Revisiting Sloppy Firsts: The Girl Who Brought Jessica Darling Into My Life

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I didn't consciously enter my thirties with the intention of being introspective and retrospective, but life seems to be taking me that way. For a multitude of reasons, I was compelled to revisit the book (series, really) that shaped much of my youth, and arguably was the single piece of media that had the biggest impact in my coming of age years. In fact, I am almost positive that I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Jessica Darling series by Megan McCafferty.

I have so much to say about this series and my revisiting of it that I cannot do it justice in one quick review, so I've decided to break it up into parts, with the first part not even being about the series itself but the person who recommended it to me in the first place. Any time I think back to this series and the impact it had on my adolescence, I am reminded of the little girl I was when I first read this book, and for that reason, I cannot begin talking about this book without first talking about the person who introduced it into my life.

It Happened On Neopets

As an introverted child who loved to live in fantasy worlds, I spent a good chunk of my childhood, including my very early teens, caring for my virtual dog-like Gelerts on Neopets.com. There, at the very young age of eleven (yes, I lied about my birth year to make an account, but who didn't?), I discovered the joys of internet friendship with other girls, many of whom lived in different time zones from me. While a few of those girls were my age, most of them were at least a few years older. And to 11-year-old me, who was figuring out how to make friends at a new school, there was nothing cooler than knowing that I had high school friends living on the opposite side of the country.

One of these girls—we can call her Katie, though I'm not sure I ever knew her real name—was a solid four years older than me, and while it's embarrassing to admit, I can't deny that I worshiped her. I was a sheltered little nerd in the sixth grade who was barely allowed to hang out with friends unsupervised, and here Katie was, talking about AP classes and dream colleges and boyfriends and drinking and sex. Forbidden, taboo topics that I'm sure I was too young to be hearing about but was fascinated by nonetheless. The first conversation we ever had, Katie helped me with my math homework because I struggled to understand how to move decimals in multiplication. She taught me the mnemonic devices that later helped me get through eighth grade geometry: Twinkle twinkle little star, the circumference of a circle is 2 pi r. Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, the area of a circle is pi r squared. Katie seemingly did it all: tutoring, cheerleading, straight A's, all while maintaining the most vibrant social life I could have imagined anyone having at the time. Everyday, I got home from school and logged on, hoping to find her there in the group chats, relishing in her older, cooler girl wisdom as much as I could, hoping to absorb some of that coolness into myself.

Thnks fr th Mmrs, Katie

Katie's presence in my life was surprisingly short given how much of an impact she made. After about a year and a half into our online friendship, she disappeared. Despite efforts by me and some of our mutual friends to figure out where she could have gone and whether she reappeared on some other social media somewhere, we never were able to figure out what happened. The internet being what it is, I have no way of knowing whether she was really who she said she was at all, but I remember her by the conversations we had and the Photobucket albums she shared: a beautiful, outgoing teenage girl with an exciting life that I could only dream about.

Here are some of the things Katie brought into my life: a love of Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco, a weekly routine of watching The O.C. so I could understand her references, a preteen desire to own any Hollister and Abercrombie clothing my mom would let me buy, and yes, an obsession with the Sloppy Firsts series by Megan McCafferty. Katie had described it as an accurate reflection of what it was like to grow up in New Jersey, and I, eternally fascinated by her and wanting any slice of her life I could get, knew I had to get my hands on that book to understand her better. So I did.

And I swear, I swear, that book changed my childhood, my teenage years, and my life. And I have Katie—whoever she is, wherever she may be—to thank. Isn't it so amazing and strange and wild that an internet stranger—who could have been a catfish for all I know, if I'm thinking the worst—left this mark on me? Something to think about before I continue on to talk about the book series itself in Part 1. To be continued!