So, Jacqueline and I woke up the next morning in about the same positions we’d fallen asleep in—SadEyes was still sprawled out in the middle of the futon; we’re crouched on the edges, trying our hardest not to roll off.

As I sat up, every muscle in my body ached.  Note to self:  No more sleeping on futons that are almost as old as I am.  And another note:  No more SadEyes at sleepovers. 

Jacqueline and I staggered upstairs; SadEyes followed behind, well-rested and alert—I think she had woken up at least a couple hours before us.  I perused my kitchen cupboards and drawers to find us something for breakfast, and Jacqueline and SadEyes leaned against the island, watching and talking. 

“You know what we should do?”  Jacqueline ventured.  “We should prank call someone.  We should prank call everyone.”

I grabbed some granola bars, and we hurried over to the living room.  Our friends had our cell numbers, so we decided to use my home phone.  We picked our first victim:  Emerald.

I’m going to have to digress a bit, and branch out into a mini-background story.  Emerald was pretty, insecure, athletic and a little mean.  We were rather good friends, though, so we joked around with her a lot.  It might’ve been because she played a lot of tennis, but everything about her seemed… big.  Most noticeably, though, were her hands.  One day, we started calling her hands “Beefy Wads of Doom”.  I can’t remember the details of where the joke came from—probably birthed from a lengthy conversation between Jacqueline and I.  Anyway, we thought that “saying” was the most hilarious thing ever.  I mean, seriously, say it aloud.  It’s ridiculous.

Alright, back to New Year’s.  We’ve decided to call Emerald, but haven’t decided on what to say when she picks up the phone.  Through consensus and being reminded of it from the mention of Emerald’s name, we decide the prank-er will simply grunt “Beefy Wads of Doom” and hang up—the humor being in imagining how freaked and confused the prank-ee will be afterwards.

We call Emerald, and, after her, a series of three or four more friends, alternating the phone between us.  Then we get to Flathead and it’s Jacqueline’s turn.  We dialed his number—all suppressing giggles—and Jacqueline sat, phone pressed to her ear, anxiously waiting for him to pick up.

Suddenly, a startled look came on to her face and she said, “Yes, hi, I’m calling for Flathead.”  Pause.  “This is…Julie.”

I could hear the voice on the phone say, “Oh, okay, I just wanted to make sure if you were calling for my son or my husband…”  [Apparently, they have the same name.]  Then she yelled, “Flathead!  Phone!”

We hear Flathead ask, “Who is it?”

His mom replies, “Julie.”

Flathead’s perplexed.  “Julie?”  He takes the phone.  “Hello?”

“BEEFY WADS OF DOOM!”  As Jacqueline hits the end button, all three of us burst out in hysterical laughter.

We’re still laughing when my cell phone rings.  I pick it up and see Flathead’s calling.  We all compose ourselves and I answer.

“Summer!  I just had the weirdest thing happen to me!  This girl named Julie called me, yelled something, and hung up!  I don’t even know a Julie!  How’d she get my number?!”  Flathead exclaimed.

“Wow!”  I tried to be as convincing as possible.  “That is so weird!  I don’t know… that’s just strange!”
            “I know!  Has anyone called you?”

“Um…not yet.  Maybe they will.  I’ll call you, if they do.  What’d she say to you?”

“I don’t know.  I couldn’t really make it out.  I think she said “I love you” or something.”

“Oh, that’s freaky!  Haha, you have a stalker named Julie.”

“It is!  It’s creepy!  Man, I’m really freaked out right now.  I mean, I’ve only given my number to you and a couple other people!”

After Flathead calmed down from the peak of his worry and I hung up, we all burst out in hysterical laughter yet again.  A few minutes later, I called him back.

“Flathead!  Oh my God, someone just called us, too!”

“What?! Really?!”

“Yeah!  This is really weird!  How did someone get all our numbers?”

“I don’t know!  Do you even know a Julie?!”

“No!”

“Neither do I!”

“I guess we have a new stalker…”

To this day, Flathead still thinks there’s a girl named Julie out there, with his phone number, that’s stalking him.  …That might have something to do with certain letters that were sent…But we’ll have to go into that story some other time.  :]

Too much Flathead in one day will make your head explode, so beware!

But first, let me tell you a bit about our character.

The only thing I regret to inform you is that she is completely, utterly, and totally nonfiction and nothing about this story is a lie or even embellished.

Well SadEyes, as we call her, earned her name for a reason. Not only did she always look as if she just adopted a bunch of stray pets only for them to get hit by a car as she left the shelter, but she definitely had the weird little quirks to match. She seems to be quite incapable of just ‘liking’ a guy. No, it’s always an obsession. Maybe it just happens with her because while this is part of many young teenage girls’ lives, nothing in her life could just be simple.

I remember on one specific occasion, as I grew to know her more, in class.

“Can I see your paper?” she asked me.  “I can give you my answers after.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

At this moment SadEyes breaks out into hysterical laughter. At what, I’m not sure.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s Little Italy, not SMALL Italy. That answer is WRONG.” SadEyes mocks with her finger pointing at my paper for everyone to see.

As she continued to laugh I couldn’t help but become a bit annoyed. I fling some comment about wanting my paper back and about being sorry not all of us could spend our free time at the library. In response to this she says,

“Well, you may all be out partying, but then you’ll be crying when I’m the one who becomes Valedictorian.”

“Right,” I snapped back, a bit too harshly I suppose, “While we’re all out celebrating life when we graduate, you will be at home writing that speech no one cares about.”

With that answer, a result of my defensive reflexes, the room grew quiet.

“Hm,” Summer contemplated a moment after, “Make it meaningful anyway.”

And with that, SadEyes shut her mouth and gave up on her efforts in cutting me down.

Now, the reason I bring this story up about me specifically is to show my own firsthand experience with the kind of person SadEyes is. She is seemingly insecure about herself, and therefore brings others down. Oh, and one key element I nearly left out of the equation: she is obsessively concentrated on her looks.

All of this *points up* is completely true.

And now that we know a bit about our character, I can now share another short story, with the same character, of course, and just as much humor. This is more the story I was building up to.

It happened on New Year’s Eve:  Well, it was only a matter of time before I would arrive at Summer’s for our New Year’s sleepover. I was sitting in the car and watching as each lamp post seemed to pass by. When the lamps became fewer and the streets far less crowded, I knew I was going to turn the corner to her house in a moment.

As my mom pulled to a stop in front of her house, I struggled for a moment with my bag, the bag that seemed so futile to pack in the first place, I always fell asleep in what I was wearing when I stayed at Summer’s, it is just sort of a tradition at our sleepovers. But I digress. I pulled my bag on to my shoulder and walked over to the front door of the house, where I was soon greeted by Summer.  We performed our normal rituals of “Hello” and “How are you” and continued upstairs to her room.

Summer and I now sat at her laptop, talking to those who hadn’t any plans to go out this evening. We talked to Juliette, and found out, to our dismay, that once again, she wasn’t able to hang out. We looked around for other people and soon came to the realization that if we were going to make plans, we shouldn’t have hesitated until the night of to execute them.

Summer took her phone out and she began to flip through numbers until she came to a halt. She looked over inquisitively and showed me the number. I’m not too sure if it was more of a suggestion or a mutual agreement, but we ended up inviting SadEyes to our little gathering.

Now, it is imperative at this point to tell you that we had attempted to invite a few other people before deciding that, although neither of us was too keen on her, we would invite SadEyes to join our group for the night, as we took into consideration the words of our close friend Kent, who at one point mentioned that SadEyes was just that: sad. But oh, how we regret it…

Soon after calling, SadEyes’ mom dropped her off at Summer’s house and we greeted her just like we would any other friend. After going on a brief snack run, we were once again in Summer’s room, only this time we were surrounded by delectable party treats. But, like I said before, nothing about SadEyes could ever be simple.

“If I keep eating these skittles, I am going to get so fat.” SadEyes said, gazing her large, doleful eyes down at the bag.

Summer and I laughed at the observation SadEyes had just made. She woke up every morning, seven AM on the weekends and five AM when we had school, just so she could run and get into shape. There was not one season when she wasn’t involved in a sport. Sometimes, she even went to the gym AFTER her sports practice. So yes, just 198493082409 more skittles, and she would be fat. Alright, perhaps bordering an overweight status.

“Okay, give them to me then.” I said. I am a big fan of skittles. Of depriving myself of snacks at a sleepover? Not so much.

I must admit, that night was probably the most I’d ever seen her eaten, which still isn’t saying much. Not that there is anything wrong with limiting yourself and watching what you eat. But, as strange as it sounds, it can be overdone.

The night proceeded interestingly, to say the least. At some point, we decided to move to the basement floor and bring Summer’s laptop along. We had already been talking to Flathead Madbrows and he was telling us each what he liked/disliked about us. While none of us, well, not Summer and myself at any rate, really cared what he thought, it was entertaining and gave us something to do. However, we soon realized this was a bad idea when it was SadEyes’ turn to be rated.

“My eyes are sunken into the back of my head?” She asked incredulously.

It was all Summer and I could do to keep from laughing as Flathead evaluated her, not knowing she was sitting there, right behind the laptop the entire time.

It took a while to convince her that no opinion of Flathead ever did, nor ever would, matter or, half the time, even made sense. A little bit later, SadEyes decided to show us some cool trick with the laptop.

“Look,” she said tapping a button, “the light flickers when you do this.”

Summer, who was a little hesitant, stared at the black screen as it didn’t flicker back on. Some trick. At least we didn’t have to talk to Flathead anymore. [Summer says:  The button she was pressing is the button that turns the screen off when you close the laptop... Yeah.  Not funny SadEyes...]

The situation regarding SadEyes’ self-consciousness only worsened as we visited a site on which we used the webcam and all tried to fit on the screen. We took turns sitting in the middle, and it was purely coincidental that when it was her time to sit in the middle, guys were no longer messaging.

*Ahem*

The situation, once again, was quite amusing.

We decided to take a break and get nachos, one of the ultimate sleepover snack foods. Summer heated up a delicious concoction of cheese and salsa and we took pleasure in dipping our crispy delights in it. After a few chips, Summer and I noticed something was strange: there were no signs of SadEyes anywhere.

Quietly, we began to search. We walked around her fireplace which leads directly from her kitchen, where we had been snacking, to her living room, where we found SadEyes in a compromising position. That’s right; she was on the ground…doing crunches. She claimed she had “too many chips” and had to watch her weight since she wasn’t going on her run the next day.

You can imagine our reaction: full of laughter, while at the same time, somewhat freaked out that someone, a teenager no less, was lying there in her living room, doing crunches to work off about 4.5 tortilla chips. Oh, and did I forget to mention that the first thing she said when we walked into SUMMER’S living room was,

“Oh, you weren’t supposed to find me!”

Yeah…typical teenage behavior, right? Well, maybe teenagers from our school.

After this little situation occurred, we headed back downstairs, where we continued to mock the oddness of SadEyes’ antics, or what you will. Although it wasn’t quite midnight, SadEyes’, in all her closed-in, locked-up mannerisms, began to nod off.

It was at this point she decided to let us in on a key tidbit of information: she talks in her sleep. You could ask her anything, and she would answer honestly.

“SadEyes,” we began to whisper as she fell asleep, “do you like Kent?”

No coherent response.

“SadEyes?”

“My name is Julie.” SadEyes murmured, only for Summer and I to force ourselves to keep from laughing.

“Um, okay. Julie, do you like Kent? Do you want Kent’s babies?”

“Kent doesn’t love me.” She said in a low, disappointed and sleepy voice.

After about twenty minutes of this, Summer and I decided it was all the entertainment we could bear for the night. We went to sleep, somewhat uncomfortably, as SadEyes, or Julie now I suppose, was occupying much of the room on the bed.

Basically, this concluded one of the strangest sleepovers I had been to. Of course this was thanks to SadEyes. Amusement galore, but not without a price to pay, as we would later find out.

The next day, before we said our goodbyes, we had a little more fun, but, really, that is another story for another time. I will give you a little hint though, it involves prank calls and the true birth of “Julie”, who plays a large part in many of the comical treats that would follow.

Jacqueline and I had been “acquaintances” for a while.  We’d been in the same drama, P.E. and computer classes, and our lockers were next to each other thanks to our last names.  But it wasn’t until we both met Flathead Madbrows that we truly bonded.  :]

Okay, so that’s obviously not his real name.  The back of his head being abnormally flat inspired “Flathead”; and a photo of himself he posted on his MySpace, where his eyebrows were ridiculously arched—so arched it became creepy and reminiscent of a rapist—inspired “Madbrows”. 

Here’s a little drawing to show how Jacqueline and I became ‘connected’ with Flathead:

So, during and after Flathead and Juliette’s relationship, he relied on Jacqueline and I to be his advice-givers and fountains of knowledge about Juliette (even though we hadn’t known her that long either).  Almost every night, I’d sign on to instant messenger and he’d be on.  Before the program even loaded, I’d hear that sickening *ding* of a message.  And the conversations would last for hours; hours of him “venting” as he put it.  Sometimes I’d just leave my computer and let him type, come back 30 minutes later and he’d be finishing his story of how Juliette wouldn’t do this or she said that, or whatever he was obsessing about on that particular day.  (I eventually learned to sign in “Invisible to everyone”.)  The odd thing was he was doing this to Jacqueline, too, and neither of us had any idea we were both suffering through the same…hell!  x]

So, that brings us to the ‘banging my head on the wall’ thing.  I was fed up with and maybe officially had been driven mad by Flathead.  So, one morning at my locker, a casual conversation with Jacqueline led to Juliette and Flathead and, happy I could finally express how frustrated I was with Flathead, I started rambling on about how he catches and tortures me with his long-winded philosophies about life and Juliette.  Then, Jacqueline goes,

“…ME TOO!”

And there you are.  Bonded forever.  ;]  But, really, having someone to share this with probably kept us both from running to psychiatrists.  So, our next step was trying to find our way out of this maze called ‘friendship’ with Flathead. 

Easier said than done, believe me.  Flathead was one of those people who could snap at any moment.  They act extra buddy-buddy so you don’t abandon them, but then, when you do, they freak, grab the nearest shotgun and wreak havoc.  This was forever on our minds when dealing with Flathead.

What made it worse was:  1. Juliette broke up with him on Christmas Eve over MySpace—he immediately messaged me and told me he’s heading over to my house now; mind you, it was 9pm.  Uh…no, just no.  and  2.  The other two people in our “friend group” essentially denounced him; Flathead’s biggest fear was abandonment—or so we hypothesized—so that really messed him up. 

That left me and Jacqueline.  And he made sure we knew.  He would constantly tell us how much he loved us, and how we were his greatest friends now—his true, real friends.  None of which we reciprocated or even acted on.  Every time he said something like that to us, we’d just get more anxious—our greatest want was to break off all ties with him.  I mean, everyone else did!  It was ridiculously unfair we were left to deal with this mess by ourselves.  But if we were to abandon him, we reasoned, he’d go off.  He’d lose it and grab that shotgun.  So we were stuck.

Oh, but how hilarious were the events that happened in that “limbo” stage of our friendship.  Flathead was emotionally draining, but extremely entertaining.  I think because he was in his own little world most of the time—and then constantly trying to drag you into it.

Here’s a message he sent me in his delirious grief after an actually very pleased and unsympathetic Juliette broke up with him: 

And a second self-explanatory, dramatic message:

Oh, yeah, did you notice his motto?  “It happens.”  Indeed, it does. …? … I think that’s enough Flathead for today, though, kids. 

Look out for Part Two!  :]

This is the introduction to “The Grand Gang: Stories from a High School”, a collection of stories based on weird things that have and inevitably will happen at/in our school and surrounding…lives. ^^

My name is Summer. I’ll be writing some of these fascinating stories for your entertainment!

And so will Jacqueline. She’s my best friend and the only other sane person here. Oh, and all the guys like her. ;]

Here’s a little insight into the other main characters:

[Names have been changed, so we don’t get punched at school.]

First, there’s Kent. He has a—let’s say—“fragile” voice and only hangs out with girls, but swears he isn’t gay. He projects the air of a “Goody-Two-Shoes”, but knows a slew of dirty words.

After Kent, always comes SadEyes. Her name is inspired by her facial expression: she permanently looks sad. She’s ‘best friends’ with Kent, tall and loves to exercise.

And there’s Lila, who has an anger problem, a serious long-distance boyfriend and a few crushes here.

There’s Flathead (name inspired by the shape of his head)—one of Juliette’s ex-boyfriends. He used to be unbearably insane (stories to come soon), but then got a new girlfriend, which seemed to calm him down.

And Juliette. She went out with Flathead.

I think Turner is worth mentioning, since he’ll probably be in most stories. He’s ridiculously obsessed with exercising and protein shakes, uptight and Republican.

And Zeke—whom Jacqueline, Juliette and I all took turns liking. Not so much “turns”, though…more like “at the same time”. It’s figured out now… mostly…I think…

Oh! Who could forget the Norwegian Model and his ditsy ‘girlfriend’, Fruit Fly? In summary: I used to like him, then he dyed his hair and started dating her. *shivers* More to come.

Ah, yes. We all have our quirks, don’t we? XD

Those are the main people, so I’ll stop there. And now to start the stories! :]