I'd rather be me and you

The Part Where I'd rather be me

If you've ever been betrayed by a friend the way I have, you'll know it hurts the most when they are right and there's nothing you can do to prove them wrong.

My fight with Cady had bought a lot of feelings to light. The fact that I had known from the moment I met her that I loved her was hard enough to deal with. But the fact that she knew and had admitted she knew hurt most of all.

I had tried for so long to ignore the feelings. To grow and to overcome the part of me that always seemed to fall for the wrong person. But I had always been unsuccessful. Always.

I woke with a pounding headache and a knot of guilt sat in the pit of my stomach reminding me in painful jolts, how much of a terrible person I was.
Damian was asleep beside me, Obi laying across is lap and making his breaths come out in wheezes instead of fully formed breaths, he didn't seem bothered though, so I left him. Slipping out of the bed and getting ready for the day. Trying to ignore the clutching dread that something was going to happen and that it would be bad, really bad.
I heard Damian stir behind me as I pulled on my boots and turned to smile at him, as small as that smile may have been.

"Morning Dame." I murmmered, coming to sit on the edge of the bed.
"JanJan." Damian said, a faint trace of worry on his face, "You know we don't have to got to school today we could play hookey."
I chuckled lightly, "I would love to not go to school. But Ma would kill us both and she doesn't know what happend last night, so no. We're going to school." I ran my fingers through Obis hair whilst speaking, "You know, Erika told us that to be brave all we had to do was be the buffalo but I'm not entirely sure that's effective in my case." I said, my voice wobbling.
Damian sat up, taking my hand and stroking it soothingly, "Why not?"
"How do you be a buffalo in a storm that never passes?" I ask, my eyes filling with tears. He doesn't answer and I nod brokenly, "Exactly. You can't, you drown instead."
I feel Damian press a hand to my cheek, sweeping away the tears that had gathered there, "That is not true Janis, not for a minute. It's not true because we don't drown, we swim. We tread the water and we fight to stay alive because that is who we are! I know you're upset and I know you're scared but I promise you that I am not going to let you drown. I am never going to let that happen okay?"
I nod against him, sniffing slightly, "Okay."

There's a strange kind of tension in the air by the time lunchtime arrives. The students of Northshore high all seem to have picked up on a wavelength that only me and Damian were already used to. Because of this there was a constant buzzing in the air that at the drop of a pin, the world could end. To be fair what happend wasn't that far off.
"Janis Sarkisian is a Space Dyke? Wow how original." I drawled, staring at the sheet of paper in front of my and trying to fight the anger that was brewing in my stomach. Damian tapped on my shoulder, thrusting another sheet of paper into my hands, his hurt expression enough to tell me that it wasn't good, "Damian Hubbard is almost too gay to function? That is only okay when I say it!" I cry angrily.
Damian snatches the paper back and scrunches it up in his fist, "Only Cady could have written that! He fumes, marching off before I have the chance to calm him down, so I just follow him instead, avoiding the fighting students and struggling to keep up with his long strides.

"All female students report to the gym immediately! Immediately!" Principal Duvalls voice roared over the intercom and I jumped up from my position sat next to Damian on the floor in the girls bathroom.
"I'm sorry Dame," I said, pressing a kiss to his forehead, "I have to go."
Instead of letting me walk out the room, Damian grabs my hand and pulls himself up, a weary smile on his face, "Like hell I'm letting you go in there by yourself." I smirked at him as he pulled the hood to his jumper up and slipped on some sunglasses, "See, completely incognito!" He joked, making me laugh as we walked into the gym were most of the girls in our year were already sat.
"This should be interesting." I muttered to him before splitting away from him to sit on the end of one of the bleachers so that Obi could sit by my feet.

"Oh look it's her dream come true! Diving into a pile of girls!" I heard Reginas voice from the back of the group and couldn't help but blush a little. The apology note to her and Cady that was in my hand felt useless all of a sudden and I scrunched in up in one of my fists. Laughing a little and throwing it into the crowd of girls below me.
"Um yeah okay... uh... I have an apology to make, I have a new friend this year and I convinced her that it would be a good idea to screw up Regina George's life. So uh... we... um we gave her these candy bar things to make her gain weight and turned her two best friends against her and then Cady... You guys know my friend Cady here, She convinced Reginas boyfriend to break up with her!"
I laughed along with the girls as they laughed because Reginas expression was priceless. I'm not sure what I expected to be fair but if Cady and Regina were both going to be mean then I was going to level the playing field. I didn't want to hurt either of them but the plastics had to be stopped.

"But as it turns out Cady is just as selfish and bitchy as Regina so my real apology is to myself... Because so really should have known better!" I called, staring at Regina with hard eyes and an unafraid expression, "I don't really expect any of you to care, I'm just the space Dyke after all but going around and spreading lies about our friends is not okay! I'd know. It's happend to me twice. We have to try to be better, we have to swear to ourselves that no matter what people say we don't care." I paused for a second raising my right finger, "We have to raise our right fingers to all the people out there who will try to knock us down with their underhands. That's what mean girls and plastics do, they slap you down and I've been there! I've done that but I will not apologise for being me and I most certainly will not prioritise asshole blondes over my own mental health. From now on I'd rather be me and if that means I have to eat alone from this moment on or quit the fake apologies then that's just what I'll do because I'd rather be me. Pretending to be nice and shy is insulting to my IQ. So yeah, you probably don't care, but I'm over playing nice.. And I'm not sorry."

The cheering in the gym was almost deafening and I couldn't help but cover my ears as I was hoisted into the air and my name was chanted by the group of girls I had just freed from the plastics rule, once I was finally put down I launched myself into Damians arms, laughing when he caught me and spun me around with a proud dad smile.
"Oh my god JanJan!" He squealed as we both stumbled to a stop on the concrete outside whilst surrounded by cheering Juniors. It was a euphoric experience and I'd never felt better about myself, "You did it babe! You showed them!" He was grinning almost as large as I was.
We bounced together happily as people chatted and cheered around us, the sounds of Cady and Regina fighting barely breaking through the craze of it all.

The sound of screeching tires and a dull wet thump however, did. Then screaming, a lot of it at a very high volume. As I turned to see what all the commotion and noise was about I felt Damians hands cover my eyes and grabbed his wrists attempting to free myself from his grip.
"No Jan." He ordered softly, "You don't want to see this."
"What is it?" I asked, still tugging on his hands. All I could see through the cracks in his fingers was a crowed surrounding a crumpled blond figure laying prone and deathly still on the road. My heart hammered in my chest as I slacked my grip on Damians hands and turned toward his chest burying my head in his soft warmth.
"Oh my god!" I whispered, the feeling that I was about to throw up rising in my throat, "Oh my god." Then I started to cry.

And that's how Regina George died.