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.
THIS IS A REWRITE OF THE OFFENSIVE VERSION! Please stop yelling at me about that version.
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 knew about the supernatural by then and doubted Christianity, 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, may a demon kill us if it isn't true."
"Demon?" 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. Now he was beginning to wonder about her friends' sanity.
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. Hell, there had been one that stated that she was Wiccan, but she had squelched that rumor quite firmly. She had no problem with Wicca, but it just wasn't for her. "Dane and Dante are both atheists, James. Although they do believe that Hell exists."
"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? And how does one end up not believing God but believing in demons?"
"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 going stir crazy.
They hated the way he seemed to have broken her. They wanted to break every bone in his body, but they knew that Jen would never speak to them again.
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 return to church and the same number of plans to take over 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 truth. I'd say God help me, but how do we know if your God exists? How do we even know that a God exists?"
"If?" he snorted. "You've been hanging around your atheist friends too long, haven't you?"
"I may have been born a Christian," her voice sounded eerily like her Aunt Stephanie's, "but I started doubting 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 I don't believe in Yahweh, Jehovah, or the Trinity. There are even some who believe that I'm a witch, but I'm just an atheist."
"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 when she saw her first vampire, and the first time and only time she saw a Slayer in action. They'd known that she had happened upon the world of the supernatural, but they hadn't thought that her sister was a Vampire Slayer. Actually, they'd never even dreamed that she might have a sister.
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 basically an atheist, 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.
Also, I apologize to everyone that I offended with the first version. This is the rewrite, meant to be less offensive…actually, this is the rewrite of the rewrite.
Thanks go to Cinnamongrrl, because I almost just deleted the entire fic. While some may argue that Christians and Catholics wouldn't break up with someone just because they were an atheist, trust me when I say that I definitely know better.