Strange Tides

1.

You and Me - Lifehouse

Five months.

Five, long, but short months. They were only long when I was alone, which was more often than what was possibly considered 'normal'.

Five was the magical number according to my Business teacher. I'd been spending a lot more time listening to her. Out of all of my teachers she was my favourite. She said that five was the 'magical' number because when we wrote business essays if we had five relevant points under every heading then the odds of get full marks for the essay was very possible.

After 12 long years I'd gotten to matric. The thing we all strove for, unless we were satisfied with a GED and stopped then. Many people would have been happy dropping out after grade 9, but the driving force behind me said that even matric wouldn't be enough. In their eyes the only reason people didn't get a higher education was because they couldn't afford it, not that we'd been swimming in a sea of cash.

My mother was a florist. They only things we could've swum in were a sea of petals.

They were willing to dig our family into a well of debt to train my sisters and me through university, but they didn't need to. I was willing to work hard so that I could be attractive to as many companies as possible and maybe we'd find a company that would want to pay for my education. That was their dream. To have a daughter that was outstanding, and after June had grown they'd needed a replacement daughter, someone to 'one up' June. Everyone had already heard all their long tales about her; it was time for a new one.

Jade had made them proud in a 'different' way, so they pushed a lot dreams onto me. Dreams I had no plans of fulfilling.

"Jasmine?" whispered a voice, but I would not be taken out of my trance. I light elbow jabbed itself into my ribs, and the voice called again, but I hadn't been in the mood for life, talk less of that person.

"Jasmine!" the voice came, harder.

"What?" I snapped.

"The bell rang two minutes ago and we have to get to math. Probability won't kill me because you fell asleep." She scolded lightly. The last part was a joke I guess, but I was too tired to fake a laugh.

"Oh yeah, let me help you. What is the probability of me going to math today?" I said rolling over on my desk.

"One," she snapped and yanked me by the arm.

"Shannon, you will be the death of me. I don't even understand why you want to go so badly, everybody knows you're going to pass the test anyway."

She chuckled.

"I still have to attend classes so that ma'am doesn't feel like she's teaching herself."

I gave up and got up to follow. We'd never been as close as we were now, but after Toni left I realized that I wasn't fond of many people. Shannon would never replace Toni, but she was the next best thing and I'd appreciated her friendship.

I told her quite a bit, but never everything because I found that I'd never trust her wholeheartedly.

"So how is Terence? Can I call him Terry? How is Terry, Jazzy?" she'd taken to calling me 'Jazzy'. She said I had to call her 'Shanny'. It was her attempt to be more like Toni, but she called herself 'Shanny' more than I ever did.

"He's good, Shanny." I said somewhat clipped.

"Oh no, you guys aren't fighting again are you? Did he cheat again?" I was slightly suspicious of her. Why would she mention cheating? Had he been cheating? Every time I spoke to 'Shanny', I always ended up feeling a little on edge.