I've changed a lot since last year. Eighth grade. I mean, back then I was popular and cute and did everything I was supposed to do. I had Paige and Jimmy, I had Toby to annoy me. I was class president. That was my life. It was who I was. It didn't really matter that I had less and less in common with Paige. Sometimes she seemed to be all about fashion and status, and sometimes I thought those things didn't matter as much as she thought they did. And Jimmy was smothering me, but that didn't matter, either.
Eighth grade was one way. It seemed like things were all figured out, all settled. This was me, Ashley Kerwin, popular cute class president, Jimmy's girlfriend. Jimmy was popular, too. He was a basketball star. It was just a matter of course that I was better than certain people. I don't mean that to be mean, it was just a fact. I was better than Liberty because I could do the announcements so well, like a professional. Liberty was smart, I'm not saying that. But she was more research smart, not performer smart like me. I was better than Sean because he was poor and stayed back and he didn't even live with his parents. I was better than J.T. and Toby because they were nerds. It's just how it was.
At my party, when my parents were away and Sean came downstairs with the ecstasy, I put it into my pocket. Absent mindedly I popped it into my mouth. And you know I paid for that. I lost all my friends. I had to spend the summer in counseling, which I thought was a little extreme. I wasn't a drug addict, a junkie shooting up on street corners, I'd just accidentally put it into my mouth.
But I think it was okay now. Not at first. I was mortified by what I'd said to Jimmy and to Paige, how I hurt them. Mortified by what I had done with Sean. So upset that I had to go to drug counseling, me, perfect Ashley Kerwin, in drug counseling. But it was okay because it was revealing. I saw that me and Liberty really weren't so different, that in a way the same thing was driving us. I saw that I could connect with Sean on a level that I couldn't with Jimmy. I saw Paige for what she really was. And Toby? He was so concerned for me that night, not about what I had said to Paige and Jimmy or what I did with Sean, he was concerned for me, and I saw that he was more like a brother to me than I ever would have believed.
Ninth grade. I tried to rebuild eighth grade for awhile. Tried to be friends with Paige. Tried to be Jimmy's girlfriend. But it wasn't working. Paige was not someone I could relate to then. Maybe that's why I called her a hag. And Jimmy? He kept trying to stuff me back into this box of who I was, who he wanted me to be. Then there was Craig. Craig Manning. He was different. I saw him taking pictures, developing them in the darkroom. He'd say these off the wall things. I kind of liked him.
I'd chopped my hair and started dressing in this extreme gothic way, and I was becoming friends with Ellie. I didn't need Paige anymore. Jimmy tolerated this new look but I knew he didn't like it, he didn't get it. I was ignoring that, he was trying to change me, I was being sort of pulled in different directions. Why couldn't Jimmy see that I couldn't be that sweet eighth grade girl anymore?
When I was paired with Craig for that "Taming of the Shrew" skit, it was almost perfect. And that whole play was about trying to change someone. And Craig said if you love someone you shouldn't want them to change. In some things he was light years ahead of Jimmy.
Later on, seeing Craig's dad show up near the front steps of the school, and seeing Craig's reaction, I knew there was more to him than he was letting people know. Like me last year. Maybe like everyone. Even Paige and Jimmy, I shouldn't put them into these narrow definitions just because they had tried it with me. Maybe I'd come back to them someday, but it was enough, it was necessary to move on from them. To see where the friendship with Ellie led, to see where the relationship with Craig took me. To see more of who I was, who I really was. And to incorporate, someday, that perfect cute class president from eighth grade. She was a part of me, too, like it or not. But I don't regret the ecstasy, not one bit. I don't regret the journey. It's a part of things, part of the fabric of things.