Jade's POV

So I'd been driving around for over half an hour trying to find another way to impress Tori for today despite the silk robes. Lately, I've been noticing how often I drop the 'Vega' and replace it with 'Tori'. Within the short time span we've had together the girl's been able to change my complete mindset on her. I drive down to a white, sandy beach off the road, plowing through some of the greenery to hide our no-so-bad rental car away from prying eyes. The headlights flash as the locks in the door clunk shut. My bare feet sink soft imprints in the cool sand as I make my way down to the water. The sun is almost above the horizon, but not quite. The orange and blue bleed together beautifully. I sigh, this would be even more perfect if Tori were here...

Speaking of the reason why I came down here so early...I tap the power button on the camera that I brought with me and the screen lights up with a few seconds time. If I'd had the time I would've packed my dad's more expensive camera that you could set to take a picture every how ever many seconds. But my handheld will have to do. I'm wearing black blouse that hangs off on one color and faded jeans. I take a few shots of myself (face only of course) with the sluggish sun in the background.

Then I pray that no one is watching and quickly shed my blouse and jeans. At least seven or eight different photos of me in my bra and underwear (I hate that other word) in various poses from various angles are now saved on my digital camera. I slide back into my jeans, and right when I pick my blouse off the ground and shake sand off it I wonder if the Bahama officials would pull me over for driving without a shirt. What? I'm just curious. It's not technically public nudity...not in my sense anyway. Nah...Bahama police would be a time consuming take away from my gorgeous girlfriend waiting back in our Romance Suite. As far as I know, we're all going to be here for about two weeks.

Two weeks is fourteen days and that's plenty of time to do whatever comes to mind to two teenage lesbians in a room together. I get back into the car and start driving at an acceptable pace back to the hotel.

My pearphone vibrates in my jeans (I didn't bring my bag).

Tori asked me about your past.

My grip tightens to a dangerous point on the communication device. Did I do something bad that made her want to know? She flips me upside down and makes the blood rush to my head, but makes it pleasant like when you stand up and spin really fast, just once and you sit back down with a smile on your face and a laugh coming out your throat.

Cat and I used to do that.

And then my thoughts jump, to when we were kids, both Cat and I, in elementary school we'd spin outside on the playground until we couldn't stand anymore, laughing so hard we rolled on the ground.

Not anymore.

I'm not that Jade with the smile anymore (most of the time), the one spinning on the playground. I've changed - no, warped, morphed into a different Jade. Such a different Jade I can't even see how the two are connected, used to be the same person. Happy Jade...she was just so doe-eyed and happy.

I used to be carefree and just as loving as Cat because back then I was pure and untainted, the horrors of reality and cruelty held back by the barrier of innocent youth. I laughed my way down the hallways, skipped to lunch, and pushed other people on the swings.

Sometimes, as much as I hate to admit it, I miss my past, the old me.

Sometimes it hurts to remember the old me, happy Jade. Before I even thought of wearing black and took an interest in all things dark. Before I had these faded scars on my wrists that mangle me inside and out, but the healed skin is always nothing to the mental and emotional scars, still bottomless, gaping wounds that struggle to close futilely. The blackness threaded through me in thin lines, and before long the threads grew into vines, vines into branches that grew roots ingrained too deep in me to wrench out by the time I bothered to notice that they were there.

I was a white canvas, streaked and painted black.

The blackness stuck to me, there was nothing I could do to get it off. At first I didn't even notice that I was different, changing while Cat stayed the same; a child in the growing body of a near adult. Light started to remind me of happiness when all I wanted was the comfort of the night that swallowed everything whole; if it can't see you, it can't hurt you. But I still built walls around me anyway, in the form of sharp words, barbed taunts, and cruel smiles. When people think you hit harder than them then they won't hit you in the first place. It was a lesson I learned quickly; from my yearning to be nothing but alone and hear no voice but my own. I even blocked out my mother and father, their voices used to be the sharpened spears that warningly poked into my spine to keep me sitting straight up, a pretty little statue for everyone to see and admire.

I learned and grew to hate it.

I knew I was a person, I walked on two legs and breathed for a reason. So when my parents treated me more like a high-priced show dog than their child, it was a rude awakening for me. I realized what it had really been. They'd dressed me up, prodded me in their preferred direction until I became old enough to follow spoken commands. But now their docile little puppy has turned feral, into a big black wolf, snarling and snapping to keep from being groomed and preened, collared and restrained, caged and muzzled.

They deserve it.

My parents deserve to be pushed away, to be hurt - no they could never be hurt because they don't feel - to know that their precious showcase item has developed a mind of its own and is running away and turning into something else. Their little flesh and blood trophy is turning into something that has some expression, a meaning deeper than money or political power. I'm going to make my name mean something to the world one day, make everyone listen to my story. I know deep inside that I want to help and heal, not cut and destroy. My past lingers to my present and maybe it will make me a better person in the long run.

Or maybe Tori will.

I've said this before and if you don't want to hear again, well then, too bad. At first I didn't know that I loved her, the sweet brunette with the chocolate eyes. She sang like an angel, was kind with every word that came out of her mouth and slipped past her lips. Maybe, when I think about it, maybe I hated Tori at first because if I had stayed like I was before I would be like her. Not completely full of innocence like Cat, but close enough. Maybe I would have been nicer, maybe I wouldn't have turned cold and kept secrets.

I'm Jadelyn West, scarred and corrupted, burned, bruised, bleeding out slowly from old wounds.

Tori Vega is my guardian angel, my guider, my healer, and my lover.

And now I have to tell her about my past.

Has anyone else been somewhere with white sand? I have. At first I thought white sand was fake, but it's real :)

So...how was Black Friday?