August 24th, 2010

I used to love school.

I really did.

But now, for some reason, it just wasn’t feeling the same. And I didn’t even know why. I just wanted to go home and finish the school year off already, and it was only the first day.

When the bell signaling the day was over rang, I let out a sigh of relief. I could finally go home and hate the fact that school was back in session even more.

“Aren’t you excited?” Lexi asked me, a large grin plastered onto her face when she met with me after school. “We’re seniors now, Jordan! We’re seniors!”

She had been chanting this to me all day, and every time it made me less and less excited. It just reminded me that not only did we have to go back to school for another whole year, but it was the last year that we had of high school. We were the oldest kids in the school, which also meant that I was the smartest.

Okay, I have to admit that that made me feel a little proud of myself. I never thought I would accomplish anything like being the smartest in the entire school, but I ended up doing it. And this only meant that I was going to be valedictorian at the end of the year…

But I couldn’t help but think about how this was the grade Dallas had been in when he had ditched me at his prom. I could hardly believe that that was nearly three years before. I had just been a tiny, little freshman back then, and he had been a senior. Now I was the senior and he was nowhere to be found.

I had totally ditched junior prom the year before, especially since our school was joining Cambridge for it. Not only did I not even get asked, but I didn’t want to deal with Jesse Jacobsen at a stupid party like prom.

“But anyway,” Lexi continued before I could even say anything to her. “I know we planned to hang out today and everything, but Bruce has something really amazing for me planned, so… yeah. I’m going to have to cancel.”

I stared at my best friend flatly. Was she seriously going to ditch me for her boyfriend? I thought that that was something best friends weren’t allowed to do. It wasn’t like I would ever ditch Lexi… if I ever even got a boyfriend.

“Okay, that’s fine,” I nodded, even though it totally wasn’t. “Go have fun.”

She squealed, hugging me tightly before hurrying off toward the parking lot. I let out a sigh, turning the other way in the direction of the way to my house.

Here I was, a senior in high school and I was walking home. I didn’t live too far away, so my parents wouldn’t let me drive. And since Lexi was going to hang out with Bruce, she wasn’t going to give me a ride like I thought she was.

The last time I had walked the streets alone, some drunk guy grabbed me. And that was in the middle of the day, just like right then. Jesse might have been able to save me last time, but that didn’t mean he was able to save me this time.

I used this time thinking about things. I was actually a senior in high school, and it hadn’t really sunk in until that moment. There was no one older than us, and everyone else was younger. It was kind of an amazing feeling, if you want the truth.

But I still couldn’t stop thinking about Dallas. He had to go through every other grade that I did, but for some reason senior year just made me think about nothing but him. Maybe it was because he was a senior when everything had happened between us… If anything ever really did happen between us.

“Asshole,” I swore under my breath at him, kicking at a stone as I continued on walking. “Get out of my head.”

I hadn’t even seen him in nearly three years. Thinking about him just because I was a senior now was just stupid.

Passing by the public school that he had went to didn’t make me feel any better. I didn’t even realize that I had taken the long way home, but I immediately regretted it. I was just reminding myself even more of Dallas…

That stupid public school. I remember wishing that I could have gone there when I learned that Dallas was going to attend. I just wanted to be so close to him, no matter what. I had been such a stupid little girl.

“Cassie, stop it!” a voice called out suddenly, causing me to jump. I turned toward the entrance of the school to see a blonde girl being dragged down the front steps by another blonde girl. They definitely looked younger than me; they were probably sophomores. “Let go of me! I already told you I didn’t want to go out with Sean!”

Was this the kind of thing public school girls fought about? I didn’t think I would have ever fought with my friends about a guy that I didn’t want to go out with. I didn’t think I would fight with anyone about a guy I didn’t want to date. After seeing AJ and Lexi with their boyfriends, I didn’t even think that there was a guy that I didn’t want to date!

Not counting Jesse, of course.

“You’re not expecting some prince on a horse to come sweep you of your feet, are you?” the other girl now asked as they hurried by. “You have to go after who you want and not just wait for them!”

“But I don’t want him!”

They were now too far away for me to hear them, but I immediately felt bad for the girl being dragged. I hoped that she’d find someone to love that would love her just as much in the future.

But that made me realize that that was exactly what I wanted, too. That was why I was thinking about Dallas so much… He was the one that I had wanted to love me so much in the past.

“Oh, Emery!” a new voice now called out, and it made me groan loudly. I turned toward the annoying person that had called my name, making a face at him as he made his way closer to me. “I didn’t expect to see you here!”

“Yeah, well I didn’t expect to be here either,” I grumbled, barely even looking at Jesse as I glared at the school before me. “I didn’t really mean to come this way.”

“Well, how was your first day as a senior?” he asked, a wide grin on his face as always. No emotion crossed my face as I walked right by him without even saying a word. For some reason, I especially didn’t want to deal with Jesse Jacobsen right then.

When he grabbed my arm to stop me, I was expecting it. I knew he wouldn’t let me get away that easily. Every time we ran into each other, we always ended up talking about some kind of useless thing that wasn’t even going to be important later on.

“It was fine, okay?” I snapped when he gave me a look, ripping my arm from his grasp and glaring at him. “It was just like any other school day. Nothing special about it at all.”

The only thing that was almost redeemable about school starting again was now I could officially tell people that I was the smartest in the school. Not that I was going to walk around bragging or anything…

“Same with me,” Jesse shrugged, though a smirk still stayed on his face. “But I’ve kind of got used to school being boring. That’s why I’m glad we have one more year until all of this is over and we’re finally free.”

I guess I agreed with what he was saying, but once high school was over with, I had to pack up all my things and move across the country to Yale. It made me feel kind of bad for my parents, since both of their kids were moving so far away after graduating. Austin was in Europe and I was going to be in Connecticut… It was so far away.

“Speaking of that, I actually have a lot of homework to do,” I excused now, and it was such an unbelievable lie that I was surprised that he was actually letting me inch away from him. “It is the first day of school and everything, but you know…”

Jesse grinned in a way that pretty much told me that he didn’t know. “Yeah, I know.”

I nodded at him awkwardly before turning away from him and continuing on my way. Everything would have been better once I got home and slept for a while… It had been a long day.

“I love you, Emery!” he suddenly shouted after me, and it made my cheeks heat up so much that I didn’t even turn around and glare at him. I only waved like an idiot over my shoulder, not knowing what else I was supposed to do.

That boy really didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.

J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J

Jesse’s P.O.V.

As I passed by the public high school, I didn’t know why I was doing it. This was the school my sister had gone to. This was the school that Hunter and Erica had gone to. This was even the school that Jordan’s brother and that asshole that broke her heart went to, too. Maybe the only reason I was here was because I took a different path to get to Adeline…

“Damn it, let go of me!” I saw a blonde girl shout as another girl was dragging her along by her wrist.

“Hurry up, Sean’s at the football field for practice!” the other one giggled, and I rolled my eyes at the two of them. They both must have had a crush on a football player or something. But were there usually practices on the first day of school? Hell, I didn’t know. I didn’t go there. “Let’s go watch him practice!”

“But I don’t want to!”

“Hey,” the one dragging winked at me suggestively, and all I did was stand there awkwardly as they both ran by.

Huh. Sophomore girls. I knew that they weren't freshmen because they weren't wearing the “Hello, my name is” stickers that I remembered Camilla come home with on her first day of her freshman year, and they definitely didn't look old enough to be juniors or seniors.

Those two girls were the kind of girls that made me glad I went to an all-boys school...

I continued my way down the street in front of the school, trying to forget that I had pretty much just been hit on by a girl that was pretty much two or three years younger than me. I could get girls older and younger, but it seemed like I couldn’t get that one damn girl that was actually my age…

When I thought I saw that damn girl I had been thinking about, my eyes widened. The last place I would have ever thought that I would see her was in front of this school. This place seemed to just have bad memories for her…

As I passed by the place I had found her crying all those years before on the night of the prom, I tried to call out as obnoxiously as I could, “Oh, Emery! I didn’t expect to see you here!”

She looked absolutely horrified to see me. “Yeah, well I didn’t expect to be here either,” she only grumbled, and I was surprised to see she was glaring at the school and not me for once. “I didn’t really mean to come this way.”

“Well, how was your first day as a senior?” I asked instead of asking her why she had come this way, and I forced a grin on my face like I always did. I could already tell that she didn’t want to talk about the school before us.

No emotion crossed her face at all when she walked right by me without even answering my question. This made me realize that she was in a really bad mood that day, even more than she usually was.

I grabbed her arm to stop her from walking off, wanting to get some kind of answer from her before she just stormed off. I wasn’t really expecting an answer, but I could always hope that she’d give me one.

“It was fine, okay?” I spat, ripping her arm from my grasp and glaring at me just like she always did. I kind of wished she’d go back to glaring at the school… “It was just like any other school day. Nothing special about it at all.”

This was not what I was expecting from brainy Jordan Emery. I had always known that she had loved school, so a response like this surprised me greatly. Something else was obviously on her mind, but I knew that I shouldn’t have talked about it with her. It wouldn’t have made her feel any better.

“Same with me,” I merely shrugged, but I tried my best to smirk so she wouldn’t think I was on to her. “But I’ve kind of got used to school being boring. That’s why I’m glad we have one more year until all of this is over and we’re finally free.”

In all honesty, I didn’t even know where I was going to go to college or if I was even going to go at all. I knew Jordan was going to go to Yale, and I was sure my grades were good enough to get me accepted, but I didn’t think my family had anyway to pay for me to attend there. That was why Camilla was going to a crappy community college only a couple blocks away from home…

“Speaking of that, I actually have a lot of homework to do,” she told me now, and even though it was something that normal, nerdy Jordan Emery would say, I just knew she was lying. Something was on her mind and she didn’t want to talk about it, so I wasn’t going to push her. For once. “It is the first day of school and everything, but you know…”

I only grinned at her. “Yeah, I know.”

She nodded awkwardly before turning away and speed walking from me. Did she want to get away from me that badly?

“I love you, Emery!” I called after her, just to see how she would react. Actually, I just wanted to say it to her at least once, even if she thought I was just joking with her. She didn’t even turn back toward me; all she did was wave a little over her shoulder, but that was enough for me.

And little did she know, I actually meant it.

I turned around to go to the gang’s hideout, since there was no point in going to Adeline anymore, but I found myself smacking right into someone before I could. I took a step back, looking down to see the little blonde sophomore girl that had been dragged by her friend only a few minutes earlier.

“Sorry,” she apologized, rubbing at her nose that had bashed right into my chest. “I wasn’t looking where I was going. I’m really sorry.”

“Leah!”

At the sound of that voice, the girl jumped. She shot me an apologetic glance before running right by me, away from the girl who was calling her name. It was the same girl that had been dragging her earlier before.

Sophomore girls were really weird.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The gang’s hideout had never been my favorite place. It wasn’t big, and yet it wasn’t small either. But it could definitely get really cramped when everyone decided to show up for a meeting.

But the main reason I didn’t like it was because of the one person that was always there.

“Come on, I’m going to go to Maine soon, Jesse,” Erica coaxed, as if this was somehow going to get me to have sex with her or something. “I’m going to go to college there, finally, and I even got myself a job already. We’re going to be so far away!”

That was good. I’d probably never even see her again, which was just what I needed.

“I told you, Erica, I don’t like you like that,” I tried, taking a step away from her, but this only caused her to take another step toward me. “You already know that I like someone else.”

She made a face. “I thought you loved someone else.”

I swallowed. “I do.”

“I just don’t get it,” she snapped, moving away from me now and crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re a seventeen-year-old boy. You’re turning eighteen in only a couple of months! It’s not normal for a teenage boy to be in love, or whatever.”

“Hunter’s in love with you.”

Speaking of him… Where the hell was he? He said he was going to go out to do something a little while ago, but it had been hours since I had seen him last. Couldn’t he just get back here and control his girlfriend for me?

Erica snorted. “Yeah, right. Sure he is.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowing at her now. “He says he loves you all the time. Even when you’re not around.”

“Just because you say you love someone doesn’t mean you mean it,” she shrugged, as if it meant nothing to her at all, but for some reason this made something in my head snap. “Just because you say it doesn’t mean anything.”

It made me feel bad. I said I loved Jordan to nearly anyone who asked, and I truly felt like I did. I’d protect her with my life and never let her go if she let me. If she let me, I’d never let her leave my room. For more reasons than just protecting her…

Ahem.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that what Erica was saying wasn’t true. All I could do was say that I loved Jordan, because she was so disgusted by the sight of me that we couldn’t be together.

“Come on, Jesse,” Erica started whining again, and I nearly groaned because I knew she was going to start advancing toward me once again. “Just forget about that Jordan Emery perra. She won’t even give you the time of day.”

I took another step away from her. “How do you know her name?”

Sure, I had told Erica Jordan’s first name, but I hadn’t ever told anyone but Hunter her last name. Which only meant…

“Hunter told me,” she told me what I had already figured out. “Her name makes her sound like a boy. Ella es probablemente una hembra fea, demasiado…”

I wasn’t even going to ask her what she had said in Spanish, because I honestly didn’t think that I even wanted to know.

When her lips were suddenly on mine, I didn’t know what to do. It definitely wasn’t something I expected, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to get her off of me. I couldn’t hit a girl, and it wasn’t like I had ever had someone force themselves on me before. I had always been the one that wanted to force myself on someone else…

“What the fuck?”

I pushed Erica off if me immediately, terrified by the voice that I had just heard. That voice was familiar. It was too familiar.

And I knew my life was over.

“Hunter!” Erica nearly shrieked, looking at me, as if I was about to help her. “I thought you were… I thought you were out…”

His eyebrows were furrowed, and he was scowling. “I’m right here.”

And I was dead.

“Well, now you know,” Erica informed him, and I just stared at her with my eyes wide and my mouth agape. Now I definitely wanted to hit her! Why was she talking like she and I had had some kind of fling the entire time?

“Jacobsen…” Hunter started angrily, and it actually really scared me because Hunter never called anyone by their last names unless he was ridiculously pissed at them.

“I love him, Hunter,” Erica snapped at her boyfriend (well, I guess ex-boyfriend now…) as she took a step in front of me, as if I somehow needed protection. “I’ve loved him for a long time.”

I wasn’t expecting this kind of confession from her, but I definitely didn’t want it. Was she trying to get me killed or something? This wasn’t going to fix anything, it was just going to make everything so much worse! For me, not her!

“You…” was all Hunter could say as I took a step away from Erica, and I didn’t know if it was because I didn’t need someone to protect me or because I didn’t want Hunter to think that I was actually with her.

“Hunter, listen,” I tried, but I knew that there was no use. Nothing I could have possibly said could have gotten me out of this horrible, horrible mess.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” Hunter nearly growled, taking a menacingly step toward me.

“And this is where I resign,” I saluted like an asshole to him, quickly spinning on my heel and hurrying the hell out of there.

“Jacobsen!” he shouted, and I could hear him and a couple of his other goons running after me. “You’re not going to get away so easily, asshole! I’ll kill you!”

And I believed him. If he got the chance, he would definitely kill me without a second thought. I didn’t think he would ever love someone as much as he loved Erica, which wasn’t helping my case one bit.

“I’m not going to let you get away, punk!”

But I was, because my life depended on it. Usually, to get out of the gang, all they did was burn the gang sign into your back so it was with you for the rest of your life, but Hunter saw me with his girl. And there wasn’t anything I was going to be able to say to soften the blows that I was going to get.

So when I saw the street, I knew I was free. Surprisingly, Hunter and his goons stopped chasing me once I had gotten into the street.

“I’ll get you for this one day, Jacobsen!” Hunter shouted after me, but I was too preoccupied with trying to live to really listen. “I’ll take something important from you just like you did to me! Just wait! I’m not going to stop until you’re dead!”

I wasn’t going to freak out about this just yet, because I knew Hunter made a bunch of threats to different people all the time. Sometimes he didn’t do what he said he was going to, but then sometimes he did. And considering what I had done, I was sure he was going to get some type of revenge on me someday.

I knew I had to be careful from now on. Senior year had just started, so it wasn’t like I could just leave. I was going to have to pretty much always stay inside until I went off whenever for college.

But I guess I could always get myself sent away somehow… But what chances did I have of that happening?

I couldn’t help but worry about Erica a little bit once I got far enough away that I knew none of Hunter’s goons could be near me any longer. I might have been able to get out without anything happening to me, but I didn’t know about Erica.

But Hunter wouldn’t ever hurt a girl, at least physically. He wouldn’t ever hit a girl in any way. I knew he wouldn’t.

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Only three more chapters left until it's over! Such a bittersweet feeling...

It's weird. Usually, when I write a sequel or a prequel or whatever, I end up hating the story and everything about it. That happened with the Princess/Pauper series and Hey There, Delilah. But with this... I don't like this story, but the original and all its characters are still my favorite. I don't know why. <3

Please COMMENT, VOTE, and FAN! <3