Not Afraid of Life by Bristol Palin Read Free Book Online Page A

in authority. It also changed the way I looked at men and fidelity. And, not least of which, it scared me. After a state trooper told me he would “bring me down” and “get you all,” it was enough to cause me to lie awake at night.
    When he called me a b—ch that night, it seemed to bring it all back.
    My friends and I told the teachers what he’d called me, thinking it would at least get him a slap on the wrist for speaking to a student that way. However, he stayed on as coach, and I just tried to avoid him.
    It was just another one of those irritants that kind of stole some of the carefree joy out of high school.
    D uring my freshman year, Mom and Dad gave me a “purity ring,” a little silver band with a diamond on it. A few of my friends in Wasilla at the time wore these types of rings, and I was happy when I received one, too. I didn’t take a chastity pledge or participate in any sort of ceremony. Mine was a purity ring and was just a simple symbol of what I already knew: I was going to remain pure throughout my high school years.
    It didn’t seem like such a stretch.
    In middle school, I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed,” and that same personality carried through to high school. I was even more organized, more dedicated to hard work, and more of a teacher’s pet than ever before. Yes, I was that girl. The one who people try not to cuss around. So the purity ring fit right in with my good-girl personality.
    Like most kids, my freshman year was a challenge. Though I had good guy friends, the gang from middle school had largely broken up. The tension caused by Jenna’s mom and my uncle having an affair made everything more difficult, so Jenna, Ema, Sammy, and I all went our separate ways. I could barely remember what it was like to have late-night chats at slumber parties when we’d talk about high school. Though we’d all been nervous about entering a new environment, we also had different perspectives about ninth grade. Some of my friends were curious about guys and knew that high school meant one thing: losing their virginity. (One proudly wore a T-shirt that read FRESHMAN FIFTEEN. Instead of referring to potential weight gain, though, the slogan was about sex; the shirt had the names of fifteen boys written—and crossed out—underneath it.) I was taking a different approach from some of them, however, and told my girlfriends that I was waiting until marriage.
    Of course, my friends and I assumed we would stay close in high school and go through the “coming-of-age” moments together. We had no idea that life would intervene and splinter our relationships. I watched from a distance as my friends lived their separate lives. I played basketball, but it wasn’t as much fun now that everyone was on different levels of teams—some were on junior varsity, others on varsity, and so forth. To make matters worse, remember Lanesia? She was now a teammate of mine. Though she wasn’t chasing me around the parking lot threatening to kill me, she was always causing drama on the team.
    I turned fifteen the day my mother announced she was running for governor of the state of Alaska. Over the summer, Mom had been thinking about whether she should challenge Governor Murkowski, who had already served one term. Many people had called her to complain about how the government had gotten out of control, how they were sick of “politics as usual,” and how the oil companies weren’t drilling and were robbing hardworking Alaskans of job opportunities. Dad supported Mom, like he has always done. So, on my birthday, Mom announced from our living room that she was running for the office.
    Okay, she didn’t choose that date because I was turning fifteen. She chose to announce on October 18, 2005, because it was Alaska Day, the anniversary of the day when the United States bought the Territory of Alaska from the Russians in 1867. Kids got out of school, state employees got off work, businesses closed for the day,