Disclaimer: I don't own Tara or Garth or anyone remotely interesting.

Jar of Hearts

Chapter Seven

Once Kole told me about this scientific thing that she said she remembered only because she said that it reminded her of me.

I don't remember what it was called, only that it had to something to do with matter and atoms. She said that the basic gist of it was the fact that matter never really and truly changed. It could break into a million pieces, it could be altered, but it stayed the same no matter what.

She tells me that I haven't really changed, that making one mistake didn't turn me into what I am today. And she's right, it wasn't just one mistake; it was a million, starting from the moment when I got conceived.

I wasn't supposed to be born, I wasn't supposed to happen. It was a mistake.

I wasn't supposed to fall in love with a teacher, we weren't supposed to get caught. It was a mistake.

Mistake after mistake, one right after another, waiting in line to haunt me, they swirl around me, creating the very essence of me. A mistake, a flaw, a blemish, they're all me. No matter how you put it, no matter how you try to change that, it's true.

Fact of Life: There's no magic eraser, everything you do you do it in permanent ink.

Good luck keeping your past from staining your future.

:-:

"Great job on Friday, Nark," Kole said, smiling up at the big lug. I wanted to barf and it looked like he wanted to salivate. I was surprised that his tail hadn't fallen off from all of that excessive wagging that it was doing. "You did really good, Tara and I were watching you."

Nark regarded me skeptically before turning back to Kole. "She went to a game? Was she behind the bleachers the whole time?"

"Actually," I drawled, leaning back in my chair and taking a sip of water. Let him think whatever he wanted, he was going to rot in hell one day. I hoped. "I was in the stand the whole time, thank you very much. And just to let you know," at this I leaned in close, stage whispering to the dunderhead, "your butt looks damn good in tight pants."

I leaned back in my chair, getting as far away from him as I could, and watched in satisfaction as he spluttered, unsure of what to say. It wasn't very often that I disregarded the script, but when I did it really got to Nark. He grew beet red and I took a sip out of my water bottle. "Well I bet you wouldn't look good in tight pants," he retorted, but he did it lamely. Even he had to admit that my ass would look great anywhere.

Kole raised her eyebrows at us, but thankfully didn't say anything. The last thing that I wanted to do was get scolded. I was up all night thanks to my knee and because I had forgotten to take my pain pills. By the time the pain got really bad I hadn't wanted to get up and so I had just lain awake until morning came and I had to get ready for school. It was a miserable life and I was still pinning the blame on Garth's attractive shoulders.

"Garth!" Damn, speak of the devil. I saw his head whip in our direction. "Over here!" Kole shouted, being obnoxious, probably on purpose just to spite me for what happened at the football game. Everyone in the cafeteria, excluding the pot heads, was looking in our direction. I wanted to bury my head in my backpack, an alternative from sand.

"Kole. Shut. Up," I hissed, but it was too late. That kid does not move fast only in water, believe you me. It was probably something like five seconds, I was counting. I watched as Nark appraised Garth, seeing what he was about. Oh, if only the Neanderthal knew what his real competition was...

"Kole," Garth acknowledged, "Tara. And I don't think that I know you..." Garth left the thought open, all of the blanks left for Nark to fill in. I hoped that he would be able to catch on.

"Richardson," our football player supplied, "Nark Richardson. I'm a friend of Kole's. And you are?"

"Cresta, Garth Cresta."

"And I'm Bond. James Bond," I cut in, exasperated of all of this 'manly' last name crap. I gestured to Kole, "and that's Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

Garth desperately looked like he wanted to laugh. Nark looked like someone clubbed him over the head, but that look wasn't unusual so I let it go. Kole's head was underneath the table but I could see her body shaking so I knew that she was laughing. The corners of my mouth twitched and mine and Garth's eyes met.

If this was a teen movie we all would have been laughing already, and then we would have put aside our differences and become best friends. Nark and I, the love hate couple that everyone adores, would date and Garth and Kole would go out, slowly and shyly and tentatively. Then there'd be some conflict and then that ever elusive happily ever after, the one reserved for fairy tales and Disney movies would come about. The end.

But we weren't anything like that. Technically we were people that shouldn't even be speaking to each other. The role of the outcast went to me, the role of the bubbly good girl went to Kole. Nark was the jock, obviously, and Garth was the all around good guy. We were almost like the mutant Breakfast Club.

Honestly my joke wasn't all that funny, and I knew that. But sometimes things like that and you just can't help stop or start a moment. They come naturally, few and far between, but things like this you can't form.

The magic in that moment stopped and we all remembered who we were, what our respective roles were. Nark and I couldn't stand spending ten minutes in each other's company, Garth and I were the estranged best friends, Nark was the outside force that had somehow been brought to us and Kole was the fragile glue that held us all together.

Pathetic, all of us. Kole cleared her throat, this time ending the magic for good. "So, Garth, why don't you sit down? Unless, of course, you were going to go eat with someone else." I saw him hesitate and then glance across the room.

Of course he wouldn't want to sit with us, wouldn't want to sit with me. If he was telling me the truth about asking people about me then he must know of my reputation. We wouldn't want to tarnish our reputation by sitting with riffraff, would we Mr. Atlantean?

He was probably going to go sit with Gar and all of his friends. That would be just peachy, considering they all hate me anyway. They'd probably tell him to go take a bath in hand sanitizer before he sat with them because he was talking to me.

"Actually," he admits, looking a bit sheepish, "I was just going to go eat lunch in my car."

Oh, he's going to play the sympathy card now, is he? Poor me I'm new and have no friends. Oh please. But of course this works on Kole, who couldn't say no to a lost puppy- even if its spleen was showing.

"Well then, you've got to sit with us!" Kole exclaimed, predictably. Garth smiled at me, almost triumphantly, as though he just won some battle or something. Bastard. I turned my attention to Nark.

"So, when are you going to go away?" I asked pointedly. Nark glared at me, but didn't say anything. Of course he wouldn't be going away now, not if there was going to be another contestant in the game of Kole's affections. It almost made me feel sorry for him that he didn't realize about Joey, but then again Kole hadn't even wanted to tell me, I had figured it out on my own and then had to wrestle it out of her. Nark just didn't have the kind of context clue reading skills as I did.

I sighed, knowing what a lost cause was when I saw one. There was a lull in the conversation until Garth decided to open his mouth again. "So Tara, how's your knee?"

I glared at him. How dare he bring that up? It was all his fault anyway. "It's fantastic, no thanks to you."

"What on Earth are you talking about?"

"It's all your fault that it got dislocated in the first place!"

Garth raised an eyebrow at me, and he looked like he was entertained again. I wanted to kick him, but them I remembered that I couldn't because of the boy sitting across from me. Throwing my lunch tray at him might be an acceptable substitute, though. "Whatever you want to think." His words brought back memories from our confrontation over at the track and if I was that type of girl I would have been embarrassed.

"Wait," Kole interrupted, ever the peacemaker. "What happened to your knee, Tara? You didn't tell me that anything was wrong with it, you said that you just hit it on your dresser this morning."

Fact of Life: That line's a classic excuse for abuse victims, Kole. Keep up, will you?

She glared at me, as if it was my fault that I've always been a liar. "Garth made me fall over at the track this weekend."

Nark, of course, had to offer his two cents too. "You run?" He seemed incredulous, not that I blamed him. After all, once I realized that he could read I was incredulous too. I decided to nod in response, not trusting myself to speak.

"Tara was only a few seconds away from state our freshman year," Kole said with a hint of pride in her voice. Both of the boy's heads turned to look at me, but I just glared back.

"I didn't know that," Garth said quietly, looking down at his sandwich. He didn't know that because he didn't care, I didn't know what on earth Garth thought that he was doing with his whole innocent act, because it certainly wasn't working on me.

"If you were that good then why'd you stop?" Nark asked, genuinely curious this time. He understood, because he was an athlete too and he knew that when you were really good at something, and you loved it, how hard it was to give that up. Kole and I lock eyes, because out of everyone here she was the only one that truly knew what had happened. Nark had no idea, and if he did it was because of the high school gossip mill, and Garth probably knew, but only vaguely, if he knew at all.

I decided to shrug as I answered. "It just wasn't fun anymore."

Hey, at least it was a half truth.

:-:

When I get home I open the door and feel like announcing my presence by slamming the door angrily, but then I smell the cinnamon and know instantly that my mother is entertaining someone. She always lights up candles that saturate the whole house with their smells when she has company over. I have no idea who it could be, but they're most likely important. Mom doesn't open our house up to just anyone, after all.

I can hear their soft voices coming from the dining room. "...oh Berra," my mother croons. I can almost imagine her face, the way her blue eyes would look large in her small face, the way that her lips would think in concern. "Was he okay?"

"Not for a long time," the woman says, and then I suddenly recognize who it is. I would recognize that voice anywhere. It's Berra, Garth's mother. Her voice still has an Atlantean accent to this day, with its drown out 's' sound and its muted vowels and clipped 'c's. She used to tell Garth and I stories on the days that we used to refuse to be separated, even for bed, and I remember imagining her voice being able to wrap around me like a warm blanket.

My mother has basically lost her Markovian accent and has wholeheartedly accepted America as her home, but Berra has never forgotten her Atlantean heritage and refuses to. I remember her telling my mother once that she wanted to remember Atlantis, a small island country in the middle of the Caribbean, even all the bad memories, because it gave her Garth.

"I don't think that he's gotten over it, even today. It's been hard for all of us, especially because he thinks that he should have done something."

"But there was nothing that Garth could do," my mother protested.

"That's what we told him, but he won't listen to us."

I take that as my cue to enter, I don't want to have time to think about whatever my mother and Berra are talking about that has to do with Garth, I don't want to care. "Hi mom," I say as I enter, and my mother and Berra both stand up. "Berra."

"Terra, darling," Berra says, opening her arms to me, and I don't have the heart to correct her. When I was younger I used to find it amusing that our names rhymed. My mother raises her eyebrows when I don't say anything, but maybe she's used to Berra being an exception to everything. "You're absolutely beautiful now. You look just like your mother!" She envelopes me in a big hug and I sink into her, remembering the days when I really was Terra and I had a best friend and no worries or unnecessary angst. But then she lets go and I'm myself again.

"Thank you," I reply, knowing that I'm going to have to be polite to her or face my mother's wrath, not that I would ever be rude to Berra. Berra smiles at my mother.

"Why don't you come sit with us, Tara, we were just talking," my mother invites me, and I sit in one of the armchairs across from the love seat where Berra and my mother were just drinking coffee, their mugs still on the table, not a wet ring in sight.

"I'd love to." I flash Berra my best smile and remember the last time she was in my house, three years ago. I hadn't been smiling then, I promise. I probably hadn't even made it out my room, by that time.

Looking at Berra and my mother side by side you can definitely see the similarities. While my mother might be all gold and blue, and Berra might be dark, you can see women that are cut of the same cloth. Both of them fell in love with the wrong person and the wrong time, and they both got abandoned. They both moved to America to make a new start, managed to snag a rich husband even with a baby on their hip. And they're both absolutely beautiful.

"So, Terra, how's school been?" Berra asks me, and I have to fight from gritting my teeth at my name. It's amazing how... wrong it can feel after not being called that for several years.

"Oh, you know, schoolish," I respond and Berra smiles warmly at me. Like hell am I telling her about the incident today where I got slammed into my locker by some girl as she walked by because I looked at her boyfriend the wrong way. I had screamed at her and we almost got into a fight before a weary teacher stuck her head out his classroom and told us to move along. The girl had left then, and there had been a boiling in my blood the whole rest of the day.

"You know, your mother and I were just talking about you and Garth..." Berra trails off and looks at my mother, who nods. She seems almost scared to say something, but then she's always been kind of scared of confrontation. Funny how she helped create a daughter who practically thrives on it. "He says that you two have a class together?" The way she says it makes it sound like a question.

"Yes, we do. Life studies, or something like that. We don't really do much in that class, so I don't really pay that much attention." My smile gets tighter as I say this.

My mother decides to play the concerned parent routine. "Tara! That's horrible." I smile at that, look at her, trying to be all parental.

"And you should see the teacher, he's a real... old guy," I end lamely, because the two of them tensed up when I mentioned something about the teacher not having a uterus.

Fact of Life: One mistake and it'll haunt you forever. Scout's honor.

My mother decides to break the awkward silence that grows between us as best she can. "So, Berra, why don't you three come to dinner. We'd all love to have you over, and maybe even Brion would be able to come."

At mention of my half brother and Garth in the same sentence I choke on my own saliva. What what what?

"That sounds lovely!" Berra says, clapping her hands. "What do you think, Terra?"

"Sounds great." I think I'll just go dig my grave now please...

"Then it's settled. You can come to dinner this weekend. I'll go call Brion right now."

A/N: Eh, it's kind of short, but it'll do. Also, who wants to know what's going on with Garth? What were Berra (btw, before I forget, thank you Clair-Rae for telling me Garth's mother's name) and Tara's mom talking about? It'll all be revealed, lol. Also, thanks to The Createn for reviewing last chapter, I wish that you had an account so I could thank you properly! And yes, I am a girl. :) 105% sure of it too.