Last period bell had just rung which marked it: the third day in a row Jade was avoiding Beck.
She was walking past Tori's locker checking the online obits, when a figure grabbed her and hauled her all the way over to the supply closet everyone uses for "interventions".
"What the hell?" Jade furiously shoved her grabber away and straightened out her appearance.
"No, what the hell to you Jade! Where have you been these past few days?" Beck was almost never angry with her so this was bad considering there were no witnesses around. Jade grumbled.
"What?" Beck's eyebrow raised which led to a sigh from Jade.
"I have bad news...that doubles as good news in disguise." Beck crossed his arms.
"Ok then, go ahead." Jade sighed and looked at the ground. Then she shifted her bag higher up on her shoulder and looked at a stain on the floor.
"I got accepted for a job offer for a pretty major role as a goth that eventually gets sucked into the occult." She looked at Beck, smirking.
His gaping mouth soon transformed itself into a smile.
"That's amazing new Jade! I'm so happy for you! It's the perfect role!" And then he stopped and got serious again.
"So why have you been avoiding me?" She started fiddling with her rings.
"Jade." Beck's voice was full of understanding. Jade looked up into Beck's eyes.
"Because this once-in-a-lifetime offer is overseas...in Germany."
His face dropped. You could practically see the happiness drain out of him.
"For how long?" Jade tilted her head back trying to get rid of the tears. "Four years."
Beck's head snapped up to look at her face. "Four years?"
"Beck, you have no idea how big of an opportunity this is for me!" Jade pleaded.
"Four? Years?" Jade sighed. "Beck, please try to understand how huge this is!"
"I know Jade, but," Beck sighed. "but did you even think about us? To what this means? For all of us?" She looks down, then back up at him and tilts her head.
"Come on really? Like I put no thought into this at all?" Beck sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
"Come on that's not what I me-"
"Don't. Don't even try and say that I didn't think about this because I did. I thought about it over and over again." She stops and clears her throat a little bit.
"Well I dont think you did." Her eyes are watering as she looks away from his accusing eyes. She shakes her head.
"Ok listen im trying to be positive and make this work. I'm trying ok. But it's the hardest I've ever worked for anything in my life! But I can't do this if you won't at least try and be a little happy and supportive for me. Ok, I never ask you to try and be or do anything, but I need your support on this!" Beck takes a step back and shakes his head.
"Don't. Do-. I don't try? I, I try ok. Support is the one thing I never seem to run out of for you! I try to make this work, us, but believe me babe, it ain't easy. You constantly mess it up. I could probably name 15 things that I try to work around but. But you just won't listen. You just leave everything to me. The responsibilities, the manners, the apologizing." His voice was getting loud so he leaned in closer to her and started to whisper. "Hey, the first time you apologized to me, since I've met you, was when Tori helped you."
"That's it, isn't it."
"What's it?"
"Tori. It's her. She's better than me; nicer. Can express her feelings. Ha. She's the perfect girlfriend when you add in the singing and dancing bit. Face it: you want her. Well good, because I want you to want her. I-"
"Jade come on. Tori is not the problem."
"Well who is then? You? Me?"
"You."
"Your- me?"
"Yes you! You don't try at all in our relationship Jade. I forgive you no matter what you do, and you have done some pretty horrible stuff, and I can't even go to the bathroom instead of walk you to class, or-"
"Ugh whatever Beck. It's not that at all. You're just making up excues fo-"
"Oh really. What is this an excuse for? Huh Jade? Why would I have to make up any excuse for you now?"
"I really didn't want it to come to this." Jade says darkly with a blank look in her eye. He takes a step back, stops breathing waiting, just waiting for what comes next.
"I'm sorry Beck but I just don't see the point of us anymore. You'll be here with highschool girls and I'll be on another continent with an almost all male cast. Long distance isn't really my thing anyway so, bye Beck. It was fun while it lasted." She picked up her stuff and pecks him on the cheek with no emotion at all, doesn't even look at him.
As she opens the door and walks out, he stares after her a little unsteady and says to no one in-particular, "Yeah, I guess it was wasn't it?" And even more quietly to himself.
"Goodbye Jade. I love you."
Two weeks later, Jade is in a cab heading to the airport. She looks out the window and gazes at the flickering scenery. She had been ignoring calls from everyone all week. Except...
No. He said he wouldn't if she didn't call back. In the call that she had picked up unknowingly, thinking it was anybody else.
The ringing of the phone throughout the empty house reverberated over the wooden floors to her room. She stretched her arm out and picked up the reciever. Before she said hello she heard it. A slight intake of breath and, "Jade?"
Not a question, not a staement. He had thought she disconnected her phone.
"Jade...I wanted to talk to you. You don't have to talk back; just listen, if you want." Silence on both ends. Jade stared out at nothing with the slightest shocked expression, eyes opened wider than usual and mouth barely parted in surprise. Her face is streaked with black makeup, and her lips are the faintest shade of purple.
A sigh from Beck's end.
"Ok, I know you saidw e were over, but you still have two more weeks. Two more weeks to spend with everyone. Two more weeks for us to be together." Silence again.
"Please Jade. I'm begging you! No matter how painful it might be afterward, we'll still have those two weeks!" Jade's eye and lips squeezed shut against the torrent of tears and words that wanted to escape.
"I...I can't." She said, her voice raspy and harsh from fighting against everything she wanted but couldn't say, and everything she couldn't but wanted to say. Her throat almost continuously constricting as she gulped for air while fresh tears streaked across her face.
"I want to, but I can't. I can't hurt you like that, because no matter," she took a deep breath and looked to the ceiling for any guidance, "no matter how good those two weeks might be, they couldn't come close to the damage that'll happen to both of us when they're over. So...I can't. And now you know that I," she stops for a second and squeezes herself together because right now, she just might fall apart, " now you know that I want to, I just..."
"Can't." Beck's voice cracked over the line, the word seeming more lonely and hopless because of it.
"Well then I won't call you." He sniffs and clears his throat. "I won't wall you if you don't call me back after this."
"Goodbye Jade...I love you." Line goes dead.
" I love you too Beck. Somuch." She hangs up and clutches the phone to her chest. As if it's a life preserver keeping her alfloat in all the despair.
If she was a different girl, she would have gone out in the pouring rain and ridden her bike all the way to Beck's rv to have those two weeks. But she wasn't. And so she stayed inside and let her tears fall down like the rain: relentlessly.
She hadn't called him back. Hadn't called any of them back, but it wasn't like they were really that close right? And now they were never going to see each other again. And besides, they went to a school for the performing arts, drama like this had to happen all the time.
She grabbed her bags out of the trunk and went around to pay her fares. She was in the airport already, and had just dropped her bags off when she heard it.
"And we just, want you to know, that we'll be mis-sing youuuuu." She stopped, breathless and turned around to face them all: Cat, Tori, ANdre with bongos, Robbbie with a guitar, and even Rex was beatboxing.
"And we just, want you to know, that we wish you the best of luuuuuuuuck." She put her bags down and stuffed her hands in her pockets, not knowing what to do but stand there shell-shocked.
"And we just, and we just, want you to knoooowwww that we loooooove you-ooooooooo!" Cat's falsetto rose up to be greeted by a depper voice; stronger, clearer, beautiful. A voice that used to lull Jade to sleep almost every night. A voice that brought tears to her eyes now.
"And I just, wanted to make sure that you knewwww, how muuuuuuch, Iiiiiii, loooooooooooove, youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!"
She hugged everyone: Andre, Cat, Tori, she shook Robbie's hand, but Beck!
She ran up to him and threw her arms around him, squeezing as hard as she could because she didn't know why she had ever let go in the first place. When they backed up from each other, they saw all they needed to see.
They slammed their lips together in a passionate kiss. Their lips smoldering under how right they knew it felt, and how much the missed each other. Beck was totally dominant in this kiss, for the first time ever, in their last. Their tongues were searching, memorzing everything about the other so they would remember exactly how things were.
As they brought themselves back down to Earth for the need of air, Andre cleared his throat. Jade turned to face the small group assembled.
"Thank you all so much. You're great friends. I'm lucky to have you. I'm sorry things couldn't have been different." She turned back to Beck.
"And if I knew how things would turn out, good or bad, and I had the chance to do it again, I'd stay with you."
He leaned in for another kiss, bringing his hand up to cup her cheek, which he gently caressed before kissing it.
"I wouldn't have had it any other way."
And then the intercom annouced Jade's flight.
Tearful goodbye's and almost impossible promises were made, Iloveyou's spoken almost all around, but it was the last thing they hear from Jade, in person, for a very long time.