Twisted Read online

  Twisted

  N.L. Greene

  Table of Contents

  Twisted

  N.L. Greene

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Special Thanks

  In the Beginning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  In the End

  N.L. Greene

  Copyright

  Twisted

  By N.L. Greene

  Copyright 2013 N.L. Greene

  Kindle Edition

  Dedication

  To my husband who has supported me

  more than I could have ever hoped for.

  And

  To all the people who unknowingly helped shape

  me into the person that I am so proud to be today.

  Special Thanks

  There are a few very important people that I have to thank personally.

  First of all, I need to thank my sister, my life-long best friend who is like a sister, and my cousin. Stacy, Carie, and Raye, thank you for offering advice, encouragement, and doing everything I asked, when I asked!! I love you guys, for real!!!

  Second, I need to thank my editor and new friend Stacy Sanford. It amazes me how much I value your opinion and just how much your friendship means to me after such a short period of time. Thanks for your honesty and for being gentle! Love ya girl!!!

  Third I need to thank the girls over at Girls Heart Books Tours. Mel and Lana, you two have been so helpful with all the marketing stuff that is completely over my head! Thanks girls, you’re seriously the BEST!

  And finally, Janet Wallace and UtopYA. I really did not understand or appreciate my full potential until I experienced UtopYA and all of its greatness! Thank you!

  In the Beginning

  My name is Natalie and I have a problem.

  My problem isn’t one of the normal problems that teens come to their parents with or seek advice from a counselor for. I’m not failing school or worried about ending up in jail. I don’t have a drug or drinking problem. I’m not pregnant and there’s not an STD scare I need them to help me with.

  No, it’s not that simple for me. Simple? What’s so simple about teen pregnancy or substance abuse in teens, you ask? Why am I brushing aside the gravity of becoming a juvenile delinquent or contracting an STD? Especially since any person with a lick of common sense can see that these things are no laughing matter. These problems keep parents up at night worrying about their children and thinking of ways to prevent them from falling victim to these exact things. They keep the police out patrolling the streets at all hours of night hoping to catch the evil culprits, or hoping to save maybe just one kid.

  I say my problem isn’t that simple, because my problem is my best friend.

  That makes even less sense, doesn’t it? I mean, how can anyone call their best friend a problem and then compare that to the problems I just listed? The statement alone is like an oxymoron or something, right? Best friends are those special people that you love almost more than yourself. They’re like sisters but better, because you actually want to be around them as much as possible. They’re that person you can never get enough of, who you share your deepest, darkest secrets with, and who you plan your entire future around. Who cares that the guy you marry one day won’t want a double wedding, complete with matching dresses and saying his vows to you at the exact same time as the couple standing right next to you at the altar? Does it really matter if he wants to live next door to that same couple, and spend every vacation and holiday for the rest of your lives together with his wife’s best friend? No! Because this person is your other half; the one person you know you can depend on no matter what, and therefore you plan for them to be a part of every aspect of your life for the rest of your life.

  These are things that besties do. Well, they are if your best friend is all of those great, wonderful things. But the relationship with my BFF is a bit different; a bit twisted. My best friend is the meanest, most manipulative girl I have ever met. She treats everyone like shit, and thinks the world owes her big time. She takes what she wants, no matter who she hurts in the process… and she does it often.

  Even to me.

  But, I ask you - what sucks even more than having this sort of best friend? Not even knowing it.

  My severe case of being oblivious started when I was in the fourth grade.

  I don’t really remember a lot from that time period, but I do remember that life was pretty normal and less complicated. More importantly, I definitely remember the day I met my best friend. It was about midway through the school year when we got a new student. Her family had just moved here from another state. I don’t know where they moved from or why they moved, and still don’t to this day. But when you’re ten years old, those aren’t really questions you ask anyway. The burning questions at the age of ten are… Is it a boy or a girl? Where will they sit? The girls all say, “Yay! Our new student is a girl, so now there are more girls than boys!” That’s critical at this age, really.

  And luckily, she got to sit by me. Our desks were arranged in small sections; four desks put together to make four separate table-like areas in the classroom. The only empty seat in the class was at my area, right across from me. And thank goodness, because I had been forced to sit with two other boys since Charlotte had left the month before. For that reason alone, I already loved the new girl and decided that she would be one of my best friends. It’s easy like that when you’re so young. You just ask if they want to be best friends, and BAM! Instant best friends.

  That’s pretty much how it worked for me and Melanie, and we soon became inseparable. My parents even started giving her a ride to school in the mornings, even though she lived around the corner and not on our street. I wasn’t really at the age to start having sleepovers or anything like that yet, and my parents were kind of over-protective, so I never asked. But Melanie (who by the end of the school year had been dubbed ‘Mel’ and I became ‘Nat’) and I still spent as much time together as we could. We ate lunch together and played on the playground together, which were the sort of things that were critical when you’re in elementary school. Then fifth grade came and suddenly we were in different classes. We still said we were BFF’s and hung out on the playground together, but that was it. From what I can remember, the year was pretty uneventful. What can I say - I was like, eleven? What really happens when you’re that age, other than the occasional new kid coming into your class?

  Toward the end of our fifth grade year things began to pick up a little. Excitement and nervousness began to build, due to the fact that we would be going to middle school the next year. Mel was still going to be at the same school as me, and we were even going to be riding on the same school bus. Our parents let us hang out more over that summer between, and now that we were older, we could ride our bikes to each other’s houses and Mel even came over sometimes to go swimming in our pool. We talked about how awesome middle school was going to be, and made plans to be best friends forever - no matter what.

  Middle School Days

  Chapter 1

  I held that promise near and dear to my heart as we started the sixth grade. I remember being scared and excited about going to middle school. There was definitely much more responsibility, betwee
n changing classes, having lockers, and meeting a ton of new people while being separated from those I’d known my whole life. Mel and I were on different teams at school, which meant that we had different classes. We still stuck close to each other at every opportunity though; meeting up between classes, eating lunch together, and catching up before and after school on the bus ride. I remember thinking that I would wake up on the first morning of middle school and magically be a different person - older, wiser, and maybe even prettier. Nothing like that happened. I was still me. I was shy, nervous, and painfully average. But not Mel, though - she seemed to go through an overnight change. It wasn’t major or anything crazy, but it was definitely different. She started to develop her own sense of style, and even her attitude started to change, almost imperceptibly.

  She’d always had a quiet personality like mine. But now she liked heavy metal (I think it was because of her older brother, but she would never admit that she liked the same things he did), she wore rocker-type clothes, combat boots, make-up, and had started to curse a lot. I didn’t really mind, because I was used to the language from all the other kids at school, but it was sort of weird to hear it from Mel. She also argued a lot more, with both the boys and the girls, and sometimes it even got a little intense. I’d even heard a few kids call her badass or cool, so I guess I was proud of her for starting to get popular and build a reputation for herself…and I thought it was even better that she still wanted to be my best friend. She made sure that everyone knew who I was and not to mess with me, not that anyone did, anyway. It was still kinda cool though.

  Sadly, the only significant thing to happen to me was convincing my parents to finally let me shave my legs…and that didn’t even happen until the very end of the year! I remember having to beg my parents for this rite of passage, only after one of the cutest, most popular guys in the eighth grade had pointed out my hairy legs to the entire bus. I remember how giggly and nervous I got when he sat in the seat beside me and turned toward me with a smile on his face. I was already blushing, and he hadn’t even spoken to me yet! He glanced down at my bare legs, and the smile turned into a smirk. “Aren’t girls supposed to shave their legs?” he asked, way too loudly. I turned away quickly as tears pricked my eyes. I held it together while on the school bus, but as soon as I got dropped off and started walking home, I couldn’t hold it back any longer. That night I told my parents, and they finally took pity on me.

  After that defining milestone, nothing else really happened and Mel and I were able to sail through our first year of middle school and into the second. Mel made a name for herself as a mover and a shaker, someone who was always in the know, and made sure that my name got associated with hers. We made a lot of friends, and Mel even made a few enemies, but none of those relationships could compare to the bond that was steadily growing between the two of us. We shared secrets, spent as much time together as possible both inside and outside of school, and began to call each other ‘sister’.

  ***

  As time progressed, so did our egos. My attitude still wasn’t quite as bad as Mel’s, but she was definitely rubbing off on me. I remember feeling like we were so much older and more mature than we really were, and that the people around us didn’t have a clue. We weren’t at the bottom of the totem pole anymore, and we were steadily working our way up the social ladder. We weren’t what you would necessarily consider popular, but we were friends with almost our entire seventh grade class and also had tons of friends in the eighth grade. I mean, we were practically eighth graders ourselves! On top of that, Mel and I would be turning thirteen later that year. We would be teenagers, which meant we knew it all, right?

  Too bad no one told me how wrong I was.

  I finally had that defining moment where I woke up and everything was different, but it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. I remember feeling like I was walking in slow motion through a tunnel to a whole new world, and suddenly I was seeing things that I’d never noticed before. All at once I had friends who were smoking, drinking, skipping school, doing drugs and having sex. Talk about information overload! I didn’t even know when it had all happened, but it was happening and I was right in the middle of all of it. Not directly, but I could see it, and if I wanted to, even touch it.

  After the first initial shock of being thrust into this unfamiliar world, I began to realize that it wasn’t all that bad. I knew that most of the smokers had parents who smoked too, so I guess it was only normal for them to pick it up. The part about skipping school, drinking and even drugs wasn’t anything major (beer and pot mostly, and then only on special occasions), and I really only knew of a few kids that even took part. But the thing that seemed to affect me the most was that all of my friends had boyfriends, and some of them were even talking about S-E-X. I’m not sure if they were actually having it or not though, because I was way too scared to ask. I hadn’t even had my period or my first kiss yet, so I knew absolutely nothing about sex. My concerns centered primarily on those two milestones. My mom reassured me that she had been a late bloomer and so that meant I probably would be too, and that I shouldn’t rush it because once it happened, I’d hate it. But I didn’t care. I wanted it to happen ASAP! It was supremely awkward when the other girls talked about it and all I could do was nod my head as if I actually knew what they were talking about, all while hoping and praying that no one would call me out…and definitely keeping my questions to myself. I had so many of them too, but I knew if I asked any of them they would all know the truth, and I was worried I would get teased and made fun of. Kids are cruel, and I swear teenage girls are the worst.

  So I just kept on, keeping my mouth shut and my ears open, all while following along behind my much more knowledgeable best friend. Mel seemed to fully embrace the changes in the world around us. She didn’t exactly jump right into trying all of the new things, but she didn’t shy away from them either. She embraced who she wanted to be and did the things she wanted to do. It helped that her parents let her express herself and pretty much do whatever she wanted, even if some of the other parents didn’t agree with her choices (like mine). She became more outspoken and confident in a way I couldn’t have imagined being. She didn’t care what people thought of her, and didn’t even care if she got into trouble for letting them know what she thought of them. I wished that my parents would let me dress and act more like how I wanted (even though I’m not sure what I would have changed), but I knew it would be something.

  Mel, at least, encouraged me. She let me wear her clothes when I was at her house, and we’d listen to music and watch movies that my parents wouldn’t approve of at all. Mel would assure me that I needed to find what I liked, not what my parents wanted me to like. She also showed me better ways to wear my clothes, my hair, and how to do my make-up to make me look better. It was like having an older sister who knew everything and wanted to share it all with you. I loved her for wanting to help me so much, and for making sure that I wasn’t walking around making a fool of myself. I never took her encouragement to defy my parents or her remarks on improving my looks as anything other than friendly advice. Back then, her comments were so subtle and insignificant. It wasn’t until much later that the warning bells stated to go off.

  I slowly began to take Mel’s advice and apply it to my everyday life; make-up improvements when I got to school, wardrobe shifts that my parents would never approve of, and a little bit more defiance in my attitude. Because of this, I finally reached the next landmark and got my first boyfriend. Truth is, I’m not even really sure if I wanted him or not, but Mel promptly informed me that A) he liked me, B) he was cute, and C) he was in the eighth grade - so I totally needed to date him. How do you even date when you can’t actually go anywhere? Anyway, I did what Mel said and presto! I had a boyfriend. We dated for a week. That’s it. He was cute, with sandy blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, and he was really nice, too. We became boyfriend and girlfriend on Monday at lunch; all coordinated and communicated through Mel, of co
urse. His name was Casey, and he didn’t even ask me himself to be his girlfriend. He was the friend of a friend, who told that friend, who told Mel that he thought I was cute. Then Mel just barreled in and took over from there. By the end of that lunch period I found myself hand-in-hand with a boy I barely knew. Casey silently walked me to class after lunch each day, then met me at my locker after school and walked me to my bus. He also waited for me in the mornings and walked me to my first class of each day. This was our routine for the entire week, and those were the only times during the day we saw each other. As we spent more time together we actually started to get to know each other, and I found that I was beginning to like him. I was in boyfriend/girlfriend heaven, walking around school with a cute boy, until the end of that week.

  Little did I know that this tiny event would be the first of many tiny, seemingly unimportant events that would lead up to one of the biggest mistakes of my life. On Friday of my one week in paradise, Casey walked me to my bus, hand-in-hand like we had been every other day of that week. When we got to my bus, we saw that his was parked right behind mine, which meant that he could stand with me until it was time to actually get on board. We stopped just to the right of the door so the other kids could still get on, and then turned to say goodbye to each other. That was when some of his friends came around the corner and started asking him if he was going to kiss me. It wasn’t nice or polite; it was teasing and insistent. I could feel my cheeks heating and my heart racing. I had never kissed a boy before! And now they all wanted me to do it right there in front of everyone?

  I knew I couldn’t do it, but thankfully Mel was there too, waiting for me so we could get on the bus together. I glanced at her with what I’m sure was a look of panic, hoping she would help me out. She knew that I’d never kissed a boy before, because we told each other everything and I wouldn’t have left that part out. But instead of the help I desperately needed, she just smirked with her I Dare You look and said, “Well come on! We gotta go. Hurry up and kiss your boyfriend.” I remember my heart sinking at that moment. I had always been so grateful to her in the past for showing me the ropes and helping me to be cool like her, but this was not the time I wanted one of those life lessons. I wanted her to rescue me, but she didn’t.