All you need is one night
By:
Dylan



Hi my name is Dylan Hardy. Yes, I am a girl, and yes, that’s a boy’s name. I have been reminded of these facts my whole adolescence. My mother, Emily, hated her girlie, proper name, so she decided to give me a boy’s name. Thanks, Mom. I am sixteen years old and still waiting for my life to start. Don’t get me wrong. I have a nice life, a lot of good friends, and a “cool” mom, or so my friends say. Boys flock to me everywhere I go, and I get pretty good grades in school. I ask myself, why don’t I like my life? I honestly can’t figure it out. But I know there is something inside me that is struggling to get out.


I am sitting in math class when my friend Jessi is almost falling out of her desk to get my attention. I ignore her for another ten seconds just for entertainment.
When I turn to her she mouth, “Party at Jimmy’s! Let’s get wasted!”
I give her a smile, but in my head I just want to bang my head on the desk and give myself a headache that way instead of waking up tomorrow morning with one from drinking.


In the corner of my eye I see him. Oh my gosh! Was he just looking at me?! Oh, there is one more thing you should know about me. I am absolutely hopelessly in love with Mike Howey.

Mike

I wish I had the courage to talk to her. She is just so out of my league. I don’t even know how to find her stadium with a GPS. Dylan Hardy is just the most amazing girl I have ever seen. I can’t even say met because we have never had a conversation, just freshman P.E. class fourth hour; I sat right behind her in the call line. I have not learned anything in math class this semester because I am too busy studying Dylan. Well, I shouldn’t say I haven’t learned anything. I have learned that Dylan has a birthmark behind her ear in the shape of an apple. She puts her hair behind it because she is self-conscious about it. I think it’s beautiful. She curls her hair more than wearing it straight. Personally, I love her hair when it is curly. I have learned that her favorite band is Incubus and that her favorite book is The Great Gatsby. She has read it three times just this semester, and I know she has finished it because she reads other books in between. So I think this has been quite an educational semester. Ah, gosh, what am I thinking? There is no way she would even look at me as a friend. I hear her and her friend Jessi talk, and they have the most exciting, dangerous weekends. I would never be able to compete with them.


So now you know my secret. I might as well tell you something other people know about. I am Mike Howey, a junior at Roosevelt High; I am a three seasons, all-star athlete in football, basketball and track. I am 6’5” and muscular, with dirty blond hair and green eyes. Despite the fact that girls have thrown themselves at me, I have never had a girlfriend, not even close. Besides Dylan, no one has ever interest me like that. Girls are too desperate and have no goals besides having a crazy weekend.


I walk out of math trying to get one more glance at Dylan before I don’t see her until Monday. I hear someone yell “HOWEY!” My friend Bill runs up to me and slaps me on the back.
“Ready for the game my man?” he yells.
“Yeah, we are going to crush them.” I reply, putting more enthusiasm in my voice than I actually feel.
“Don’t forget Don’s afterwards. There are gonna be hotties all over us after winning the game!”
I nod my head and smirk. Trying to think of an excuse not to go to Don’s after the game, a pizza place everyone goes after big sporting events. I walk farther away from my class feeling more depressed and realizing I won’t see Dylan for two days.
Dylan

I walk into my house after school, happy that for once we have no volleyball this weekend, and find a surprise that is not wanted; my sister is sitting on the couch with, oh, Surprise surprise, a beer in her hand at three in the afternoon.

“What are you doing home from school?” I ask her trying to keep my face neutral.

“Eh, there wasn’t anything going on this weekend, so I decided to see you and mom and hit some parties out here. How are you?” She looks up at me with a bored expression already tuning me out. Because we both know she doesn’t actually care how I am.

“I’m pretty good; I’m going to go do my homework real quick. Breakfast tomorrow?”

“Uh duh! Double chocolate chip banana pancakes?”

“Is there anything else in the world to eat on a Saturday morning?”

“Nothing worth mentioning!”

With that I went up to my room, looked in the mirror, and I let my fake face drop into what I was actually feeling. My sister, how can I even explain my sister? Well, I should start with her name: Andie, once again my mom with the boy names. Andie is two years older than me. She is a freshman at ISU. I have a good relationship with my sister when she is in a good mood; we have amazing times together and can talk to each other about everything. But there have been problems with her for a while. In high school, she defiantly took a bad road. She would drink and do drugs every day. She was getting arrested and forming a bad reputation. My mom decided to discipline her lightly during these times because she’d done the same thing when she was younger and decided that Andie needed to learn on her own. Well, dear Emily doesn’t know how far Andie has gone with her little experiments and how much I have had to do to keep my sister out of jail and the hospital. Too many times to count,