“Wake up.”

“Nnnng… Five more minutes…”

“Wake up!”

“Hold on a bit…”

“ANDREW, WAKE UP THIS INSTANT!”

“Alright, alright… I’m up.”

I sit up on my bed. I can’t think right now. I guess I’ll talk to you guys once I wake up a little bit.

~~~~~

“Mom, I’m heading out, the bus is here!”

“Alright, be safe! Have a great day!”

September 7th. The first day of school. Wow. Has time really gone this fast? It feels like yesterday I was at the beach with my friends playing beach volleyball, having the time of our lives. Where did the summer go? Seniors told me I had to spend my last free summer living my life before the hellish junior year. And I wasted it. I completely wasted it. And here I am again, back at this hellhole that we call school. I hope my teachers are okay…

The bus arrives in front of the main doors, and I look up to see the building that I’ve been coming to for the past two years of my life. The bricks, the benches, the trees - they’re all so familiar to me. I know this school inside and out, and I’m only a junior! Whatever.

“Andrew! Yo, Andrew!”

“Oh hey man, long time to see.”

Oh him? That’s Justin, my best friend. We’ve only known each other for like five years, but we’ve done pretty much everything together. From sleepovers when we were five to egging houses a couple years back during Halloween, we’re pretty much brothers.

Anyways, the day goes by pretty quickly. One of my favorite days of the year? Definitely the first day of school. It’s all just syllabus after syllabus, getting this and that signed, and pretty much running around school. No penalizations for being late, and it’s just great. Living the life and I’m only a junior. Hah.

“So if you flip the syllabus over, you can see that homework constitutes roughly 10% of your overa…”

~~~~~

“Dude, wake up.”

“What? What happened?”

“You fell asleep, haha. Did you get like an hour of sleep or something? Get up, school’s over.”

I wake up from my little nap, feeling the glare that my science teacher is now giving me, and I get the hell outta there. I go to my locker, and as I close it, I turn to see the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Yo, who is that?”

“Oh, her? That’s Jenna. People don’t really know her, but she’s one of the most underrated girls in the school. Why?”

“Oh, no particular reason.”

Why go on with the bullshit? It was love at first sight, and the next thing I know, I’m behind her trying to smell her perfume. Damn.

~~~~~

“How was school today?”

“Great, thanks. Thanks for the dinner, it was great.”

“Where are you going?”

I was already in my room, and I couldn’t hear her. I sat down, opened up a new page, and typed in Facebook.com.

J… J… J… Here she is. Jenna. Add friend? Would I come up as creepy? Eh, fuck it.

Click.

~~~~~

It’s 11:00 PM.

First day of school? Check.

Meeting old friends? Check.

Meeting the girl of my dreams? Double check.

It’s gonna be a good year.

Happy Holidays! -Dan

This is dedicated to all you teenagers out there.  Written by Daniel Cho, Victor Liao, and Quan Zhou.  ~Enjoy

Prologue

Hello there.  I have the biggest headache in the world.  Perhaps all the crap that has accompanied me wherever I go has something to do with it.  I feel like someone at the beach.  He swims out as far as he can, only to be met with the largest tidal wave in the world.  Trying to confront it, he finds himself overwhelmed and overpowered, and there’s nothing he can do about it.  The salt water sears his throat and his eyes, and his life flashes before him in a matter of seconds.  It’s finally over.  He struggles to stand up and after opening his eyes, he catches a glimpse of another large tidal wave headed for him.

Basically, in the past year, this analogy accurately depicts my life.  Tidal wave on top of tidal wave washes over me, and it’s only a matter of time until I succumb to the cold grip of death. 

I apologize for not making a formal introduction.  My name is Andrew, and I am basically your average 16 year old teenager who is experiencing tons of emotional stress and problems.  I attend High School West, one of the high schools in the district Half Hollow Hills.  

I would tell you every single thing that has bothered me in the past year but there’s not enough room here.  So I’ll just generalize. 

Junior year.  Ahh, the bane of every teenager’s existence.  Junior year is even harder for me because of the expectations from my parents.  Failing grades on top of failing grades has effectively lowered my chances of attending a prestigious school to……0.  I know that perhaps 98 percent of all teenagers experience this, but for some reason, it affects me the most.  I find myself constantly staring at the wall, blind from tears, angry with my incompetence and failure. 

On top of all that, peer pressure for drugs and alcohol has almost consumed my social interactions in and out of school.  I don’t want to participate in those things, but at the same time, I want to be accepted.  So what choice do I have?  Things aren’t exactly perfect at home either.  Family problems have plagued me my entire life, and this year, it has gotten even worse.  It gets aggravated every day, and every day presents a new problem within the family.  In addition to family relationships, my relationships in general have not turned out too well.  I have lost friends who cared about me, and because I was too involved in my own life to care, I am all alone. 

Instead of just blindly listing all my problems out, I will delve into these problems more specifically.  In this introduction, I hope to present teenagers out there with a narrative, maybe to help them should they ever experience the same or similar problems. 

So just bear with me.  Bear with me as I recount events and situations this past year that have effectively led to my current emotional instability and depression.  And I hope that you learn a little, and realize that even though tidal waves may seem to wash over you frequently, they will eventually stop.  They will eventually stop, and you can stand up and say you braved the fiercest of waves, and the biggest obstacles of life. 

Enjoy.

-Victor Liao

This is a story dedicated to all of the people out there going through rough times. We may not know how big of a hole you’re in, but this book is to let you know that you’re not alone, and that there’s hope for the future.

Cheers,

Victor Liao

Daniel Cho