The first thing to do after you burn yourself is to stop the heat. Submerge the affected area under cool water because even after you've removed yourself from direct contact with the heat source, your skin can still blister and swell.
Jade never learns.
.
Did you hear? the halls whisper. I heard she caught him with that Vega girl. And then afterwards—after she walked in on them and he wasn't sorry—he didn't care to go after her or anything. Oh, well, I heard he just finally burst, just couldn't put up with her anymore. Poor boy, endured her for all those years, she never deserved him. I knew they wouldn't last; they're more dysfunctional than a Kardashian marriage. Better off apart, those two.
Jade doesn't hear. She doesn't pay attention, but they must be saying those things, why wouldn't they be? She's already heard bits and pieces here and there when rounding corners and opening doors.
There he goes, they say. The ever-so-nonchalant cool guy Beck. No longer tied down by that jealous, emotional, insecure wreck of a girlfriend. Would you look at that; he's happy.
.
The first time she sees him again, her thoughts scatter like fish.
He still wants to "be friends" he tells her, but not really. What he means is that he wants to keep up an appearance. He'll say hi to her in the hallways and during lunch for the sake of those people they don't really give a damn about—Tori, André, Cat, Robbie. So that, you know, they can pretend that everything's fine and not awkward when it isn't because that's totally the best way to do things.
Except that he might not have worded it like that.
Either way, they're going to act like divorced parents who feign amiability for kids who've never done a thing to deserve their lies.
.
She's pathetic enough to end up with Cat in this new place with a smelly dog and intriguing distractions to touch. But life's an even bigger bitch than she is because just as she's about to get through her first Saturday evening without Beck in a long time, he actually shows up—to help fix her mess, nonetheless.
Then the night just gets so much better when Cat starts crying and Jade proves to be enough of an idiot to cover her head with a pillow during the earthquake. When that chunk of ceiling lands not two feet away from her, she realizes that she needs to start thinking some things through.
And as if hanging out with Cat that time wasn't enough, she's now been on a date with Tori and on a four hour road trip with both of them. It's a miracle that she hasn't slammed her head in a car door yet.
.
Jade's honestly waiting for Tori to pounce on Beck. With her natural charisma and incessant desire to make everything shine, she'd have him in a heartbeat if she wanted to.
Yet something weird happens at lunch one day, and Jade feels Tori's foot graze hers under the table on its way to André's. Before she knows it, they're holding hands in the hallways. Okay, so Jade can't say she's too surprised at that, but it doesn't make the barely budding couple any less nauseating to look at.
But of course Tori's not the only pretty girl in the world.
There's this newly uploaded picture The Slap of Beck and some pale skinned girl, with long, wavy, brunette hair and innocent eyes, caught mid laugh, and he's just grinning at her like she's the damn sun or something. She finds out later that the new girl's name is either Zelda or Zara, maybe Ziti, and she's Canadian.
Jade wonders if Beck had meant all those things he'd used to say to her.
.
Her brother asks about Beck sometimes, asks why that boy who looks like Aladdin never comes over anymore and why Jade's home so often compared to before. Just as she's considering how his favorite coloring books will fare against her strongest industrial scissors, he says that it's nice, how he gets to see her more frequently nowadays, in that whiny 5-year-old voice of his.
She discovers that he's not so bad at scissor shopping when she lets him tag along one time. He picks out a pair that he just has to show her immediately, which results in him getting scolded by a shop assistant for running down the aisles with a sharp object. He has potential, that kid.
Jade lets him try them out first on a free newspaper as soon as they leave the store. They listen to that sharp snipsnipsnip of metal on metal and watch as all those fragments of other people's stories carelessly flutter away.
.
It happens slowly, but the new routine she's developed starts to feel normal and those voids that occasionally left her sleepless start to fill in.
And good God, Jade must have had a brain transplant because she's willingly spending even more time with Vega. They sing karaoke at Nozu every now and then, but they bring Cat along now too because she'd cry if they didn't. Jade draws the line at Trina.
She even lets Tori pick out a song for her one night on a whim. Tori makes her go up alone to sing "Perfect" by P!nk and it's a crowd-pleaser.
The lyrics get stuck in her head all night.
She almost forgets about a door that never opened.
.
Sometime in the spring, Jade writes script for a short film about nameless man. A man with a new family and a new job and a blue tie to match his eyes. A man who starts off sincere and hopeful but struggles to find his footing over the years, supporting his wife and child with too long work hours and mumbled half-hearted apologies. A man whose world fades from bright hues to dull, muted greens that reek of scotch and aimless anger. A man who never rediscovers the beauty of art in the midst of all the lonely nights. A man who gives up, loses himself and comes home to his mistress-turned-new-wife by the end of the ten minutes. But it isn't about the man at all. It's the story of the tired woman and the disillusioned girl who both get left behind.
When Sikowitz dismisses the class one day, she holds back a pair of quiet, unintimidating peers, gets a tot from across the street, and asks if she can borrow them for a while.
The finished product has footage that for once doesn't feature blacked-out sets, sharpened scissors, or haunting music. She pins all her expectations on this project, fully expecting it to collapse under the weight.
In the end, the film turns out simple and bare, and everyone tells Jade that it didn't feel like her at all. In reality, Jade feels like the audience is intruding even though the only reason they've gotten so close is because she's let them in.
Of course her not-friends come up to praise her. (She still doesn't know what to call them. Obviously, they are not friends, but nor are they adversaries or strangers either.) Cat asks why the man couldn't find his way home and tries to tell an anecdote about how her brother once mistook an innocent bystander for their mother, but as soon as Tori goes in for a hug, Jade's silenced everyone with a firm, resounding "No!"
Although smart enough to back off, Tori still mock punches Jade in the arm, beaming with pride and saying, "Great job." (Jade shouldn't care about what Vega thinks. Really. She shouldn't. That would give her too much power.)
André praises her silently with an approving nod and smile. Robbie makes some comment that Jade doesn't bother listening to.
Beck says, "I liked it," to which Jade replies, "Good for you," while trying to seem indifferent.
He runs a hand through his hair like he's dealing with a particularly difficult child and Jade makes a face. The group takes this as their cue to leave, so they say good-byes and shuffle away, but Beck stays.
"Why are you still here?" she says bluntly.
"Because I want to talk to you. I miss it."
"Right." She purses her lips. "That's why you never listened to me."
"I said I liked talking, not yelling."
"What, we're going to have this fight again even after we broke up?" she snaps.
Again with the hand through the hair.
"Look, I have better things to do, so—"
"I'm sorry I was being a jerk before, Jade." Beck little looks glum with his hands in his pockets and his poor posture. But he also looks a little sincere too, so, here goes, she'll indulge him.
"And I care now because?"
"Maybe you don't. I just want you to know."
She shifts her weight.
"And I tried not missing you," he continues, looking like a lost puppy. "But I couldn't."
There it comes. The door opens and the memories come flooding back. "Beck, I don't know what you're expecting from me, but you're probably not going to get it."
So he hangs his head and starts backing up, but then Jade remembers that one time she'd said something nice to Tori and Tori had said something nice back and that situation actually didn't work out too badly.
She calls out his name and Beck whips around so fast that she swears he should have tipped over.
"Well—." She hesitates. "I guess shouldn't have been such a gank. So, sorry." Jade nods her head once, affirmatively, to punctuate her words, and, wow, she can't believe she's just said that.
"Nah," he says, "I like you the way you are."
"Okay. I'm leaving now."
"Wait—I told you I really liked your film, right?" Beck's sounding a bit desperate now, and Jade can't help but admit that it's a little endearing.
"Heard you the first time."
"And the actors, too. Nice casting."
"That was arbitrary. I wouldn't have been able to deal with Tori's obnoxious face or Cat's ditzy laugh long enough to work with them," she says matter-of-factly. That reason's close enough. Truth is she just didn't want them that close to this story of hers.
"And me?"
She shrugs. "If I'd made this film last year, it probably would have starred you and me, I guess." His acting's pretty good as long as he isn't being pretentious about it.
"I wouldn't have left you for someone else though, you know."
"Yeah, you would have," Jade scoffs, hitching the strap of her bag higher up on her shoulder and side-stepping him, preparing to head towards the door. "I wrote it in the script that the character leaves. It's called acting, Beck. We're actors."
He has this lop-sided smirk growing on his face. "But still."
"Whatever." She rolls her eyes, clips the conversation right there.
"See you around, Jade," he calls out as she walks away.
"I'd rather stick my –"
"Yeah, yeah."
It's only when her back is facing him that she stops fighting that smile.
.
This is how she had found him the first time:
All of a sudden there was this eager freshman with a dumb transparent locker in her life asking her where Sikowitz' class was as if he couldn't read room numbers/she looked like some tour guide. But he was cute, and there was something fun about a guy who didn't flinch at everything she said. They'd shared similar ambitions and plus he's such a good kisser so maybe he'd be fun for a while. Then a month turned into a year and one year turned into three until one second had turned into ten.
This is how she'll find him again:
Someday she'll decide to sit with him at lunch and let slip a witty comment that will make him laugh. He'll start to look for her in the halls in the mornings and in between classes. Eventually they'll hang out in places that aren't school or his RV (which holds too many memories there anyway). That Canadian girl will visit again and Beck will have to spend time with her before she goes back, but André and Tori will ask if Jade wants to go bowling with the rest of them and when she sees Beck again the next day he'll tell her that he missed her. He'll ask her to help him with an audition and her critiques will be harsh but honest and never petty or exaggerated because he deserves this job; he's worked so hard. She'll finally get a leading role all on her own merits, not because Tori was sick or because her name was drawn at random, and on opening night, she'll take his breath away. Hollywood Arts will host another prom, and he'll tell her that she's never looked so beautiful when he sees her in that dress. But she almost won't hear it because then he'll be leaning in and kissing her and making up for all that lost time.