My favorite part of the class was that it was very diverse, and everybody got along well. There were only fifteen students, three of whom were juniors. Another junior, Martin, was openly, flamboyantly gay—one of the few brave souls out at the time. In middle school, he received attention for tap dancing in spandex during talent shows. By the time he reached his junior year of high school, he was known for once saying to a gentleman outside of school, “If you got the length, I got the strength.” The other junior, Nora, was the class president and class heartthrob. She probably set a record for number of erections induced.
As my junior year of high school came to a close, I started to get more depressed. Colonie was a big, suburban high school that had a lot to offer, especially socially. There were always parties on the weekends that would give the students something to talk about on Monday. Occasionally, somebody would get naked or go topless or a scandalous hookup would happen. However, it was the type of school at which even if somebody did something embarrassing, the person with the worst reputation would be the person who was never invited to the cool party.
I was going to high school with kids who had spent all their lives feeling that the teenage years were supposed to be glamorous. Most kids my age had to fight with their parents to stay up later to watch Beverly Hills 90210. They were listening attentively when Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell said in one episode that high school is the best time of your life. From Pretty in Pink to The Breakfast Club to Can’t Hardly Wait to American Pie, tons of teen movies popped up every week promoting the idea that nothing was more important than having a tight-knit group of friends.
When I was a junior, I would listen to my classmates talk about parties and getting ready for the prom, basketball games, movies, and concerts. I, on the other hand, was working at McDonald’s and spending the rest of my free time masturbating into a sock.
In the spring of 2000, I told my mother how depressed I was and that I had thought about committing suicide. I didn’t have any plan, but I always felt inferior to people—always the outsider—and I was lonely. I was young, a very diligent worker, and got good grades, but I was only looking at the present moment. My mother was alarmed, but she never really took it seriously. She would ask me from time to time if I had suicidal thoughts, and I would lie and tell her I didn’t. The thought of going to a psychologist scared me. What if he or she would just lock me up in a psychiatric ward surrounded by other mentally ill individuals? So I just pretended that everything was okay. But it wasn’t.
During the summer between my junior and senior year, things got better when I started to look at colleges. I realized that there was going to be a day when I didn’t have to worry about who to sit with at lunch or what to wear. I was torn between attending Union College and SUNY Geneseo, both of which were very competitive to get into.
Since I wanted to get into a good college, and since I wanted to get a scholarship instead of paying an exorbitant amount of money for school, in my senior year I decided to take AP English, two math classes, AP Chemistry, college-level Spanish, college-level psychology and sociology, and college-level economics, for which I got credit from the University at Albany. I was able to skip Spanish 4 and rejoin my senior class thanks to Ms. Franklin, my Spanish teacher, who spent time after school preparing me for the Spanish 4 final exam. At the end of eleventh grade, I took both the Spanish 3 and 4 finals, which helped me skip a whole year’s worth of Spanish.
The first day of senior year I was one of the lucky students who drove to school. Just a month before school began, I bought a used 1994 Chevy Cavalier, for which I saved from my part-time job at McDonald’s. Since my mother didn’t drive me to school, I would often arrive late. This never happened before I started driving to school. My attitude toward my senior year was, “Let’s get this over with.” I was so ready to move on from high school.
On the first day of senior year, I decided to sit at a table where Eric and Dan were eating lunch. Although, I didn’t want to and I know I was not invited, there was nowhere else to sit. I sat at the end of the table, and they were taken aback but didn’t say anything. Eric had all this anger toward me, although I could never figure out why. He was always tormenting me and always trying to give off this masculine persona. Eric loved stirring up drama, like his life was a reality television show. What made it worse was that his group of friends, especially Dan, would agree with or do anything that Eric told them to do.
Even though I was sitting at
