No One Dies a Virgin

Chapter Two: Party for Two

Summer past as quickly and painlessly as it had come, ruffling the leaves and hair of anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the snap of the Autumn cold. Jason Dean was among the few who stayed inside until the very last minute before going to school on a rainy Monday morning in early Autumn. None of the soft heat of Summer was left to warm his tear stained face on the morning that his Junior year of High School took place. None of the soft Summer light was left to guide him home on his way back from the Hell that he would learn to commute to from his own personal Heaven.

No one spoke to him after the first day, not even Kurt and Ram (the infamous gruesome two). He learned that in High School his place was much like his place at home; In a corner with his head buried in a book or in his arms, trying to catch up on sleep that evaded him at night.

Jason Dean learned an important lesson his first week of school in Sherwood, Ohio. He learned acceptance is something only found among the dead. People cannot sympathize with the living, but when you are cold and blue you might as well have been a sait. He learned the only place people like him and people like them could get along was in Heaven.

It took exactly four months and a half for anyone to notice Jason Dean sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, not eating, not drinking...just sitting and watching the ecosystem of the school unfold as if in some sort of sick human documentary crossed with a game show. Jason Dean would sit and watch them running around like ants to a food source, no person but to be noticed. He would watch and smile as he saw it all unfold, no one noticing the sick reality of it all; In three years time none of this would remain, and none of it would matter any longer. The students of Westerburg high schools graduating class in 1989 wouldn't be remembered as any different that the ones before them-There would be a few new trophies in the case, and a few more names on the walls, but other than that, assuming the building still stood the school would be virtually unchanged by any of the goings on in 1988.

The thought depressed Jason, though he always knew it was true. He spent most of those four and a half months thinking about it, in fact, and still he couldn't get the nagging feeling that something would be different this time out of his head. He felt like he could change something...like the school would remember them in 1990 and onwards...like something would give. Something had to give.

When something did give, at the end of Four and Half months it wasn't what Jason had expected at all. It was the fact that he was noticed. He was noticed, and not just by anyone. He was noticed by Veronica Sawyer. She was no ordinary girl, despite her ordinary name (Veronica Anne Sawyer). She was nearly as cynical and dark as Jason himself, but with no cause to see the world in black and white. It was just her way. She had no backstory, no traumatizing past. She simply was as she was and had always been as far as Jason could tell.

That was when he was noticed. He was noticed by the extraordinary girl with the ordinary name. How they met though...

Jason Dean met her in the cafeteria when she walked to his table and slammed her hand down, demanding attention. Looking up he had been shocked to see not one of the three most popular girls, or one of the bullies but rather the most special popular...the most irregular popular. Veronica Sawyer was the glitch in the system of popular. She was the odd one out, and here she was, at his table, demanding that he hear her out.

"I want you to come to a party I'm having at my house," she said, looking him up and down as if seeing him for the first time (who knew, it may have been her first time...he wouldn't know). That was the second weird thing (the first being that she had talked to him at all)-Jason Dean wouldn't have pegged Veronica Sawyer as the type to have parties...She seemed to float above all that hype. Then again, she seemed to be full of extraordinary things. Jason Dean was stuck trying to figure her out, find out how she thought. That was the main reason he said he would come. He wanted to know how her brain worked...what she thought about. His consent was a social experiment.