Heyy guys!! I am FINALLY updating now that my exams are over and I am just getting my results. 95 in Chem and 71 in Physics. Phys is ok I guess...it was over the mean/average anyways.

This is for hollisterhotti for being really nice and using those cute smileys I love, and I am a sucker for anything Hollister related of course anddd I realised that on the previous chapter I didn't do who it was dedicated to, I did, "this is dedicated to for being..." etc and that was actually for herquill for being awesome so yeahs...

Enjoy!! Lotsa love, Juicyxxxx

Choice

Why on Earth do I always fall for the wrong boys?

In the first grade I fell in love with a boy called Paul Dairy, who used to share his Snickers bars with me at recess. Then he had ten minutes taken off his Golden Time on Friday for not listening to the teacher. Yes, ten minutes off Golden Time meant you had done something terrible, in the first grade.

In the third grade there was a boy going by the name Freddy "Flash" Biro, who was obsessed with comic books. He used to lend me crayons whenever mine broke or something and I thought he was the sweetest kid ever. He then moved to Kentucky, as his older brother earned an expulsion for...well they didn't tell us but it must have been something bad.

Tony Fernando was the cutest boy in the fifth grade. All the girls were in love with him, and I practically fainted when he invited me to go to the first co-ed dance our school was holding. It ended tragically though, when I spotted him holding hands with Coral McAdams at the end of it. I mean, Coral McAdams? That girl used to give her Bratz dolls tattoos with black Sharpie pen.

Sixth grade brought new and exciting boys to our year, but I was struggling too hard to not fail Biology to notice any of them.

In the seventh grade, the cliques started to form. The nerds with their high waisted trousers, the computer geeks with actual walkie-talkies pinned to their shirts, the oh-so-depressed emos in Converse and skinny jeans, the cheerleaders in their tiny ruffles skirts, the jocks with their shaggy hair and quickly developing muscles, the musician slash artists with their soulful eyes and rock band T-Shirts, and of course the infamous Pretty Committee consisting of Alicia Rivera, the Spanish beauty, Layne Abeley, the pretty-in-a-kooky-way protestor, Claire Lyons, the frosty beta, and Kori Gedman, the soccer defence, who, well, sucked. At defence that is.

I considered myself lucky. I didn't belong to a clique; I kind of belonged to them all. I was sporty, girly, skinny-jeans obsessed, musical, artsy and ok, I could be geeky. I was popular because I knew the tricks of fitting in and soon I was even allowed to sit with the Pretty Committee at lunchtimes which was considered a huge privilege.

I was friends with Dylan Marvil, since like, forever. It was always me and her, her and me. Then Kristen Gregory turned up at our French class one day in the middle of the semester in a blur of Prada flip-flops and hair the color of warm butterscotch. She claimed that she had been traveling in Milan and Rome and had literally just come off the flight. To put it in short, she sat at our table and we became great friends, never looking back.

Then in the eighth grade, I started going out with Griffin Hastings. He was kind of cute, but I think I just went out with him because Dylan and Kristen had boyfriends and were spending less time with me. Well, Griffin got suspended for using graffiti on the gym walls. It wasn't even offensive, just the lyrics to some songs about war and famine and poverty and why math should be abolished. Kristen and Dylan convinced me in to believing that he had, "issues" as they put it and I stopped going out with boys who wore skinnier jeans than me after that.

Then, I started noticing...him. It was the ninth grade and the Tomahawks had got to the state finals or something, I never really paid attention to that kind of thing. Anyway, Kristen was out to impress Josh and Dylan was out to impress Cam, so since everyone was going wild and dressing outrageously anyway, so we decided to as well.

We three transformed the Sirens' soccer uniforms in to totally adorable outfits. We ripped the baggy shorts in to pleated micro-minis, tied up the shirts at the front to reveal clip-on navel rings, replaced the soccer studs with Kurt Geiger platform heels and made huge, glitter-embossed banners. Ok, we all looked a bit slutty but it was a soccer game. And you know how wild they can get.

So we re-tied our extensions and re-sprayed our tans and got to the game. Josh noticed Kristen asked her out, Cam noticed Dylan and asked her out, and so at the end when everyone was making out because the Tomahawks had obviously won, I was left on the sidelines with a smudged banner, a broken heel and freezing legs.

Well, Derrick had come up to me and we got chatting and stuff, and to tell the truth, I have never really noticed him before. I never really thought that I had a chance of going out with one of the soccer jocks; they have always been labeled as the stereo-typical, dumb jerk. Well, who is really, really hot.

So one thing led to another; we exchanged numbers and email addresses and soon we were pretty much an item. He wasn't dangerous, but he was like a girl magnet, a drug I just couldn't resist. Having to tear myself away from him was agony. Because he was just Derrick. The cute, floppy haired boy I loved. But when I started to slowly drift away from my friends, in to something that I let myself fall into, I didn't want to drag them down as well.

I never thought I even had a choice. When mom died, I never thought anything would be the same and I just didn't think that I could get on. It was as if that had happened and I didn't even stop and think. Like when you're swimming, you can be really tired and just float, eventually sinking down. Or you can swim out there and reach the end, reach the safety and the warm towel and leave the swimming behind you, leave the past behind you.

I needed to swim out there and get that towel...but I couldn't leave the past behind me.

I can't change the past.

But I can change the future. Because I had a choice.