Disclaimer: I don't own anything Degrassi-related. But I'm working on it.
Author's Note: This contains spoilers for "Rock This Town." If you haven't seen it yet, you need to go ahead and click your browser's back button and either wait for Friday or watch the episode online. You have been warned.
Liberty Van Zandt hated her birthday. Time passes every second of every day; there was no need to celebrate just because it was the anniversary of her birth. That was what she said every year. Even she was beginning to think that she sounded like a broken record.
The truth was that Liberty thought her birthday was cursed. It wasn't that nothing good happened on the day – it was that everything bad did. At the age of five, her mother was in a car accident. On her sixth birthday, her beloved grandfather had his stroke. And the bad luck just continued every year. Last year, the bad luck hadn't been quite as bad: JT took her out and the food ended up all over her clothes. But even knowing that something horrible was bound to happen couldn't have prepared her for tonight.
Standing here in the hospital with her friends' arms wrapped around her, she still couldn't believe it was true. Even after finding him slumped down on the side of his car, in a puddle of urine, blood running down his back, she refused to believe he couldn't be saved. She lost the one and only love of her life on birthday. Sure JT had been dating Mia and playing father to Isabella, but it didn't matter to her. She still loved him. And for him to leave her like this, over that – that girl…
Logically, she knew she couldn't blame Mia for JT's death; it wasn't really her fault. After all, it was Nick's Lakehurst goons who actually stabbed him. But Liberty couldn't help thinking that if JT had never hooked up with Mia, then he would still be alive because there wouldn't have been any problems with her psycho, jealous ex. But she also knew that she had treated her love badly, which drove him into Mia's arms and his new, ready-made family.
As Toby, Manny, Emma and Sean's tears dripped onto her blood-stained dress, all she could think about was how much she hated birthdays.
Rest in peace, JT Yorke and good luck, Ryan Cooley.