Things didn't really start changing between Darren and I until high school. While we still hung out a lot, we saw each other less and less. Instead of spending every weekend together, it cut down to every other weekend. I was finally becoming my own person, able to survive school without him constantly being by my side.
I enjoyed this new freedom, the excitement of what felt like a new life. I was able to make my own friends, and boys were starting to notice me, which was completely new. It had taken me a while to grow into my big eyes, but it had finally happened. What had once been something that had the boys making fun of me was now what attracted them to me.
Darren had changed as well. He had traded in his glasses for contact lenses and had grown like a weed. His tall lanky blue-eyed blonde-haired look had lots of girls swooning over him, but he never seemed to pay much attention to it. He wasn't a jock, but being the son of the wealthiest guy in town definitely had its perks, not to mention that Darren was incredibly smart and talented.
It felt strange having my friends ask me about him. Darren and I had grown up together, and while I could understand why they found him attractive, I couldn't see him like that. He was just Darren to me, my best friend. At least, that's what I thought until I started dating Elias Adams, a junior on the football team.
I had been so excited when he asked me out. I couldn't wait to tell Darren. But when I told Darren about my new boyfriend, he didn't seem to share my happy sentiment.
“Good for you,” he said dryly, looking as if someone had just taken the wind out of his sails.
I had decided to tell him and my mom at the same time so I could reduce the number of times I had to repeat the story. My mom shared my zeal, though her expression quickly softened when she saw the look on Darren's face. I didn't really understand. It was like they were speaking a silent language to each other that was foreign to me.
“So, tell me more about this boy,” Mom said, though her voice made it sound like she was treading lightly.
“Well, he's tall, and athletic, and he has brown hair and brown eyes, and he's so dreamy. Oh, and he's on the football team,” I practically squealed, unable to handle my excitement.
“And how about you, Darren? Any young women in your life lately?” she asked as she went to work rolling the meatballs for the spaghetti that we would be having for supper.
“Nope. Not interested in anyone.”
“You know, Irma O'Neill likes you,” I blurted out, trying to keep him from feeling excluded.
“I didn't know that,” he replied, though there was still no enthusiasm in his voice. After a moment, he stood and said, “Well, I'm going to head home. I'll see you later.”
“You're not staying for dinner?” my Mom sounded disappointed, but I was kind of glad Darren was leaving. He seemed grumpy.
“No, ma'am. I have a lot of studying to do for an upcoming test.”
“Well, alright.”
He walked around the side of the bar to give her a hug before allowing me to escort him out.
“Are you alright?” I asked as I watched him climb onto the moped his parents had bought him for Christmas.
“Yup. See you at school tomorrow, Tara.”
“See you, Darren.” I waved at him before coming back inside and sliding onto my chair to watch my mom finish preparing dinner. “He was acting kind of weird,” I commented.
“He's jealous.” My mother smirked.
“No way. Darren and I aren't like that.”
“Maybe you don't feel that way, but he does.”
“I'm sure that's not it. He was probably just having a bad day.”
She shook her head at me before dropping a meatball into the spaghetti sauce. “Girl, sometimes you are so blind.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “What makes you think Darren likes me?”
“The way he looks at you. He's been looking at you differently for a while now.”
“I haven't noticed him looking at me any differently.”
“That's because you're blind.”
“Whatever.”
“I'm serious. Have you ever thought about maybe dating Darren?”
“Mom! That's just gross. It would be like dating my own brother.”
“It's not gross. Darren's a good guy. That boy has manners, which is more than I can say for most of those high school boys.”
“Elias has manners too.”
“I'm sure he does. I don't know this Elias though.”
“You'll meet him,” I said cheerfully. “He's so perfect, Mom.”
“I'm sure you think so now. I'm just saying that if it doesn't work out with you two, I wouldn't mind seeing you and Darren together. I think your father feels the same way. You know that your father and I were high school sweethearts.”
“I know,” I groaned.
I had heard the story a million times. They had never been with anyone but each other growing up. It was like a boring storybook romance. So old fashioned.
My mother got pregnant with me in high school, giving up her dream of going to college to be a nurse. Instead, she ended up a housewife. My father worked two jobs to support us until he got a break working on computers for a big corporation. By that time, I was getting ready to start kindergarten, and they didn't want me to spend my childhood years growing up in the city. We moved out to Castroville so that I could have a simple country upbringing. It was still a struggle financially. Up until my father got a big promotion when I was in middle school, we lived on as little as possible. Sometimes he said he regretted moving away from the city. It cost more in gas to get to and from work, and the car wouldn't last forever. If it wasn't for his promotion, we might have ended up moving back into San Antonio. I thought I would have liked that more and had mentioned it a few times, but my parents felt we were better off where we were at.
“I'm just saying that there's nothing wrong with dating your best friend,” she continued.
“Yes, there is. Who would be my best friend if not Darren?”
“A girl, perhaps. Why not that Krista girl. She seems nice.”
Krista was my best friend next to Darren. We had become really close as freshman, and a lot of the time I felt like I related to her better than I did to Darren. We were both girls, after all, and we liked talking about boys and doing each other's makeup and hair. Those were things I couldn't do with Darren.
The only annoying thing about being her friend was that she had a huge crush on Darren. I had told him about it once, but he had taken it with a grain of salt. If I didn't know he liked girls by all the porn he watched, I would have thought he was gay. Darren did like girls though, he just didn't discuss it with me, which suited me fine. I had no interest in the people he thought about dating. That was his thing.
“Krista could be my best friend,” I agreed. “But Darren holds that spot right now, and I have no plans on changing that.”
The subject was dropped after that, and I was thankful. Just the thought of my mom actually wanting me to date Darren made me feel weird. It was just so wrong.
***
Like most high school romances, Elias and I didn't last very long. At around the three-month mark, I started getting insecure. He began acting distant, and the relationship quickly crumbled.
There were other boys after Elias, so many that I could barely keep count, so many that my mother had me put on birth control just in case. I pushed the words she had spoken about Darren liking me to the back of my mind. We weren't like that. We never would be. He was my friend, and I wanted to keep it that way.
While my dating life had picked up dramatically, Darren still didn't date at all. It was like he had an allergy to girls. He just didn't seem to have any interest in them. When I asked him why he didn't date, he said it was because he wanted to focus on his studies and get into a good college. I took that at face value. Besides, who was I to pry.
Despite my active dating life, I never let the guys get a home run. Third base was a stretch for most of them. Penises intimidated me, and being fingered made me uncomfortable, but I let the guys I really liked make their way around the bases before I sent them back to the bench. While I would do most sexual things, sex itself was sacred to me, something that should only be done with your one true love.
Thinking back on it, I couldn't help but grin at how I used to think that way about kissing. It didn't take my one true love to give me the kiss that knocked my socks off. That happened with Elias Adams. That was a real first kiss.
Sex was more intimate than a kiss, and I wanted to make sure I did it with the right man, so I held off, going as far as I could in hopes that I wouldn't get dumped for not putting out. My resistance irritated a lot of the guys I dated. 'Cock tease' became one of my secret nicknames, but I didn't care. I still had my morals.
Krista and I were one in the same in that sense. She liked to go far, but she wouldn't go all the way. We'd talk about it late into the night, giggling at how the boys would act when we'd take them to the brink of no return just to pull away. It was all a big game to us.
As the time passed, Krista seemed to get more and more wild, trying to drag me down a bad path with her. I went part of the way, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol whenever I got the chance. The seedy people she had started hanging out with were a bit too much for me though. Of course, Darren felt the same way, and he tried to curtail me back onto the right path, which only made me want to rebel more. Still, I knew when too far was too far.
It was heartbreaking seeing such a beautiful girl destroy herself. Krista had the boys drooling all over her with her long red hair, bright green eyes, and adorable smattering of freckles. She was petite and peppy, with a very sing-song voice that only added to her overall appeal. Even Darren admitted that he found her attractive a time or two, though he felt that she was bad news, which she was.
Every semester, her skirts got shorter and her attitude got nastier. She'd skip class, get caught making out behind the band hall, and the drug dogs found pot seeds in her locker. She'd been in trouble at least half a dozen times her junior year, but no matter how bad her screw up, nothing seemed to turn her around.
Then I got a phone call in the middle of the night. She had gone to do a drug deal, but everything went south when they saw how pretty she was. The guy held her down and forced himself on her, telling her that he'd track her down and kill her if she squealed to the cops. She didn't. Despite my begging and pleading and threatening to tell her parents what happened, she let it go by the wayside. The guy got off scot-free, never to be heard from again.
Krista was shattered. The experience changed her completely. For the longest time, she was nervous and jumpy. She went straight home after school and didn't want to go out on the weekends. She lost all interest in boys and became a sad shell of the girl I used to know. It took months for her to heal, and as she did, she became a better person, realizing the consequences of partying and not being careful of the company she kept.
I was sad about what had happened to her, but it taught me a valuable lesson. There were bad people in the world, and it only took one mistake to change your life forever. I found myself becoming more cautious, not pushing guys so far, and being clear about my intentions before I even started messing around with them. It made me feel safer somehow.
I spent senior year helping Krista get herself back together. We started to go to church with her mom, and I was happy that I could be a part of reforming her into the sweet girl I had met in freshman year. Now that Krista wasn't being so crazy, Darren was hanging around with us more. We started to feel like a solid group. It wasn't just her and I or Darren and I, it was the three of us. We did everything together, from bowling to going to the movies to hanging out at my house or Krista's house. Darren's parents wouldn't let her come over to his place because they thought she was a bad influence. They weren't particularly pleased that he was hanging out with her either, but they couldn't stop him. Darren was obedient up to a point, and once his parents had bought him a car for his sixteenth birthday, even he had become a bit rebellious.
Prom was quickly approaching, and I couldn't wait to be asked. There were several guys who I thought liked me enough to ask, but I was a bit surprised when Darren stepped in line first. He waited until we were alone at his house, studying upstairs in his room.
“So, prom,” he began awkwardly, tapping his pencil eraser on his textbook.
“Hm?” I asked, looking up from my English homework.
“You're going, right?”
“Yeah. You?”
“I'd like to. I mean, you only have one senior prom.”
“Indeed. So, who are you thinking about asking? Krista would go with you in a heartbeat.”
“I hadn't thought about asking Krista.”
I could hear the nervousness in his voice. Krista and Darren would be perfect together, I thought. She was gorgeous; he was handsome. She was practically obsessed with him, and they got along well enough.
“Who else would you ask besides Krista?” I gave him an annoyed look. If he asked anyone else, she'd be hurt, and I absolutely hated the idea of him hurting her.
He kept his eyes down on his book, though I knew he wasn't reading it. “I was thinking that maybe you and I could go together.”
I let out a raucous laugh and then immediately felt bad about it once I realized he was serious.
“Why would you want to waste your prom with me?” I quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Well, I hadn't thought of asking anyone else.”
“Ask Krista,” I told him, wanting to end the subject as soon as possible. It was such a stupid idea, him and I going together. That would be like going to prom with my brother. It definitely wasn't happening.
“If no one else asks you, will you consider it?” his voice was thick with a twinge of hurt. Oh God, it was like my mother said. This was Darren being weird. I was so thankful this part of him rarely showed.
“I'll consider it,” I told him, then prayed to God, Buddha, and every other religious figure that someone else asked me out before prom.
The Gods were kind. William Blake asked me out three weeks before prom. He wasn't the only one to ask me out, but he was the first, and so I thought it was fair to go with him. William wasn't a jock, but he was popular and handsome with an appealing bad-boy reputation. He liked to live fast and party hard, street racing in the middle of the night and showing up at every keg party within a five-mile radius of Castroville. I was excited to be going to prom with him. It was guaranteed to be a fun night.
When he asked me out, I figured that Darren would submit and ask Krista out, but he didn't. Instead, he decided to be stubborn and not go to prom at all. Thankfully, someone else asked Krista to go, though she was still a bit bummed that it wasn't Darren. For a while, I felt guilty that he had decided not to go. He made it sound like it was important to him. It wasn't my fault that I was the only one he wanted to go with though. We weren't children anymore, and I wasn't going to let him guilt me into feeling sorry for him.