NOTE: While the characters in this story start off at a young age, no sexual contact of any kind takes place until everyone involved is at least 18-years old.
PART 1: Miss Popular
***
HIGH SCHOOL, FRESHMAN YEAR
Dude, reality bites.
The utopian world of my imagination was soooo much better than this. In my imagination, everything made a logical, mathematical kind of sense. I envisioned a human race where the fact that I was a foot shorter than most of the boys at school was not an insurmountable obstacle. In my universe, intelligence was rewarded with respect from one's peers, not free trips to the bottom of the nearest trash can, courteousy of the local football jock. I swear I still had someone's old yogurt in my hair.
It was only the first day of school, and two trash cans later I had decided to commit seppuku, or some other archaic form of suicide, as soon as I got home. My backpack must have weighed more than I did, and I could feel my spine bending out of shape already. I would look like Quasimodo by the end of the school term.
I missed my old school already. I had always lived nearby to the local public schools, but my parents had put me through a private school during my formative years. It was only now, in High School, that my dad had seen fit to move me to a public school. It would build character and give me a chance to develop my social skills, he had said.
He never told me exactly HOW I would develop social skills, however. I had a bowl-haircut because my mom thought it a waste of money to take me to a hairdresser when she could do the job herself. My glasses were big, fat, and hideous. I wasn't an ugly kid, by any means. But given a start like that, I might as well actually BE as disfigured as Quasimodo, too.
I sat on a bench by the parking lot, my feet swinging in the air as they did not quite reach the ground. I waited for my carpool classmates and my mom's minivan to arrive, my hyperactive mind already finding new things to occupy itself. Plotting out the most minute detail in my head, I believed that I had found the proper technique for killing myself. But that's when she walked by.
Glittering, bright blue eyes. Silky, shimmering dark hair. Elfin, dainty face. Perfect smile filled with rows of pearly-white teeth. I'd like to say that these were the first things I noticed about her, but they weren't.
To be certain, she possessed all of these amazing attributes, but my eyes had glued onto her FABULOUS breasts.
I wasn't familiar enough with girls to determine cup size, but they seemed pretty damn big on her petite frame. She wore some tight, quarter-sleeved top with a scooped neck to show off those round, perky globes of heaven that gave every male within a hundred yards an instant woody. And as my vision expanded to the people she was with, I nearly passed out from sensory overload. She was walking with a group of upperclassmen cheerleaders, decked out from head to toe in perky school colors. Well, head to ass, I guess, since their skirts really didn't go down very far.
My mouth dropped open, thoughts of suicide quickly vanishing from my mind as I realized my purpose in life. How could I even think of leaving this world when such heavenly creatures attended my school?
Oh, did I mention that my previous private school had been all-male?
"Hey, Jason! Wake up!"
Crap. Was this nothing but a dream? Oh, but to stay asleep forever and dream such wonderful dreams, to have this angel with me for all eternity.
"Dude, you're gonna drool all over yourself."
"Huh?" I turned my head, tearing myself away from the vision before me. My best friend Marcus was waving his hands in front of my eyes, snapping his fingers to get me to come around.
"Man, one would think you'd never seen a girl before."
I looked back at her departing form, her skintight jeans hugging her every curve as she sashayed down the sidewalk, oblivious to my very existence. "That's no girl. She's all woman."
Marcus gaze followed my own. "That's Amanda. She was in a couple of my classes the last few years, but man did she grow up over the summer." His eyes gazing appreciatively at the females, he clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Welcome to public school."
***
The rest of my freshman year passed by relatively smoothly. Over time, the school bullies found new prey to pick on, although Todd Beckman did saran-wrap me to the flagpole in January.
As we all began to get involved in after school activities, the carpool was pushed back until 4PM every day. I was part of Math and Chess clubs half the days of the week. The other days I found myself gravitating to the basketball courts where most of the other students played pick-up games. I was a late bloomer, and thus a tad underdeveloped (I was vertically-challenged) so I never got to play. But watching the games was more exciting than sitting around doing nothing. I usually had my homework finished in fifteen minutes, so I otherwise had almost two hours of time to kill.
Marcus, on the other hand, was in the exact same clubs as I was, but had hit his growth spurt a bit early for his age. He was as tall as many of the seniors in the school, albeit a skinny and gangly kind of tall. But his height had led to his inclusion in the basketball games, where he proved he at least had some minimal coordination. His full name was Marcus Yao, and he was Chinese, the tallest Chinese the upperclassmen knew. They all just called him "Yao" since it was more fun to say than "Marcus", and they kidded around that someday he'd be a big NBA star.
The third and final member of our carpool was my next-door neighbor, Kendra. Her dad was an immigrant Japanese businessman who found the stereotypically perfect woman to marry, a six-foot tall white woman with beach blonde hair. Kendra had inherited her mom's athleticism and was always in the pick-up basketball games as well. She even played on the girls' Junior Varsity team. As it was, she was a total tomboy, spurning makeup like it was a deadly toxin and dressing in loosely-fitting athletic apparel to hide her figure.
At 3:55 I would be the first one to our carpool location. At 3:59 I would open the doors and wait for the two basketball junkies to get loaded in before I jumped in. My mom taught me to be courteous and chivalrous, although Kendra resented me doing anything special for her "because she was a girl."
Marcus had been my best friend since before time, playing video games and card games and watching Star Trek reruns. Kendra I had been acquainted with, but since I was a kid who never went outside (except to go to school) I never got to know her before. But on our repeated journeys to and from school with nothing to do, Marcus and I found Kendra's inner nerd and we began to develop a comfortable friendship.
***
By sophomore year the three of us were firmly entrenched in the Nerd cliques. Kendra wasn't completely out of place; we had several female friends who similarly despised anything considered too "girly." By this year I had finally grown up, and had also joined the after-school basketball kids, and found that our little trio had become "orbitals" around the two social groups. On half of the days, we went to Math club and Chess club and did generally nerdy things. The other half we played ball and I was developing a solid 3-point jumper. We were freely accepted in both groups, while not being part of the inner circle of either clique.
Maybe this is what my dad meant when he spoke of learning to socialize. I had considered myself forever destined to be a nerd, but I started to believe that I was a decent social creature. Compared the rest of the nerd group, our trio was pretty popular.
Of course, this little ego-balloon was about to be crushed. I was about to find out just how much farther I had to go to be "popular." My life completely changed second semester. It was biology class, and the teacher assigned us lab partners. When I walked up to the posting outside his office and saw the assignments, my jaw dropped to the floor. My lab partner was Amanda.
To be sure, I knew perfectly well that she was in the class. A girl like that was impossible not to notice. But I never expected to have any actual face-to- face contact with her. Then I smelled a sweet floral perfume next to me, and felt an accidental bump to my side as someone jostled for position to see the assignment sheet in front of us.
Now in my defense, the natural position for my head is always slightly tilted downwards. I never really stand up straight, partly because I want to watch the ground where I'm going and partly because I don't have the self-confidence to walk upright. So when I turned around the first thing my eyes latched onto was Amanda's perfect cleavage a few inches away from me.
She reached her hand out and placed a finger under my jaw, lifting up to click my gaping mouth shut and then pushing higher to get my eyes to meet hers. Dropping her hand, she just smiled at me and asked, "You're Jason, right? I guess we're going to be partners!"
She suggested that we either meet at my place or at school after class for homework purposes, explaining that her home wasn't suitable for studying. The last thing I wanted to do was show my complete model collection of every Starship Enterprise to the prettiest girl in school, so I readily agreed to meet after classes. Things luckily worked around my clubs' schedules. I would have to miss a basketball game here and there, but I couldn't think of a better (or more frightening) way to spend those afternoons than with her.