Yes, Holly was a pretty good girl, by most standards.
And most of her friends were pretty "good", too. Any parties they ever had or invited eachother to featured root beer and licorice and truth-or-dare. Or trips to the mall, which was where Holly was headed tonight. Her friend Cherry was having a birthday party at the theater in the Newgate Mall. The movie? License to Drive. Corey Haim was so cute! Holly was totally psyched.
She picked her curly hair into a full-bodied bob and lined her eyes in black. She brushed on seafoam green eyeshadow to match her top and paired the look with her favorite pair of light blue denim cutoff shorts. Modest cutoffs, of course. They had to be just an inch above the knee. White sandals and a pink gloss to her lips finished the look off just right.
Her mom drove, picking up one of Holly's best friends along the way. Amy Callahan was the kind of girl that made up for her chubby figure with an infectious personality. She was possibly even a little over the top at times. But Holly loved it. Amy was so fun and full of life and you couldn't help laughing when she laughed, which was pretty much all the time. She was adorable - Holly wouldn't think otherwise. But, she was a big girl and boys were petty. Not to mention she had reddish hair, braces and freckles to boot.
"Corey Haim will totally be my boyfriend," Amy predicted, her head snaked back and forth as she said this with a click, click of her fingers. "You know he wants him a little of this."
Holly smiled over the terrible thought in her head - "I don't even have a boyfriend. What chance has she got, really?"
Holly hid her hands behind her back and dug her nails into her palm. She didn't enjoy the judgemental, rude, and thoroughly uncalled for thoughts that would pop up in her brain sometimes. Who was she to judge, anyhow? It didn't matter if her friend Milly had vomit breath or that Jeni had a big butt. They were her friends. "Bad Holly," she thought.
"You girls have fun. Be good," her mom said as she dropped them off.
"Always," the two of them said in unison and giggled.
The movie didn't start until after 9pm so the group of girls gathered in the food court for big soft pretzels and diet coke. Holly met Cherry Lerner when they were lumped together as locker partners in 7th grade. Cherry, bless her soul, wasn't a very cute girl. The meaner boys at school would say that she kind of looked like a man. She always kept her hair neatly short and never wore one ounce of makeup. And she always wore baggy jeans and big, boyish t-shirts or polos. But, she was a nice girl. A bit clingy, perhaps, but she made you feel like you were her bestest friend in the whole wide world. It was kind of endearing.
None of the girls at Cherry's party were part of the "upper class". They weren't popular. But, they weren't unpopular, either. They were sort of in the middle. Aside from Cherry, Amy and Holly - Hillary, Millie and a boy named Chuck were at the mall for Cherry's birthday. It was a decent gathering. Holly had hoped that Cherry's cute neighbor and fellow almost 9th grader, Mike, had shown up. Holly had had a crush on this boy since she first laid eyes on him on the first day of 7th grade French class.
Mike Lentel had to be the cutest boy at North Junior High. And he knew that Holly had a crush on him. And how did he find out? Well, it was one of those epic humiliating moments that inevitably befalls every teenage girl.
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