the strangling. I am convinced it did this just to torture me. Her snakes gave me nightmares on a regular basis. If I were ever forced to share a room with her, I’d probably camp out in the closet.

Merri was not fond of my friends; she thought they were annoying and dramatic. She was usually pretty good at putting that aside for me and faking a smile when she had to. Today was one of those days. The sunshine must have been bright enough to even get Merri in the mood to socialize.                               

As for my friends, Kate was a girl I had met my first year of high school. She was constantly complaining about some serious life dilemma that she made sound more like a mid-life crisis than an adolescent issue. She and I had a few things in common though; we’d rather skip class on any given day to drink and flirt with boys. Kate was about my height – 5 feet 4 inches. She had the biggest boobs ever and bleached blonde hair. She was curvy with a butt that could knock down a sumo wrestler. Boys loved that about her. Megan was the snotty one. She was funny when she wanted to be, but snotty. She was tall, blonde, and attractive. I had become close friends with Megan in seventh grade. She was new to my home economics class, and I had decided to take her under my wing. We instantly became almost as close as sisters. She had quite an ego and loved to give guys a hard time. Megan also loved to try new things and was always up for almost any sort of trouble. When the three of us got together, the gates of hell opened, and we were out to cause some crazy and thoroughly entertaining trouble. The main stipulation was that the trouble must involve the most recent batch of mostly-innocent boys we were aiming to torture. 

As for myself, my name is Elizabeth. At 14, I was a small 115 pounds with long medium-brown hair, and I was frequently given compliments on my perfect lips. I was beginning to comprehend that I had been given the gift of a flawless figure, and when I wanted to, I could easily grab the attention of any guy in my sight. I usually only wanted this when I was drunk and extra conceited. I liked the attention, and even more so, I loved the sense of power I felt every time I caught a guy staring. Even as a young kid, I always looked for reassurance and confirmation that I was worthy of special treatment. This need to feel accepted only became stronger as the years passed. For the most part though, I was bubbly and friendly, but I also had a concealed passive-aggressive personality. I was mostly passive until something annoyed me enough to cause a major meltdown. When I was only five, a little girl asked me about twenty times over if I would be her friend. After saying yes for the nineteenth time, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I started viciously whacking her with my plastic softball bat to shut her up. She ran home crying. To this day, I still feel terribly bad about that. I definitely had my father’s temper. I was born pissed off, and I could not tolerate being disturbed with any sort of extra noise or unnecessary chatter. The alcohol took all of this away.

On the last day of school, we were all talking in a circle in front of the gym about whom we were going to invite to our beer-fest and trying to figure out where exactly this would take place. That’s when I met Josh, a senior at my high school. He overheard us talking and invited himself into the conversation. The tall, handsome senior guy confidently informed us that he would be joining the party. Coincidently, he lived about twenty feet from the back of the high school gate. The location became official and now we were all ready to do this. We walked to the location and quickly began smoking, drinking, and laughing hysterically over pathetic jokes that really weren’t all that funny.

After chugging half of a beer, I began to feel the liquid-courage pump through my veins. Whenever I caught a buzz, I also caught a case of extremely enhanced self-confidence. In fact, I believed that I was so ingenious that no matter what idea I came up with, it would always turn out in my favor. I was an exception to the rule of consequences. Looking around to try to figure out if Kate or Megan already had dibs on any of these boys, I began to assess which one might be the most attractive and mature. Josh, the handsome and confident senior, caught my eye for the second time. This time, with each glance, I was utterly paralyzed. It must have been his deep blue eyes that were flirtatiously glancing my way every few seconds. It also could have been how I adored the height on this guy, and maybe just his talkative, confident, friendly personality. He was about 6’2”, and to me that symbolized protection. His confidence made it seem as if he were in total control. All of the guys my age were just too short. Some of them still had squeaky voices and that just annoyed me.

Josh had such an adult appearance. Of course a youthful one, but it became incredibly easy, and almost natural, to imagine a life with him. As he spoke to the rest of the group about things I still can’t recall, my imagination was running wild and his consistent eye contact intensified my ideas with each warm smile. I pictured our new, white, picket fenced home and our little babies playing and laughing. I gladly allowed myself to entertain the idea that Josh just might be the
one.
Thoughts and fantasies overcame me that I hadn’t yet experienced. My trance like state became very specific. I heard myself telling him I was pregnant. I saw him smiling and happy while holding and reassuring me. This vision, however, portrayed both of us as adults and possibly in our mid-twenties. It was so incredibly perfect. I wanted it. Whatever it was that caused this to cross through my mind changed my thoughts on life and growing up - permanently.

The party concluded with Josh and I locked in his bedroom. He turned on one of my favorite songs. He was intensely looking into my eyes as if he were silently expressing his feelings of his instant love.

When the party died down and the light weights passed out, Josh walked me home. I lived about a half mile down the road. I was excited to know that he lived so close to me. That would make it easier for me to pursue him. He led me up the two wooden steps to my front door. It was an awkward moment. I didn’t know if he wanted to kiss me goodnight or just see me off like another meaningless girl. Before I could think much more about it, Josh wrapped his long arms around my waist and told me that I had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. He called me sweetie before kissing me and saying goodbye. This was the first time a man had spoken to me with such sincerity and respect. To add to my admiration for him, I was delighted to learn that he was a clean, passionate kisser. I could not stand it when a gorgeous guy was a sloppy kisser. It truly gagged me when a date completely ruined the entire outing with a slimy tongue. Definite deal-breaker. I didn’t have to worry about that with Josh.

I immediately developed strong feelings for this guy. He treated me as if I were a grown woman - something I had wanted to be for so long. I was sick and tired of other people thinking that they knew what was best for me. I wanted to be ahead of the game. I wanted to have more than any other girl my age, even if it meant finding it in an outrageous way. Josh made me feel like I had a chance to become an adult sooner. I stumbled to my room and fell asleep with a smile.

I woke up the next day to a knock at my door. Josh casually walked in and started chatting away.
Ok, good…he still likes me
, I thought. I was slightly taken by surprise with his sudden visit, but I wasn’t complaining.  I was happy to see him, and I was sure that my mom would like him too. I was right. He fit perfectly into our family. Right away Josh was great with helping out around the house when he visited; he raked up pine needles in the backyard, and he loved to cook when anyone in the family was hungry. Josh was very talkative and made a great first impression. He was skinny as well as tall and always dressed in a plain white tee shirt and jeans. I couldn’t believe this handsome and mature guy wanted
me
. No other boy in our grade had facial hair and a deep voice like he did. I was happy to have successfully found a man. Being with Josh lifted my self-esteem and gave me the confidence I had been lacking. He made me feel like I was worth it. Josh made me feel loved and adored and wanted. I felt as if I were finally whole and needed by another person.

Our first serious conversation came after the first time we had sex, which was introduced by him. It was the age factor. I assumed that because he was a senior he would be about 17 years old. He told me he was 19. I wondered if he was a little too old for me, but I quickly erased the thought from my mind. I was nervous about telling him how young I really was. I decided to do some rounding. I boldly told him that I was fifteen. I was still two months away from that but, in my teenage mind, it was close enough. He sighed with relief and said that he was
hoping
that I was at least fifteen. I ended up telling the truth a few weeks later. By that time, he was already hooked and had said the “L” word so there was no turning back.

We were together every day for every possible minute. Our young relationship never felt young, it always felt mature. I was in love with Josh. The vision that blasted through my mind of the day we met never vanished. It became more vivid, and as we spent more time together, I began to build ideas off of it. He carried himself as if he were my husband - the husband that I wanted. He made me breakfast, gladly catered to my every need, and frequently spoke of our future together. We had our fights, but he wrote me love letters. His spelling was horrible, but I easily looked beyond that. He constantly showed me small acts of kindness, and often, the small acts were what meant the most.

Officially a couple and coming up on our 5 month anniversary, Josh walked me to the chain-linked gate that began the path to my first day of high school as a sophomore. He kissed me and said he would be waiting there for me at the end of the day. As I approached, my friends gave me a look of curiosity and slight confusion. They never thought that I would take a one-night-stand so seriously.

I attended my scheduled classes and could hardly wait for the last bell to ring. Sure enough, Josh was waiting for me at the gate. He had a turkey and cheese sandwich in his hand, knowing how hungry I would be by the end of the day. He always stayed true to his word and had my back, and that made me love him even more.

Later that evening, my oldest sister, Lilah, stopped by the house. She had been cleaning her apartment all day and wanted me to help watch my 2 year-old niece, Summer. Lilah had left home about a year earlier. She and my mother had gotten into some battles over some serious and some not so serious issues. The house had become much more peaceful with Lilah at a distance although I occasionally missed her quirky humor. She had met a man the night before while out with her friends at the casino, and he wanted to take her out again. She spoke of Huey like he was a true keeper. He was even a doctor!
Gross. He must be like thirty something!
  I thought.  Why my twenty-one year old sister was attracted to this older man I’ll never know. I was later to discover he was in his 50’s!

“I have school tomorrow and I have to do homework. I want to hang out with Josh tonight too,” I told her. She looked disappointed but was understanding. She called the house about an hour later. “Huey says he’ll pay you to babysit, and you can just hang out with Josh at my apartment,” she said.  “Ok, I guess that works,” I replied, trying to conceal my excitement.

I was extremely happy about this new babysitting gig. I knew that Josh and I could spend more time alone, and I wanted to see what it was like to spend time with him in an unsupervised environment. It turned into an every weekend job. Lilah and Huey spent their nights at clubs playing poker. Lilah sometimes didn’t return until ten in the morning. I would tell her that Josh had left when it got dark and that he slept at his own house and he would only come by to visit and bring food. Eventually Lilah gave in when I played the “scared” card. Eventually I assured her that Josh would sleep away from me on the floor. That was partially true - at least until Summer fell asleep. As soon as we heard Lilah rustling with her key to unlock the front door, we practically threw each other in the opposite direction. We just couldn’t stay off of each other. Josh and I were becoming very serious, very fast, and on a totally new level.

Not long into the school year, my health class teacher, Mrs. B., announced that it was time to take home the simulated baby dolls for our 100-point assignment. I had seen other students walking around with these dolls, and I always thought that they looked so pathetic. I thought this would be more of an embarrassment than anything. A week later I was waiting in line at the end of the school day for my doll to be issued to me for the weekend. It was pretty awkward accepting a fake baby and being expected to hold and treat it as if it were real. I was issued the only black baby in the classroom. It was a little boy, plastic penis and all. When I picked up the baby, the first thing that I noticed was that it was actually heavy. The baby probably weighed about eight pounds. The second thing I noticed was that it smelled so good. It smelled like baby powder, clean and fresh. The teachers must have cleaned it and doused it with the baby powder to give it a more real effect. I think I named him too - probably something similar to Josh Jr. I would have to explain to Josh that Jr. was born with a very rare genetic makeup.
Nonetheless, he’s our precious son!
I laughed to myself.

As a child, I had periodically adopted a variety of baby animals so I figured that it couldn’t be too difficult to deal with this doll that wasn’t even real. One of my first pets was a tiny mouse that I stole from the pet store. I stole Rupert out of fear that he would be fed to a snake and I wanted to spare him. Merri told me that there was no way he would survive because he was just a few days old. I took this as a challenge and spent my last twenty dollars on a small cage and cedar. I set lit candles next to Rupert’s small cage every night for the first week to help keep him warm and cozy.

Rupert kept me company for the next six months. After coming home from school one snowy day, he was dead on my floor and torn to shreds. The family cat, Astro, (I called him Ass for obvious reasons) had ripped my little friend to pieces. I became hysterical and ran downstairs to my mother who then asked my pet-expert sister to clean the mess. She did - with no argument. I think she felt bad for me.

Over the weekend, I took care of my “baby” when it cried. I had been instructed to insert a key into its back to calm it down. This baby simulator put ideas into my head that caring for a baby would be as simple as turning a key. I quickly started to enjoy carrying the baby around and pretending that I was a mommy. I wanted to practice, and I wanted my doll to be real. After I turned my doll into class the next week I became much more interested in my health class. I wanted to learn more about babies. However, I failed the assignment miserably. Apparently I hadn’t woken up to calm his little butt down on numerous occasions in the middle of the night. Oops.
It was freckin’ 3:00 a.m.!
I thought to myself, as I stared at my big, red “F.”

It was about 6:00 o’clock on a Friday night, and as if we were already living together, Josh and I were making my niece, Summer, a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. Lilah was, once again, heading out with her doctor boyfriend. I had finally met Huey - grey hair and all. He was oddly friendly, but I still thought he was way too old to be dating my sister. It grossed me out, but I loved Lilah and wanted her to be happy. It was just another babysitting night and Josh was getting bored. He invited his older brother, Jed, to come over with his fiancé and their six-month-old baby. I had expected both of them to be at least in their early twenties. Jed was 21, but his fiancé was only 16. Dawn was a really nice girl, and she seemed like a very happy mommy too. Her little baby girl was the cutest thing I had ever laid eyes on.

As I was listening to Dawn talk about the new neighborhood she and Jed were living in, an idea exploded in my mind like a rocket blasting into the night. This was the best idea I had ever come up with! As Dawn was talking, I attentively nodded and smiled while I excitedly thought to myself,
I’ll have my own baby! My mom will have no choice but to kick me out, and we can be our own little family!
Jed and Dawn made it look so easy. It almost looked fun. I didn’t
really
want to be kicked out of my home, and I definitely didn’t want to upset my mom. Unfortunately, there was no way that I could have seen that far into the future. I assumed that it would be a minor conflict and forgiveness would surely come sooner than later. My newly acquired vision was that of my new family living together in an adorable little apartment. I saw a happy baby and a husband that worked hard every day to support us. I was a happy housewife wearing a polka dot apron and making cookies with the new offspring. It was the perfect fantasy.