The Other Half || Jerrie

Chapter Five

By the time Perrie Edwards made it to middle school, she realized that she had only one friend. It wasn’t that big of a deal, Harry was a great friend, but she was also getting to the age where a girl needs a few good girl friends.

Alex and Perrie brainstormed the problem together, knowing that she was still attending the same school with the same people had been with in elementary school. They decided that Perrie should try playing a sport, so she decided on lacrosse. She joined the town league so that she could meet some girls from her town, many of whom didn’t attend private school.

She didn’t end up making any friends, as all her teammates had joined the team with friends they already had. In fact, Perrie ended up making an enemy of one girl, Jesy Nelson, after she accidentally nailed a ball at the brunette, giving her a concussion. While Perrie didn’t make any friends on the team, she did find a love for the sport of lacrosse, and that was just as good.

At the start of eighth grade, Alex and Debbie sat Perrie down to discuss what she wanted to do for high school. Her current school ended in eighth grade so she would need to start applying to private high schools or decide if she wanted to try public schools.

It was Alex who suggested the Rhythm School. Unlike the other network schools, it was a co-ed school. The school was well known and had incredibly good ratings. After shadowing a current student, Perrie decided that she wanted to go.

She brought the school up to Harry, but for the first time the two best friends separated, Harry choosing to go to a private all-boys school.

Freshman year started with a surprise to Perrie. She was surrounded by girls and boys who had never known her as the weird girl who plays chess with the governor’s son. Puberty was hitting Perrie in the best way possible and for some reason everyone wanted to be her friend.

The biggest surprise to Perrie, however, was befriending Jesy Nelson. In middle school, Jesy had been angry at the world and a bit of a brute on the lacrosse field. In high school, she was no different. The only difference now was that Jesy was no longer around her public school friends and was friendless and out of place in the private school. Her only friend was her older brother, Niall, who was also a new student, but new as a junior.

Perrie could tell that the Nelsons were hiding something, but she wasn’t one to pry. She had secrets of her own, ones she was just discovering. Like how great she thought Taylor Swift’s legs looked in her skirt.

Befriending Jesy Nelson wasn’t a choice, it just happened after they both earned a detention the second week of freshman year. Jesy had earned hers for skipping class, Perrie for already being late to school six times. Though to be fair, that was Debbie’s fault.

Perrie was the one who had broken the silence as they sat in the empty classroom after school during their detention, the only ones in the room.

“So are you planning on trying out for lacrosse?” she asked the angry brunette.

“Obviously,” Jesy scoffed in response. “I’m hoping to make varsity, if I don’t get another concussion anyway.”

Perrie knew that Jesy wasn’t exactly acting invitingly, but she couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Moments later, Jesy joined her. The teacher on detention duty heard them from outside the room and came in to reprimand them.

This, of course, just caused them to laugh even louder.

From that day forward, Perrie finally had a girl friend. She never expected to become friends with Jesy Nelson, nor did the rest of the girls in her grade who suddenly decided that Perrie’s choice in friend made her not worthy of being one of the “popular” kids. Neither Perrie nor Jesy minded though.

Two months into freshman year, Perrie and Jesy realized that they were too old to go trick-or-treating any more. That being said, they weren’t ready to give up wearing costumes, so they enlisted Niall and Harry to join them in a group costume. The four of them were the Scooby Gang. Not from Scooby-doo though, no, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Perrie went as Buffy, Jesy as Willow, Harry as Xander and Niall as Giles. Harry and Niall had flipped back and forth on who they wanted to be, but in the end it was decided that while Harry had a great British accent, Niall was the most mom-like of the group and therefore best suited as Giles.

Because Niall was sixteen while the rest of them were fourteen, he was able to drive the group to a well-known haunted house across the state border in New York.

Perrie hadn’t really thought through the fact that the haunted house that had been all over the news for how great it was would be especially crowded on Halloween night. They ended up waiting in line for tickets for half an hour, then for another hour in line to actually get into the house until it was finally their turn.

At the door the group was told that the house was a maze and that part of the experience was trying to figure out how to get out. The actors inside were also allowed to separate groups, but if they said the safe word “mercy” they would immediately be allowed to exit the house through a back door.

Needless to say, the four made a pact not to use the safe word.

The first room they entered was a classic creepy room filled with old dolls that looked like something out of a horror film. The group stayed strong though and barely flinched when the clown in the corner reached out at them.

After they left the room, they found themselves at a fork and decided to go left. They were halfway down the hallway when they heard the sound of a chainsaw and an actor wearing a mask started coming towards them holding the chainsaw high. Niall gave a high-pitched shriek and was the first to turn and run, Harry close behind them.

“I’m not scared, are you Perrie?” Jesy asked, turning to her friend. Perrie shook her head, but she was a little scared. Perrie had learned a lot about Jesy in the two months they had been friends. She’d learned that the brunette was carefree at her core and saw the beauty in everything, but also that something had caused her to learn how to be strong at a very young age.

The actor with the chainsaw picked up his speed and that was when Jesy and Perrie looked at each other quickly before sprinting past the actor, continuing down the hallway.

At this point they realized they’d probably lost Harry and Niall, but at least they still had each other. That is, until a teen actor dressed as Little Red Riding Hood with bite marks as make-up, dragged Jesy away from Perrie.

Perrie frantically searched around for any of her friends, running through a room filled very realistic spider webs.

She saw a figure up ahead that looked a lot like Niall with a girl running behind him. It was dark and she could only see shadows so she assumed Jesy had found her brother.

“Wait!” Perrie yelled.

She followed the two into the next room only to discover that the next room was pitch black. Perrie reached an arm out and brushed against something sticky. She yelped and pulled back her arm. She heard someone chuckle just ahead of her and guessed it was Jesy.

Perrie took a risk and extended her arms out in front of her, walking forward until they hit the back of the girl she assumed to be Jesy. The moment Perrie touched the girl’s shoulder a cackling sound echoed throughout the room causing Perrie to quickly grasp the girl’s hand.

The hand was slightly sweaty, but Perrie barely noticed that. What she noticed was how perfectly her hand fit in the other girl’s. When her heart skipped a beat, it wasn’t out of fright, but rather because when the girl gave her hand a slight squeeze, electricity seemed to run through her veins.

The girl started walking forward and Perrie silently followed, still grasping her hand. The two felt their way to the exit in the dark. The light was blinding when they pushed the door open and the first thing Perrie saw after her vision cleared was Jesy waving at Perrie.

Perrie realized immediately that it wasn’t her friend’s hand she was holding and quickly dropped it, face burning with embarrassment as she ran towards Jesy. What Perrie didn’t realize, what she had no way of knowing, was that the hand she had been holding was one she would hold again in several years, and would hold for years to come until the day Jade Thirlwall died in her sleep at the age of 94, lying in bed with her wife, hands grasped.