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2001-12-01 - 10:20 p.m. This is what it is like to be fourteen. I don't think you can understand it, but I'll try to make you understand. I have an Esprit book bag that's white with black writing. It's a case of too little, too late. No one in our high school carried book bags, but at the middle school that we came from Esprit bags were the thing. I got my book bag in eighth grade before I realized that; it was turquoise and no-name. So I thought in ninth grade that I better prepare, but as it turned out, backpacks worn slung over one shoulder were where it was at. So I still carry the out-of-date book bag, though I don't care so much anymore. Either way my shoulder would hurt. My best friend is Arianna and we both wear Keds and we both always made sure our socks match our shirts. That's just how it is for us�that's our fashion statement. We don't necessarily fit in with the other kids in high school but we don't necessarily stand out either. We aren't hippies and we aren't preppies and we aren't pretending-to-be-poor-when-we aren't. We're just us and we have each other and she has other friends and at times I have nothing. New Year's Eve usually consisted of me hanging out with my mom and pretending to be festive and excited but actually feeling very unfestive and depressed. I loved my mom but I just couldn't help feeling like there should be more to New Year's. This year it was going to be different. This year I was attending my first New Year's Eve party and it was going to be at Arianna's house. This year I was going to be cool. We invited everyone we could think of. We invited older kids, kids from different schools, and all of our crushes (secret and not-so-secret). I was worried about how it was going to look if no one showed up, but no one else thought this would be a problem. Arianna's soon to be sister-in-law agreed to buy alcohol, lots of it, and her parents would be away. They knew about the party but I wasn't sure if they knew about the alcohol. Arianna only lived eight blocks away from my house so I went over early to get ready. Amy, Justine, and Johnny were already there. The alcohol consisted of forties and wine coolers, and I don't think I'll be drinking, but Arianna and Amy have gotten drunk before�once�and they tell me it's fresh. That's our word, we got it from Justine, and we say it all the time. I told Chelsea to get me a forty of St. Ide's because of the Ice Cube commercials. We've all just recently seen Boyz N the Hood and we have a love affair with Ice Cube. More specifically, Arianna has a love affair with Ice Cube and I just like his music. I think Ricky is the cute one in the movie. Johnny tells me that St. Ide's is the poison drink and encourages me to try Old E. instead, but I'm loyal to Ice Cube and I'm loyal to Arianna, and I stick with my St. Ide's request. I�m wearing Amy's black silky patterned button up shirt, my favorite jeans, and of course, black socks and shoes to match. Justine does my make up�a lot more than I'd usually wear, but I'm trying to look good for Travis Johnson, the guy that I'm in love with. I told him recently I like him and he said he liked me too. He said he would try to make it to the party tonight, and I'm counting on it. I've got this feeling that something good is going to happen between us tonight, maybe even my first real kiss. People start showing up and the worst thing is that people from last year, from middle school are showing up. "Who the fuck invited them?" Arianna and Amy say to me. There are so many people there all of a sudden and we feel caught in this weird place because the boys we lusted after in middle school are there. They always acted like we were the biggest dorks and so we're stuck between acting like our new-having-a-cool-party-with-alcohol selves and our old-dorky-middle-school-girls-who-don't-get-to-dance-with-boys selves. We're angry that they have put us in this position. Arianna and Amy and Justine start drinking their forties, wincing as they chug it. I tell them I think that might be dangerous but they just laugh. Justine is from New York and has had a lot of experience with forties. Jake Westfall, Arianna's middle school love is there. In sixth grade he asked her out and she said no even though she loved him. After that it was all downhill. He proclaimed loudly that he did not want to go out with her, and then went out with the-girl-in-middle-school-that-every-girl-hated. This was Patty Cherry. You can imagine what someone with the name Patty Cherry is like. She was loud, beautiful, long blonde hair she always wore in a ponytail or in intricate multiple ponytails, always had the best clothes (jeans with little bows on the bottom, shirts with those attached vests, the stretch pants with the lace on the bottom), loved Michael Jordan, and had big breasts. Arianna was in a state of sad shock from sixth grade to eighth grade. Finally, one time at one of our school camping trips, after Patty and Jake broke up he asked Arianna to dance. This was unheard of�the group he was in didn't talk to the group we were in (other than to make fun of us). The only people that danced at the camp dances were the people in his group. We didn't go, or sat on the sidelines and watched. Arianna said no, she didn't want to dance and have everyone look at her. Then, in the biggest drama to ever unfold in our dorky group of girls, he came to our cabin and talked to her outside. He ended up kissing her cheek and that was the end of that. Nothing more ever happened, but that was the best thing that happened to her in middle school. Actually, it was the best thing that happened to any of us in middle school. Having him here now was very nerve-wracking, even though she was definitely over him. I began wondering what was taking Travis so long to arrive, so his friend Rafiq (who liked Arianna) called him up. It turned out that his mom refused to give him a ride to the party. I talked to him for a few minutes and he said he was sorry, but he didn't sound like he cared that much. That, on top of all the other mixed signals he had been giving me, sort of pushed me over the edge. After I got off the phone with him I felt like crying. "Try your forty!" Amy said. "It's so fun, forget about him!" Arianna said. "Okay," I said, grabbed the bottle and began to chug. It wasn't long before I started feeling good. I was having fun. There were so many people at the party: Rebecca, Sheila, Lucia, Rafiq, Johnny, Jake, Justin, Will, Zack, and Malik. So many people that later on down the road I would know in different ways. We finally gave Jake and Justin a piece of our minds about eighth grade. Arianna drunkenly told Jake that he had a lot of nerve showing up at her party when they were so mean to us in eighth grade. Later on Jake told me, "It's not that we were mean to you, you guys were just shy! Anytime we tried to talk to you you wouldn't say anything." I tried to remind him of one of our field trips, the one where some of us tried to sit in the back of the bus, feeling that they didn't have the monopoly on sitting far away from the teachers. Jake said to us contemptuously, "Why are you sitting in the back of the bus? It's not like you have anything to talk about that the teachers shouldn�t hear!" Jake didn't remember, and at this point I didn't much care. The alcohol made me miss Travis even more. I was fourteen years old and I hadn't had my first real kiss yet and I was determined that this was the party where I would get it. He'd ruined my plans. Rafiq, the one who liked Arianna, was Travis's good friend, so he spent a lot of time talking with me about how sad I was about Travis not being there. I asked him if Travis liked me at all and he said he thought he did. Apparently Rafiq and Travis had had discussions about how they thought we would be, "wild in bed." The fact that we were both virgins (and they knew this) didn't deter them. I felt strangely flattered by this. There was a boy that was a senior at Lincoln that year who rode the same bus as we did. His name, Arianna had found out somehow, was Steve Bukous. She thought he was the finest guy she had ever seen. He was clean cut and preppy and always wore a red and white letterman's jacket. She had fantasized about this guy for weeks but she felt he was out of her league and had never talked to him. Steve had a friend who always wore Guess? jeans who looked like he could be gay. Apparently this guy was friends with Johnny. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Steve Bukous was there, at Arianna's party, smiling and drinking a forty of Old E. For Arianna it was as if Ice Cube himself showed up at the party. It was unbelievable. Arianna's new mission was to find a way to talk to Steve, and seeing as it was her party, that wouldn't be too difficult. Somehow the line between comforting me and getting closer to me had gotten a little fuzzy with Rafiq. We were holding hands now, and sitting outside, and discussing the problem of my first kiss not happening because Travis was not there. And there it was, all of a sudden, us kissing and me telling him�for some unknown reason�not to use any tongue. He was giggling at me and he had long curly eyelashes and a big nose and he kissed me softly, over and over, no tongue. I told Arianna when I passed drunkenly by her and she said she didn't care. She was trying to find a way to talk to Steve Bukous, discussing a game plan with Amy, and she was feeling sorry for herself because it was her party and no one was talking to her. Too Short was singing "It's Your Life" on the stereo and then we listened to DJ Quik and at one point someone put on Hi Five. All the girls stopped short and looked around them with wistful eyes when "I Can't Wait Another Minute" came on. That was the song during eighth grade and it was one of the songs that girls listened to alone in their room, looking in the mirror, trying on black eyeliner and crying, because no boy had ever felt that way about her. I smiled at Rafiq and felt the tips of his eyelashes and we kissed again and again and again. After awhile we separated and I saw a boy that came from Jefferson, one of Rebecca and Amy's friends. I stopped and asked if he wanted to dance and we did, me hanging my arms around his neck in the way I saw the girls slow dance in eighth grade as I watched on the sidelines. It was the first time I had ever danced with a boy and I told him so. He said he couldn't believe it because I was so pretty. I asked him if he wanted to kiss me and he said yes, but I gave him my cheek and he laughed and asked if that was how it was going to be and I laughed and said yes. I kept running into Sheila and she was making out with a tall guy named Zack who was Johnny's best friend and who I didn't know was going to be my boyfriend later on. I was worried about her because she had never kissed a boy before either, and I kept giving him mean looks and telling him to get off of her. He was clearly pissed off at me, but he ignored me the best he could. Johnny told me to stop being a player hater or he told me to stop being whatever the equivalent expression was at the time. It got later and later and nearly everyone ended up spending the night there. We all slept in the living room. Amy liked Johnny but somehow he ended up sleeping on the floor with Justine. I slept next to Rafiq, who held my hand all night. The next day was a day of, "I can't believe how drunk I was last night!" "I can't believe I kissed Rafiq!" "I can't believe Steve Bukous was at my house!" "I can't believe Johnny and Justine made out!" Everything was okay but everything had changed for me, and for all of us. We had pulled it off�had a fresh party that everyone came to and now we felt a lot cooler than we ever had before. This is what it is like to be fourteen.
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