Well, you know the drill by now. None of it is mine except for the original characters and the series storyline.
The song is I was only (Seventeen) by the Beu Sisters. This is the third in my series about the characters I introduced in Back before the War.
This is the first story I've really done that tells about Jenny. I'm almost content to abandon my other fics since this series is so easy to write. ALMOST Catlimere, so you will eventually see more of my other stories.
Also, I am a strict Christian, but I'm going against most of what I've ever been taught and making Jenny into a Wiccan. But I don't know much about the religion, and I really don't want to get into a seven hour conversation with my friend Ashley about her religion. So I'm just making it up as I go. Sorry.
I was only trying to keep the walls from closing in
I was only waiting 'round for something to begin
I was only seventeen
I told you that it didn't mean a thing
Jennifer Chase-McMahon pushed aside the boxes in her mother's attic, her mission clear. She wanted to find the stuff she'd stashed up here years before, when she was seventeen.
She'd just broken up with her first serious boyfriend, and she'd stuck the things from that up here. Her parents never knew what happened, but Dane and Dante Gilas had. Of course, she'd always been closer to the younger Gilas twin, Dante. Dane was just a really close friend, but Dante was practically an extension of her soul.
And it had been Dante who had told her that she needed to confront the past.
Feels like a million years ago
Small town where everybody knows
Everything about everybody else
Nine years. It had only been nine years. It felt like centuries sometimes, but others it seemed like it had only been the day before.
The chain of events had started when she was fourteen though it took three years for everything to come to a head.
She had been waiting for something that seemed so important to her soul. All these years later, she still didn't know how her soul had known what would happen, but it had.
Then he walked into her senior AP history class, cocky smile and all. According to the extremely reliable private school grapevine, he was her age, single and a transfer student from Athens, Georgia. Most every girl in the school and about a third of the boys had been drooling and lusting over him from that very first day.
Way back when there wasn't you and me
I guess I was still naïve
And the moment was as far as I could see
At seventeen, Jenny hadn't been a blushing virgin, but she hadn't been loose and easy either. Her first time had been with Dane of all people, when she was fifteen and he seventeen.
But he had made her heart jump into her throat in a way no one else had ever done before then.
She had lost her naivety because of him. She had lost her innocence to that cocky bastard.
I was only trying to keep the walls from closing in
I was only waiting 'round for something to begin
I was only seventeen
His name was James Angle, and he was her polar opposite.
She was into Wicca by then, while he was Catholic. He was homophobic, and she'd grown up in San Francisco. She streaked her hair every color of the rainbow during her high school career, but from the start, he was more conservative than anyone she'd ever met.
And he was the son of a wrestler who hated the McMahon family, although neither of them had found that out until it was too late.
She'd been using just the Chase part of her name at school for years, and there were millions of Angles out there. How were they to know that their families hated each other so badly?
And how in the blue hell had they gotten together in the first place?
I told you that it didn't mean a thing
Why can't you just love me
Dante glared at the young man. "So you're the guy Jen's into. I don't see why she'd like a Catholic tight ass, but if you treat her right, I won't hurt you."
Dane added his menacing stare. "And neither will I. But if you even think of hurting her, Dante and I will both come after you."
He sniffed. "My name's James. And I am not a tight ass."
"Sure you're not, Catholic boy," Dane drawled.
Just then Jenny came back to their table, a small frown pleating her brow. "If you three get into a fight, I'm never speaking to any of you again!"
Dante was quick to reassure her. "We're just discussing things, Jen. We solemnly swear to it, Goddess help us."
"Goddess?" James repeated. He and Jenny had been going out for nearly two months, but this was the first time he'd met any of her close friends, and she didn't talk about them often.
Please don't push too hard
The truth you think you're after
Might just break your heart
She sighed, knowing that her friends were disappointed in her for not telling her boyfriend. They were also blown away by the fact that he was so naïve about her. They were as aware of the rumors at the high school about Jenny as she herself was. Those rumors had been around since the first day of her freshman year so they were fairly hard to ignore. "Dane and Dante are both Wiccan, James."
"What?" he asked, shocked by her answer. "Jenny, you don't expect me to like people who don't believe in the one true God, do you?"
"Go on, Chase-McMahon," Dane prompted, "tell him."
But before she could say it, tell him the truth about her and wait for the other shoe to drop, her boyfriend gasped. "Isn't Chase your last name?"
"That's Mother's maiden name, yes," she answered, "but my father's last name is McMahon."
Someone who I thought was my friend
But sometimes people just pretend
And I would never be the same again
He ran out of the restaurant, out of the mall, and essentially out of her life. Jenny hadn't heard from him again for another month, during which Dante and Dane had to keep her from calling on Cupid or using a love spell.
They were more bent on calling a vengeance demon, but they knew better than to do that. Not only would their best friend have been pissed off, but she would have also flayed them alive.
She had the power to, too.
I was only trying to keep the walls from closing in
I was only waiting 'round for something to begin
I was only seventeen
She was only seventeen, but she was afraid she'd lost her heart. And she'd just been rebelling against her hypocritical parents. They didn't like the fact that she had no plans to stop being Wiccan and the same number of plans to takeover the reins to the family business.
Dating a Catholic boy with the same last name as the jerk who'd raped her Aunt Steph had been her way of telling them where to stick it.
The other end result had definitely been unexpected and unwanted.
I told you that it didn't mean a thing
Why can't you just love me
Please don't push too hard
The truth you think you're after
Might just break your heart
He finally came to her house one night, not wanting to explain but knowing that he had to. She met him at the door of her father's house, her eyes cold and frosted with anger. If he'd known her as well as he thought he had, he would have headed for the hills.
But he didn't, so he stayed there. "You never told me that you were a McMahon," he began.
"I wasn't aware that there was a law stating that I had to tell you everything about me." Her voice was as frozen as her eyes.
"I'm an Angle, Jenny," he pointed out.
"So?" If her eyebrows rose any farther, the Rock would have had competition.
"My father's name is Kurt, Jenny. Surely you've heard the misguided stories your family tells about him."
"They aren't misguided," she growled. "I am quite aware that they are the absolute Goddess given truth."
"Goddess?" he snorted. "You've been hanging around your Wiccan friends too long, haven't you?"
"I was born a witch," her voice sounded eerily like her Aunt Stephanie's, "even if I only became interested in Wicca during the summer before ninth grade."
"What?" He turned as red as a beet root. "You misled me!"
"I never misled you, James," she fiercely glared at him, "and if you paid any attention to what people say about me, you would have known that I was a witch long ago. It's not like it's a heavily guarded secret."
"That's it," he screamed, "you and I are over!"
As he walked away, she whispered into the wind, "We've never really been anything, James, because we were never totally honest with each other."
I'm sure there are things you would rather keep inside
I won't ask you about all the things you've tried
Don't let yesterday get in the way
Why can't we just start from where we are
Her best friends had been there as she sobbed out the entire story. Dante had known that she had had sex with James on numerous occasions, but that revelation was news to Dane.
She'd even sobbed out the part about Kendra and the brothers she had only dreamed about. They were both surprised when she confessed that that was why she'd started going to the coven meetings. They'd known that she had been rebelling against her parents, but they never dreamed that she had siblings.
All they had been able to do was be there for her, just as their Jen-girl was always there for them.
I was only trying to keep the walls from closing in
I was only waiting 'round for something to begin
I was only seventeen
I told you that it didn't mean a thing
Why can't you just love me
Please don't push too hard
The truth you think you're after
Might just break my heart
Years later, she closed the boxes that contained her memories from that time, wiped the tears from her eyes, and gave a heavy sigh. She wasn't that girl anymore; she wasn't the same at all. She was still Wiccan, but she never hid that fact anymore. If people didn't like it, they could jack off. And she'd learned that even though he'd been her first love, he would never be her last.
Her mother didn't know that she was in town for the weekend, and that was the way things would stay. Anyways, she was leaving as soon as she boxed up a few photo albums, the ones that her parents didn't know she knew about.
They were her favorites, those early albums. In the pictures from before she was born, and up to about the time she was two, they looked like a family. They looked like the antithesis of everything her parents had become.
The tiny sprite who would become the wary seventeen year old girl she'd met on that fateful day was always smiling in those old photos. The boys were cheerful too.
Every one of those pictures had smiling people in them. Every single one of them. She often wondered if life had simply crushed that happiness, or if her family could have recaptured it if they had tried. She honestly didn't know the answer.
But Jennifer did know, as she collected the seven thick photo albums, that she was due in L.A. Dante wanted her to meet someone. And what her best friend, her brother, wanted her to do, was always done.
Well, I'm certain that you can all tell where this is going. Look for another story in this series within the next couple of weeks. I'm trying to keep this series as all being song fics. Weird, I know, but that's just how I want to do this series. So I have to find the perfect song for the next story.