stars in your eyes

quindecim

In the weeks that followed Claire's irresponsible drunken night, a lot of things changed in her life. Her mother, for one, was a lot less lenient when letting her venture out of the house in fear that she might make another terrible life decision that would get her into more trouble, or worse. She also kept a tight eye on the time Claire spent with Rowan after the bad decisions they made together.

So no boyfriend and no best friend. Check.

Jasper and Harry finally started seeing eye-to-eye again and were slowly working to get their friendship back. Everyone knew it would never be put back exactly the way it was before – that jasper would always carry a bit of resentment – but it meant something to claire that jasper was willing to forgive. Too bad he was only looking to forgive Harry. Claire and jasper' relationship on the other hand was still broken. Even after she found out that Jasper only informed his closest friends about Claire and Harry and wasn't the one to spread the rumors, Claire still couldn't see past the fact that she and Harry were still apart at Jasper's house.

And as for Claire and Harry – they hadn't spoken since the night of the party. Since she forced him to spend the night, since he told her they couldn't be together anymore and she saw in his eyes that he meant it. His words were so final and the look he gave her was so pitying, it made her sick to her stomach.

It took Claire weeks to be able to fall asleep without crying, without that ache in her chest for her first love.

Jasper never brought Harry over to their house anymore and everyone knew why and agreed it would be best if it kept on that way. Mark, missing the company of both his sons, would take them out to sporting events or to play paintball, which didn't sit right with claire. But she couldn't blame them for wanting to get together. Harry was such a large part of their family before everything happened, and now he was just absent.

At school Claire mainly kept to herself, carving out a new existence for herself under the watchful stares of everyone around her. She had friends and she kept up with them, but she didn't get involved like before. She didn't feel that particular flutter for companionship she used to get. So she just focused on her studies instead of bothering herself with social situations.

Zayn, Claire's new friend from the party, tried his best to flirt with her, practically throwing himself at her, but she ignored his advances. The old Claire would have jumped at the chance to be with such a beautiful creature, but she changed. She wasn't the same person and she was content with being alone.

School – that's how Claire passed the time. Homework. Reading. Writing. Just school. She'd never been much for excelling in her studies, but Jasper was right about one thing – it was never too early to start preparing for college. And though she didn't know if Penn State – the school jasper and Harry were both patiently waiting on acceptance letters from – would be where she went, she knew she wanted to be able to get into a good school at least. And for that she needed the grades to back her up.

...

"This presentation will be thirty percent of your grade thus far in the class," Claire heard her government teacher announce.

Her head snapped up from her words. Was she zoning out as she started class? What was going on? Presentation... thirty percent...

Claire swallowed hard, realizing she'd never been much of a public speaker. She waited on more instructions as Mrs. Klein gathered up the papers from her desk, instructing them further about said presentation.

"You and your partner will have four weeks to come up with something significant," her teacher said as she counted out enough papers for each row of desks and plopped them down on the head desks to be passed back.