Growing up in Burley, Idaho, there isn’t much diversity in who you get to go to school with. From age five to thirteen, I didn’t know anyone else outside Minidoka County. But then, my mom got her English degree, and that meant that she wanted to return to the work force. She chose to teach English, and she began to apply to many of the local schools in the area and to my dismay, she sent her resume to Burley High School, home of the dreaded, mangy, and green Bobcats. I was so shocked and disappointed that she would even to apply to that school, the school that had large cats and were green. There was no other high school for me besides Minico High School, home of the glorious, majestic, and toned Spartans. Plus to add to it, that’s where all of my friends were going, there was no way I was going to leave my friends whom I loved so dearly. But my parents had another fate for me, and there was going to be a change in my life.
In eighth grade, I didn’t have the best of friends. It worried my parents that I was hanging out with the wrong kind of people, but of course I thought that my friends were the best thing in the entire universe. My friends were the girls that a person would describe as rebellious, unruly, and disrespectful. But they were my friends, and that was the only thing that mattered to me. My parents always claimed that my eighth grade year and on would be my defining moments. I didn’t care about what they told me, I was going to be what I wanted to be and I was going to do what I want to do. My parents weren’t going to stand for that, and that is part of the reason why my mom sent her resume to the home of the green and white, Burley High School.
Caylee Pfeifer was everything that I wanted to be. She towered among the boys, and I always admired the way she had with those boys, even if they still had cooties. Caylee was blonde, and even though she said I had the hair that she wanted, I always wanted her short, bobbed blonde hair. She dressed exactly the way that I dressed, blue jeans, frayed at the bottom, a t-shirt that could only enhance what meager womanly figure that each of us had at thirteen, and then the thing that only make our bodies look better, a zip-up hoodie, all of varying colors ranging from brown to brown.
Caylee and I did almost everything together, but she was not a member of the church, and I was. There were some limitations in what we could to do together, but there were always plenty of sleep-overs. At many of these sleep-overs, there would be talk of the boys, and Caylee always had the juiciest stories about her boys. And I would listen to the details that she gave, and I would wish, and hope that someday my prince would come, and I too could have a great make out and then I would be the one to boast about how well my prince could kiss. She taught me all the tricks to getting the boys, and together we would stay out late and do all the things that our parents had asked us not to do. Things like toilet papering people’s houses, and sneaking out and wandering outside and dancing in the middle of the street, and saying that I was where I was supposed to be but really I was out with Caylee. And of course we were reprimanded by our parents, and we would be grounded. Separated for a few weeks, then we would be freed to do dark deeds on the weekends.
We were connected to the hip, and together we hated Burley High School. It was the bane of our existence. Then the unfortunate day came when I had to tell Caylee that my mom had applied to teach at Burley High School, and could be possibly switching schools, she about broke my face.
“What do you mean you might be switching schools?!” Caylee cried.
“I have no choice, I have to go wherever my mom goes.” I said brokenheartedly.
“No, there is no way you are leaving me in this place with all these nasty boys. And who is going to be my best friend when you go? I will be by myself, starting out as a freshman at Minico, with no one to help me get around. We are friends for life, remember?” Caylee sobbed to me.
“Like I said, I have no choice. My parents are forcing me.” My voice cracked on the last two words.
Already, the shift was beginning. As the school year faded into summer, Caylee and I only grew closer. Every moment brought us closer to the possible end of our friendship. Then that fateful day came. It was a bright and sunny June morning when my mom entered my room to talk to me. But before she could open her all powerful mouth, I knew what she was going to say.
“Honey, I want you to know something, I got the job at Burley.” These words nearly ended my life. I could see the world spinning and crashing right before my eyes. I started hyperventilating, and then the tears came, and they poured out of my eyes like man pouring a water bottle down his back after a good run. I’m sure I fainted and I was out for a good ten seconds. I woke to my mom shaking me, and saying things like, “Livvy! Livvy! Wake up! There is no need to be dramatic!” But this was the time that I needed to be dramatic, I was going to be switching schools for crying out loud! I was going to be leaving all that I knew behind, I was going into uncharted waters, and I was going to be that new kid at school. I was not a brave person, there was no way I could handle standing up in each of my new classes and introducing myself, and I could not handle sitting by myself in each classes and alone at lunch, the most social time of the day. I called Caylee that very same day, and then that was the end of our lifelong friendship. For the rest of the summer, every time I passed Burley High School, I threw up a little in my mouth. It wasn’t that the school itself was bad looking, it just meant that I was going to be the newest member of that school, and it went against everything that I knew.
