Thirty years ago I walked off the plank into high school where blue skies promised Homecoming and fall colors and new beginnings. I was fresh off the boat from junior high, where I had weathered storms. Volleyball was underway. Cheerleading. I think life had seemed to be going pretty well for the first time in a while.
I had a learner’s driving permit and I drove myself to school in a hand-me-down Mercury. I was getting better at operating the clutch, but I continued to arrive to the parking lot in sputtering fits and starts where people saw or heard me coming. I was notorious!
I was surprised when an older boy took an interest in me. He was a Junior. We began passing long notes back and forth several times per week. I felt blessed to suddenly have a friend. However, the grapevine operates quickly in a small school. During this period of passing notes, a joke he made in my absence made its way to my ears. When a boy asks other people to tell a girl that it doesn’t hurt to lose your virginity, is he being funny? I wasn’t thinking about sex. I didn’t want to be touched anywhere. Junior High had been extremely painful. I had not qualified in a cheerleading tryout in eighth grade. I had flirted with anorexia. Worse, I had developed during those two years a terrible firestorm of hormonal acne on my chin which had left me scarred physically and emotionally. I had been groped, mocked, and asked deeply personal questions about my body.
Now I suddenly had a pen pal who compared me to Nicole Kidman and talked of his love of strawberry blond hair. Beside his love of red hair flew red flags, even in his friendly letters to me, all written in purple ink with a flourishing cursive pen stroke. In one of his notes he relayed a story about a friend in my own class who had been trying on clothes. He said she shouldn’t go shopping because it made her feel “depressed”. What was going on? Hell is a teenage girl.
I was passive, and I continued to believe he was my friend. He was polite one evening when we were driving around my small town. It was my first time alone with him. I have no memory of the conversation between us. When I dropped him off he leaned in to kiss me. I instinctively pulled away. I did not want a kiss–maybe because I felt shame over my skin problems, or possibly it was the joke about virginity or because he seemed to be shaming other girls, or because he seemed gay. I just didn’t know him well enough. Hell is a teenage girl.
I sent him a brief note the next morning explaining that we were friends. I just didn’t know him. Hell is a teenage girl. I was worried about how he would feel, yet confident he would understand that I just didn’t yet know him well enough. I tried to be gentle, and I didn't think of it as rejection. I believed that if I were to be given more time to better understand him, I might want to kiss him, or date him. I didn’t want to reject him for the wrong reason. I didn’t want to reject him. Hell is a teenage girl.
Later that day, another Junior called me a bitch in the hallway near the band room. This person had always been friendly and kind to me. I began to doubt my communication. If this guy who had always been so nice believed I was a bitch, then certainly my words and actions had been out of line. I had been cruel, not kind. Hell is a teenage girl.
The following weekend I arrived from a tournament late at night to pick up the Mercury from the school. I jumped off the bus to find every inch of its surface smeared with layers of Crisco. I learned later it took three cans to do the job. It was stuffed under the door handles, and it covered the side mirrors. Because it was almost Halloween and I didn’t believe I had rejected anybody, I did not suspect him.
Hell is a teenage girl.