Hi, So this is that novel I was mentioning before in my bio. It's called "That Year." Anyway, it's not done, but I thought if I get good reviews and helpful critiques for the first couple of chapters and etc, then it will motivate me to finish the novel.Okay, the beginning of the novel might be a little rough, I did start writing this at the end of eight grade year...I have edited it, but I might have missed some grammar mistakes...I really don't know. One more thing, this genre is a romance/comedy/drama. It's set in the year 2006 and the narrator of the novel is fourteen (but she's not the sophomore, she's just about to enter high school. She is actually telling a story that has already happened about four girls when they were in their sophomore year.--That's to clear some things up. Other than that, I really can't say anymore without giving too much away. Here is an important thing to remember, I will be posting this in installments which means that just because it's under chapter two or three doesn't mean its a new chapter. It won't get to chapter 2 until it's probably under like chapter 7 as an example. This "chapter" is the preface/prologue/introduction part. The beginning of the first chapter will start under chapter two.

That Year

A High School Account During Sophomore Year

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Life is good, right? I mean, all those shirts say it is. Though, what happens when something breaks like your handle on life and you can’t find any glue, or tape, or staples? Could you deal with the problems of high school on top of that? Could what happens to you in high school affect how you live the rest of your life? When is that defining moment where you realize you’re on the path you were destined to be on? Are there answers to these questions or are they just rhetorical?

And no, this isn’t some High School Life 101, chicken noodle soup for the teenage soul crap; It might be a tad like chicken noodle…but at least the title doesn’t make you hungry.

My name is not important. What I look like isn’t either. I am the person you see down the halls; you have never met me nor have I you. I am the person you think is cute but would never approach me or I’m the person you think is ugly and would never approach me. I am one of your classmates. I am one of your friends. I am your narrator, or whoever you want me to be…except Morgan Freedman. He’s been a narrator enough times.

…But, if you want to get to know someone, then in that case, my name is important. Hi, I’m Jessica. Nice to meet you.

...Prologue...

Some people imagine Hollywood to be like high school. The interns on the set are freshmen, the extras in a T.V show are sophomores, T.V actors are juniors, the dramatic film stars are seniors and the teachers are the directors. People can only imagine. The only thing is high school could never be as glamorous enough to be compared to Hollywood. That is, unless someone counts all the girls trying to be a size zero by doing all those crash diets that just sound plain disgusting. Other than that, a better comparison with high school is a trailer park next to a junkyard, because everyone who lives in a trailer park would all agree it’s like living in a hell hole. The principal is called Lucifer, aka the devil. Teachers are the demons and vampires sucking away your life. Students are the lost souls trying to figure out who they are as a person. It’s a tough world to live in, especially when someone is a teenager and they don’t know where they fit in.

Very few graduated alumni would want to talk about the four years they spent in high school if the subject matter ever approached them. It’s why some statistics show less than half of a class will show up for their ten year reunion. Some will say, high school is the place where kids in grades nine through twelve learn and be prepared for the adult world. That’s the sugar coated version. However, they always leave out the part where high school scars some students for the rest of their lives. There is always that one moment in those four years that someone wished they had died. According to everyone’s lovely parents, high school does have a few problems. Those nasty pop quizzes, strict teachers that won’t ever allow any student to take a potty break, the bad hair days, and obviously, not having a date to crucial social dances that defines teenagers as the outgoing types or the ones who don’t get dates and stay in with their noses in a book. Parents of teens tell what not to do in high school: don’t do drugs, don’t hang out with people who do drugs, don’t drink alcohol, don’t stay out later then eleven, don’t get pregnant, don’t have sex, don’t do anything that the kid will later regret, in general. They always forget to mention what to do, so the teens can avoid bigger problems like peer pressure, cliques, bullying, backstabbing, and the feeling students get when they even think about school. That feeling when a fourteen year old arrives at school and they already feel like they are going to throw up. The kid actually wants to, too, because at least they would get out of school for the day. People always leave out stuff about high school if they even do utter a word about it. Mainly, because they are trying to block out that horrifying period of time they wish could be forgotten. High school is like a small congested state. The population is a lot. The capital is Doushebagapolis.

In Doushebagapolis, there in the center of it is the hellish two-story building where everything is breaking down. The heaters never work in the winter but do in the summer. The school is too cheap (broke, really) to buy air conditioning, so during spring and summer, the place turns into a sweat box. That’s how a certain famous phrase that’s on everybody’s t-shirts was created, “Here, athletes aren’t the only ones who sweat.” That’s not even the end of it. Wasps, bees, and other unidentifiable flying objects always manage getting into classes even when all the foggy and mildew covered windows are closed. Plus, if a teacher is unlucky, squirrels and homeless cats get stuck in the ventilators. That’s when students feel like they have entered into a haunted house. The horrifying sounds, such as the scratches of a cat trying to get free from it’s claustrophobic cage called a 1984 heater installation, freak all the little freshmen out when they enter their first classroom for the first time. These creepy noises that have the kids jumping out of their seats have become a common nuisance. How a cat managed to get in the heater is a mystery in itself. The moans of a dying squirrel makes any person cringe in their gum-disposal-desk seat. If those aren’t the sounds kids hear, then it’s the loud pounding clatter coming from the plumbing and the water that drips out all the faucets uncontrollably and inevitably. The plumbing in schools is just pathetic. It’s likely to be blamed on the plumbers with their ass cheeks hanging out who did the half-ass job back in 1973 or 4 or whenever the schools were built. Water fountains never work because the water only comes up about an inch. It’s impossible to get anyone’s face under the faucet to even get the tiniest droplet of water. The bathrooms never flush properly. Teens always have to bang on the toilet knob as hard as they can so maybe, just by chance, it will go down. The showers are useless in the locker rooms because, for one thing, no one uses them, and the other thing, they don’t turn on. They are a waste of space where more lockers should have been built. Who knows, maybe then the three girls who share a cubby together could all separately have their own four by four square to put their dirty socks and a possible sports bra in because, realistically, nothing else bigger can fit. I can’t even forget to mention about how even if somebody managed getting a nice size locker there’s a greater chance of it not opening because from the gecko, it was jammed. Not only that, but if that somebody got their locker to open, most of time, they won’t be able to get it closed. High school lockers are just built defective on purpose. It’s just extra stress to add on to the overflowing ocean of stress a person carries in their wrinkled forehead and stern frown.

The cafeteria is where overpriced frozen food out of a can is sold and sometimes, undercooked. I could write a whole book on why school lunches are hazardous. A kid doesn’t get food poisoning out of thin air. Not that I’m imposing all high school lunches are poisonous. It’s just it all started with the vast numbers of kids overweight and the government passing the nutritious act. The sad consequence of the act being passed is now most of the schools in America have stopped selling French fries, pizza, Snapple, and snacks that have sugar in them…the good stuff. The tasty food has been replaced with mushy string beans, four by four square inch salads that are dressing-less, snacks with Splenda, and paper cartons of skim and soy milk. Of course, schools still sell pretzels because that’s where they get their revenue. Processed chicken nuggets are still a favorite until one person finds out what is really in them and tells the rest of the school. Cheese steak isn’t cheese steak. Meatballs are chewy as well as anything that has meat in it and sold in a high school cafeteria. Taco meat isn’t ground beef. A whole school of kids should just boycott the lunches while holding up picket signs that read: What happen to real food? It’s among the gazillion and one questions a kid will ask him/herself each day. It’s a tragedic day when a tenth grader realizes prisoners are served better food compared to the lunch ladies at a high school who don’t wear fish nets in their hair. A lame geometry joke is that school is like a prism. A hell hole isn’t the only comparison, prison is just as good when describing high school. Classmate is just used as a more nice-sounding word compared to the word, inmate.

Nobody can forget about the stuffy rooms that make anybody feel claustrophobic in high schools. A classmate sits two inches away from another classmate where the one can see everything the other person is doing and unfortunately, what he or she smells like. Everyone knows by now what a guy smells like after he used up the whole can of the body spray, AXE, in one use. The smell isn’t the only thing that’s rotten. It’s the authority figures and students who make up a school. The principles who reward someone with a Saturday detention where they feel like they just walked onto the set of the Breakfast Club. It’s the pesky evil guidance counselors who want their students to join ten clubs, play a sport, do community service on their Saturdays, and attend a religious gathering on Sundays. They purposely forget to mention have a life. The teachers who don’t give a crap about their students needs and only on what they want. Students can’t eat in the classroom and yet the teacher eats a pretzel with a pepsi right in front of them. Students can’t use cell phones in the school, but if a teacher has a life threatening call about how their wife said she didn’t have enough money to get their favorite kind of pasta sauce, penne a la vodka, this week at the market; then they can yell to their wives on the phone for the whole period. That’s while the students write a five page essay on why you can’t use cell phones in school. Those sorts of people might seem like they would be anybody’s worst problem, but they aren’t. The kids, the ones who want to “take it outside” after school is over. Plus, the classmates, who never are mates; the ones who enjoy making other lives a living hell. The ones who ditch their friend on a Friday night because they got asked out to go on a hot date and couldn’t care less that they ruined their friend’s plans with them to see Napoleon Dynamite or Mean Girls for the four hundred and thirty ninth time in the friend’s renovated basement with a red shag rug that should have stayed in the seventies.

High school is the place teenagers also realize they aren’t cool. They always thought they were “cool”, but teens only had really compared their coolness to their mother and that’s an easy battle to overcome. Hundreds of people try with every ounce of their bodies to become what other people have defined as cool. Kids want to have a cool reputation. They would give up their three wishes, if a genie was real and granted them, to become popular, rich, and beautiful. These kids spend hours trying to get friends who would make their un-cool selves look cool in return and aren’t the complete tools of the halls. Trying to hook up with the varsity football player who is the hottest thing to have ever walked the planet is an obvious goal. Certain students even get a hair cut to change their appearance because, lets face it, they have had the same hair style since their mom let them decide how they wanted to style it. Buying designer clothes and accessories is now important because teenagers believe rich people are the “cool kidz.” So, these confused teenagers buy a Coach bag that was more than all the presents they might have gotten last Christmas combined. They buy this bag, why? Oh right, because everyone else around them has one. Get big or die tryin’ has become numerous amount of people’s new slogan to motivate them to get some muscle on their skinny, wimpy bodies. That way, they can be the ass-whooper, not the whoopee. Buying a lifetime supply of Proactiv was a necessary must. People know they have to trade in their present car that they might have saved up for three years that’s rusty with bullet holes in the windshield from the past owner for a cool sleek convertible. They put all of that on their American Express, MasterCard, Visa--whatever, because in all realization they don’t have that kind of money and they don’t own a tree that grows cash. So, they max out all their credit cards. These insane people have to have an expensive car to drive to school in the morning because they are brought up to believe that the coolness factor relies on it. Even if they are going to crash their new car in the next week because they weren’t paying attention to their rear-view mirror. Teens try to become “cool” for months, but it the end, most are still lame-ass losers and they are out three thousand plus bucks not to mention the debt they owe on their debit cards. That’s when it’s okay to call themselves an idiot. Only an idiot would really think they absolutely positively need to change who they are just to be accepted by other people who aren’t necessary cool, but in these idiots’ eyes they are. If teenagers would just look around once and a while, maybe they would see that every other teen, like themselves, is just trying to figure out who they are and what they are meant or destined to become. Most teenagers don’t figure out soon enough that the only test that matters is accepting themselves.

Most people know the basics of high school. For instance, how to get around room to room, because if a freshman gets lost once, the seniors will pick on them like they are the senior’s nose. They will tell this little frosh to keep going left when all the classes are on the right and the frosh has been walking around in circles for the past five minutes looking like a dumb-ass. This has probably happen already to millions of fourteen years olds just entering high school. Just like falling down a flight of stairs or up a flight of stairs or tripping over their shoe laces and falling flat on their face in the hallway. Normally, in a high school, at least where I am from, there are four wings, an A, B, C, and D. The A wing has everyone’s art and music classes for all those certain kids, with their earphone bud in one ear listening to alternative rock and the other one dangling down their side, to show their creative side. The B wing has the history and English classes for all the future presidents to study the screw ups the past ones made. The C wing has all the science and math classes for the ones who wear pens in their shirt pocket and glasses with the duck tape taped in the middle that remind other teens of Erkel from Family Ties. But, the Erkel look-a-likes will be credited for curing cancer in thirty years; that’s karma for everybody else. The D wing has the rest of the types of subjects, Spanish and all the other languages, special E.D classes, and whatever else. With four wings and a hundred plus classrooms, anyone would suspect that the school can easily fit a little over 2,000 pubescent kids without it being crowded, but they are wrong. It’s jammed packed and with more angry little freaks of nature coming in each year, the United States’ high schools are going to be so overpopulated, they’re going to turn into China.

To someone in middle school and below they are brought up to believe that high school will be the four best years of their lives. (They get stuck in believing that if the teen movies about high school look so glamorous, then that must be how they are like in reality.) It is a sad story when a little munchkin in third grade with pig tails and a day dress with little sun flowers all over will turn into what someone would like to call a slut or any other derogatory name people think up these days. The girl was only trying to look like the one girl they saw in She’s All That, (The one that looked like a tramp.) The movie forgot to tell her that real high school sucks and no matter how hard anyone tries, they will always suck. Which is why, a kid hearing people in the hallways of the school saying they suck is normal. Even hearing people in a kid’s head saying they suck is a bit crazy, but still normal even if the kid is suffering from paranoia. However, if a kid hears people saying that they don’t suck, well this particular kid must be very good at ignoring unhappy people who bring down the happier people. But, it’s high school and it doesn’t matter that students suck, because everybody else in the world sucks, too.

Join the club.

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So, here is a story of many strangers, forced to go to high school, work together and have their lives taped on camera phones, to find out what happens when they fail a class, when students stop being polite, and start getting really bitchy. The Real High School, where students get schooled, which will be a new television show on MTV once they realize their Real World is fake.

The bell in every classroom on the wall rang, echoing through the halls like a person yodeling on a mountain top where the sound reverberated in the wind. Another kid blew out his eardrum, because he was idiotic enough to stand right next to the door which was exactly below that dreadful, chipping red paint coat of a noisily bell. Although, it wasn’t his fault, he’s a frosh. Just a regular stereotypical, hundred and ten pound, scrawny freshman; who would also try out for the football team and get crushed, literally. Maybe, as a suggestion, cross country would have done him best as the track team just happens to be the sport for the underweight guys who are made of skin and muscle. Of course, that’s what anyone would expect from them when they run a 5k and do a thousand crunches each day. At least, they still eat hefty meals, can’t say the same for the girls’ cross country, or any girl for that matter. Eating disorders, pot, meningitis, MRSA, cheat sheets, fender benders, preggers, emo-black-eye-liner-kids, smokers, alcoholic drunks, crack addicts, sex offenders, and underweight and overweight jocks…and prissy prude cheerleaders: Welcome to high school. Maybe, you will be in the top 5 of the class…that actually enjoys it.

Enter through the doors of Reynolds’ high school. My school, the school my parents went to and even one of my grandparents from my mom’s side. It’s located in the nice part of Jersey, South Jersey in the small town of Bedford, home to the grrreat tigers. Reynolds’ has just begun it’s 06-07 school year. Full of pointless fire drills, evacuations and lockdowns, bomb threats, and flipping backpacks inside out like last year only this time kids get suspended because teachers are fed up with the shenanigan. Oh, and not to forget, a great year of kids playing elementary games like UGG!; Would You Rather; and I Never, hundreds of times when the ADD kids get too bored to just stand still. The failing of your midterms and finals for four years in a row is always something to look forward to. Not to mention, watching overly sexed students making out in the hallways. As well as over self-conscious girls rushing to the bathrooms to pop a pimple and discuss why Daisy Summers was wearing that hideous shirt with the lady bugs all over and a long bleached out denim skirt with bright red stockings as if she was stuck in the eighties. Boys playing games on their graphic calculators while girls send texts per second during class. Another typical year with the exception all the seniors have passed away, new “Frosh” meat have entered the wild and everyone else is a year older. Just think, another day at school means one day less of it. I heard if you keep saying that in your head there is a possibility that you’ll start to believe it. Who knows, maybe this school year will go by fast. That’s though, if fast means slow in your dictionary you stole from the school library during ninth grade orientation.

Let the games begin. You know the cliché saying, don’t hate the player, hate the game, right? I say, screw the game. Play by your own rules. We aren’t going to let some building crush us like one that landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. We will live it the way we want to and that should be that. It’s never just that, though. Life is never just black and white, unless you got sucked intoPleasantville. Usually, life’s gray around some edges. It’s a hard knot life for us as the wise Annie once sang. Life is a hard knot and impossible to untie.

Now, that I have practically ranted as far as humanly possible about the big HS, let me tell you a story about real high school life, about real high school students. This true account begins in the second year of high school for four special girls and not special as in “Stop licking the Elmer’s glue, honey.” More of the lines of shopaholic, cellphonemaniac, boy crazy teenage girls who apparently have one more thing in common, they are all best friends, BFFs (Best Fcking Fckers.) These girls also wished school never existed and all the information they learn and forget in school could be just downloaded onto their Ipods. Weird, but it is the computer age and all. Kids these days, talking in IM and saying LOL instead of laughing and you wonder why every parent thinks their kid is weird. Of course, the parents also think they are completely normal. The definition of normal in my books is to be abnormal. FYI! It’s normal to be not.

The girls, Candice Rebecca Parker, Nellie Grace Alexander, Haley Rose Peterson, and Lauren Nicole Martin have been friends since preschool where they all had went to Kinder-Kare. Yep, they have been friends before denim overalls became out of style. We all remember Osh Kosh. Friends when people would still dance to the Macarena and enjoyed to. They have known each other before Reality TV became fake. Friends before FRIENDS became a huge hit. Before September 11th and the war in Iraq. Before Furbies and Gigapets were invented. I could go on and on, but think you get the message. Anyhow, they still laugh to this day at the fact all their last names are boys’ first names. However, these girls are very different as well. Because, if they were exactly alike, they’d be quadruplets, twins, but that’s in another reality or parallel universe; whatever floats your boat. Getting back to the girls, lets get to know each one starting off with the athletically gifted one.

Candice Parker is the fast, angelic athlete that never turns down a chance to play a game, no matter how ridiculous, and win. She is intense in everything that can be called a sport. Not to mention with her long straight brunette hair, model-type body (God was extra nice to Candice as He was creating her) and cute crooked smile, (He just made a small slip up…He’s still perfect, though) every guy wants to play with her and not always in that kind of sense.

Nellie Alexander is the blonde of the group, who has her moments, typically. Plus, with only clothes on her mind all the time and with a ton of credit cards in her real Prada clutch, who wouldn’t? She is also not the brightest out of the bunch even if she keeps popping in her mouth Smarties candies. I wonder if you can overdose on them…they are shaped like a pill. I guess you could, you’d get a sugar high. That drum noise goes off somewhere, you know, when you crack a stupid joke like that. We have all seen MadTV. I’d hope, unless you are the kind of person who lives under a rock. Nellie doesn’t live under a rock. She lives in a mansion next to some really famous lawyers and judges that used to be seen on The People’s Court.

Next is Haley Peterson. She is the quiet, extremely smart, but pretty girl next door that never has trouble finding that boy next door if only he exists. Having, though, the girl next door features: auburn hair with beautiful hazel eyes, fair skin with freckles, thin physique, shyish cuteness, maybe she’ll get lucky this year. Still, being the girl next girl and smarter than most of the juniors and some seniors who attend Reynolds, she doesn’t know everything and what she discovers could change her whole life or completely shatter it to pieces. Good thing life isn’t like a mirror, it would be even worst with seven years of bad luck.

And finally, there’s Lauren Martin. The boy crazy, health-nut, horse-lover that is the tall girl you always seem to see down the maze of a hall. She would be amazing at basketball if she wasn’t so bad at sports and a klutz. She is the red-head of the group, too, and has that stereotypical hot-head temper. Lauren is the most outgoing out of all her friends and is all for boys, boys, boys. She does have a few problems with going out with the right kinds of ones.

Sweet sixteen parties, bitch fights because girls aren’t cats, and rumors; this year should be full of that lovely drama. It might be even more drama then what happened on Laguna Bi-otch or Newport Har-boring.