Catholic High School Girls In Trouble
Denver started dating a girl names Kerry that went to an all girls Catholic High School. Around this same time he started hanging out with a crowd of people he deemed “Cool” I hung out with them a couple of times and other than one guy named Tom, whom I had known since Elementary School, there wasn’t anything special about them. But Denver really seemed to idolize these guys.
Many of the details of this saga were murky, but what I do know was that those other guys were using Kerry as some sort of gateway to other girls. Kerry had a friend from school named Stacey. Stacey was really cool and in general all my friends liked her. We became fast friends.
Unfortunately, Stacey had a crush on Denver. Despite the fact that her friend was dating him, she could not bring herself to date any of the other guys. After two of them asked her out and she turned them down, they told Denver she was a bitch and he should not hang out with her anymore.
This absolutely crushed Stacey, when Denver started parroting these guys word for word. He was doing what they said for approval or acceptance. What they didn’t count on was me.
A few weeks later, he showed up at my house when I was having one of my weekend gatherings and he brought one of his “cool” friends. They had obviously been drinking, They didn’t stay long, but they left their alcohol behind a tree in front of the house and the little kids across the street found it the next morning. It wasn’t the alcohol that got me in trouble. It was the fact that the little kids mother got to point it out to her, because our neighbor’s kids were monsters and always had to be disciplined.
I wasn’t allowed to have people over “until further notice.” Now, a lot of my other friends were getting annoyed.
Over the last few years, I outgrew the need for acceptance and started becoming a Champion for what was fair and right. Having started gaining my own social clout allowed me to push back. When that group started to ostracize Stacey, I turned around and shoved her down their throats. She became my first adopted “little sister” and I was going to protect her as such.
I forced Denver to hang out with her and his attitude softened and they became quick friends again. But unfortunately, she was upset that she couldn’t hang out with all of her friends like she used to. She had heard that Tom was throwing a party one weekend and really wanted to go. Denver gave some reason why he couldn’t take her and although it was against my better judgment, I agreed to take her (I cleared it with Tom who was more than happy to have Stacey there).
It didn’t take long for all Hell to break loose. Stacey had the need to confront Greg, the catalyst to the anti-Stacey campaign because she rebuked his advances. And because she confided to him that she didn’t want to date him because she liked Denver, he used that to turn Kerry against her in her own school. I just didn’t expect Stacey to go after him like she did. Like they say… “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
The best part was when Greg told her to go home because nobody wanted her there, and then Tom chimed in that he in fact did and invited her. Denver was there, but opted to remain quiet even though I implored him to speak up. In the end I believe we were there for 20 minutes. Stacey made her point and it was a good one. But she was hurting. The fact that Denver didn’t support her was heartbreaking. Even I was let down. It was apparent that being “in” with these guys was more important to him.
A few weeks later, they convinced him to dump his girlfriend. I forget what reasons they gave him. But it was funny that one of them ended up taking Kerry to her prom. I guess that she wasn’t as bad as they were telling Denver she was. Although she was not a fan of me for siding with Stacey in the whole debacle, I had no ill will toward her. It didn’t take long for Denver to become disenchanted with those guys and in the Denver came back to us after a few months when he realized who his true friends were.