A Brand New Hope
When I was a kid I thought
I wanted all the things that I haven't got
Oh, I learned the hardest way
Then I realized what it took
To tell the difference between
Thieves and crooks
Lesson learned to me and you
Give me something that I need
Satisfaction guaranteed
'Cause I'm thinking 'bout
A brand new hope
The one I've never known
'Cause now I know
It's all that I wanted
~Green Day, Macy's Day Parade
Jameson Standish was the model upper class son...right up until he wasn't anymore, that is.
He was tall and good looking, with short curly auburn hair and live-wire green eyes, certainly a boy never short of admirers- a heartbreaker who was too good to break anyones heart.
As a high schooler he had been popular, "a natural leader" his teachers had told a gushing George and Adelaide Standish whenever they would put on their happy family facade on and go to a PTA meeting.
He was captain of the school's football team, president of the Student Council, class valedictorian and got good grades to boot. He had been everything his little sister, eight years his junior, wanted to be when she got to high school.
Claire was nearly ten when her brother packed up his stuff and moved out, boarding the next flight to Europe straight after graduation to become a chef in École de Cuisine Alain Ducasse in Paris, even though it had always been the plan that he would go to Law School in Chicago and join the family firm.
Eight years later, he owned his own restaurant now on the The Champs-Élysées with two other chefs from America, one of which he was engaged to with a baby on the way.
At seventeen, Claire could still remember perfectly when her ten year old self had latched onto her big brother and sobbed when he told her of his plans to move, pointing out where Paris was on the pink and gold light up globe that sat on her bedside locker to show her where he was going to be.
"Please don't go Jamie", she had whispered into his Ralph Lauren shirt. She knew she couldn't be too loud about it, their parent hadn't known yet. She had been the first person he had told.
"Don't you worry about it one bit, Claire-Bear"(he was the only one allowed to call her that). "We'll talk all the time on the phone and I'll send you lots of postcards."
"But Jamieeeee", Claire had whined, still not ready to let go of him. "Paris is sooo far away who's going to tell me stories and tuck me in and cut the crusts off my sandwiches".
Claire remembered her younger self hoping that that whole conversation had been a dream, and in a minute Jamie would barge into her room and drag her out of bed and down to the breakfast table, tickling her until she would think she would die if he didn't stop.
It had all been real though.
Jamie had pulled back and squeezed her tiny hands in his much larger ones.
She couldn't see it back then but now that she was almost the same age as he had been when he left, she could empathise completely.
Jamie needed to get away from their parents, away from the pressure of being their perfect privilleged son, away from all the fighting. He needed to leave and become his own person, not the person they wanted him to become.
"You're gonna be fine Claire",He had told her seriously. "I promise."
George and Adelaide Standish had been pissed beyond belief that their golden boy had left them and, as a result, their fighting became a lot worse. The both blamed each other for pushing Jamie away.
Claire just blamed both of them.
Claire and Jamie had expected their parents to split up years ago but divorce just seemed to loom over the Standish family like a storm cloud that never burst with rain.
(It seemed as though George Standish still needed his trophy wife, just like Adelaide needed her rich-ass husband)
In the years that followed, the pressure on Claire to be perfect and to make up for her brother straying off his predestined course became ten fold; ballet and piano lessons, new designer clothes, constant dieting and only being allowed to make friends with girls who had parents as wealthy as her own.
If she wasn't doing well in a class, her parents would hire a university professor to teach her in the evenings and since her brother had upped and gone to France, George had set his sights on his daughter to be the heir to the Standish family law firm.
She was very popular in school, definitely one of the favourites for prom queen and even though she was by no means a brainiac, her grades usually came home pretty good (mostly Bs).
She got her childhood wish...she was just like Jamie when he was in high school, but she still wasn't happy.
The girls she hung around with, the ones equally important on the Shermann High hierarchy as herself. She couldn't talk to them, even if she tried about anything important. They knew absolutely nothing about her beyond her designer cloths, her vacations abroad and her father's law firm.
Claire couldn't tell them about how her parents fought day in and day out. She couldn't tell them how they used her as a pawn to prove that one of them was better at being a parent then the other. She couldn't tell them about how she wanted to help people when she grew up. She couldn't tell them that she would never find a boyfriend among the football players and the school's wrestlers. She never told them she wanted to get as far as possible from Chicago, far away from her childhood and from her unsatisfying home life.
So she stuck to what a girl like her would be expected to talk about...the latest line of Gucci bags, designs for the prom queen crown and what she would wear to Homecoming.
Jamie called her regularly and they would chat for hours about his life in Paris and hers back in Shermer.
She never told him how bad the arguing had gotten between their parents or how she often felt peer pressure to keep her opinions to herself if they didn't align with those of her other super popular friends.
(She didn't want him to think she wasn't okay and she definitely didn't want to make him feel guilty for getting out while he had the chance)
Her parents assumption that she would grow up to be just like them never bothered her until she was past her seventeenth birthday, it niggled her for a while but she always brushed her worries about those kinds of things aside until one Saturday when everything she careful hid away was swept out from under the rug by four of the most unlikely people.
Claire really wouldn't mind being a lawyer, She knew her father helped people everyday in his line of work but the kind of personal life her parents had and the marriage they had gotten themselves into...the fighting, the not having time for each other, constantly putting the blame for your shared troubles on each other.
She wanted more than all that, it had been one of the many things she had learned about herself while serving Saturday detention. Things she had learned from the brain, the basket case, the jock and the criminal, The Breakfast Club (that was what Brian had nicknamed their band of misfits).
She didn't want her heart to die when she grew up. She cared, just like Allison did and something told her the boys did too.
Since that Saturday Claire had seen a lot more of The Breakfast Club...particularly John Bender if she was being honest.
She knew as her father drove her up to the front steps of Shermann High that Monday morning that she was commiting social suicide by wanting to be friends with Brian, Andy and Alisson ( and maybe even a little more than friends with John) but she remembered how her brother had stood up to their parents and became a chef...She got her bravery from that, not to mention how she had spotted John at the school gates (a tell tale twinkle in his ear telling her that he had kept her diamond) with some of his burner friends.
Surely, She could stand up to her so called "friends" and tell them that The Breakfast Club were her friends too, that she wanted them to be a part of her life from then on out.
(And she did tell them, but it was later on that day when they had already found out anyway and word had gotten around the school. Beforehand, Claire thought she would be upset if they didn't understand her choices but, in reality, when they did turn on her (even though it stung more than a little) she could see their friendship and the popularity that came with it probably hadn't been worth the huge effort she had been putting in for the past five years)
John had teasingly bowed to her with a little jerk of his head and a smooth rolling gesture of his hand, his eyes flashing devilishly as he caught her staring at him.
She couldn't hear him from inside her father BMW as they drove by but she knew him well enough to know what he was mouthing to her. "Princess".
Claire could still hear Bender's voice from Saturday in her ears, rolling the Ss at the end of Princess as he tugged on her ear lobe, kissing her neck as her fingers got lost in his long chestnut tresses.
He smelled of tobacco, smoke and cheap cologne and his mouth was warm and hungry.
She was thankful her father didn't notice the blush that crept up on her cheeks as she waved goodbye to him and got out of the car.
She knew Bender had suggested that dating him would be a good way to get even with her mom and dad and even though she had agreed, Claire couldn't help but feel attracted to him beyond that.
He made her feel something. He felt like fire and he infuriated her to the point where she wasn't sure whether to slap him or push him hard against the nearest surface and crush his lips with her own.
John met her outside the science lab before second period, Chemistry was the only class they shared and Claire had been pretty such that he had only been there once or twice all year.
Incidentally, it was also the only class she didn't share with one of her girl posse and for once, she was glad of it. She needed to talk to him.
At the time, it crossed Claire's mind that people could see them, a princess and a criminal interacting in a crowded corridor, but as soon as John had leaned in, a lot more close than necessary, to talk to her those thoughts flew right out of her head.
His breath hot in her ear just like it had been after they had made out in the janitor's closet the previous Saturday.
"Hey Cherry. Funny seeing you without your ladies in waiting."
Claire remembered smirking at that. "I could say the same about you and your burnout friends?".
If she was being honest she had actually been surprised that he showed up to talk with her at all. After herself, she had pinned him to be the least likely of The Breakfast Club to break the status quo of Shermer High and talk with someone outside their clique.
After all, she and John were at two opposite ends of The High School Spectrum, both popular in their own ways and among their own crowds but their two worlds weren't designed to meet.
Everybody laughed at his jokes but underneath it all most people were afraid of hoods like John.
Claire, on the other hand, was part of the crowd that fancied themselves loved and envied by the rest of the student body, or at least that was what she had thought until their Saturday detention.
Their paths weren't mean to cross. A princess shouldn't have met or a criminal like him (or a basket case, brain or jock for that matter) but it had changed everything and Claire wouldn't have it any other way.
At first, to her anyway, their relationship was like an act of rebellion. In a world where she was the perfect daughter who did everything her "perfect" parents wished of her, John Bender was to her what Paris had been for her brother...a way to escape.
She just hadn't expected him to turn into more than that...a person who understood her, a person who she cared about far beyond that.
John shrugged noncommittally at her question, leaning forward to press his hand into the lab door behind her so that he was hovering in front of her. "They're off doing what they do, Sweets."
Claire tried not to react to his proximity (or to one of his many silly nicknames for her) but he was so close to her now. His nose was almost touching hers right in the middle of the school corridor for all to see. She couldn't help thinking back on the previous Saturday and what had happened between them in that closet. She had never let any boy touch her and kiss her like that before!
"You mean they're getting high behind the bleachers, like you guys are always off doing during first period."
John had smiled teasingly at that, eyeing her suggestively. "So you have kept an eye on me before Saturday. Well, I'm flattered. I knew you couldn't ignore me if you tried"
"In your dreams, John Bender."
"Oh, you don't know the half of it Princess."
That had been the start of it, the start of what had been going on between them for the last month and more. They teased each other, argued, made out and then repeated the cycle, finding some kind of almost harmonious equilibrium between them, all the while spending ridiculous amounts of time either alone together or hanging out alongside The Breakfast Club.
Claire knew she, as a stereotypical 'good girl' had been warned off of 'bad boys' by her parents, the girls who used to be her friends and by society itself.
But no one had ever said anything about bad boys who were, underneath it all, good men.
They were the hardest of all to resist, as Claire Standish was coming to know.
Her ex-friends had always teased her about her hesitancy to date. They asked her if she was waiting for a handsome prince on a white horse to come sweep her off of her feet when in actuality she had given her heart to the ring leader of the school's rough side of town rebels.
A guy who's goodness and kindness was wrapped up tightly underneath layers of denim, leather, flannel, sex appeal, cigarette smoke, self preservation and sarcasm.
A guy who drove her absolutely insane but who she couldn't keep her hands off of at the same time.
'Sweets, you couldn't ignore me if you tried"...but she didn't try any more, in fact Claire was pretty sure she never had.
Before she had met The Breakfast Club, Claire had never imagined herself falling in love with a guy like John. She hadn't said it aloud to him yet but she felt it deep down inside and even though she was uncertain, sometimes she found herself believing that he felt just the same.
Times where, between his teasing and smirking and scoffing, his dark eyes would soften in a way that they only did for her.
She has often heard people say that a girl wants a bad boy that is only good for her, and that a boy wants a good girl who is only bad for him...she reckoned that there was some truth to that now.
She felt accepted with John. He taught her to be brave and how to let go...and she loved him for it, loved him for the man he was deep down underneath the rebel he showed everyone else.