I met Victoria when I was freshman, and she was a senior in high school. I saw her around campus, you know. I was fresh meat and she was a bad-ass senior, so we didn't share classes, nor were we in the same social circle or anything. I really didn't get to know her until after we spent detention together. You can’t talk in detention, but you can still learn things, and get familiar with people. There was this one kid who liked to tease me, his name was Mark Cooper. He was in a few classes of mine, and liked to irritate me. Mark was your average jock, you know...huge! He looked like one of those neanderthals. This guy had a great future in sports, and would follow in those footsteps much later.

He called me by my last name this one particular day, and I completely flipped out on him. Henceforth, I was dubbed freak. Yeah, I understand that is kind of weird. The name the school had me under was my fathers. He was abusive. However, no-one knew that of course. And no-one knew I had it legally changed, but was fighting the school about that. It was eventually fixed later that year. Until then, I was the freak who didn't like being called by my own name. So, of course other than pushing my buttons by using my last name, they liked to make up names for me to go by.

I liked to sketch in high school and actually became quite good at it. At the time, the drawings I was working on were pretty dark. I drew demonic skulls, hellish kind of things, and my favorite of all was a drawing of my fifth period English teacher. In the drawing, he was holding a smaller version of himself in the palm of his hand standing in what I call the 11th dimension of Hell bitching at himself about being quiet in class.

After detention, Victoria complimented my art, she had had a chance to get a glimpse of in detention. I gave her a simple thanks because I was socially awkward. In the midst of the uncomfortable silence, I decided it was time to go home. She followed.

“Do you know Katherine Drummond?” She asked, easily keeping pace with me.

I just shrugged and said, “Yeah.” In truth, Katherine was another of the girls in detention that apparently knew everyone, except me. I was new to the school, but still knew of her, so it wasn’t technically a lie I suppose.

“Are you interested in her?” She pried.

I told her, “No.” Now, that was the truth in part. I thought she was cute, but didn’t think it was important to reveal that because Katherine, like Victoria was a Senior.

The important part is that she was trying to be friendly. She continued to walk with me.

“So, where do you live?” I asked, taking a step outside the box.

“Oh, not far.” She replied casually.

I had never seen her walk, so I was suspicious, but I allowed it. She talked about nonsense and tried to fish things out of me. I realized rather quickly she wasn't aware I was a freshman. She talked about teachers I wouldn't have for another three years and wondered what I thought of them. Of course, I recognized a couple of names. One of them was actually my coach, so Victoria and I made fun of him for a while.

It became very obvious Victoria was following me. I wasn't going to take her to my house. Victoria was dressed far too well for my side of the tracks (literally there are tracks). The town is separated by train tracks. On one side is the rich and well off, and then there is my side. I wasn’t embarrassed about where I lived. It was my stepfather to be honest. He liked to have a few drinks when he got home from work which unfortunately for me turned out to be 30 minutes before I get home from school. By the time I do get home he is well sauced and looks for something to punch on and yell at until my mom gets there usually around 11:30 at night.

Instead of bringing Victoria to my place I told her I wasn't going home. She didn't seem concerned about this at all. Of course, this meant I needed some place to go. So, I decided the near by second train yard as if that was my plan all along. She followed me, and I smoked. I offered her one, but she didn't smoke at the time, so she declined. I pulled out my sketches, and she took my sketchbook from me and flipped through the pages. She eventually asked me what the story was on the kid who was always pestering me.