Life

* Some names have been changed.

Growing up, every Sunday night my family gathered at my Granny and Poppy's house across town for spaghetti dinner. If I slept over the night before, I watched Granny roll the meatballs and brown the sausage that Sunday morning before dropping each in the sauce to simmer. I thought every family spent their Sunday nights like that, and I loved our family ritual. After dinner was over, we all retreated into the living room and watched TV. Then we hugged and kissed good-bye and went to our homes to prepare for the school and work week.

Although my time with my family was special and something I looked forward to, school wasn't. Due to being painfully shy, I had trouble fitting in. I was bullied for being overweight and had teachers who didn't care enough to help me in the subjects I struggled in. In between being ridiculed for my size and feeling as if I were dumb, I had very few close friends and was often alone.

I had two great best friends while growing up, and they were my only saving grace. I met Sierra and Rachel in kindergarten, and we were in the same Girl Scouts troop together. We each had younger siblings who were near in age and mothers who were involved in school functions. The two of them lived six houses apart in a suburban neighborhood about five minutes away from the busy street where I lived. Sleepovers, Halloween, and numerous birthday parties with both of them made life better. Sierra and Rachel were like night and day, however, and I fell in the middle, being a little bit of both of them.

I didn't become good friends with Sierra until third grade, when we were placed in the same class. Even back then, she had a wild streak to her. Sierra would tell a joke and get a group to burst into laughter; she was the girl the boys had crushes on, the girl who always had a ton of girls attend her annual birthday sleepover. I was content living life on the sidelines and taking in all the excitement that followed her. While I was socially awkward and not exactly considered a hot tamale, Sierra was. Boys adored her.

One particular incident occurred when we were about eight years old. Sierra liked a boy in our class and wanted me to pass him a note from her. The note said, "I like you. Do you like me?" As her loyal sidekick, I, of course, said yes. I put the note on his desk and slipped away. He came over to me and asked who had given him the note. While all eyes and ears were on me, I began to stutter. He asked again, and before I knew it, I said, "Sierra."

She wanted to kill me, as you can imagine. But I didn't fully grasp the whole concept of "Shhh! It's a secret note to my crush. Don't tell him it's from me." I was a buffoon. At least now we laugh about it. That's just how life with Sierra was while growing up. Wherever she went, I followed. Whatever she told me to do, I did (to an extent).

Rachel was the opposite of Sierra. She was quiet, and if someone made her upset, she cried. She and I preferred to stay in and rent teen movies starring Freddie Prinze Jr. while munching on popcorn or my mom's homemade pizza. I became best friends with her in the fourth grade, when she was seated next to me in class. Sierra became placed in another classroom that year, so we saw her on the playground at recess and during Girl Scouts.

Rachel and I started having sleepovers every Friday night, alternating between her house and mine. We didn't have to ask each other; it was simply understood where to be at what time. The Friday nights when she came to my house were fun; she arrived after dinner, and we painted our nails or made ice cream sundaes with my mom and my younger sister, Lin, in the kitchen. Immediately after that, we retreated to my room, closed the door, and put on the latest Backstreet Boys CD and choreographed our own dance moves to it. My favorite member was Nick Carter, and I really and truly believed I would marry him one day. We both liked pizza, the color green, and telling jokes — it was meant to be. So there we were, week after week, dancing and laughing in our sleeping bags until the sun came up.

Since Rachel and I spent so much time together, our teachers quickly caught on. We still hung out with Sierra, but she had made friends with some of the more popular girls in our grade and was doing her own thing. We even went as far as to get a blue heart necklace that was cracked in half; one half said "Best," and the other half said "Friend." We were attached at the hip.

Well, the day came when we were due to find out what class we were going to be in for fifth grade, and one at a time, we walked up to the front of the classroom for our assignment. I came back and asked everyone around me what class he or she was in. I asked one boy who sat near me what teacher he had, and it turned out he was in a different class. I continued to ask all the other boys and girls while I waited for Rachel's turn. I forgot that I had asked that boy, so I asked him again.

He said, "I just told you who I have for fifth grade. Stop asking!" (I made a mental note not to have him sign my yearbook.) And then Rachel came back and broke the news; she had been placed in a different classroom. So the recess bell rang, and I cried on the swing set. Sierra tried to comfort me by announcing she was in the same class as me. "But ... it's not the same," I managed to get out while my sobs grew louder. For a person without many friends, that day was heartbreaking. But that was just my first taste of life's unfairness.

Fifth grade arrived, and there I was, talking to my best friend in the bus lineup and then walking into a different class once we entered the building. That September, Sierra and I got invited to a pool party for a girl who went to church and school with us. Sierra kept encouraging me to dive into the pool, and despite my best efforts not to try, she won. While I was a natural fish who spent hours in my own pool, I couldn't dive to save my life. There I was, holding my nose with one hand and plunging into the pool in my navy-blue Winnie the Pooh bathing suit from Kmart.

That was when I noticed it. Two of the popular girls and the birthday girl were snickering and looking my way. I jumped in, with the splashes getting louder each time. I knew I was the biggest girl at that party, so my tasteful one-piece suit stood out. Everyone else wore trendy bikinis, displaying bony, undeveloped bodies. I told Sierra I had no desire to dive again, and when she asked why, I shrugged. She wasn't buying it, so we continued to swim. She asked again what was wrong, and I blurted out, "The girls over there are making fun of you and me." While there was clearly nothing wrong with her, I was too ashamed to say it was me they were targeting.

And just like that, Sierra swam over to the others and blurted out, "Hey! What is your problem?"

The birthday girl gave her an odd look and said, "Nothing. What are you talking about?" Sierra had no intention of stepping down; she was moving full speed ahead as I watched this whole encounter in silence.

She continued, "I saw you looking our way and laughing, so something is funny. What's your problem?" The birthday girl and her two other cronies smirked and insisted they weren't talking about us. I finally told Sierra to forget it. We changed out of our wet bathing suits and got ready for pizza and cake with everyone else. And that was the beginning of our fifth-grade year.

The year 1997 was a whirlwind; the world was changing, and so were we. The rise of boy bands made life a little more exciting, as was the presence of the media phenomenon the Spice Girls. Each girl in my grade had a favorite "Spice" they idolized. I liked Sporty Spice because I could relate to being a tomboy with a ponytail in my hair every day and worshipping black Adidas sweatpants. I thought Posh was gorgeous and so fashionable; I wondered how on earth she walked in such itty-bitty outfits and high heels. I used to close my bedroom door and stare into our backyard as I pretended to be Posh Spice. I imagined the trees were my audience, and I was singing to a sold-out crowd, using Lin's Spice Girl microphone.

I was in the chorus at school, and my dad always told me I had a good voice, so naturally I wanted to be a pop singer. Some days I belted out Madonna songs, and years later it would become Selena or Britney Spears songs; I studied their videos to get their dance moves down pat, even down to Selena's famous hand gestures and Britney's hip gyrations. All this was behind closed doors, of course, because I assumed being overweight with bushy hair and crooked teeth wasn't going to get the notice of any music moguls, so my concerts were always in the privacy of my bedroom.

The Spice Girls were overtly sexual in their music and presence, and my dad wasn't a fan. He didn't like me listening to them or watching them on TV, so I had to sneak it. My mom taped each performance they had on Jay Leno and David Letterman's shows — via a VCR ... Remember those? — and I watched them the next day after school. I remember getting a Toys "R" Us gift card for my birthday that year, and when my mom took me to pick something out, I chose Spice World, the Spice Girls movie. My dad saw it on the counter when I got home, and I overheard him say to my mom, "If I would have known she was going to pick this out with her gift card, I would have taken it away."

When Sierra's birthday rolled around that April, she announced she was having a Spice Girls sleepover, complete with our dressing up as our favorite band member. I choose Sporty as usual, meaning I looked no different than I did every other day of my life. I thought going as Posh was too much of a stretch, and I didn't have the confidence to even attempt it.

When I got to the party and saw Sierra dressed up in this tiny dress, with her long blonde hair shining in two high ponytails, I was in awe. She looked just like Baby Spice, and as I went inside, I saw that so many of the other girls looked just like their favorite Spice gal too. Sierra remarked that I should have gone as Posh. I could have worn a black dress and borrowed a pair of my mom's high heels. I shrugged at her, sheepishly went into the party, and tried getting the popular girls in my grade to talk to me. Rachel was so nervous about going to the party that she got a stomachache and ended up staying home. So there I was.

Sierra opened her gifts, and one girl gave her a kit full of makeup, so naturally she wanted us all to explore this crayon box full of goodies. I took a pencil, which I would learn many years later was eyeliner. I had no idea what this mysterious blue pencil was or how you used it, but I remembered my mom using one somewhere high up on her face. I took the navy-blue pencil and colored in my eyebrows. When I emerged from the bathroom, Sierra practically spit out her fruit punch.

"What happened to your eyebrows?" she said.

"I colored them in; isn't that what you are supposed to do with that thing?" I asked.

So now my bushy, Oscar the Grouch eyebrows (as my cousin Kelly had once referred to them) were a navy-blue hue. I scrubbed ferociously to get the ridiculous color out of them and went to the living room to have pizza.

The school year went on, and then summer came and I spent long days swimming in my pool and reading Teen People and YM magazines. Rachel went to a nearby camp for a few weeks but she was home every day by dinnertime. Sierra and Rachel also had pools, so we each took turns having swim dates and sleepovers; then we ran to the mailbox each day to check whether our middle school schedules had arrived.

The day mine did, I ripped open the envelope as fast as I could and dialed Rachel's number. We had no classes together. I called up Sierra, and it was the same diagnosis. My older cousin Anthony (Ant) had just graduated from our middle school and was now on his way to becoming a freshman at our high school, so he came over and marked up my schedule with little checks next to the names of "good" teachers and little x's next to the names of "bad" teachers. But I still wouldn't have my two best buds with me when school started. So the three of us waited patiently for our lives to change in middle school.

Within two weeks of school starting, I got my period for the first time. I think this had to do with how stressed I was about having so many kids in one building and having to run from class to class within a short time span. Middle school was rough, and each night I had trouble falling asleep, because I was anxious about what the following day would bring. I can still close my eyes and picture walking up the steps in my old middle school and trying as hard as I could to open my locker. Middle school is rough for anyone except, of course, the popular kids. I used to wail, "But everyone else is getting their hair colored like Britney Spears and wearing sexy clothing like her!" — to which my parents told me that no means no. I look back now and understand where they were coming from. No twelve-year-old should be dressing up like a vixen.

The first class of my middle school career was English, and I can still see the teacher's smiling face and her blonde hair shining brightly. She made class fun, and while there were no kids in the entire class from my elementary school, I liked laughing at the jokes of the new, funny boys in my class.

I actually didn't see many of the kids I had grown up with throughout the day. My middle school had many students, and therefore it had two teams to break down each grade. I was on a different team from Rachel but on the same one as Sierra, but really I saw the two of them only in passing. I didn't make many new friends, like most of the other kids did.

I became really friendly with a girl, Sue, in all my classes, and we passed notes back and forth and studied together, but she wasn't allowed to go to the movies or the mall because of her strict upbringing and family's culture.

While girls in my grade were going on double dates to the movie theater in town, I spent my spare Saturday nights on my godmother, Aunt Jo's, sofa. She lived across town and had the best snacks, so each weekend was a fiesta. We would order a pizza and watch a movie and then on Saturdays, after we slept late, we ate endless bowls of sugary breakfast cereal in front of the television and then went to a flea market or to visit a friend of hers.

Her three daughters — Jo Jo, Kelly, and Angie — would give me a French braid and jazz it up with bows and headbands. They were the older sisters I'd never had, and I loved it. They made me feel so cool with how they painted my nails (which always got my dad mad when I came home) and teased my hair. In return, I gave them back massages.

Sixth grade was a whirlwind and over before I knew it. It was a year of so many changes, and then it was time for the hot summer. Freedom! Days to be spent lying by the pool, eating chips, and going to Girl Scout camp with Rachel.

Then enter September 1999: seventh grade. Remember how I said the start of sixth grade was rough? Seventh grade was even worse. This time I was fortunate enough to have a few classes with Rachel but once again, none with Sierra.

Regardless, middle school was rough. Oh, did I mention that was the year I got braces? I would have those pesky suckers on for three years. Ugh. Flared jeans were back in style, and so were Old Navy tech vests; Rachel and I got matching blue ones. My mom took me shopping and let me pick out my very first pieces of makeup. I picked out brown lipstick, rosy blush and a powder-blue eye shadow.

I also begged for a pair of platform white sneakers, which all the cool kids were now sporting. The shoes were so elevated that they were hard to walk in, and one day as I walked down the staircase leading to the front of the school, the lace came undone, and I tripped and went flying down the staircase. I landed face-first on the ground with my backpack smacking me in the upper part of my back, and just as my dignity was flying out the window, the hot sixth-grade social studies teacher appeared and screamed, asking whether I was all right and alive. I'm not sure how I didn't break every bone in my body or my face, but I survived. I got off the floor, brushed myself off, and tried to ignore the fifty or so students on the staircase as well, who were rushing off to their next class. The same tripping scenario happened at least three more times throughout seventh grade until I finally got the hint and donated those god-awful shoes to the Goodwill.

A few weeks into the school year, my dad dropped me off at Rachel's one Sunday afternoon so we could study together. I noticed a box hanging on her door and asked her about it, but she said she didn't know what it was. A few days later, she sent me an instant message on AOL and said she had big news to tell me in school the next day. I thought it was something to do with the handsome jock I still fancied a year later. Not exactly. At school the next day, Rachel, never one for too much excitement and commotion, blurted out, "My dad got a new job — we're moving to Pennsylvania."