Excerpt: Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

Tonight would be a repeat of last night, which was a repeat of the night before and so on. Who was the idiot in my life that thought giving me a fake ID was a good idea? Yeah of course, it had done wonders for my reputation. My ability to get alcohol and mix drinks for any party was what had made me Student Council President to begin with. The end result was that my grades were holding on by a thread and I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be sober. Two years of this and I still had two weeks left of high school. I was well on my way to becoming a certified strip drunk. I’d be there tonight.

Seeing her in the hall with him. Their lips together as if they were one parasite. His hand up her skirt, invading territory that used to belong to me. I had her first! I had her first! In the catwalks above the Anthony E. Zuiker Theatre. I took her virginity. She stole mine. I was an idiot. She won’t forgive me. She throws it in my face, daily. Four years of history between us and it’s just easier to be cruel to one another.

Gentleman of the jury, I present to you, exhibit A: Hannah Rolland. Always an inch taller than me, more when she wore those platforms she always loved. Blond hair that she kept straight or pulled back. Intense green eyes that pierced through you when she looked at you. She’d been a cheerleader since she was a little girl and had the body to prove it. Top soprano in her choir. Secretary for the Company Players and more popular than I ever could be even with my fake ID.

Freshman year, we were paired together for a project in Beginning Drama. We spent two weeks on our lip sync assignment. She asked me to come over and help practice. She kissed me. Me. Scrawny, barely standing at five four. Glasses and braces, and not the clear kind that made you look as if you didn’t have them. No, my parents tortured me with the curse of being a regular metal mouth and said I was too young for contacts.

Hannah was my first kiss and it was a horrible kiss. Her mother walked in and I was sent home. I asked her out the last week of school and she said, yes. Why? The best looking girl I’d ever seen. She could have had anyone in the school. She chose me. She said it was because I was sweet. I was a geek. She claimed to be one too underneath all of what I deemed to be perfection.

We were together for two years and we were in love. She was my first for everything. My first kiss. My first date. My first dance. My first girlfriend. My first best friend. My first lay. There was nothing that could pull us apart. Despite the fact that I was nothing to her crowd, everyone thought we would be together forever. We even thought that. For two years, there wasn’t a day we weren’t around each other. My family adopted her as their own. Over the summers they would let her stay the night, provided I left the bedroom door open and we behaved ourselves.

But, she started talking about that forever. Before Christmas of our Junior year, the word marriage had come up in too many conversations. I wasn’t ready. Was that so wrong? I’d just turned seventeen years old. I didn’t want to think on that future. The idea of being a teenage husband wasn’t appealing. The more she brought it up, the more I began to notice other girls and they were noticing me.

The braces came off. My doctor prescribed contacts. My cousin gave me a fake ID. I was president of the Company Players. I was getting invited to more weekend parties. I was building a reputation for myself that didn’t include being Hannah’s boyfriend or tag along. I broke up with her because I wanted to see other people. I didn’t want us to jump into marriage and regret the decision later. I just wanted us to be sure. I was in love with her. She was in love with the idea of forever.

A week later she was with him and had been with him since. A year and a half. She now sported a cheap diamond ring on her left hand. She flashed it casually every time I walked by. They had plans to marry the summer after graduation. I hated her, but I still loved her. She just hated me.

When I got to the lunch table, money was handed to me as I sat down. I already knew what everyone wanted. I’d been supplying my group of friends for months now. They weren’t even really my friends. I was as aware of this as they were. I bought them alcohol and in exchange, they voted for me when I ran for Student Council. They let me sit at their table. We pretended to be close.

My real friends were all in drama, but Hannah had taken them in the separation. She did it to spite me. She didn’t fit in with them like I didn’t fit in with the jocks and cheerleaders that surrounded me every day. She took my friends so I would be forced to take hers. She knew I couldn’t handle watching her and Sean act as we used to.

I draped my arm around Amanda Schylek and she rested her head against my shoulder and her hand against my leg. She used to be Hannah’s best friend. Let me make it clear, we were screwing. We weren’t dating. There isn’t much of a difference in high school, but to me it wasn’t the same. I didn’t like her. Her personality was annoying. She complained that I was too eccentric. We fought on a regular basis. There was little between us. She was just the only ammo I had against my ex. We’d been screwing, not dating I remind you, since Hannah’s engagement to Sean.

This arrangement was mutual. She disliked Hannah after she dropped all her friends for her new boyfriend. When we had been together, we had worked it out so that our friends rarely felt left behind or like a third wheel. They had been important to us. I still tried to maintain that same idea and it was easy being single. Hannah’s whole life revolved around our friend Sean. As my popularity increased, hers decreased. Oh the fickle ways of the society within a school.

Amanda and I first hooked up at a party we had all attended three months ago. Hannah walked in on us. It had been nothing but blissful revenge since. Amanda let me see other girls. I let her see other boys. We just made it a regular habit to post new pictures of us together on Myspace, where Hannah still had the both of us added. Today, Amanda’s affection was in reaction to the looks that Hannah kept passing over to our table. Childish. But we were all still children.