The Downfall of the 'It Girl'

That's a heavy thing to go and lay on a girl......

I swear that the rest of the afternoon was the longest one in recorded history. If I had ever thought that time had drug on anytime ever before, it paled in comparison to today. As I sat through each of my next three classes that I had after lunch, my physical body was present, but the rest of Jenna Matthews was most definitely ‘absent.’ The events from lunch encompassed my entire mind. 

The conversation between Calvin and I made my heart ache almost to the point of being unbearable. What exactly had it been that Sarah had said to Calvin to make him question my feelings (that I had thought were blatantly obvious) towards him? I loved him, I knew that without a doubt. He had my undivided attention while we were together, and when we weren't together, he was all that I could think about. 

Suddenly, about a quarter of the way into my sixth hour Spanish class, I began questioning what Calvin’s true feelings were towards me. Maybe he didn't like me or care about me as much as I had been thinking he did. I mean, I wanted him to; with every fiber of my being, I sincerely, wholeheartedly wanted him to, but maybe, just maybe, he actually didn't. Oh, good gravy, this was all becoming entirely too much to process at once. 

But the conundrum that is my life didn’t end there. No, not quite. Then there was the episode at lunch with Landon. 

Oh, Landon Craig, you incredibly gigantic pain in my ass. We had so much history together. At least from my perspective, anyway. Before lunch today, I had begun to think (realize?) that I had quite possibly been just another tally mark on Landon’s list of girls he had made his way through. But there was a little hiccup on my part with knowing that I’d been a ‘tally mark’ and just simply accepting it and moving on with my life, like all of the other girls had seemed to have done. 

My hang-up was that I had fell in love with him, and I had fell hard. ‘Those first loves will do that to you, honey,’ I heard my mom’s voice say inside my head from back when I had broke the news to her about Landon and I splitting up. I had intentionally left out the real reason as to why, of course. I had just told her that we had gotten into a huge fight and ended up calling it quits between us. Some things are just better left unsaid when it comes to parents.

Landon had given me everything that I had at one time, at least, thought I ever wanted: an incredibly hot, insanely popular boyfriend, not just friends, but the “right” friends, and of course, single-handedly made me the most popular girl at Webster High, I was the ’It Girl,’ as everyone referred to the girls in our clique. And he had managed all of these things in a blink of an eye, with a wave of his hand, like a magic trick, I guess you could say. There was absolutely zero effort on his part, of course. It was all included in the exclusive ‘VIP package’ that being Landon’s girlfriend ensured. 

And I was naïve enough at the time to actually think and believe that it was all for real. I thought that Kelsey and Amber really were my new best friends, and that the others in our group really liked me for me, too, not for the sole reason that they were more or less ‘required’ to at least pretend that they did, being part of the Landon Craig VIP Packaged Deal, of course. But the part that hurt the most when I finally opened my eyes and saw the ‘It’ group for who and what they really were, was, yup, you guessed it, Landon. 

There wasn’t one single, solitary second while we were a couple that I ever questioned his feelings towards me. He was everything and anything that a girl could ever dream for in a boyfriend, especially while still in high school. He was sweet, caring, attentive, an incredible kisser, and we had just seemed to ‘click,’ I guess you could say. We were more different than we were alike, but it worked for us (or so I thought, of course).