I have a love/hate relationship with my yearbook.
On page forty eight of the Sentinel High School yearbook, in big bold letters, beneath my senior picture, it says: Monica Preston: Most likely to Succeed.
Have I succeeded? Not sure. If you take success to mean that I struck it rich, or that I was the top of my class in college, then no…I’m an utter failure. If success means that I survived, got my diploma and finally grew up from my asinine existence (read: life in general)…then, yes, I’m the world’s greatest success story. I’m not as popular as I once was and there’s a gap between my family and I that would dwarf the national debt, but that’s okay.
I’m not exactly proud of what happened but if you asked me if I had a choice to do it differently, well I’d do a few things different...can’t lie there.
But I’d still do it all again.
I didn’t care what people thought of me then.
I don’t care about people think about me how.
You can think all that you want, but in the end I’m still reigning. Don’t look down on me. I’m STILL the ruler of my life.

You Can Call Me Queen Bee
Based on characters from To Be A Different Someone

White Teeth Teens

“Ooh, I like this.”
“Too fluffy. What do you think, Monica?”
I stood a few feet away from a display of sweaters with my ‘friends’ Casey Mullins and Melissa Ackerman. I use quotes for the obvious reason: they were not really my friends.
Sure, they knew my favorite flavor of ice cream.
Yes, they knew my fashion.
But no, they never heard me cry.
I never poured my soul out to them as they were more like my trusted lieutenants or my royal advisors.
At least, that’s what my brother used to say.
“Queen Monica Person,” he would proclaim—and not as a term of endearment or on the sly. If he had his way, he would have gotten me a tiara and a robe.
And yes, if the right person threw herself down at my feet I would take up the crown for her; but that wasn’t going to happen for a long time.
And, as I said, my ‘friends’ never knew. They would comment on how this guy or that guy was hot or busting and I would be screaming in my head that I would never care but instead I’d throw my hair to the side and say something that would—for the most part—answer the question.
“It’s okay. It would be better in red,” I replied as Melissa spun the hanger of one of the sweaters.
Casey only nodded.
I had known Melissa since fourth grade and Casey since sixth and here we were, soon to be sophomores, lurking in the only mall in Missoula, Montana and pretending we enjoyed being something important at Sentinel High School.
The three of us held power in our school—for some reason we were the top bitches; the fighting queen and her court—it may have had something with the my brother being popular and with me taking every girl down who would try to be with him. Not that I cared about him; but it was more that I wanted them; his admirers, but I knew full well that to admit my feelings to any of them would be a death kneel.

Because, high schoolers suck, you know? I attended Sentinel High School in Missoula up until the middle of my senior year.

Spartans kick ass!

There, I got that out of my system--that will be one of the few times you''ll hear me saying something great about my high school. I tolerated it.
I worked with the teachers.

But I held court in the halls, even though my brother said it in jest, even he couldn’t deny it; I wasn't a lowly freshmen. I was the mother-fricking princess on the social echelon. Others had to wallow in the muck but not me, at least, that’s how it was.

My dad was a teacher at the University of Montana and my mom was a dental hygienist. I could say that they loved me; kept a roof over my head and my mom and grandmother started me on a regional modeling career.

From pre-school up until my sophomore year I participated in talent shows and carefully scripted pageants. Carefully scripted because I always had to bite my tongue or I’d cut down my competition. Nothing was off-limits to me. If I knew Sheila Armitage’s father was a drunk then I’d mentioned it in an off-the-cuff manner. If I heard that Maria Brown was involved in some form of a threesome less than a week ago, I’d make sure the judges found out about it.

I admit, I am ashamed that this occurred a lot during my times while I was in eighth grade. Thank God none of them went to my school or I’d would be reminded of it all on a daily basis.

Anyway, mom, dad and, unfortunately, my brother, Micheal would be in the audience to see me win at just about every pageant—except one: Juliana Yates won due to her mother sleeping with the judge—and in turn, I was expected to be in stands when my brother played baseball for traveling ball and the school teams. I found it boring when I was younger and I found it mind-numbing when I was older. Micheal hated the pageants until he got old enough to care about boobs. Which was pretty early in his life, if I recall correctly.

He would have a new girlfriend every other week or so and this intensified when dad bought a new truck and allowed him to use it to drive us to and from school and to places around Missoula. Usually though, he would drive me to school and then leave me behind to ride the bus or find my own ride home from school.

I didn’t come out and scream to my parents that he left me at school on that first day-I was able to catch the bus.
The next day, still didn’t say a thing and kept my sisterly banter to him on a low roar.

However, on Saturday morning, I stuck it to him, right in front of his friend, Travis.
“I need to go to the mall.”
“Mom’s not here.”
“Well, duh, but dad’s truck is in the driveway.”
I usually avoided any looks from Travis. I thought of him as a perv. Yeah, maybe he had some looks—if one bent that way—but he was a leach.
“Besides, you owe me.”
“I don’t know owe you jack,” Mike replied as he turned his attention back to a baseball game.
“Yeah, so is that why I’m always taking the bus home and you’re taking your flavor of the week out. Who is it this week, Lia or Brenda? I do hope the seats clean up.”
“What are you talking about?” Mike asked without even turning to look at me.
“Oh I know a l lot of things. They all talk to me.”
Mike then turned back to me as Travis snickered and punched him in the arm.
“Dad would love to hear that you’ve been gong out to the butte almost every night; instead of going to practice at the fields. How should I tell him?”
“What tine do we need to go?”
“You’re seriously going to cave in to your little sister?” Travis asked.
“I’m not caving in.”
“Whipped by your sister; geez, man.”
“You wanna walk to the fields or go in your parents station wagon? ‘Cuz I don’t.”
“Fair trade,” Travis conceded.
“We need to pick up Melissa on our way, ” I replied with a smirk as I closed the door.
“Fine, whatever!”

That was how it was for the reminder of my freshman year. My brother, a junior at the time, kept up with his part of the bargain: if I needed a ride somewhere on the weekend, he would be there. Our parents didn’t ask any questions and we didn’t say a thing out loud that would clue them in that Mike was having way too much fun with that truck.
On one particular spring evening, we almost bit the big one as Mike drove too fast around a turn and collided with a sign post; completely tearing off the passenger side mirror.
“Oh, fuck!: Mike yelled after he had slammed the brakes.
Travis opened the door, got out, and walked down the road to pick up the mirror.
I admit, I really wanted to tell him that he was going to be in so much trouble but I kept my mouth shut because it wasn’t worth the argument at the time.
Mike killed the engine and got out. I shimmied out and followed him.
“How’s it look?”
“Like a plastic and glass piñata.”
Traced handed the shattered mirror assembly over to Mike.
“This is perfect!”
“There’s a way out of it.”
“How?”
“We could say someone came by and smashed it with a bat or just side-swiped us.”
I leaned on the tailgate as Mike turned the damaged part over in his hands.
“It was a light colored car,” he said.
“They went around the corer and nearly slammed into us,” Travis added as he took the part from Mike.
“We were nearly hit head-on until the zoomed out of the way.”
“Sounds good.”
“Yeah,” Mike replied as he looked at me. “Right?”
Mike, Travis, essentially the whole friggin baseball team he played on, were a bunch of conniving yes men with nothing but sex on their minds and baseball was just their excuse to get together. That group could think up a lie to get out of anything and they were usually successful at it. Mike was new to the group, well, there a newer guy, James McKelver or something like that, who they had to beat into his head—literally—that they all worked as one. They all played as one. And they all lied their asses of as one too
“If they ask, I’ll just say I was asleep,” I said with a shrug.
Mike had gotten pretty good at playing my parents by then, even better than I ever could.

“Are you guys okay?”
“Still a little shaken up,” Mike answered Dad as the five of us sat at the dining room table.
“You see, Mike? There are people out there who don’t care about others and will just walk or drive away from responsibility.”
“Or helping someone,” Mom chipped in as she gave me a hug. I had to feign that I had been scared to death since Travis said that I screamed when the collision occurred.
I so wanted to kick him in balls, as Mike was the one who yelled; and if we had been in a ‘real accident” he would have been the one to scream like a bitch—I’ve seen a few of their practices.
“We’ll take the truck in to the dealer tomorrow for a repair. Take it there after school.”
“Got it, Dad.”

The truck was repaired within that week and Micheal was once again leaving me behind at school—unless he going to baseball practice. I never understood what the girls of my school saw in him and what he saw in them after, well, whatever they did; it was like a revolving door. He had brought a few of them home, much to my mom’s raised eyebrows and my dad’s continuous lectures of “having members of the opposite sex in our rooms.”
If only I could tell him the truth.

Basically, our parents were against any girl Mike brought home—and I mean they would grill them over dinner. It would be welcoming at first and they would test to see if Mike would go to his room with said test subject and then they would lay into her with the twenty-one questions.
It was kind of like a surprise game show and the ones who won were the ones that weren’t freaked out by our loving parental units.
I used to bite my lip at the thought of them interrogating a potential girlfriend of mine. I would prepare her for the third level of Hell she was about to enter. However unlike Mike there was no way I would actually bring a potential girlfriend to my house.
I would have taken her to some small cafe, pay complete strangers to pretend to be my family or I would tell her that they were all dead.
Which, is something I started wishing on my brother a few weeks later.
On the last day of my freshman year I was at the truck before Micheal. I “borrowed” the key form my dad and in a crazy. “I’m now a sophomore” euphoria, I moved the truck to the other side of the parking lot. I did this for two reasons: I felt bitchy that day and that a member of the baseball team, James had pinched my ass and Mike did nothing about it.

Jack fiddle di-di-squat and I was pissed.

Not pissed enough to deck James nor take out my frustrations on an innocent vehicle but on my brother; who saw it happened but laughed it off with the rest of his “team”—which on that day they were all going to head out of town to an area near the river.
My parents were told that it was some time of practice for the travel ball team. I didn’t say anything to them as at that time I was still following the brother-sister rule and would not snitch on him since it didn’t exactly concern me but after the event in the hall.
To have someone walk up next to you and talk with you and then move their arm down a bit too far and pinching.
Some girls would consider that a variation on flirting—assuming that they felt any chemistry with they guy beforehand; but I didn’t. I didn’t react as they may have assumed. I didn’t show any signs of anger or fear—although inside I felt rage and and bitterness, almost tears, but I didn’t let them see it as I just accelerated my walking pace until I reached my classroom. I could hear them all laughing, with Mike and Travis being the loudest.

“Monica!”
I walked out to the area where truck was originally parked. The gang from earlier, plus two, stood in the empty parking space.
“Where’s the truck?” I asked with honest sincerity.
“You don’t know?” Mike asked.
“No,” In replied. “You lost dad’s truck?”
“It’s practically mine anyway,” Mike replied with a sneer.
“And now you’ve lost it,” I said with no emotion.
“Repo?” Travis asked.
“No way; it’s paid off. I’ll bet it was the ‘super fairy’.”
“Steve?” James asked.
Travis only laughed.

Steve Nelson was once a part of the team but he had a fallout with rest of them; in that he brought his boyfriend to one of the games and the rest of his teammates went all over him. I mean, he was on their side but that entire game they—and by they I mean Travis—bullied poor Steve to near tears and slammed his date—I don’t recall his name—into the fence near home plate after the game was over. Steve tried to fight, but he was outnumbered, outgunned and would soon be just outed at school—which was worse than any punch he would have received.

The following Monday, Steve’s life at Sentinel came to a social-shattering halt. He wasn’t some small kid; he was a normal-looking guy worth some muscles and him and the other guy made a nice little couple but the tongue-lashing he received shattered his heart. I wanted to talk to him a few times but I feared for my own social standing. How could I tell him that we were related in so many ways and that I would be glad to wear a rainbow pin when if I did; I’d never hear the end of it from the boys and even more from my own gender; who would smell the blood and go in for the kill.

I wanted to help him, but he withdrew from school after that week and from then on if anything out of the ordinary occurred, the guys on the team would say that it was the work of the ‘super fairy’.
“He wouldn’t have the balls,” Travis said as he looked around the parking lot.
I had parked the truck on the far side of the lot, out of view unless someone actually moved their ass to get a bigger look. I stood around for a few moments, wanting to hear Mike ratchet up the bravado a bit more before becoming frantic that maybe someone actually had stolen the vehicle and he would have to ask for rides for the rest of his life; unless he actually got a job to pay for his own.
But then how was he going to get to said job?
I wanted to smile at that little Catch-22 but couldn’t.
I played the part life assigned me: the uncaring little sister.
“Should we call the police?” I asked as Mike made a few circles around the parking spot.
Travis looked to the road.
James glanced at me and I clenched my fists.
Mike walked away from the three of us, in the direction of truck, assuming he continued on to the end of the building.
Travis and James followed.
“I’m going to catch the bus,” I shouted as I walked in the opposite direction.
“What? You’re not going to help me find it?”
“It’s a truck, not a puppy,” I said, “It’s either here, or it’s somewhere else. What can I do?”
“Thank you, your most highness!”
I wanted to flip him off, but I at that moment, I thought I had won. Except for the fact that I left the seat and mirrors at my height.
So all Hades exploded that night.