I came home from another bad day of Cooter Jr. High School. Eighth grade is a very hard year. I was stressed because people began talking about tests. This is where the grades started counting. Not only was I stressed about classes, but gossip can go around pretty quick. Girls were getting taunted over cheerleading tryouts. Others would make sure the younger girls understood that you had to push inn practice. I think of most students there as bullies. I wanted to get away from that town and start new. My parents never listen to what I have to say about school, or that's how it seems sometimes.
I'm always asking my parents if I could live where the rest of my family lives, around Hardy, Arkansas. I'm so much happier hanging around my cousins and getting to see my family. I began meeting my cousin's friends, and everyone I would meet at their scool seemed so much nicer. When I would ask about moving, I would get the same answer everytime.
"It'll be like that at every school," my parents told me.
I would say, "No, it'll be like that at any school around here." It seemed like it didn't occur to them that I asked because they would just keep on with what they were doing. We had just gotten a new house a couple of years ago, so we really didn't have the money to spend on another house.
Later in my eighth grade year, I started my volleyball practices. I was one of the best hustlers out on the court. I also made the cheerleading squad. We have summer practices for both volleyball and cheerleading. We worked hard to have a great volleyball seaon, and keeping the school title of State Championos in cheerleading.
The start of my ninth grade year, I made a promise with my friends, Jessica and Abby, that we were going to have a good time this year, no matter what we go through. The first day we had a blast, blocking out everyone's gossip that they were sharing about the summer.
A couple of weeks later, my parents wanted to have a talk. I had no idea what was going on or what my parents wanted to talk about.
Mom asked me, "How would you like to move to Arkansas for next year?"
"I'm not sure. I would be fine with it." I wasn't sure it I really wanted to after they wanted to.
"Well, just don't tell anyone. We might possibly think about it because we want you and Archer to have the opportunity to have a life around your family," she told me.
"I won't. That would be cool though," I wasn't sure about leaving Abby and Jessica. I had just gained two of my best friends over the summer, and I didn't think I wanted to leave anymore.
All I did was practice sports in my free time. Dad would take me to the gym and I would either work on serves for volleyball or tumbling for cheerleading. I would practice whichever depending on how I felt pretty much. When the real practices came in, there were a lot of hurts and pains along the way in cheerleading, but we made it to State and won once again. We also had one of the best teams in our conference and district for volleyball.
I got all-district and all-conference my first year playing in high school. I knew in Arkansas that hardly any of the schools had volleybaall. If a schoolhad it, more than likely it was a big school. I wanted to stay in a small school where everyone knew everyone. Volleyball was what I wanted my future to be. Cheerleading, I was about to quit it anyways. I wasn't a big fan of the was athe coach thought about things. She had always told us to think of everyone else below us on the scale, and that's not thow it's supposed to be.
I ended up telling JEssica and Abby because I thought if something were to come up about them leaving I would wawnt to know. We knew since I had the possibility of leaving, we had to definitely have the time of our lives during our last year together.
We made the year worth every minute. I was always out with me two best friends at night and never home. We would go eat at a Mexican restaurant in Blytheville every Saturday night called El Puerto. We would order the same thing each time. Mine always tastes the same every time. It all smelled wonderful each time we went and it could never get old.
After basketball season, all the cheerleaders were getting ready for try outs again in the spring. I knew I wasn't cheering for sure, but I wasn't sure what to tell people when they asked. I wasn't sure if we were moving and I didn't want to take the risk of taking another girls spot that deserved on it I wasn;t there. The coach was irritates when she found out, and I told her I wasn;t into cheerleading like I thought I was. Still annoyed, she walked away from me.
After cheerleading tryouts, my parents told me what the definite plan was. We were going to see if dad could look and find somewhere that was interested in him. If he found somewhere he liked that was interested, then we would move and go with his job. If he didn;t, then we would stay in Cooter and no one would hear about it.
Dad skipped a couple of days so that he could run around to other schools and see if he coule talk to good schools about talking to the people in charge and seeing if there were any openings.
By the end of our school year, my dad finally told me where I would be going to school the following year. I was excited, but yet scared. I had gone to the same school my whole life, but my parents finally seemed to have listened to what I wanted to do.
During the summer my family moved to Ash Flat, Arkansas. I made a lot of friends during the summer from going to the lake and playing volleyball. When school started back, I was so happy that people were very talkative and wanted to include me in on things. I am so glad I got to move, but I miss my old friends dearly.