Midterm

Ashley Droubay Nobles

Midterm Paper

I heard the scissors take inches off my hair as my Aunt Jolene cut and styled it.  My family calls her salon the center of gossip. Jolene happens to find out everything about everyone in Tooele County while people are in the chair getting their hair done and she doesn’t keep it a secret. She was blabbing about something I don’t know anything about and then our topic of conversation shifted to me and I heard her say,

 “Lindsay would never sneak out”.

Lindsay is her daughter, who is 3 years younger than I am. This comment would have been fine if I hadn’t been sneaking out lately and she hadn’t found out about it through the center of gossip. As she was rambling on, I smiled as I replayed in my head the time that I snuck out. I soon realized it was the best decision of my life.

            It was Friday night and, like most teenagers, I had plans with my friends. We were going to the bowling alley to do some bowling and then we were going to come back and watch movies at my house. My best friends wanted to sleep over but my parents would never let them since they lived about a mile away. We bowled for what seemed like ten hours and then went back to my house to watch movies. We only got through one movie and everyone wanted to go home. Soon, everyone had left. I was exhausted. As I was getting ready for bed, my phone went off. It was my good friend Derek. I hadn’t seen him in a while and he wanted me to come hang out with him and his friend Kasey cause “he has this awesome new truck” as Derek put it.  I knew of Kasey but I had never formally met him. He had dated Bridget Downey, who happened to be a girl I despised.

I quickly got dressed and snuck out the window, which was pretty easy to do since there was no screen on the basement window. I crept quietly through the front yard and onto the dirt road walking about 200 yards to get to the spot where Derek and Kasey were picking me up. Derek let me sit in front, which was a little awkward at first. It was dark, but Kasey was wearing a white hat and a black Nike shirt that said “Just Do It”. He smelled like abercrombie and looked like the model in the abercrombie and fitch pictures. He had a handsome build and cute face with light brown eyes and brown hair. He was extemely attractive.

 I brought a CD for us to listen to which included all my favorite songs at the time. We were driving around Tooele while listening to my CD and trying to decide what to do when I suddenly had a great idea.

 “Let’s go steal a ‘Droubay Road’ sign! I’ve always wanted to hang one up in my room!” I exclaimed.

“I’ve done that before,” said Derek, “if I knew where I hid it I could just give it to you.” Kasey looked at him, then looked at me and said,

“Why bother, let’s just go get another one for her!”

 I was so excited! I thought, ‘Why would these two guys want to risk getting into trouble just for a road sign for me?’ It didn’t matter; we were getting that road sign.

We headed south on Droubay Road looking for the least public outlets to take the sign from. We came up to Smelter Road, which was almost the end of Droubay Road and decided this was where we would take the sign. We parked the truck and got out. Kasey dug through his toolbox for tools needed to take the sign apart. He found what he needed and they quickly got started on the sign while I kept watch for cops or pedestrians. It was pretty dead since it was 1:00 A.M. All of this excitement and realizing what time it was made me forget about how tired I was earlier. 

“Got it!” Derek said as he and Kasey headed toward the truck. They threw the sign in the back and we headed back toward my house.

I didn’t want the night to end, so I told Kasey to go to Wal Mart first so we could get drinks and goodies. As I was looking in the side mirror, I noticed a car behind us. The streets were dark and it was hard to make out the type of car that seemed to be following us. We went under a street light and I knew instantly it was a cop. We had just stolen a street sign and there was a cop behind us. My mind started spinning and I tried to come up with a plan that would get us away from the cop. 

“There’s a cop behind us, and I think he’s following us,” I told Kasey.

 “I know, I saw him a few minutes after we left with the sign,” he said.

 I sensed panic and worry in his voice as we all tried to come up with a plan.

Derek suggested, “just act casual, go to my house and drop me off and I will get it out along with my bike and it will look totally normal.”

I was worried about his plan, but it was much better than anything I could think of. The only thing that was on my mind was the fact that we could have records for defacing public property and I had been out of high school for a couple months!

Luckily, the cop didn’t follow us all the way to Derek’s house, but we were still worried he might come back after we left his house and see us, so we took the sign into his room and hid it under the bed. Derek told us he was tired and wanted to just turn in for the night. I was happy and excited! I got to spend some alone time with Kasey, who was extremely attractive, funny, and smart. I began to think Derek did this on purpose. He had been talking about setting us up on an official date for a month now, so this must have been his idea of a date.

We drove around and talked for a couple hours and then he took me home. Nothing happened, and I didn’t expect anything to happen. About a week later, Derek called me and asked if I wanted to get together with him and his girlfriend and Kasey, sort of a double date. I accepted and he told me we were going to go paintballing. I had never been so I was excited to try it out! After being pegged with paintballs by Derek and Brittany, we decided to go get ice cream and then head back to watch a movie.  I caught myself checking Kasey out and remember being so attracted to him. He had a way about him that told me he would protect me no matter what situation we were in. We got in the truck to head toward Derek’s house to watch a movie and Kasey asked if it was okay that we stop at Wal Mart because he had been talking to a friend. I didn’t think much of it until we got there. His friend was a girl named Nicole, who appeared to be highly intoxicated and was driving. He left for a minute, went into the store with her, then came back out and talked to her at her car for a while. I was not happy about that. Wasn’t this supposed to be a date?

After he came back, we left for Derek’s house.

When we got there, he said, “I have to leave, but I’ll be right back.”

We went downstairs and put in the movie. I started to feel out of place. I had been waiting for Kasey to get back for over an hour, so I decided to write him off as just a bad date and a boy in the past. I told Derek that he had my number and could give it to Kasey if he felt like he wanted to talk to me after everything and then I went home. A few minutes after getting home, I got a phone call. It was Kasey. “I’m really sorry that I left our date, I don’t want you to think I was ignoring you or putting you out. Nicole, that girl that we met up with was driving drunk and I went and talked her into giving me the keys. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” he explained. I told him that I wasn’t sure he was telling the truth and he asked if he could come up and talk to me. When he got to my house we talked for a couple hours and he ended up kissing me. I had been kissed before, but never like this.  I was on Cloud 9. This was the most amazing kiss I had ever experienced. The term ‘butterflies’ used to describe the feeling you get when you like somebody was highly exceeded. I knew that I wanted more time with him and that this wasn’t just a thing of the past anymore. The world seemed to stop for the moments he was with me.

A year later, Kasey asked me to marry him. We were married on October 3, 2008 and plan on being married for eternity! I guess two wrongs do make a right.

“So why did you sneak out, Ashley?” asked Jolene.

 I answered, “I don’t know, but I’m sure glad I did.”

She snickered something under her breath and I left her salon with a new hair cut and a smile. I never knew such good things could come so unexpectedly.