Uh oh. I accidentally took forever with this one… My bad.
It's Wednesday and something is off but I can't put my finger on what it is. I sit down beside Beck empty-handed like I 've been doing for the past few days, Andre and Cat take their usual spots beside me, and Robbie trips on his way over, gets up and takes a seat across from Beck and I, attempting to pretend that nobody saw him do that, even though everybody did.
As always, one of them starts a boring conversation while Beck tries to make me eat, and as I've done the first half of the week, I ignore him, and I ignore them, and I play with my water bottle without adding to their conversation in any way.
Something feels different, though, and it only takes me a moment to realize what it is. Beck and I are the only people at this table who aren't smiling, and although Beck never smiles, it's not hard to see he's happy today.
I know that it isn't supposed to work this way. It's acceptable to be depressed for a couple of days, maybe a week if you're really close, but then you move on. You do it slowly, but you stop looking so depressed all the time and you put on a mask and every once in a while, you think about something else. It's not working that way for me, and I don't know why.
I play with my phone a little as an excuse for distancing myself from this conversation, but they don't even notice. They must be so sick of me, just sitting here silently every day. All I do is bring them down. They're getting over it, and I'm still here at the bottom. I haven't moved an inch.
I stand up and I leave the table, but nobody follows me. They probably didn't even notice, but that's okay, because I don't want them to come after me.
I'm not hungry, but I mindlessly order a disgusting burrito from the Grub Truck, and I go back inside the school to eat it in peace. I sit down by some lockers and open the wrapper, but I can't make myself take a bite. As much as I want to believe that it's because this isn't real meat and I'll probably get some disgusting, life-threatening bacterial infection from eating it, in reality I'm not eating for the same reason I hardly ate yesterday, or the day before. The stress Tori has caused me has ripped a hole in my stomach, I swear, and I feel sick all the time and I just want to curl up on my couch at home and maybe watch a marathon of That '70s Show, or maybe a disgustingly cheesy romantic comedy, but I know if I do that, I will only feel worse, because those are things I never did before her, and now won't do afterwards.
"Jade." I look up from the tortilla-wrapped mystery meat in my lap, into Lane's face. "Do you have a minute?" He looks concerned, and his eyes travel to the lockers behind me. I look up and realize that, of course, the locker above my head is Tori's. What are the odds of that?
"Why?"
"Your teacher talked to me." He pauses, like I'm supposed to know what that means. "About your play." My play? My play… Shit. That crappy excuse for a homework assignment I did three days after it was due, while drunk. I don't even remember what it was about. I should have waited to send that in until the next day.
"Uhhh…what about it?"
"Why don't you just come to my office?" He won't stop with the sympathetic child-friendly voice and I actually feel scared for a moment, while I stand up and follow him across the school to his office. He takes a seat in his hanging chair, but I remain standing, despite his suggestion that I take a seat.
"You've turned in a lot of disturbing plays over the years, but given the circumstances, I wanted to talk to you about this one." He reaches for a bottle of lotion and starts to rub it into his hands, nodding toward the couch again.
"Was there something wrong with it?"
"Well, no, not really. It's a great play. Very…dark…but very well written. One of your best works, I hear." Oh, well that's reassuring. I do my best writing when I'm hammered. I'll have to keep that in mind. "The problem is that it's obviously based on what you're going through right now, and Mr. Gerrard was worried about you, so he gave me a copy, and I believe he was right to be worried." I don't know what to say, so I stand there, focusing more on my freezing toes than what Lane is saying.
"Jade, sit down. Please." I decide to humor him and I take a seat on the edge of his couch, praying that maybe if I tell him I'm fine he'll believe me and let me leave. "Did you speak to either of the grief counselors last week?" I don't know what he's talking about and I just stare at him, unable to open my mouth. "I take it that's a no. Well, I just want you to know you're not alone, and there are many other people in this school going through the same thing you are." It'd be lovely if that were true but we both know it's not. I'm not going through what everyone else is going through. This is different.
"I'm fine. Can I go?" He lets out a disappointed sigh, but gives in, as I start to stand up.
"Please don't hesitate to come see me, if you're having a bad day, or you want to talk about something, or even if you just want to cut class."
"I will." As if that would ever happen.
"It's okay to grieve, Jade. She was your friend." I just nod and rush out of his office as if it were on fire. I'm in such a hurry that I, in typical movie fashion, run right into Beck. He places his hands protectively on my arms as I stumble, but the look on his face doesn't match this caring gesture.
"Jade. What's going on?"
"I had to talk to Lane." I answer semi-honestly.
"Yeah, okay. That's why you've been some…" His face is turning red already, as he struggles with his words "broken robot all week?"
"No, Beck. I'm depressed, okay? My friend died, so I am upset, and you know nothing. I'm not 'acting like a broken robot.' A robot doesn't have a heart, or feelings, which is something you'd know a lot about, isn't it?" I try to walk away, but he grabs a hold of my arm.
"No, Jade, I get that you're upset, but it's been almost two weeks, and you're not moving on. This isn't normal behavior, and you're not you."
"I don't know what to tell you, Beck. I don't know when you read the book on normal behavior of the grieving teenager, but it's not something you rush. You can tell me that I need to get over it all you want, but it's not going to happen. I just… I need you to leave me alone."
"What are you talking about?" He's showing more emotion in his face right now than I've ever seen as long as I've known him, but I can't figure out if he's angry or surprised.
"Just go away. You don't understand and I can't expect you to, so…you're free of me." I'm not going to the rest of my classes anymore, so I start to go to my locker, but he yells after me. Luckily this time there's nobody else in the hallway, and no one gets to witness the public spectacle that is another one of our breakups.
"So, what, we're done? Is that what you're saying?"
"Yes. Until you can learn to respect me, we're done."
"Respect."He spits the word out and I know he's rolling his eyes as he stalks off like the terrible (ex)boyfriend Tori always tried so hard to convince me he wasn't.
…
It was a Monday when I spent my evening curled up in the arms of my best friend, crying over reruns of Law & Order. Though she'd seen me this way a couple of times before we were really friends, I didn't like to cry in front of her, and at this point I was only doing it because I knew she'd blame it on my hormones.
"She didn't mean to tell…" Tori had said this in a variety of ways, about ninety-seven times already. "You know Cat, she really can't keep a secret."
"It was stupid of me to tell her. Any of them, really. I should have just kept it between the three of us." She kept awkwardly stroking my hair while semi-concentrating on the TV, and didn't say anything right away.
"People would have found out eventually. It's not really something you can hide…"
"I know, but they didn't have to find out for another few months. I could have hidden it, but now I have to deal with another six and a half months of people staring at me like I'm an alien."
"I don't know, they probably would've started talking soon anyway. Your boobs are getting pretty big. It's kind of suspicious."
"They are?" I didn't think anything of the fact that she'd noticed, but suddenly I was aware for the first time of how tight my shirt was getting.
"Well, yeah… I mean I probably just noticed because I know what to expect, but those creepy freshman boys that sit a table over from us at lunch and always stare at your cleavage would've noticed." I laughed, thinking of the prepubescent little twerps. They were too afraid of me to actually say anything to my face, but I'm pretty sure they never even knew what it looked like, as I'd noticed them staring at nothing but my chest the first day of school.
"You wanna know something funny but also really creepy?" She suddenly asked, with a laugh that didn't sound like her usual one.
"What?"
"One of them – the one with the over-gelled hair and braces-" I nodded, knowing which one she was talking about. "Well, he came up to me at my locker a couple weeks ago and asked me if I had any naked pictures of you, because he was willing to pay for them."
"Oh my god. Why would he ask you that?" She'd done a good job of taking my mind off the situation at hand, though I wasn't sure feeling creeped out was any better than feeling betrayed.
"I don't know. Maybe he thinks I'm your photographer or something. I almost died, but I never thought to tell you until now."
"That is so creepy. That kid's a future sex offender."
"He probably is." She agreed, as she turned up the volume on the TV.
"I just still can't believe Cat would just blurt it out like that in the middle of class. I…I know she didn't mean to humiliate me like that. She's an idiot – as mean as that is, it's true - and I can't really expect her to keep any secret, let alone one this big, but I still just can't believe she did that to me."
"I can't believe nobody believed my food baby excuse. I mean, did they see what you ate for lunch today? It was a totally acceptable explanation."
"Shut up." I pinched her, not quite hard enough to leave a bruise, and she swatted my hand away, laughing as I tiredly rested my head on her lap. "Well anyway, thanks for trying."
"No problem." She started stroking my hair again, and I was led to believe that it was another weird talent she had, because it was so unnaturally relaxing. "I've got a backup plan, in case singing doesn't work out. I'll become a pregnant-best friend body guard. Obviously not a very good one though."
"Flipping burgers would probably be a safer bet." I'm sure she probably laughed, but by then she'd put me to sleep and managed yet again to – at least temporarily – do away with my problems.