It's the last day of spring break, and I should be out with my friends. I should be laughing with Alli; I should be visiting Jenna and her new baby. I should be having fun, but every time I close my eyes, I see him. I see his face when I told him that I needed space; I see him in the hospital bed, smiling unsteadily at me, as if he was hoping that this would fix everything.

I still can't believe I left him there.

I'm just fifteen, and he was scaring me so much. I felt so pressured, so suffocated, and I needed a way out.

So I shouldn't feel so guilty for what I did. But, for some reason, I do.

And instead of having fun with my friends, I'm sitting in my room with the door locked, pouring out my feelings into a stupid piece of paper, and I'm crying my eyes out because I broke up with my boyfriend.

Life is a joke without a punch line.

A single tear landed on the page, splattering the ink. Clare sniffed and wiped at her eyes, snapping the journal shut and tossing it to the side. Twelve hours until school, and she was crumpled into a weeping ball against the headboard. If she wasn't so miserable, she might have realized just how much her life sounded like a soap opera at the moment.

Her cell phone rang, scaring the crap out of her, and she jumped about three feet in the air. Sighing, she grabbed the thing, answering the call and holding the phone up to her ear.

"Yes, Alli?"

"Are you okay, Clare?"

Clare sighed again and replied, "I've been better. Why?"

"You sound like you've been crying."

"Maybe," Clare admitted.

"Clare! Move on already! He was manipulating you and-"

"I don't want to talk about it, Alli," Clare interrupted.

"You'll have to face your demons someday."

"Yeah, tomorrow. I'll have to see him in the halls and the classroom and…" Clare trailed off, biting her lip to keep even more tears from spilling over.

"I'm sorry, Clare." Alli sounded like she really meant it, and Clare smiled slightly. Even though Alli pissed her off sometimes, they were always there for each other; Clare had lost count of how many times she'd shown up uninvited on Alli's doorstep, sobbing her eyes out, because her parents were fighting again.

"Thanks… I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

There was a pause, and then Alli answered, "Okay. See you tomorrow."

Clare hung up, the cell phone dropping from her limp fingers onto her lap, and forced herself to take a deep breath. Usually, the action alone would calm her, but this time, she couldn't stop the tears. She had cried more in the last week than in the past three or four years combined.

"Clare!"

What now?

She could hear her mother's footsteps, coming up the steps, and quickly wiped at her eyes again, erasing the evidence. Helen was usually kind and patient, but she'd never really liked Eli, and she wouldn't understand why Clare was upset over the whole situation.

"Clare, we have guests!"

Damn it, Clare thought, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. She unlocked the door and opened it for her mother, keeping silent.

"We have guests," Helen repeated. "Why don't you come downstairs?"

"Who's here?" Clare asked as she followed her mother down the stairs.

"You remember Jake Martin, right?"

Clare stopped, her foot hovering over the next step. "What? No way. The kid who threw a dead frog at me?"

"That was six years ago, Clare."

Rolling her eyes, she nearly stumbled down the steps, catching her balance before she hit the floor and walking out into the dining room.

She could tell who Jake was right away. He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark blond hair, and he didn't look anything like her ten-year-old neighbor who harassed her when she was nine, and his father didn't look very similar, either. Then again, it had been six years, and she was sure that she didn't look the same, either.

"Clare Bear?" Mr. Martin squinted at her, like he couldn't believe that it was her. "Oh, jeez, kiddo, that is you. You're all grown up now, aren't you?"

"Hi, Mr. Martin," she greeted him, giving him a small hug. "Hi, Jake." Something was off, though; she didn't remember Mr. Martin ever calling her kiddo.

"Hey, Clare."

His voice was different, too. Nothing about Jake was the same.

Six years, Clare reminded herself. It's been six years.

"You look… good." His eye drifted over her, from her head to her feet, and Clare shifted uncomfortably. Okay, this was definitely not the Jake she remembered.

"Uh, thanks?" A small silence stretched out awkwardly between them, so she followed her words with, "You do, too."

He winked at her, and she almost puked at how damned creepy it was. She never would have thought she'd say this, or rather, think this, but she wanted the old Jake back. The one who chased her around with a snake in his hands and, in his younger years, thought she had cooties.

This was going to be a damned awkward dinner.

000

"He's just not the same guy, Alli," Clare explained. "It's so weird."

The two girls were sitting on the steps leading into Degrassi. They probably had half an hour or so before they needed to enter the building, but Clare had begged Alli over the phone minutes after Jake had left to get their early so they could talk face-to-face.

"It's been how long since you've seen him? Five years, right?"

"Six," Clare corrected.

"Well, Clare, you've changed a lot in six years. I'm surprised he recognized you."

"You don't get it, Alli. He was… flirting with me. Jake Martin was flirting with me."

Alli rolled her eyes. "And that's a bad thing? Clare, listen to me. Maybe this Jake guy can help you get over… you know who."

"Eli's not Voldemort, Alli. You can say his name," Clare snapped.

"Whatever. What I'm saying is, give Jake a chance. He might turn out to be… good for you," she suggested.

"I can't believe that you're upset because some supposedly cute guy hit on you."

"I never said he was cute," Clare protested.

"Well, is he?"

"Sort of," Clare answered awkwardly. Jake was kind of cute, but he wasn't… well, he wasn't Eli.

"Then just… go with it," Alli encouraged.

"It was creepy," Clare said firmly. That was her statement, and she wasn't changing it. "It was really, really creepy, and it was like he was a totally different person."

"Just go with it," Alli repeated. "Sometimes, when you take a risk, good things happen."

000

A/N: This is an Eclare story, not a Cake story, just to clear things up.

And this is starting out a little slow, like all my stories, but it will get good, I promise! Check out my other story With or Without You, and don't forget to review!