This is the 8 chapter story of my Sophomore year in high school. It revolves around a girl named Sandy Thomas, who stupidly, yet strategically managed to infiltrate the minds of practically all of my closest friends at the time and brought my high school life down to it's knees. Read on, to experience what will be one of the most dramatic and true high school stories that you've ever read.

Chapter 1

Sophomore year was coming 'round and I was getting excited. I've been a piece-of-crap freshman for a year, so I naturally became cocky (like almost every other sophomore student at the school) because I thought I was one of the "big boys" now and I'd blend in more with the juniors and seniors. Unfortunately, with my newfound arrogance, I became even more of a naive piece of shit. I only had one goal this year: get a girlfriend. I was 15, and I had never really had an official girlfriend yet. Also, I spent my whole summer alone that year, so I didn’t really know how to interact with people too well, and I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable or shy I would be around people when I went back to school.

Throughout my first few days of school, I had already met so many cool new people but only two people stood out to me; and ironically I haven’t really met either of them. They were both girls that I saw in math class. One was named Elise. She was a fairly popular freshman, but I didn’t bother trying to interact with her. I found it hard to talk to any girl that I liked- and to top it off, all hope of ever talking to Elise was eradicated when she got with one of my mortal enemies (at the time), Elf Boy. Then the other girl’s name was Emily. She didn’t really go to my school but she dropped in every now and then to visit my math teacher, Ms. Cooper. I don’t know what it is about this girl, but she just stood out above any other girl I’ve ever met. I couldn’t help but notice her the first time she came into my classroom; she just gave out that kind of vibe. But she was also way out of my league (which is the league of inexperienced fucks) and I immediately gave up all hope of ever talking to her.

I was pretty much a loner throughout my first few weeks of school. I couldn’t even hangout with people that I knew because there were two lunch periods at that school: Lunch A and Lunch B, and I had Lunch A; which means everyone I knew had Lunch B...rotten luck. Every once in a while though, I’d ditch my fourth period so I can go to Lunch B to hangout with Dave, Case, Laurence, and sometimes even Will (he’d drop in occasionally). Case and I weren’t great friends at the time (though we’ve known each other since the fifth grade) but all that changed when he asked me to join the school’s marching band. He offered to give me a tour of the band room after school so I can meet some of the marching band’s members. I went ahead and said yes because I figured I had nothing to lose. Little did I know that this very move would lead to the destruction of my sophomore year.

So I went to the band room after school with Case, and it was awesome; a bunch of people that I recognized were there, I hadn't known that so many familiar faces were in the marching band. The most notable people that I had seen were Carlos, Elise, Elf Boy, and even Emily (she wasn't in the marching band but she was hanging out with some people there). Case started taking me around the room and introducing me to people. This place was awesome, all the people were friendly, and it was actually sort of easy to talk to them (considering the fact that I was extremely antisocial). It wasn’t until Case introduced me to a certain character that I began to rethink joining the marching band. This white-as-hell, loud, dirty-blonde girl spotted Case, Carlos, and me from across the band room and walked up to us.

"Hey Case, whose your friend?" she said as she walked up to Carlos and put her arms around him. I immediately assumed that Carlos was with her and proceeded to feel sorry for him until I noticed that he was shoving her away from him. Then the definite word, "slut", popped into my head just as Case answered her, "This is my friend, Richard. He's thinking about joining the marching band so I brought him here for a tour of the band room. Richard, this is Sandy."

She walked up to me, and looked at me from head to toe repeatedly then went on and asked, "Can I have a hug?"

I was confused so I backed away slowly. She didn't seem to notice and basically pounced on me and gave me a huge hug; I had to gasp for air after she let go of me. We moved on and away from her so that I could meet some other band members, but it became almost impossible not to notice Sandy. She was loud and obnoxious and ran around the whole band room hugging and hitting on every guy in there, even some of the girls.

"She's a nutcase," explained Case, "if you end up deciding to join the marching band, stay away from her." Case, Carlos, and I spent the rest of my time in the marching band room talking about how much of a psycho Sandy is and I didn't really get to meet anyone else after that (the two girls I wanted to be introduced to, Elise and Emily, were gone by then). Throughout the conversation, I learned that Sandy is perverted, she’s in love with Carlos, and she has a suicidal depression problem that she has to take prescription pills for. No matter how much I wanted to avoid, or move away from the subject of Sandy, Carlos and Case kept bringing it up. The two of them (although they talked about her as if they despised her) seemed really interested in her.

The next few days at school were insane. Sandy popped up EVERYWHERE I went. It was almost as if she was stalking me, but a lot of the times I managed to slip by her without being seen. She's like one of those characters that you don't really notice until you meet, and after you meet them, you see them everywhere. Not only did I see her everywhere, I heard about her everywhere. Everyone was talking about her; girls were gossiping, guys were making fun of her. Her bad reputation made her quite popular. Needless to say, with all of this hype about Sandy, I decided against the joining of the marching band. I really wanted to but I didn't want to deal with Sandy, I had a really bad feeling about her. I stopped going to Lunch B because Sandy began hanging around my group of friends. I was beginning to hate her; the bitch was so annoying and she was taking over the very few people that I knew. They all seemed to love her too; it was as if they were corrupted. To my surprise, I even found out soon after that she had gotten with Carlos. How the hell did she manage to convince him to get with her? He talked about her as if she was Lucifer.

Needless to say, I pretty much became a loner again. I became desperate so I decided to get to know some people in Lunch A. I soon became friends with a group of Asian nerds. If you ask me how and why, I couldn't tell you because I honestly don't remember. These kids were fucking freaks; I secretly disliked most (almost all) of them. There was Wisconsin (dead serious, his name is Wisconsin); the closet case, Katie (who claimed to be a real life sorcerer...she was actually pretty cool at times), Hermone; the Asian gangster, and Hermone's sister; Yohana, the tomboy. They all claimed to know my friend, Will. I recall one conversation that went something like this:

Wisconsin: "Yeah. Richard, Will, and I used to go to elementary together."
Katie: "Oh, Richard knows Will?"
Me: "Yeah, I do."
Katie: He's a really strong caster.
Wisconsin: "True, his spells are strong, but my counter-curses are stronger."
Me: "Uhhh...ok."

How the fuck did I end up in this group? I was past the point where I pitied myself; by that time, it was at the point where I was laughing at myself. At how much of a loser I am.

More days went by, and I ended up hanging out with the Asian version of the Harry Potter cast after school. Things were getting somewhat kickback now, I thought I had finally found my high school niche; being a nerd. My grades were above average, I haven't seen or heard from Sandy in days, and these kids weren't lying when they said they knew Will because he actually dropped by everyday after school and hung out with us, so there was at least one familiar face. The group played a lot of Magic: The Gathering (you know, the card game), so I decided to join in on the fun. I used to play it back in eighth grade so I knew the game well.

One day, an old friend, Laurence, whom I hadn't seen all year, passed by and saw us playing Magic. He became interested and soon enough, both he and Case began coming after school to play. Two weeks passed and MTG became the biggest trend in that whole school. I kid you not...before the grunge scene, the emo scene and the SKA scene hit this school...the Magic Card game was THE coolest thing there. I got pretty irritated by the large number of bullshit Magic players (you know it's bullshit when you see rapper-wannabes playing Magic), so I stopped playing. I decided I'd only hangout with my Asian nerd friends at lunch, to avoid the flood of Magic players after school.

With all of my free time outside of school now, I found myself a lot of effort into the quality of my homework. But homework could only occupy me for so long. I was becoming even more lonely and depressed as I sat at home and did nothing all day. Days passed, and I even stopped hanging out with my nerd friends. It's been weeks since I've seen or heard from any of my old friends, they were starting to become nothing but familiar faces when I saw them at school during a passing period. Then I decided to call another friend of mine (who I didn’t know really well at the time), Cheryl. Man was I a shy little piece of shit - but even then, I went ahead and called her anyway. We talked for a while, and within days, we’d be talking to each other for hours on the phone. Cheryl pretty much occupied most of my time outside of school. I didn't get to hangout with her because she was out of town for a while; she normally stayed in Toronto, which was far enough as it was, but I was pretty stoked about her coming back to town. We would be going to see the Irish punk band, Flogging Molly in concert when she came back.

Then one day, I received a phone call. I was expecting Cheryl on the other end, but it turned out to be Case...

"Dude...sorry I haven't hit you up in a while." he said.

"Nah, it's cool. I've been busy with homework and stuff anyway." I explained in a not-so-caring voice. He didn't seem to pay attention to what I was saying though. By the tone of his voice, he was very happy about something.

"Man you'll never believe this, I’m with someone! I'm so happy!" -Okay, what the fuck? Case has a girl? Case is the fucking spawn of Satan. How did he land a girl? I still felt happy for him though, but I was curious to find out who she was so I asked. Then everything seemed to turn to slow motion, even Case's voice seemed to get deeper and lower as I heard his mouth extract the two most dreadful syllables that you could put together at the time:

"Sandy".

At first, my mind was flooded with swear words that slowly seeped to the tip of my tongue, but they were immediately drowned with questions. The first and most important question being: "Dude...I thought she was with Carlos, why would you get with your friend's girl?"

"Carlos left her a while ago man, and he's cool about it. In fact, he insisted."

I decided that I had to avoid Case. I didn't know what it was about Sandy, but she just gave off a REALLY bad vibe. I wasn't too worried though because I never saw any of my old friends, including Case.

So I woke up the next morning and started getting ready for school, when there was a knock on my door. I opened the door to see Case and Sandy standing there. He wanted to show off his stupid girlfriend to me, or so I thought. I had to admit though, the bitch was being fairly quiet and not as annoying as the last time I saw her, so I figured it'll be alright kicking it with them. We walked to school and Case and I started talking about what we've been doing lately; catching up basically. I told him all about Cheryl and how we’d be going to a concert with each other soon. He seemed unusually interested in that subject, but we later moved on to the subject of Halloween. I told Case about how I'm ditching school all day on Halloween (this was tradition for me) and he decided he'll ditch too...along with Sandy.

Three days later...Sandy broke up with Case. Who would've seen that coming? He was devastated, and I was fairly happy (not because Case was sad). I figured that Sandy wouldn't be hanging around Case now that they broke up so I started ditching my fourth period to see my old friends at lunch again. It was great hanging out with them, and there were a few new people that I haven't met before, such as Ponyboy, Ears, and Eric. Things were starting to look up once again; I got my old friends back, I still hung out with my nerd friends, and Cheryl and I were going to go see a show together. So naturally, now that things are getting good...the shit has got to hit the fan; Case got back with Sandy- oh but it gets worse.

I was hanging out with Case and Sandy one night, when Case had to go home early for some reason. So it was just Sandy and me now. I told her that I'm going to head home when she grabbed me and pulled me toward her. She didn’t say a word and out of the blue, she tried to kiss me. I pushed her off of me before her face could connect with mine, and practically ran home. I decided that Case has to know, even though I knew how he'd react. So I told him, and he did exactly what I knew he would do: He called me a liar and said that I'm jealous. Two days later, Sandy left Case again, and he was apologizing to me about how much of an idiot he was.

So anyways, Case, who was heartbroken now, started hanging out with me a lot more. I guess he considered me to be his best friend now, since I was honest to him about what happened with his ex. He asked me to go hang out with him and the nerd gang after school to play Magic one day, so I figured why not? I’ve only see them at lunch lately; it’ll be cool to kick it with them for a while after school. So we went to see them after school, which is when I noticed something from afar: Sandy was standing behind Will, who was standing in front of his sister, Jessica. It looked like Sandy was trying to hide from Jessica, behind Will. Case and I walked closer to the scene and it turned out that Jessica was about to start a fight with Sandy because she found out that Sandy was hitting on her brother, Will. There were some verbal insults thrown for a while until finally Will’s sister walked off. Will explained everything to us afterwards. He explained that Sandy and Jessica used to be longtime friends when some guy came in between them and they became hateful towards each other ever since. Sandy was quick to get off of Will’s back when she saw Case. I talked with Will for a while and Case and Sandy started up a conversation of their own. Will was talking about how Sandy wanted to get with him and he said no. He sounded disgusted by the thought of it and went on to explain that he would never do such a thing. After our conversation ended, Case and Sandy were making out. They had gotten back together - for the third time. Man I hated high school relationships. To top the bad news off, one of my nerd friends, Hermone, told me never to show up with or without my “bickering buddies” at their after school spot again. None of my other nerd friends seemed to want to back me up.

So I spent the next few days without hanging out with any of my friends until Halloween came. I ditched school with Case and Sandy and we hung out on the streets for a good six hours. It was pretty uneventful except for one instance when Sandy tried to kiss me again while Case wasn’t looking. I shoved her away and he thought I was trying to hurt her, but to my surprise, he wasn’t that mad. Later on, when night fell is where the real fun began. We started egging homes and vandalizing property- man we were acting stupid. I remember I did something that made everything take a turn for the worse: I took a roll of T.P. and lit it on fire, then walked into the middle of a very high-traffic street and just placed the burning roll of fire there. That’s when I heard cop sirens, so I ran. I was separated from my friends because I ran down the first backstreet that I saw. While I was running, I somehow ran into Sandy, I don’t know how she got ahead of me. The dumb bitch didn’t seem to realize that I had cops on my tail, and she took the lighter from my hand and lit another roll of T.P. and threw it into a nearby dumpster. We all know that trash + fire = disaster. I just shoved her aside and continued running. I was running down a very long street with no turns when Case caught up to me. He seemed to be well aware of our current situation. Then things got worse: A passing car with three or four hooligans was passing by and they fucking EGGED US WITH AN EGG SHOOTER. I had yellow, gooey yoke all over me.

I completely forgot that the cops were after me at that point. All I remember is how angry I felt as I turned and kept shouting at the drive-by eggers. I also recall Case chasing the car as if he was really going to catch up to them. Then, almost suddenly, I felt a massive pain on the back of my head and I was knocked out...I don't know what it was that knocked me out.