#sliceoflife 5 of 31

Day Five of the #sliceoflife challenge.

So far, as my mom jokingly pointed out, I have looked like a fairly depressed teenager on here, which is definitely not who I am. I have another slightly deep story to share, but I will save it for another time. For now, I will try to balance out my stories about bullying and scary life decisions with some humorous ones. This one that I am about to write actually happened the very first day I drove myself to school.




The day that I got my license was one of the best days of my life. I drove myself to dance that very night and could not stop smiling. At all. Not for a second. My happiness was also prolonged by the fact that I got my license the first week of February vacation. Pretty much the best day ever.

That feeling of complete and overwhelming joy and freedom carried over for the entire week. As I pull into the student parking lot at my high school next Monday morning, I'm still feeling pretty good. I've gotten more comfortable behind the wheel during my week off and am more than a little excited to show off my hand-me-down 7-seater Volvo to all of my friends.

I see my friend Tara sitting in her car right in the spot she said she'd be in--the second row next to the second island. By island, I'm guessing you realize that I don't mean a sunny patch of sand. Our school's parking lot has a few randomly placed islands for plants and things when the snow actually decides to melt. They're cute, but sort of pointless. Of all things to decorate, why choose a parking lot?

Tara motions for me to park in the empty space directly in front of her, right alongside the island's curb. I carefully pull up as close the curb as I dare and begin to pull in to the spot. I feel my tire graze the granite, but keep going until I am comfortably sitting across from Tara's Honda. I smile to myself, pretty proud at my first ever school parking job. That is, until I see Tara's face.

"Don't worry about it!" I call out, turning the car off. "That little scratch was already there!" My mom had hit a rock a couple years ago, giving the front right of the car a small dent and a couple scratches.

Tara just shakes her head.

"What, then?" I call. I hope she can hear me because I don't feel like turning the car back on and opening the window. Plus it's cold. She shakes her head again and smiles a sort of disbelieving, scared smile. She yells something to me, but I can't hear her. "What?" I shout.

She walks over to my window and motions for me to roll down my window. I roll my eyes and open the door, and she just looks at me, her eyes huge. I raise my eyebrows. "You just popped your tire."

I freeze for half a second, and then laugh. "No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't. Tara that isn't funny."

"Fine. Come look if you don't believe me." I reluctantly get out of the safety of my warm car and follow her to look at my front right tire. I gasp. It wasn't really fair for her to call it a tire. The thing was completely flat. Parallel to the ground. Smushed.

"Oh my god." I fall to my knees to examine it more carefully. The sharp granite curb I had grazed so lightly had cut straight through the rubber. There's a gash about five inches long. I am no expert on popped tires, but this one looks pretty popped. "I am sooo dead."

"That's more of the reaction I was looking for." Tara laughs and helps me up. "Call your dad, do you have Triple A?"

It's all I can do to force myself to nod. Words just don't seem to be coming.

"Larkin, relax," Tara smiles. "You have Triple A, your tire will get fixed, and you will laugh about this in a couple days."

I force a small smile. "Okay, but you have to promise me that we will keep this as secret as possible. No one needs to know that I sliced my tire my first day driving to school."

Tara shakes her head, laughing, as I walk back to my car to call my dad. "I promise."

#sliceoflife 4 of 31

Today is day four of the #sliceoflife challenge, and my second day. So far, I am loving this challenge because it is forcing me to make time in my day to write. My mom has always told me that I definitely have 20 minutes a day to sit down and write but I never believed her. However, now that I have people besides her that expect me to do just that, I am finding that I do, in fact, have that time available. Maybe when March is over I'll spend this 20 minutes a day doing SAT work.
I want to write my post today about high school bullies, after seeing another slicer write a blog about bullies in middle school. I have accepted that bullies exist no matter how old you are, but what I still struggle with to this day is how to deal with them.

(Again, names are changed)

I walk into the library and look around for a table. Usually I sit with my friend Sara this period, but I can't find her. On a normal day, I would have just texted her, but unfortunately I left my phone in my car this morning and my high school has this weird rule that you can't go out to your car during the school day. I mean, I guess it makes sense safety-wise, but what could a kid go get out of their car that they couldn't sneak into school at the beginning of the day?
I see my friend Beca sitting at a table, but she's sitting with Gabby. I quickly walk to an empty table, hoping they don't see me. Unfortunately the gods did not hear my silent prayer.
"Liv, can you come over?" Gabby calls, "I didn't hear what the English homework was." She doesn't turn around to look at me, just assumes that I will happily prance over to wait on her. I do.
When I get to her table, I sit down in the only empty chair and begin to pull out my planner.
"Sorry, but Ely is coming in like two seconds so you'll have to move."
I give her a nasty look that she completely misses, immersed in her phone. Beca, however, notices.
"Don't worry about it Liv, I'm sure he can just pull up a chair." I smile in response, silently thanking her.
Gabby rolls her eyes. I quickly peek over her shoulder to see what she is so interested in that she couldn't even say hello. Twitter. Obviously. Why talk to the people sitting right next to you when you can cyber-talk with everyone else?
"Gab, do you want to know the homework? Because I really have to go study."
She finally looks up and laughs. Kind of weird, because I'm pretty sure my goal for that statement was not humor. "Geez, Liv, you need to relax. Seriously. Stop complaining about how you need to study. We all know you have a 98 GPA, there's no need to brag about it." Beca's boyfriend, Jack, who I've only met once, snickers and I feel my face going red. Before I can think of a clever response, Gabby grabs my English notebook and starts rifling through it, messing up my neatly organized papers.
"Here, I've got it." I take it back and pull out the assignment. I hate when people copy me, but Gabby knew what she was doing on this one. She asked me what the homework was, then when I was comfortably sitting down she made fun of how smart I am and then goes to copy my assignment. She knows that if I say no now, I'll look like an even bigger dork than I already do. Pure, cunning, manipulative genius.
I hand her the paper and get up to leave as Ely walks in.
"Liv, where you going? You know you can sit here, right?" Beca looks up at me.
"No, it's fine, don't worry I'm not leaving because you guys have cooties," I laugh awkwardly. "It's just that I have two tests today that I really have to study for."
"Okay," Beca says, laughing too, "Have fun."
"Oh, trust me, I will," I say and finally turn away and start walking towards the beckoning empty table. As I sit down and take out my history notes, I promise myself that I will never let Gabby get to me again. Next time, I will stand up for myself and tell Gabby that she can find another person to bother. Even as I think it, I know that it's a total lie. Gabby has friends and those friends have friends and if I want to remained well-liked, I know that standing up to Gabby is not in my best interest.

#slice2013 3 of 31

I decided to make a blog to join in the Slice of Life challenge. My mom told me about it and is doing it herself, so I decided why not. I think it is such a great idea to write a story of your own life every day. When I sit down to write a story, I often can't think of anything to write about. However, I am hoping that if I write a little every day about my life, then by the end of March I will have some great works in progress that I can continue to build off of. 

This weekend I had a dance competition. Within every dance competition there are at least 100 mini stories to write about, but I decided to pick one moment.

(I changed the names)

I sit between the curtains, careful to stay out of the glowering eyes of the judges; I remember what countless directors and instructors have told me, "if you can see the audience, the audience can see you." The two girls that are performing now are doing really well. Their turns are perfectly together, and they had an amazing lift; a hard feat to pull off for a girls' duet. It would have looked better if one of them was a guy, though. All the girls at my studio come to these competitions and leave feeling beyond jealous of all the companies who lucked out in finding an amazing male dancer. One of my friends went up to one guy and offered to pay him to do a duet with her. He looked at her quizzically, awkwardly laughed and said "thanks?" He didn't realize that she wasn't kidding. 

Anna and I are in two dances. I chew on my lip and watch as the next duo takes the stage. 

"Anna," I say, and walk over to where she is rehearsing by the door. She raises her eyebrows at me while marking a turn. "Do you think we could run the lift a couple more times?"
"Larkin, can't you see I'm in the middle of something?"

I go back to my spot in between the curtains and continue stretching. Everyone knows that when Anna says to go away, you should go away. I close my eyes and picture the dance in my head. Anna and I are different in that way. If I practice my dance right before I go on, I will get all stressed out that I am going to forget it and then I'll go onstage and I'll actually forget it, so I choose to just picture the steps in my head. For Anna, she does best when she runs it over and over beforehand. 

I look back over my shoulder. Anna has taken a break and is sitting in her left split with her eyes closed. 

I walk back over. "Anna, do you think we could do the lift just a couple of times? I would feel a lot better if we run it before going on."
She opens her eyes.
"Yeah, whatever. But don't screw up now because then you'll psych yourself out and screw it up onstage."

She has always known how to boost my confidence. 

We are able to run it once before my dance instructor calls us over to stand in the wings. A lot of people say that their "heart beats through their chest" when they're nervous. That's not the case with me. My heart stays relatively calm, but I get really bad stomach aches. And let me tell you, my stomach was not feeling too good. 

"Anna and Larkin, senior duet, Somebody That I Used To Know."

Anna starts walking and it takes me a moment to realize that I am supposed to follow. I trot along behind her and we get into our opening places. She is standing right in front of me, toes touching, back facing the audience. I've grown in the past year so now we're standing eye to eye. "I love you, let's kick some butt, " she whispers. I grin back as the music starts.