Hey guys, welcome to the story. I'm really excited to work on it. The chapter updates probably won't be regular, but I promise I do update frequently. I don't usually take a month to update.
Original Prompt from Blakelovessantana:I think a good Jori story would be Tori being a mega b*** and Jade being really shy and nerdy and instead of going to HA they'd be in Sherwood with Tori as HBIC head cheerleader or something like that :)
When You Love Someone, But It Goes to Waste
"I don't want to talk about it." My voice sounds dead, even to me. I just can't bring myself to care about anything anymore. This is the billionth time Oliver has brought it up. I should be pissed. I should be going off on him, but I can't find it in me to care enough.
"Jade," he continues to pester. "You can't just avoid the subject forever." I silently ponder whether he's trying to provoke me. I really do just think he's looking for some kind of emotion. So am I, Oliver. So am I.
"I can do whatever I like," I reply, closing my locker as the two of us head to lunch.
"That's the point," he insists. "You're not doing what you like!" To anybody else, they might not have been able to follow his train of thought, but I've known Beck Oliver since forever. I'm one of very few people who have the right to call him by his last name.
"I do stuff I like," I retort, knowing full well I'm lying.
"Name one thing."
"I've been catching up on Criminal Minds," I respond. It's sad. As soon as I say it I realize there's little else I can name that I like doing anymore. I talk to Oliver. I watch Criminal Minds. I settle down with a nice book. That's all I do that I enjoy anymore.
"Jade, that's a past time. That's vaguely enjoyable. Watching TV should not be the best thing about your day," he argues.
"I like talking to you," I defend. "Or at least, I do when you're not like this. Why can't you just leave me alone?"
"Because you're depressed!" he yells for the whole school to hear. I'm barely embarrassed. It's not a mystery. "You're wallowing in your own misery. I remember a girl who used to be happy and go home and write. I remember a girl who would come into school, a new script in hand every morning, wanting me to proofread. What happened to her?"
"She grew up," I reply bitterly, grabbing a tray from the lunch line.
"Jade," he sighs.
"Leave it alone, Oliver."
He's quiet for a little. I finally think he might let me have some peace. And then he speaks up. It is so soft spoken and calm it unnerves me. It lingers with sadness. "Why don't you write anymore?" He sounds like me. And for the first time I consider him. Maybe he's been around me too long. Has my cancer, my sickness of sadness, spread to him? And I feel something for the first time this conversation. I should let Ollie go. He should be happy, away from me.
"No inspiration," I respond, the thought eating at me.
"You haven't written in months."
"I know."
"You love writing."
I hesitate before answered. "I did."
Beck doesn't say anything for a second either. "Cristina wouldn't want this." It pierces my heart like a thousand arrows just to hear her name. I want to cry, but I'd run out of tears to shed a while ago.
"She has nothing to do with this," I deadpan.
"You stopped writing when she died."
"I told you, no inspiration." 'Stop talking about her,' my brain yells at him. YOU DON'T GET TO TALK ABOUT HER!
"I don't know if you're just holding all your feelings inside or if you're blocking them out. Either way, I'm afraid of the eruption that's inevitably going to happen when they come flooding out. I don't know what you're going to look like in the aftermath, but it scares me. You need to write and let your emotions out or maybe fucking start talking to me about it."
"With all that eruption bullshit a passerby might think you're the writer," I reply dryly.
"Jade," he warns.
"I'm not hiding my feelings or blocking them out. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm just uninspired, okay?" I pray he drops the subject. I can't take much more of this.
He gives me an I-don't-believe-you-in-the-slightest look, but doesn't say another word.
We grab our food and eat in silence.
** Fix You **
Cristina. I'd always loved the name. Cris. Crissy. They were just annoying. But Cristina was a beautiful name. It was… rare and perfect. I whispered her name from my lips like it was gospel. "Cristina." I couldn't get enough of it. Saying it had become my new drug.
She batted her eyelashes, pursed her lips, and replied. "Jade." I nearly melted from my name falling off her lips.
Cristina. I had never loved a name more.
** Fix You**
I stare at the teachers. I wonder if they think that they're doing is important, like it matters. Their trivial lives don't matter, not in the scheme of things.
What matters? Love. Hate. Sadness. Joy. Intimacy. A smile. Brown eyes. Red lips. A laugh. A name. That matters. Algebra? Doesn't matter.
They call on me and I don't respond. They glare at me because they know I don't know. I glare back at them because I don't care that I don't know. They think it's the end all be all for me to know whether y=mx+b or not. I know better. Nothing really matters in the end. We all just die in the end, don't we?
I begin to ponder the idea of life and death as I mindlessly twirl my pencil between my forefinger and middle finger. What is life but a series of highs and lows? And what happens when you've reached the highest high that you're ever going to reach in your life, and you know it. Do you stop living or do you keep soldiering on in hopes that a momentary lapse of happiness that will never compare to that high height will come into your life? What do you do when you've lost all hope? What do you do when you're hanging on by a thread?
Everyone else is walking around with giant smiles on their faces thinking they've found happiness in every day life. I know the truth. You don't find happiness in the every day. What they're feeling isn't true happiness. They only believe they're happy. And then I begin to wonder, is it better to have felt true happiness and have lost it or be able to keep on walking, keep on smiling, under the guise of ignorance and counterfeit happiness? I envy them.
Alfred Lord Tennyson said better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I still don't know whether or not I believe him.
** Fix You**
I remember a time when I could make an entire audience jump up off their feet and applaud for a play I'd written. I remember a time when people would come behind stage, complete strangers, and give me a bouquet of red roses and tell me this was the third time they'd come to see my play and cried every night. I remember a time when that used to mean something to me.
The cheers and the applause and the adoration used to fill me with joy. It used to make me feel accomplished. It used to make me smile and be happy that I could help even just one person in the audience who felt just like me and understand that they're not alone. I would pour my soul into those plays.
I don't talk much to begin with. I'm a writer, but sometimes words aren't enough. I've never been all that confident in my own life. I'm shy, but when I talk you can guarantee it'll be something worth hearing. At most schools I would've been considered nerdy (back when I gave a shit about school), a loser even, but at Hollywood Arts I wasn't. I would've been, if it wasn't for my writing. At Hollywood Arts popularity is based on talent. I was never very popular, I was on the very low end of the social totem pole, but people respected me because of my writing.
I didn't have any deep, emotional issues. I had a normal family, a good education, a couple close friends, and a passion for writing. I was never abused or anything, but even when I was little I understood that in life came a certain darkness. Most people know it's there, but stay in the light and pretend it can't touch them. I stay in the light, but I know the darkness can come and grab me at any time. It's a scary thought. That's what I would write about, the darkness in the world and sometimes in my life. For the people like me, who choose to see the darkness, they realized they weren't alone and for the people who choose to pretend, they get a glimpse into what us rare few see. It gives them the taste they want to see, but they could always go back and they did. For some reason, it has always connected with my audience.
That's what I love—loved—no, still love—about Cristina. She lived in the light, but she acknowledged the darkness. The weird thing about her was that she never let it bring her down. She was different from anybody I'd ever met. It was either one or the other. You either lived solely in the light, or you lived in the darkness just waiting for the day it would come out and snatch you. She was like finding a diamond in an endless field of coal, glimmering well everybody else was just a dull, black rock.
Or, I thought she was. I guess in the end she embraced a lot more darkness than I ever thought.
I'll never know what she saw in me. She'd always tell me she thought I was beautiful, but I never deserved it. She was like seeing an angel in the flesh. And who was I, a mere mortal, to look upon her? She'd tell me how I was funny or how I every time I wrote it was her scripture, but I never could live up to her magnificence. I might've written her scripture, but she was my scripture.
What do you do when your faith has left you?
**Fix You**
Dinner between dad and I was tense at best. We didn't know what to say to each other anymore. When Cristina first… died, he had tried to talk to me. He tried to comfort me. We'd never been close, but he always cared for me when it mattered. But nothing he did could help. Nothing anybody did could ever help me.
I tried a therapist for a while, and she was good. She tried talking to me at first, which didn't work, but then we found a pattern. I'd walk in and for the next hour I'd sit there in silence and so would she. We'd just think or stare off into the distance. That's all I ever needed from her. The company, the not being alone, helped.
So I sat there, rolling my food around on my plate, rearranging where the broccoli was every couple of minutes. "Jade, you have to eat," he says wearily. I don't know why he tries anymore. I don't know why he hasn't given up yet. He should. I wish he would. I'm down spiraling and I don't want anyone to help me back up because what's left for me up top where everyone else is?
I grunt, acknowledging him. I don't want to talk. If I don't talk, he can't engage in a conversation with me.
"So… I have some news," he says nervously. I guess I was wrong about the conversation.
I don't bother looking up. I can tell it's bad. Or, it would be. For old Jade it would be bad. But the concept of bad is based solely on perspective. And things can't get worse when they are already at their worst. He could tell me I'm going to hell and it wouldn't even be bad news. In fact, that would probably be good news. At least I'd finally be as dead as I feel inside.
He plays with his fork, the end screeching against his plate like nails on a chalkboard. "Spit it out," I bite, harsher than I had intended. It was odd to hear any emotion other than complete apathy.
He looked just as surprised as I did. "Times are getting harder Jade," he begins, easing me into the bad/good news. I honestly just want him to tell me what it is. "It's getting harder and harder to make ends meet." This barely spikes my interest. I've lost interest in material possessions as of late. There are only a few things that can be held that mean anything to me anymore. I don't need more shit or anything. "I'm afraid that we can't afford to have you going to Hollywood Arts anymore."
I wasn't expecting that. That actually startles me. That makes me feel something. Scared. I'd already lost Cristina. I'd lost nearly everything that meant anything to me. And now I was going to lose the only thing I had left. I was going to lose Oliver. "What does that mean for me?" I ask, shocked.
"It means that you're transferring to Sherwood," he responds. "I'm really sorry sweetie. If there was anything else I could change, I would. But…"
"I understand. I'm going out." I clear my dishes and walk out the door.
**Fix You**
I didn't plan to come here. It just happened that I did. I only meant to drive. I didn't actually have a destination in mind. But I guess I just subconsciously ended up here. This was the last time I saw her alive.
"It looks so beautiful, doesn't it?" she says, staring up at the setting sun.
"I guess," I respond. I never really understood the big deal about sunsets. I guess they were beautiful, but I'd always preferred the night. The night sky, with all its darkness, still had stars that burned through the heavy blackness from galaxies away. I thought that was more beautiful than some stupid colors in the sky.
"You guess?" she teases.
I shrug. "They all look the same to me."
She immediately shoots up to stare at me. She gasps in semi-mock horror, "Jade West! They're always different. I've never seen a sunset that looks the same. Obviously, you need to stare at sunsets more."
"I will as long as you're with me," I respond. She smiles that blinding smile of hers that always makes my heart beat a little bit faster as she lays back down, her head on my chest and her body curled into mine lying flat on my back against the beach towel.
"Then I guess you'll be seeing a lot more sunsets in your lifetime," she replies happily.
So now here I am, sitting on this beach all alone. My ass is getting all sandy and I'm going to need to take a shower to get all this sand out of my hair, but I don't really care right now. I just lie there and stare as the sun sets and fades into the dark night sky. As I fall asleep I wonder if Cristina is out there, one of the stars staring down at me through the darkness, through death, in our little slice of paradise on this beach. Or is she the darkness, embracing me into her grip, and taking me away with her to death?
I know we didn't meet Tori in this chapter I'm sorry. Next chapter is all Tori's POV. The third chapter is when they'll finally meet!
