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PROMPT: Write about someone who's impacted your life and why.

About at two and a half years ago, I walked into my place of work to find a surprise waiting for me. This surprise sat at the counter of the diner, had a paperback in his back pocket and was accompanied by a scowl that only faded when he opened his mouth to hurl some sort of insult my way. It was an unexpected surprise and an unwelcome one at that, but one that my boss made perfectly clear that I was going to have to deal with for a while, or at least until his nephew was deemed fit to send back to his mother. His name was Jess Mariano and he was a category five hurricane that disrupted the sleepy life of my small hometown, leaving some sort of debris in the yard of each person living there.

This was, of course, until we met. After a single exchange with him, I was determined to change this storm's trajectory and strived to remain untouched once it had passed over.

At the time, my life had begun to crumble from beneath me. My absent father had recently stopped paying child support, forcing change onto the dynamic of my home. My mother now had to take more shifts at the hospital to help keep the lights on and my brother divided his time between contracting jobs and football training. I had taken it upon myself to schedule my life to the hour, starting my days with school at six, working until ten each night and was left cramming whatever homework and studying I had to do for the late hours of the night. It wasn't uncommon to find me running on four hours of sleep at night (if I was lucky), leaving me overworked, overtired and miserable. I wasn't seeing my family as often as I was used to, my social life started to fall apart, and each day began to feel more and more like a chore. Work had acted as a safe haven for me the year before, and I refused to let Jess ruin one of the only things in my life I truly enjoyed.

You see, I met Jess Mariano during the darkest period of my life and at first, it seemed as though his ultimate goal was to make it even darker. It wasn't uncommon to find the two of us arguing while serving customers, harassing each other at closing, and finding different ways to get on the other's nerves at each possible moment. At first, I was convinced the two of us would never get along and I would spend every day in my own personal hell until I went to college. I had also convinced myself that I would remain in the eye of the hurricane and be unaffected by the disaster.

It wouldn't be until nine months after we met that I would realize how wrong I truly was and would see the wreckage begin to pile up.

After you're constantly around somebody for nine months, no matter how much you dislike them, you get to know them. You discover their music taste through arguments. You fight about which authors and genres are superior. You get to know their ticks. You learn how to read them. Jess had learned my ticks within months and was able to read me sooner. Whether either of us wanted to admit it or not, we had gotten to know each other, and pretty well at that. So, when my physical and mental health began to deteriorate at the end of my sophomore year, Jess was one of the first to notice. He asked me what was going on, we got into a fight, and accidentally, everything came spilling out. Everything that I had only ever told my best friend of ten years, each thing that made me feel more vulnerable than anything else in my life, was set on the table, ready for him to use in the battlefield against me.

But he didn't. Instead, he took it upon himself to help me.

I learned that like me, Jess also had an absent father who he'd never met before. He had a neglectful mother who had no idea how to deal with him, which is why he'd been shipped to his uncle's hometown. He knew what it was like to be self-sufficient and fend for yourself. He told me that he knew how much he would have wanted somebody in his corner when he was first getting a grip on his situation. He offered to be that person for me, and I, even though I was reluctant, accepted it.

Our relationship changed that day, and it was a change that both of us welcomed with open arms. Though it took a while, we slowly started to warm up to each other. Our bickering became friendly and often ended in laughter instead of tears. We started opening up to one another more, talking about things we couldn't seem to speak to anybody else about. I even helped edit the novel he'd been working on, something of which he refused to show anyone but me. I still take pride in that to this day.

Long gone were the days of me hoping to stay in the eye and remain unaffected by him. With each piece of debris he brought, Jess was able to teach me something new. At first, he taught me how to defend myself, he taught me the value of wit, and he taught me never to shy away from an argument if you have a point to make. Now, while all those things are important and they are things hold dear to my heart, the real lessons I carry from my friendship with Jess are things that I don't think he knows he did for me. He taught me how to smile again, he taught me that it's okay to let yourself breathe once in a while, and he taught me that I am worth much more than I care to admit.

Though his exterior seems rough and jagged, he is a decent boy with his heart in the right place. Though he doesn't make a great first impression, he is someone worth getting to know. And though he is not at all someone I would have ever considered to be calling a best friend, here I sit, writing my dream school's admissions essay about him and how he changed my life for the better.

This category five hurricane of a boy, who had destroyed each and every person's yard in one way or another, had shown me that I wasn't alone in my fight to regain the days I had lost. I do not regret the mountains upon mountains of rubble he left for me in his wake. I know he feels the same.

Jess Mariano was able to help pull me out of the darkest period of my life and aid me in my attempt to piece it all back together. I had been scared of the dark for so long, and I thank him for showing me light.

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J WASN'T CERTAIN what his story was anymore. As soon as he'd met Blue, he had a feeling that she'd be his great beginning and most likely tragic end. And then came Katherine.

Katherine, with her snark and her ripostes and her biting comments, had the beginnings of an antagonist. She was prickly and guarded and J knew she had as many if not more issues as he had. She reminded him of himself and perhaps, that's why he found it so easy to dislike her. He knew who she was. She was a pain in the ass whose ultimate goal was to drive him insane and make his life miserable.

And then she had to go and prove that J had absolutely everything wrong about her. She was a goddamn fucking enigma and everyone in town adored her. She watered her neighbors' plants when they were away, she volunteered at the dance studio around the corner even though she had two left feet herself, and she participated in every biweekly holiday that the town had. She was kind and listened to people (like really listened to people. J was shocked by what she would remember) and she was funny without ever being mean. She found a way to sidestep her issues in her attempt to make the people around her happier.

J hadn't understood it. He hadn't yet understood her.

Katherine, who had the looks of the girl next door and the wits of a genius. Katherine, who wore skirts and loved flowers and painted her nails pink and had Rainman-like knowledge of bad 80s movies. Katherine, who listened to The Distillers but also valued ABBA and all of their painful music. Katherine, the girl who could be so much like him, yet somehow be the complete and utter opposite.

In a town where everyone and everything was so cookie-cutter and by the numbers, Katherine proved to be the only thing inconsistent. She wasn't who she presented herself to be and that almost made J want to like her.

He wasn't sure that he liked her until that night in the diner when she told him about her dad.

He wasn't sure he loved her until he got off the phone with her twenty minutes ago.

Katherine, with her waxing poetic moments, especially when she'd had too much to drink, had found a way to get through to him in a way that she'd never before. In the three years that they'd known each other, Katherine had never really had to persuade J to listen to her. But something about tonight was different. It was something about the way she spoke. Something about her slightly slurred words that were the product of her best friend's helpings of vodka and lemonade made J take them in. He took everything in.

"You and me," she had begun, after a minute of rambling that occurred after she'd called him at roughly three in the morning. "We're two sides of the same coin."

J nodded into his thin pillow, air mattress squeaking under him as he turned on his back. He stared up at the stained ceiling of his apartment with lazily blinking eyes. He glanced across the room to see his roommate missing from his bed. Perfect. "How so?" he asked, running his hand across his face.

"We're the same person," she said. "...but we're different."

"You expecting to win a Pulitzer with that line or something?"

"Shut up. You know what I'm trying to say."

"It's three in the morning. You're lucky that I can even register that you're talking at all."

"I'm nice," she said. "You hate the world. You have shitty music taste. I don't. I feel things way too intensely. You barely feel anything. You're so talented in so many ways. I'm not." Katherine popped her lips. "See? We're different."

"God, you're drunk."

Katherine disregarded his comment. "We're different, but I've never felt so in sync with a person, you know? You understand it all. Nobody else does. Like comedy and tragedy. Two sides of the same coin. You can't separate them. Can't draw a line through them. They even each other out. That's us."

J was quiet. Katherine liked to ramble when she was nervous and when she was drunk. He wasn't sure where this conversation was going to take them next.

"I feel like I know so much about you, but know nothing about you at the same time." He heard her sigh into the phone. Softly. Slowly. "I want to know you, J. I really do. I think you're worth knowing. But I don't know both sides."

"Both sides of what?" J's words were a murmur amongst the dark, hanging in the air with the tension of a secret.

Katherine's response was slow. The volume of her voice matched his. "Coins have two sides, y'know? I'm not saying you have some, like, Batman double life or whatever. But I think there's some stuff you don't show me. And knowing somebody, really knowing someone, is knowing all parts of them, even the ones that you think are bad." Katherine sucked in a deep breath at the same time J's caught in his throat. "I'm not scared of whatever side you don't want me to see, J. I wasn't the day I met you. I'm never going to be."

J stayed silent on the other line. His staggered breathing blended into the noise outside his apartment, the horns wailing at the rate his heart was beating. What on earth had he done to deserve a relationship like this with someone like her?

Katherine was too intoxicated to read anything into his prolonged silence. She chuckled into the speaker. He could see her rolling her eyes. "I really need to go to bed. I've got work at noon."

J cleared his throat, the sound of her voice bringing him back to reality. "Tell my uncle I say hi," he said, knowing that she wouldn't remember in the morning.

"As you wish. Night, J."

Before she could hang up, J shouted her nickname. "Congrats again on the Ivy."

"Geez, are you going to congratulate me every day?"

"I don't see a reason not to."

Katherine laughed. J had never noticed how nice the sound was. "Goodnight, asshole."

And as he bid her goodnight, he sunk further into his air mattress, her words spinning around in his head until he fell back to sleep that night.

They'd stay there for the next couple of days, until now, where he was packed up in his car, ready to go surprise her and celebrate, something he couldn't have imagined doing for the girl he used to think of as the villain in this chapter of his life. He could never have imagined this. He could never have imagined loving a friend like this.

Blue might of been his great beginning and tragic end, but Katherine? She was the whole story.

And somehow, J was more than okay with that.

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author's note: emo hours start now

also marley's essay is absolutely over 650 words but fuck application standards this is fiction baby

IMPORTANT NOTE: WHAT I ENVISION TO BE THE SUBSECT IS BASED ON TRUNCHEON PRESS'S TAKE ON WHAT THEY THINK THE SUBSECT WOULD BE LIKE (it's where i got the j, the blue name for rory and the l name for luke from!!) ITS A STUNNING PIECE OF WORK ON THE WEBSITE "MEDIUM" IF I COULD LINK IT I WOULD HOLY FUCK GO READ IT ITS BEAUTIFUL

love u all tons!
-mags