The Other Side

Just Friends

     Ryan Park and Jenna McDougall had been close friends growing up in Sydney, Australia but they drifted apart after he moved to South Korea to be with his grandparents and she got caught up in her newly formed band, Tonight Alive, as a result of the sadness she felt from his departure. From primary school up until Freshman year, the two were inseparable. Ryan play fought with Jenna and a few other kids from the neighborhood, honing his martial arts abilities he'd been learning since age 5.

      Over time the fights with neighborhood kids were replaced with fighting in PlayStation games and staying awake until the sun rose on weekends, but Jenna always stayed. She was there when Ryan had his first real breakup, she was there when he learned how to dance with somebody, she was there when he had his first kiss, she was there for every moment of him falling in love with other girls and it infuriated her. 

     The McDougall's had taken in Ryan and his mother during the recession after his mother divorced his father for his abuse and alcoholism. Ryan's mother, Michelle, was trying her best to gather enough funds to feed and clothe her two sons. Before Jenna's kindness, they were watering down juice and milk, wearing patchwork rags for shirts, their shoes were worn thin and the only point of wearing them was to prevent direct contact with the hot pavement when walking to school, and then he just left without anything more than a quick goodbye before boarding his plane.

     'Ryan should be grateful,' she thought,' he should love me. We've done everything for him.' Jenna was pacing around her room now, reading the letters Ryan had sent her from South Korea over and over with angry tears streaming down her face. Her head was aching. It had been two months since he went to stay with his grandmother and she still could't get his goofy, crooked smile and his soft brown eyes out of her head. Jenna understood that family comes before friends but she should be more than friends with him. She flopped down onto her lower bunk and threw her pillows onto the top out of frustration before pulling her blanket over her face and allowing herself to really cry for the first time. Ryan hadn't written for almost a month now and the thoughts of him with another girl 6,828 kilometers away were breaking through the emotional barriers she had built when he first dated another girl. Her biggest fear had been realized, they were just friends and that's all they would ever be.