Lies, Revenge & The Brother of My Best Friend

The sun shines, warm and inviting on my back as I walk through the courtyard and into the doors of Saint Maria High School. If ever a school chose their name perfectly, mine did. Many of the adults I’ve been around complain about how terrible their high school experience was- the mean girls, the jerky jocks who picked on “nerds”, everything scuttling around trying to avoid the attention of popular losers who thought it was fun to tear others apart. Well not here! St. Maria HS has a COMPLETE anti tolerance policy but even then, everyone here is kind and welcoming to everyone else, or at the very least, they mind their own business instead of trying to make others feel smaller. Maybe it’s because our town is so small everyone know everyone’s parents, but I’d like to believe that people are just inherently good to each other when they’re in a safe environment that fosters that behaviour. Let’s get familiar. I’m Genevieve Westerson, Jenna to almost everyone around me. I’m a high school senior, which is twelfth grade, thinking of becoming an accountant or something. I like accounting, it’s really fun. Anyways on to my day, which was long but whose day isn’t? Everyone trying to maintain good grades while finding their identity and somehow fit in a full meal while trying to socialize at lunch time- it’s a lot. It’s also so uniting when everyone around you is as concerned with their academic future as you are. Halfway through eight period I feel my phone buzz in my pocket, a text message that I can’t check. Ms. Robbins is explaining mitosis and science is NOT my forté. It will just have to wait. When I check the text as soon as the bell sounds out, it’s my best friend Jackie asking me to meet her in the labs. I’ve just left them so I just wait for the room to clear out before I reenter. Eventually she arrives, joined by my boyfriend Quintin and her other friend, Renee. A little background- I’ve never really liked Renee, she’s always just been a friend of my best friend. Maybe I’ll sound mean spirited for saying this, but I simply do not f**k with her energy at all. She just FEELS like a secretly weird girl, and not in a good way, but she’s my best friend’s friend so I keep it cute with her. Jackie Topanga is my best friend. I wish we had a cute ass story like people who were best friends since they first met in kindergarten or something, but nope. Our friendship was more like a cold soup that got microwaved. We saw each other in the eighth grade on orientation day, and sometimes I smoked weed without her circle of friends, but we’d never really have a conversation beyond “pass the blunt”. That changed in tenth grade when we had the same accounting class together. We had assigned seats next to each other, got to talking and soon we were thick as thieves. Outside of the classes we didn’t have together, wherever you saw Jackie you’d see Jenna too. It turned out that her mom picked her up after work from her aunts place near the school, in the same estate I lived on, so we walked home together too and sometimes hung out until her mom arrived for her. Then there’s my baby, Quintin. Full name Quintin Erkley Morris, but don’t you dare ever call him Erkley. Everyone at school just called him Q. He’s the school’s star athlete- a track star and the best striker on our soccer team. He’s not just riding the wave of physical talent though, he’s also very intelligent and hardworking. If this were any other school people may wonder why the schools “number one boy” was dating me. By all accounts I would be called a nerd or worse. I’m not super attractive, I’m not a star pupil or a complete angel and I’m definitely not one of what people would call the “popular” girls- cheerleaders, runners, super confident types. I’m just a normal girl really, but Quintin’s just a normal boy, just like everyone else in this school. There are no real cliques, hierarchies or anything like that, just a bunch of teens trying to manage their workload. We click. I don’t know how to describe it, but Quintin and I just get each other, you know? Much like my relationship with Jackie, it wasn’t an instant connection. We knew each other for all of eighth and ninth grade but it was just a “hey, how you doing?” in between periods in the hall. Then one day I went to a group hangout at a cafe and we had an actual conversation. He was respectful, emotionally intelligent, funny and way less rowdy than he was at school. I learned that he could play the guitar. We went to get coffee later that night, just the two of us, and I knew he was someone I wanted to have closer. A month later we were dating, and we’ve been together for almost two years now. I’ve been struggling trying to keep his gift for our second anniversary under wraps, but keeping it a secret is hard when I know he’ll love it so much. It’s okay, I only have four days left now. The next words I heard would snap me right out of my giddiness. “Jenna, Q has something he wants to tell you.”