August 19th, 2008
“I swear I’ll dump a bucket of water all over you if you don’t get up,” Lexi warned from above me, but I still didn’t move a muscle. Even if she were to pour a bucket of water on me, I wouldn’t have cared about that either. I just didn’t want to get up, for more reasons than one.
“Jordan,” a gentler voice said now, grabbing onto my shoulder and shaking me lightly. “You need to get up. You can’t miss the first day of school.”
“Yes I can,” I snapped, swatting AJ’s hand away. “I don’t want to go.”
I heard Chelsea sigh, and I saw her shadow on my wall cross her arms over her chest. I was being stubborn, but that was usual. The girls should have been expecting this, considering they knew I wasn’t a morning person.
“Do you think she’s still depressed over…” Lexi started, and I could tell she glanced at me before continuing with, “D-A-L-L-A-S?”
“I can spell,” I muttered, not even turning to face them. “I’m not the smartest girl in our grade for nothing.”
“You won’t be the smartest in our grade anymore if you don’t get up and go to school,” Aimee snapped, sitting down on my bed by my legs. “She’s been depressed about Dallas the entire summer.”
“It was her first broken heart…” AJ tried to stick up for me, but I knew that it wasn’t going to do any good. It had been almost three months; I should have been over Dallas. Sometimes I would be able to forget about him, but he always seemed to be what I thought about whenever I went to sleep and whenever I woke up.
“We’re all going to have our hearts broken,” Chelsea said now. “But I guess it’s a little different for Jordan, huh? She’s liked Dallas ever since she was really little. I guess I can see why she’s so upset after all these months.”
“Did I ever say that that was the reason why I don’t want to get out of bed?” I nearly shouted, my back still to them as I continued to face the wall. “I never said that I’m not getting up because of Dallas. I may be upset whenever I think about him, but that doesn’t mean he’s the reason I don’t want to go to school. He didn’t even go to our school anyways.”
I thought I heard Aimee smirk, if that was possible. “Oh. I think I know why she really doesn’t want to go to school.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing what Aimee was talking about, when Lexi asked, “What?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” Aimee snickered, sounding way too smug for her own good. “They didn’t do it last year because Headmistress Belladonna was sick with the flu. But they’re going to be doing it this year. Don’t you remember getting that letter from the school over the summer? The one that told all the students to go to the auditorium on the first day of school? It didn’t tell us what it was for, but I know because my sister’s a senior this year, she’s the vice-president, and she’s friends with Jordan’s brother. I’m sure he’s told her what’s going to happen.”
“What?” Chelsea asked now. “What do they do? What’s going to happen?”
Aimee grinned. “They welcome back the students of Adeline and Cambridge… together.”
“Why would they do that?” AJ asked, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “I mean, they are our brother school, but…”
“Exactly, they’re our brother school and we’re their sister school,” Aimee nodded, sitting on my bed next to Chelsea now. “We have dances with them, and other things like that. They just want us to get used to each other. We’re technically the same school.”
“We’re technically not,” I snapped, sitting up in my bed now and throwing the covers off of me. “We don’t go to the Cambridge Institute for Boys. We are not boys. We’re girls, which means we go to the Adeline Academy for Girls.”
“She really doesn’t want to see Jesse,” Chelsea blinked, as if it wasn’t obvious.
“We didn’t see him all summer,” Lexi pointed out, in case we somehow didn’t know. “I wonder why. Do you think something happened to him or something?”
“He probably just never left his house, or he went out of town,” Aimee shrugged, since it was no big deal at all. It was actually good that we didn’t see Jesse Jacobsen at all for the two and a half months of summer… “But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that we’re going to see him today for the assembly.”
“Are they coming to Adeline or are we going to Cambridge?” Lexi now asked.
“They’re coming to Adeline,” Aimee answered. “They always come to Adeline. We’d be informed if we had to go to Cambridge.”
“I’m not going,” I groaned, falling back onto my bed and covering my head with my sheets. “You can’t make me!”
“We might not be able to…” Chelsea started, and I was kind of scared of what was going to come next. “But someone else can…”
“Austin!” Lexi cried from my doorway. “She won’t get up!”
I heard my brother’s footsteps as he made his way up the stairs. This wasn’t going to end well, I knew, but that still didn’t make me get up at of bed. I was pretty sure Austin was still scared about getting me out of bed from when I had almost taken his hand off…
That was why Dallas always woke me up. He wasn’t scared of me hurting him. I couldn’t even remember a time when I had hurt him. It had always just been Austin… Maybe it was because he was my brother and I didn’t care if I hurt him.
“Jordan,” Austin said from the doorway, almost causing me to laugh because I knew he wasn’t going to come inside. “You should really get up. You don’t want to be late.”
“I’m not going,” I snapped, curling under the covers even more.
I could tell my brother rolled his eyes. “Is this because of the whole Cambridge thing? There’s a possibility that you won’t even see Jesse Jacobsen at all. You’re probably just overreacting and thinking too much.”
“They separate it by grades,” Aimee informed my brother as she leaned against the doorframe beside him. “There are about one hundred kids in each other our grades. So there are going to be two hundred sophomore kids in the auditorium at the same time. Jesse Jacobsen is going to be one of them. There’s a possibility she’ll see him out of the two hundred kids… But then again there might be less because this assembly thing is optional, but recommended. So that means Jesse might not even be there.”
“Oh, he’s going to be there,” Chelsea snickered, causing my grip on my blankets to only tighten. “If he thinks Jordan’s going to be there, he’s going to be there.”
“I don’t have to go!” I snapped, shoving my head under my pillow now. “If I feel like getting up later before school starts, I’ll get up and just go to school. I’m not going to go to this stupid before school assembly thing if I don’t have to.”
“You’re going,” Lexi sighed. “The four of us are going, so you’re going to go too. Just because Jesse Jacobsen might be somewhere doesn’t mean you can just hide out in your room all the time like a hermit.”
“I agree,” Austin nodded.
“You’re not going to school,” I countered back to my brother. “So why should I go anywhere?”
“I start school next week,” Austin reminded me, in case I had somehow forgotten.
I growled. “Of course you do.”
“Are we going to have to deal with this for the next three years of high school?” Chelsea huffed, shaking my leg as she continued to try to get me out of bed. “Austin is too afraid to pick her up, and we don’t have Dallas here anymore to get her up!”
“Mentioning him probably isn’t the best idea, Chelsea,” AJ snapped at our glasses-wearing friend, and I still didn’t move. “I’m pretty sure he’s still factoring in on how Jordan’s feeling right now.”
Chelsea chuckled nervously. “Oh, yeah…”
“At least we were able to get her out a little bit over the summer,” Aimee sighed, and I could tell she was fed up with me not getting out of bed. “She’d be even paler than she already is if we didn’t get her some sun. Like an albino.”
I said nothing, and my four best friends and my brother now knew that I seriously wasn’t in a good mood. I usually would have defended myself or glared, but this time I said absolutely nothing.
“There’s no way I could get ready in time,” I mumbled, still not snapping back about the pale comment. “Go on without me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jordan,” Aimee smirked, grabbing onto the pillow that was over my head and removing it. “You have plenty of time. You don’t even know what time it is, do you?”
I didn’t think I wanted to know the real time. I thought that they had woken me up at six thirty, the time I usually had to wake up, but something was telling me that I was way wrong.
“We woke you up at five o’clock, and now it’s five thirty,” Lexi informed me, and I almost fell out of bed. “You have plenty of time to get ready.”
No wonder I was more tired than usual! They woke me up an hour and a half before I was supposed to wake up! They were sure lucky that I decided to go to bed earlier the night before than I usually did… I would have taken their heads off.
“I could always call Dallas and say that you forgive him and want to talk to him,” Austin informed me innocently, still not moving away from him spot from my doorway. What a wuss. “Is that what you want, Jordan?”
“I’m up!” I shouted, throwing the covers off to the side and springing out of bed. “Don’t call that asshole!”
Aimee smiled, nodding at me. “Good. Now go take a shower.”
I scowled at her, but did as I was told anyway. There was no use in arguing with them. It was five to one, and I had lost this round.
But that didn’t mean I had lost the war.
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“They’re giving out refreshments,” I scowled as my friends and I made our way into the auditorium. “Are you kidding me?”
“Only water bottles,” AJ made sure to point out. “You know they don’t allow anything but water in the auditorium.”
“They still shouldn’t be selling anything.”
“Jordan’s just taking everything so negatively this morning,” Chelsea laughed, almost tripping over her untied shoelace until Lexi caught her arm. “Hopefully her want to be the best will stop her from being so depressing.”
“Yeah,” Lexi nodded. “She’ll probably be back to normal once school starts up normally again.”
“You’re acting like I’m not even here,” I snapped, as if my friends were completely idiots and didn’t realize that I was right there beside them. “Not that I really care. I hope I feel a lot better once school starts up again. I hate feeling this way.”
“You’ll feel much better once you get a boyfriend!” Lexi giggled, wrapping her arm around my shoulders.
I shrugged her off. “Not going to happen.”
As we took our seats, I found it kind of weird to see boys in our auditorium at our school. They didn’t belong there, even if they were from our brother school. Adeline was an all-girls school, and that was all it would ever be… I couldn’t even imagine being forced to go to school with the Cambridge boys. What would they call our school if they forced us together? Adebridge? Camline? I didn’t even want to know.
“Seeing Jesse won’t be that bad, Jordan,” Aimee assured, patting my shoulder happily.
“You’re just saying that because you can kiss him again if you see him,” Chelsea spoke up flatly, and I couldn’t help but agree. The three girls and I hated him greatly, but I couldn’t tell if Aimee felt the same way.
I didn’t like this chair that I was sitting in. It was too squeaky and it felt like it would break if I leaned back in it too much. I went to a wealthy private school; couldn’t they afford nice chairs? It didn’t seem like it…
“Welcome back, class of 2011 students,” a familiar voice suddenly said into the microphone. I looked to the stage to see our beautiful headmistress, Cambridge’s headmaster right beside her. They stood very close to each other, and I wondered if I was the only one thinking that something might have been going on… “It’s great to see you all again after the long summer.”
The summer was definitely not long. Not at all.
“Headmaster Solomon and I would like to welcome you all back,” Headmistress Belladonna said now, but I couldn’t hear what else she was saying because something else quickly caught my attention.
“Well, look who it is,” a new voice now said, and I felt a hard kick right to the back of my chair. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Emery. I thought you’d still be in bed right now.”
“I would be,” I snarled, not even turning toward him, “if it wasn’t for my friends.”
“How about we go to bed together?” he suggested in my ear, and I would have taken up this offer if he meant that we would be in bed sleeping. “I think it might be fun.”
“Go to hell.”
I didn’t even look back at him. I so wasn’t in the mood, and I knew he could tell that. But that didn’t mean he was going to stop teasing me… I didn’t think he would ever stop teasing me.
“How does it feel to be a sophomore, Emery?” Jesse asked, his head cocking to the side as he smirked at me. “Must be fun, huh? We’re not the babies anymore.”
“Sure,” I shrugged, seriously not in the mood to deal with him. “It’s great.”
Jesse chuckled. “You sound so enthusiastic.”
“You know it.”
Out of the two hundred people there, why did he have to sit anywhere near me? He had to have seen me. That was the only explanation I had.
“Oops,” I suddenly heard beside my ear, and before I could turn to snap at Jesse, an entire water bottle was being dumped onto my blouse and skirt, soaking the front of them completely.
I didn’t know what to do for a moment. I just sat there in complete shock, trying to register what had just happened. Jesse Jacobsen had just poured water all over me, and the front of my clothes were soaked. He was sure lucky that he didn’t try to touch my hair…
“I’m going to kill you!” I shouted, spinning around in my seat and reaching to strangle him. It might have just been water, but I was completely soaked! I couldn’t go through the rest of the school day like this!
I must have been putting too much weight on the back of my squeaky chair, because before I even knew what was happening, it snapped back and broke, causing my face to smash right into Jesse’s chest. It also caused the entire place to go completely quiet, everyone’s attention on us now.
“Jordan Emery!” Headmistress Belladonna cried at the exact same time Headmaster Solomon shouted, “Jesse Jacobsen!”
I froze, my hands on Jesse’s shoulders because I couldn’t reach his neck. My face was still pressed against his chest, but I knew that he was smirking at me, like he always did, and all I could do was glare, not moving my cheek from against his chest.
And that was the first time I had ever been called to Headmistress Belladonna’s office because of Jesse Jacobsen.
But this wouldn't be the last.
J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J~J
Jesse’s P.O.V.
“You’re up bright and early,” my mother informed me as she continued to squeeze oranges for orange juice. “That’s very rare for you, Jesse.”
“It’s because he has to go to Adeline before school starts,” Camilla snickered over from the kitchen table as she nibbled on a piece of toast. “Actually, he doesn’t have to go. I heard it’s completely optional, but recommended.”
“And why are you awake?” I asked her flatly when I turned toward her. “Your school doesn’t start until next week.”
My sister shrugged. “I wanted to see if you’d get up early to see Jordan at her school.”
I scowled at my sister as she and my mother giggled. They were never going to let me hear the end of this… All they ever did was tease me about Jordan. Even when we went to New York to visit my cousin Marnie and the rest of our family, so now they knew about my feelings for this girl as well…
“I’m going now,” I grumbled, grabbing onto a piece of toast before making my way out the door. I ate it in three bites, quickly making my way to my usual route to school. It was the same way to get to Adeline, only quicker…
When I got to the school ten minutes later, I filed into the auditorium along with everyone else. It was a lot easier to find, considering the fact tons of kids were piling inside. There should have only been around two hundred kids, at the most… It seemed like there was so many more.
I was handed a water bottle as I looked around for the only person I wanted to see, hoping that she would be there. I hadn’t seen her the entire summer, and I actually really missed her. I’d rather have her snap at me than never see her again…
It seemed like I was never going to find her, but then my eyes landed on the familiar redhead that had kissed me all those months before. She was still hot, maybe even hotter. But she was nothing compared to the girl sitting right beside her.
She had gotten her hair cut. Instead of it ending just under her shoulder blades like it had the last time I had seen her, it was now shoulder length. It wasn’t something I was used to just yet, but I knew that I would soon. She could have shown up with the same haircut as me and she still would have been beautiful.
So I decided to sit behind her, deciding not to make a sound to show her that I was there. It would have been much more fun to surprise her later.
“Welcome back, class of 2011 students,” Headmistress Belladonna said into the microphone. I tore my gaze away from the back of Jordan’s and looked to the stage to see Adeline’s headmistress, Headmaster Solomon beside her. They stood way too close to just be friends… Huh. I wonder what that was about. “It’s great to see you all again after the long summer.”
When having to deal with my family all summer, it definitely was long. It was kind of nice to be back.
“Headmaster Solomon and I would like to welcome you all back,” Headmistress Belladonna said now, but I didn’t feel like listening anymore, so I decided now would be the time to finally annoy Jordan after almost three months.
“Well, look who it is,” I said, and I kicked her chair as hard as I could. I hope I didn’t hurt her… “I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Emery. I thought you’d still be in bed right now.”
“I would be,” she snarled, not even turning toward me, “if it wasn’t for my friends.”
Let’s just say I was very thankful for her friends right then.
“How about we go to bed together?” I suggested, leaning closer so my lips were right by her ear, and she sat there for a moment, as if she was actually thinking about accepting my offer. I would have been out of that room in a hot second if she did… “I think it might be fun.”
“Go to hell,” she spat.
She didn’t even look at me. I wasn’t ever going to admit this out loud, but it did hurt me just a little. I wanted her to look at me. I hadn’t changed very much over the summer, and I wanted her to notice that. I wanted her to see that my hair was still the same length because it had grown while I was in New York and I had gotten it cut the week before. I wanted her to see I had a scar on my left eyebrow from my cousin Cameron accidentally kicking me with his soccer cleat. She just had to look at me.
She wasn’t in the mood, I could tell. Was she still not over Dallas? Or was it just because her friends forced her to get out of bed early? I wanted to know why she was so upset.
But I was an idiot, so it wasn’t like I was about to ask.
“How does it feel to be a sophomore, Emery?” I asked, since this was the first thing that popped into my head. I cocked my head to the side and smirked at her. “Must be fun, huh? We’re not the babies anymore.”
“Sure,” she shrugged, and I frowned. She didn’t notice though, since she still didn’t look at me. “It’s great.”
I forced out a chuckle. “You sound so enthusiastic.”
“You know it.”
She was so unhappy, and I wanted to know why. But if I had asked her what was wrong, she would have just thought that I was asking so I could make fun of her for it. I really was an idiot sometimes… Or most of the time, when it came to Jordan.
Suddenly, I got an idea that would make her look at me. I quickly unscrewed the cap to the water bottle I had been given, holding my breath as I tipped it over Jordan’s shoulder. She’d definitely kill me for this… “Oops.”
The entire thing dumped onto her blouse and skirt, soaking the front of them completely. I felt heat rise to my cheeks when I realized that she was wearing a white shirt. This was actually a very pleasant sight, and I liked it a hell of a lot, but not when we were in the auditorium filled with two hundred other kids…
She didn’t seem to know what to do for a moment. She just sat there in shock, so I just sat there as well as I waited for her to react to what had just happened. She was going to react, right? Why wouldn’t she react?
“I’m going to kill you!” she suddenly shouted, spinning around in her seat and reaching for my neck to strangle me. I grinned at her, glad that she was finally looking at me and acting like her old self.
Much to my surprise, the back of her chair suddenly snapped and she fell forward, her face smashing right into my chest. This also caused the entire place to go silent, and everyone’s attention on us now.
“Jordan Emery!” Headmistress Belladonna cried at the exact same time Headmaster Solomon shouted, “Jesse Jacobsen!”
Jordan froze, her hands on my shoulders instead of my neck. Her face was still pressed against my chest, but I forced a smirk on my face. All she did was glare, not moving her cheek from against my chest.
I felt my breath catch in my throat. It might have been by accident, but her head was on my chest. Her cheek was actually resting on my chest. It was the closest she had ever been to me… It was like I was holding her for the first time, almost.
But this wouldn’t be the last. I would make sure of it.
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The picture on the side is the cutest thing I've ever seen. I didn't make it, but I love whoever did.
Sorry this took so long. I've just been going through a lot of things that I've had to deal with lately... and I kept on trying to write this chapter but I didn't like how everything came out. I still don't like how this chapter came out... I think it's just because I'm in a depressing mood right now. And if it really does just suck and it's not just me that thinks that... it's also because I'm in a depressing mood. :/
But... I got to meet Ally Carter on Wednesday. :) That was truly the happiest I've been in a long time.
Please COMMENT, VOTE, and FAN! :)