Treasure Hunt

Treasure Hunt (2)

Chapter 2

Jennifer Smith

“I miss you,” Jennifer murmured into the phone.

The door to her room was locked, refusing anyone to get in.

“I miss you too,” Drew’s low voice came from the other end of the line.

“When did you say we could see each other again?” Jennifer asked him.

That question had been on her mind twenty-four/seven for the last month. She missed him terribly.

“I don’t know Jenn, I hope it’s soon though,” Drew sighed through the phone.

The two of them had been talking to each other over the phone for hours every day since they got back. Jennifer knew that it was him she missed the most. She had tried calling Rebecca a few times a week too, but she had never answered. Jennifer feared she was mad at her. And she missed her best friend. But talking to Drew really helped her forget about everything else that had happened in her life.

The second she had walked in the front door one month earlier, her father had enveloped her in a big hug, telling her how much he worried and how much he missed her. With a scoff, Jennifer had pushed him off and said, “It’s your fault in the first place. I can’t believe you let them do that to me,” and then walked away.

When Jennifer had started to go up the stairs she met her mother, who was wondering where her husband had wandered off to. She had glanced at her only daughter and then said, “Oh, you’re back.” No hug. No “I’ve missed you”s. Just, you’re back, before her mother had continued her trip downstairs.

Ever since then, Jennifer had avoided her mother. Mrs. Smith had done exactly the same to her daughter. They had never gotten along.

Her father, on the other hand, had done everything in his power to make Jennifer forgive him. It hadn’t helped much. For every apology, Jennifer had completely closed off. Every present was stocked up in the closet she never used. Every hug was dodged and every conversation was simply ignored.

After all her discoveries, Jennifer had decided that she didn’t need her family. They had barely been around in her childhood. What gave her father the right to waltz into her life after getting her kidnapped?

So, she had simply just locked herself in her room, never talking to them. She took her meals up to her room, drove herself to school in the car her father had gotten for her, no matter how many times he asked to drive her and simply just walked past them in the halls of her home. So nothing much had really changed in her house.

Her life at school though, had been completely transformed. The day after she was taken, and the day after her date with Mason Black, a rumor had been spread around school. Mason Black had told his football buddies that he had taken her innocence, popped her cherry, taken her virginity, or whatever way you want to say it.

That rumor had circulated around school, and when Jennifer never returned to school, everyone assumed she had run away because she had gotten pregnant. Not even when she had returned to school did the rumors cease. What went around now was that she had run to Nevada to make sure no one ever heard about her abortion. She had spent the month on her grandparents’ farm to get over the loss of her baby. She still suffered from depression and refused to approach anyone in her class.

When Jennifer had first heard that rumor, she wanted to cry. She wanted to run to the bathroom and ball her eyes out. But she held her head high. And now, a month later, she wanted to laugh out loud every time she heard people whisper about her.

She didn’t care what those people thought of her. It was only what she thought of herself. She had realized that the people at her school were shallow. Even if she had known them her entire life, they didn’t care about her. And the moment an ugly rumor came out, everyone avoided her like she was the plague.