DARK IMAGE

1) He's a Mystery

It's always been my mother, her extreme pen-pal, and myself. 

My mother is an only child, and although my grandparents live in Germany and are very rich, my mom is all about the easy life style. We could live the life of luxury, but she refuses to dance to that genre. I mean we have super nice things, but her strength is in keeping  life simple.

I'm almost eighteen. I just graduated two weeks early from high school, so I've had two weeks of lolli-gagging. 

My mom's saying college, but we both know that's not my vision.

Marsha and my mom have been extreme pen-pals since they were sixteen, before her son or I were born. They  "use to" send thousands of letters. Now they have one phone number that only the two of them use, aside from their everyday phones. 

I've never talked to Marsha or her son, and even though it feels like she walks around the house with us, we've never met or seen pictures of each other.

My mom says the reason they have so much to talk about, is because their situations somewhat mirror each other. The only thing that differs is our money, which my mom balances that. I think it's great that my mom is so generous.

They talk so often, I tuned out their conversations years ago. That's why I'm caught off guard when she hangs up her phone and says, "I don't know who's worse, you or JesseJames?"

My mom could never imagine how much that boy plays in my mind. 

At school I got really tired of hearing why don't you have a boyfriend? So now I give no reply because I know JesseJames  is just a dark image that spends a lot of hours in my head.

I don't know anything about him other than his name, but that doesn't help because I have a crush on it. His first name is "JesseJames". His last name is "Stone." No middle or nick-name. Just JesseJames Stone. 

I can remember wondering what he looked like when I was only about 4 years old. Then at around seven or eight, after watching Drop Dead Fred, I remember thinking, "maybe I can change his "IMAGE" into my "IMAGINARY FRIEND." So my friend Shadow and I tried to think of a way to make it happen. We gave up quick.

Shadow and I are conjoined friends. We have a very unique situation.

EVERY SINGLE YEAR from K to 12 grade, we had the SAME TEACHERS with the SAME CLASSES together. 

 It started because Shadow's older sister was teasing us about how we would not be in the 1st grade together. So I begged my mom to ask the school. Later she told me it was her donations to the schools. It made the schools happy so she decided to continued to do it as long as it worked for us. And to this day, much to everyone's suprise...

Shadow and I felt empowered being able to have the same classes every year. We became popular because there was two of us not one. That's when we figured out we could blend in any where. So we didn't have "one reputation" we had a list of reputations. Besides being popular, we also had a reputation of being everything from nerds to class comedians etc. But the one we're most proud of, is not putting up with BULLIES.

We ended up with a "whomped on look" of scrapes and bruises, but we had this strength we didn't know we had. Needless to say we got a "DON'T MESS WITH US REPUTATION" from that day on.  

Now that we are finishing school and ready to graduate, Shadow has found a cute crush here and there. But as for me, I was never able to get his image in my head to step aside.