It has been 6 years since the group has graduated from Hollywood Art high school. All have split off into their own directions in life, many losing contact with the others. Jade is a struggling Play Write, forced to work a day job until she gets a call out of the blue that changes everything. Now she may get the big break she needs to fufill her dreams as well as discover things she never knew she wanted.
Chapter 1
A pale 24 year old woman with long black hair sits in her somewhat small one bedroom Gothic looking apartment. She only has on an old tight fitting black t-shirt and baggy black board shorts. She is furiously typing on her laptop, that is position right on her lap in front of her. A look of complete and serious tunnel vision plastered on her face. The woman is Jade West and when Jade West is writing even natural disasters know not to disturb her. Unfortunately, a cell phone on the verge of going dead is not a natural disaster its just annoying. Jade has been silently typing for hours and currently the rest of the world has stop existing, at least from her prospective. The only thing that brings her out of the writing grove she's in is the loud death beating of her almost dead cell phone. Which always causes her to jump out of her skin when she hears it.
"Shit!... you couldn't hold out a little longer could you?" Jade says with hell's fury in her voice as she places her laptop aside on the couch cushion next to her and pick up the phone from the coffee table, staring daggers at it for powering down again. This makes it three times this week alone Jade thinks to herself. "I really need a new cell" she say out loud to no one, followed by an aggravated sigh as she gets up to plug her cell and its charger into the wall. Her back slightly stiff from sitting so long. "Lets see if I make rent this month and then I'll worry about a new phone" she say as she stretches her arms out to the sides.
Jade crosses her sparsely decorated living room in her bare feet. Only having a coffee table, three person couch, some old chair she found out front of her building one day and a TV placed strategical in front of the couch on an old wooden TV stand. Also there is a book shelf that holds what few books Jade deems worth reading and some old framed photos. The brick walls of the apartment have been painted black, her favourite colour. She walks the six steps it takes to get to the island that divides the kitchen from the living room. This is where she ate most of her meals when home. The kitchen only has a fridge, stove, toaster oven and, her prize possession, her coffee maker. Walls also black behind the creaky wooden cabinets. Just to the right of the kitchen is Jade's bedroom. Inside her bedroom on the floor is her mattress on top of the box spring for which she sleeps on and a large wooden dresser, that holds her clothes, set against one of the black brick walls. Only a very select few have ever enter there and she planed on keeping it that way.
Bending over at the waist Jade plugs the cell charger into the wall at the base of the island. She unfurls the long cord and plugs the other end into the phone. Placing the device on the counter of the island, she sees its already started charging. Returning to her seat on the couch Jade's eyes turn to look at the photo's on one of the book shelf's. There are three framed pictures there. One is a portrait of her mother from many year ago, may she rest in peace. The second is of her and her father from his last birthday. He had his party in Hawaii, which is the reason she is in her black bikini in the picture smiling beside him. The last picture is of her and her five best friends from high school or you could say the five best friends she ever had. Robbie, Andre, Beck, Tori and Cat. All of them crowded around her smiling happily, even Jade, in a celebration of Jade's 18th birthday.
It has been six years since Jade West and her friends graduated from Hollywood Arts high school. And with all the demands of growing up as well as trying to make it in the entertainment industry, it really is only to be expected that the group of close friends have drifted apart some over the years. During a rare time of quiet thought, Jade looks at the photo's and thinks back over the last six years and ideally wondered about the group of people she had become so close to.
Robbie Shapiro, the forever awkward one, hasn't been heard from since graduation. He lifted California almost right after high school, hoping to become a producer or something. Not that Jade cared all that much. Jade never paid too much attention to Robbie, besides from the times she was insulting or assaulting him. Even after Robbie stopped carting the freaky puppet Rex around with him everywhere he went Jade still found him to be annoying. "Loosing a puppet doesn't change the fact that he is still a ventriloquist" Jade thought with disdain.
Continuing to look at the picture she notices her friend Andre Harris. Andre went off to pursue his dream of becoming a famous musician. Jade still gets a call from him every now and then. The calls themselves were inconsistent at best, Andre could go months without dropping you a line, due to him always being on the move to his bands next gig. And the calls would mostly be about his upcoming gigs or his latest sexual conquests. Jade always laughs hearing about that stuff. She finds it so funny that the almost too nice guy from school has turned into such a stone cold rocker. Not that he's not still a nice guy, just a little matured. The last time she has actually seen him was about a year ago, most likely a little longer. It was at one of his bands shows in some random dive bar in down town L.A. He really killed that night, not caring if the crowd was kind of small, just loving that he got to perform on stage. When he was up on stage Jade could clearly see he was born to do this, she also noticed that it looked like Andre got another tattoo on one of his well developed arms. She could tell he had a fresh tat on his left upper arm, even with the fact that the dark ink blends with his dark skin pretty well. Since high school Andre went into full on rocker mode. He grew out his hair and put it into long dreads. He worked out like crazy and now had muscles and was cut like a diamond. He also started getting piercings and tattoos all over the place. Along with growing out a wicked gotea. The whole package turn Andre into one hot ass rock star. Jade couldn't help but think if she was a little more brainless, or drunk, like the groupies Andre was pron to hooking up with, she would have easily have gone for him as well. "That boy was all man now" Jade thought with a little smirk on her lips.
The though of being with a man brought about thoughts of Beck Oliver, Jade's long gone ex-boyfriend. Looking right at him in the picture now. Just thinking of him, even now, still brought out a small pain to her heart. A pain that was most likely do to the fact that both her and Beck still had something good when they mutually ended things shortly after high school. It wasn't that she wanted to stop going out with him due to Jade not still loving Beck. Even as she was saying goodbye for the last time, Jade knew she still loved him as much as ever. And maybe a part of her always will. But it just didn't make scene for them to keep going when they were barley able to see one another for more then a few days every few weeks. It all started in the second last year of high school when Beck started getting offers to do commercials and gust spots on TV shows. We were all so happy for him, even me, at first. But the more TV gigs he did, the more gigs he was booked onto. Soon Beck had to get an agent to control his work and school schedules as well as spend more and more time away on said gigs. There was one thing that stuck with Jade through was all these jobs. Even more so then all the attention from other girls Beck got, but after the first break up Jade got a better handle over her jealousy. Well better then before anyway.
But it wasn't that the girls were throwing themselves at Beck that stuck with Jade, the girls have always done that. It was that Beck would always come back to her and be with her totally in what little time they had together as Beck's career was taking off. It was that clear attention from him that kept them going for the next year and a haft. But it was Beck's big break that signed the death warrant for their relationship. In their last year at Hollywood Art's Beck was offered a "Big" movie role. A high budget Hollywood romantic flick, the kind that always made Jade nauseous to watch, playing opposite to the latest Hollywood "IT" girl. To this day Jade refused to even name her. But it was clear to everyone that the movie was Beck's big break into show business, and it was. Beck spent the next seven months in Europe shooting the movie, taking him out of school until nearly three month past graduation. He did finished school using the internet and working with tutors. But for those seven months the only time they seen or hear from Beck was mostly over the phone or internet.
The one time Beck did come back while doing the movie was for a few days near the end of the year to take Jade to the prom. She still says she didn't want to even go, but deep in her heart Jade knows she had a great night with Beck at the dance. Jade had even more fun later that night when she and Beck lost their virginity together in Beck's trailer. The thought of that night still makes Jade smile and blush ever so slightly. But the distance and time apart only made it hurt more when Jade had to watch him leave to finish the movie. Though he came back for the prom, he couldn't for the graduation ceremony. Jade always had a picture in her head that when she walked across the stage to get her diploma that she would see Beck there cheering her on. But when she got her diploma there was a hurt deep inside her that she kept covered up from everyone because she knew Beck was thousands of miles away shooting a movie. A hurt that was not easily healed.
Eventually Beck did return, but it was never the same. When Beck lift California he was just a high school student, but when he came back he was a movie star. There was people coming up to him for autographs or taking his picture all the time and his work schedule never seemed to slow down. If anything it got faster and he spent even less time with Jade now that he was back. Jade put up with this for another two months until the night before his big movie premiere, Jade and Beck sat down to talks for the first time in about two weeks. Jade was nearly in tears the whole conversation but sucked it up because she refused to cry in front of Beck. Beck wasn't doing much better then Jade as both of them knew what was about to happen. They talked for hours and in the end decided to stop seeing each other after that night for the good of their friendship since neither could stand the thought of growing apart slowly or end up hating one another. Jade spent the rest of the night with Beck. They made love, talked and laughed like they used to, but when the sun came up Jade knew it was time to go. Staying longer would weaken her resolve and stop her from saying goodbye. She lifted quickly, went home to shower and spent the next week screaming and crying at anything that moved or would pick up the phone. That last night was the last time she and Beck seen or talked to one another. The movie was a big success and launched Beck into stardom. Nowadays it hard to go anywhere without hearing something about the famous Beck Oliver's latest happenings. "At least I can say I knew him when. When he was just a virgin who blow his load after seeing my boobs for the first time" that thought always got a chuckle out of Jade and made her feel somewhat better.
Jade suddenly shakes herself out of the memories of the past, not wanting to dwell too long on such pointless activates, and goes to sit back down on the couch. She plops down heavily on the seat she was sitting on before and looks at the TV, wondering if there is anything good on. Picking the remote off the coffee table she turns the TV on and starts to channel surf aimlessly. Using the noise from the TV to drown out thoughts of Beck.
Feel free to review with any comments you may have, I look forward to reading them. I promise to update soon.