Chapter Eight:

Plans

Jessie and John stood in front of each other in their private area, cut off from the rest of the world, Jeff having just left Jessie by herself – not something that she wanted, but no one, including John could know that Jeff was just lurking around the school. The last thing she wanted to do was to talk to John; she didn't even know him well and yet, he was unintentionally terrorising her – even if the terrorising was caused by her own mind and sick imagination. It was understandable that he liked her and wanted to speak with her, but she couldn't handle contact with him just yet.

"Talk to me about what?" She asked, acting cautious.

John glanced down, towards the grass beneath the two, not sure where to start with his conversation; there were many things that he wanted to know.

"Well...I guess I wanna know why you've been avoiding me for a start..."

Jessie froze and her whole body became tense. She had no idea how to answer that; of course, she couldn't tell him the real reason – he'd think she was a psychopath or just plain insane. Luckily, Jessie was great at thinking on the spot due to her constantly having to hide her emotions from others and therefore, quickly contemplated an excuse, also remembering that he had asked her out the day before.

"I haven't got an answer for you yet." She stated, not flinching.

Honestly, going on a date with John didn't seem too appealing to her anyway – not that she had been thinking about it due to her recent endeavours with a psychopathic killer. Jessie didn't want to sound pretentious or anything, but John was way too "normal" for her. Jessie had spent her life being a gamer, Otaku and murderer researcher long enough to know that "normal" guys found you strange if you did any of those things; she had never been an ordinary girl, so guys often stayed away from her in the romantic sense. In addition to that, John would probably spend the whole date talking about "normal" things like music, celebrities or TV shows that Jessie had probably never seen before like X-Factor or Big Brother. Not the most appealing night of her life.

John reacted quickly to her statement; he suddenly became down which showed when he glared towards the floor again and placed his hand, which was now a determined fist, in front of his face. "I see...how long do you think you'll take with an answer...?"

"I don't know..."

John wasn't going to give up so easily. He remembered yesterday when Jessie became breathless when he grew closer to her and thought that was the best plan of action to convince her. He stepped forwards, instantly causing Jessie to fall back against a nearby tree, just like she had when Jeff surprised her by falling out of the tree; she wasn't going to get any closer to him in case she ended up freaking out and fainting, or even worse, hurting him. The pursuer noticed her actions at once.

"What?" He asked. "Do you not want me near you or something?"

"It's not that!" Jessie exclaimed. "I just...uh..." It was no use. She couldn't think. Her ability to think on her feet was crumbling due to the situation she was in.

John took another step forward until he was right in front of her, his face inches away from hers and his hand against the tree, blocking her from moving from her position. She became red from the dominance that John suddenly had over her and his assertiveness; she didn't like it. He then softly mumbled "Then what is it...?"

For the first time, a boy was trying hard to go out with Jessie and she was extremely flustered; she had never thought of John in that way, but it was still sort of nice to see how hard he was trying. It was kind of an ego boost for her. She felt like a girl in a Shojo manga. Although, all this sudden contact with boys was too much for her right now; under any other circumstances, she would've just tried to brush him off gently, but that wasn't possible right now. She was too panicky and flustered.

"Uh...I..."

"Do you like me?" He interrupted, his face strangely serious.

"I...don't really know you...so...I don't know..."

Instantly, John smiled and responded with "Well, then how about we go on the date to get to know each other?"

Jessie couldn't help but admire John's amazing ability to never give up; if she were him, she would've quit this mission to date her long ago. She could tell that he wasn't going to stop perusing her, so she had to give in at some point.

She had to.

"...Okay..."

A large grin appeared on John's face as he released his hold on the tree, freeing Jessie from her confinement and joyfully said "Awesome! I'll give you details tomorrow!" as he ran off.

As soon as he was gone, Jessie fell to the ground, still leaning on the wall, fully confused and regretful. She didn't want to date anyone at that point; with everything that was happening around her, boys were the least of her concerns.

"At least I didn't get that weird feeling just then...thank God for that. Considering what happened with Jeff yesterday...I might've actually hurt him..."

"You can talk to one of my friends today."

"I wonder what kind of friends Jeff has...and I hope to God that they can help me…"

~:~

"So, what do you think?" Jeff was once again, on the phone; this time he was wondering around the city, his hood up and face well hidden behind his long bangs. Luckily, people in the city weren't on too high of an alert so no one was noticing him wondering around.

"Sure, just go on Cleverbot later and let me talk to this Jessie girl. I'm sure that she'll listen." BEN replied with.

"Why can't I just call you? Wouldn't that be easier?"

"Cleverbot's more fun." BEN chuckled. "She'll be so freaked out. Sounds like she's pretty cute too, so I wanna see her surprised."

"Yeah. She's pretty cute..." For a brief moment, both Jeff and BEN were silent; Jeff couldn't believe that he just said that. Since when did he openly admit that Jessie was cute? Since when did he openly admit that any girl was cute? Girls weren't important to him.

"She must be cute if she could give you a hard on like that." Jeff became red.

"HEY! Shut it! She cut me while practically straddling me! What else could I do?!"

"You should've fucked her or something." Jeff's heart skipped a beat at the statement and questions ran through his head.

Why didn't he fuck her? Why did he purposely resist doing anything to her, sexual or pain-inflicting? Normally, he wouldn't care and just did whatever he wanted to. Was it because she's like him? Or is it because...he actually gave a shit about what she wanted...? Did he...really care about her...?

"Dude?"

"I'm still here..." He mumbled. "Hey, BEN?"

"Yeah."

"Do you really think she's like us?"

"She has to be. More specifically, she's like YOU. Why?"

"No reason..."

That was the moment when Jeff had a thought that would stick with him for a long time and puzzle him until the end of time.

"I don't know why…but…I don't want her to be like me..."