We met in high school in 1998, I thought she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. We were mere acquaintances until we were juniors, that was when things were starting to fall apart for her, and for me life was looking pretty good.
I used to be a terrible student in school, I'm not sure why. I am brilliantly intelligent (believe it or not,) I just didn't want to do the work, so I didn't. This all changed in my sophomore year. I had an algebra teacher, Mr Christiansen, who really helped me to discover my potential, and also a lust for knowledge. It wasn't long after that I was a straight 'A' student, and it was easy for me too. I even studied physics on my own, I feel like I have since regressed to my "what's the point?" mode, but that's an other story. The point is that by my junior year I had great grades which in turn had won me many scholarships, and also a great job in a friendly atmosphere where I made really good money for a sixteen year old (or maybe I was seventeen, It was over five years ago, so I don't remember.)
Jennifer on the other hand had been through hell between the spring of sophomore year and the summer of junior year. She had often referred to that year (2000 I think it was) as the worst year of her life. I wasn't very close to her yet, but from what I can remember some very traumatic things happened to her this year. Early in the year, I believe we were still sophomores, her house was burnt to the ground by an arsonist trying to cover up a robbery of a convenient store. She spent quite a while afterward away from school, I can only imagine what it would be like to lose your entire life over the course of an evening. One of her losses being her cat "JJ" or "Jennifer Junior", she's always had a lot of animals, I believe this was the only one that didn't make it, but it was her cat and it was a very painful moment for her, I know that cat was important to her. Also that year, sometime during the summer I guess, but almost right before school had started because it was major news around the halls, she broke up with her best friend at the time, who was also named Jennifer. This came as a shock to me, well, to everybody really. The two were inseparable for years, and suddenly they wouldn't even talk to each other or recognize each other's existence in any way at all. It was very surreal and I don't know if either of them noticed, but their breakup seemed to upset the balance of the universe as a slight sadness could be felt reverberating throughout the building. Later I would become privy to the details of what lead up to the separation, but honestly it still doesn't make sense to me. From what I gather, they both feel very betrayed by the other. I really think this was all due to manipulation from an other person who was jealous of what they had. I know at least from my Jennifer's end she would welcome some sort of truce with her ex-best friend, but she is also a little paranoid (a family trait, I have come to learn) and avoids her at all costs. I have been in the same room as the both of them before, and am sure that they have noticed each other's presence, the tension is palpable. Anyway, things for her were looking bad, she fell in with kind of a rough crowd and took on an almost "what've I got to lose?" approach to life.
Well school started this year, junior year for the class of 2002, and everything was just weird. I felt like I was in Bizzaro World. I've always been an very shy person, extremely introverted, and quite stoic, which explains why despite my dashing good looks and charm, that I've had exactly one girlfriend in my entire life (though I have had many crushes, before Jennifer it was like I was in love with someone new every other week.) Anyway, it was around this time when, for some reason still unknown to me, Jennifer began to notice me. I didn't quite understand it, and I thought she was making fun of me at first, but apparently for all my genius I am also oblivious, because apparently the whole school had noticed before I had that she had developed a huge crush on me. Everyday before school started she would talk to me a little bit, just smalltalk about classes and teachers, but I suppose the body language should've tipped me off, as both of our nervousness was fairly visibly apparent.
At the time she had a boyfriend who lived off Cape, I think he was our age, maybe a year younger, I'm not sure, but I think things were starting to go south for them, though I know that he was probably the first person she had ever really loved. He was a nice enough guy, and I'm pretty sure she still keeps in some degree of contact with him. Well, she started talking to me one day while we were waiting for the day to begin about how she had started thinking about somebody else. At this point we had been talking quite a bit and I think we had finally crossed the line between acquaintances and became friends. Anyway (I use this word too much, I need to utilize the thesaurus in this thing,) anyway, she asked me that morning what I was doing for lunch and I told her I would be in the library, as was my normal routine, and working on homework. When I got there that afternoon she was already there, waiting for me. I was extremely nervous I knew something was up, but I also wouldn't allow myself to get too excited, just in case I was wrong, I don't think I could have taken the heartbreak, though looking back, I had no idea what heartbreak was. Well, that lunch period was probably one of the greatest days of my life because she poured her heart out to me, she opened herself up and proved she was far braver then, than I ever would be. She told me it was me who had become the other man in her life, and all I could do was sit there and twitch uncomfortably.
God, I love her.
Maybe I'll finish this later.
