Maddie never expected her senior year to go this way. She never expected her parents to divorce and she definitely never expected to move to the other side of the country.
But as is her nature, she decides to see this as a new beginning away from a...
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Jenny and I sat down at the top of the jungle gym that evening. The sun had just set but the air was still warm. Hector hadn't lied when he talked about the jungle gym being high up. I refused to look down as we lay on our backs, staring up at the sky. It was beautiful. For a moment, I almost forgot about what had happened here, years ago.
"This is your first time at the park right?" Jenny asked. I nodded, tilting my head as I tried to take everything in. She nodded, "I used to come here all the time. The guys and I used to make teasing girls a sport."
I chuckled. I could imagine Jenny when she was younger, wild dark hair and wild dark eyes doing mischievous things. I turned to my side so that I could look at her, resting my head on my arm. She remained on her back but her eyes met mine and she smiled at me.
"How come I'm your first female friend?" I asked. The question hadn't come from no where; I had thought about it from time to time. It was just odd to me that Jenny was a cheerleader dating a football player and she didn't have any female friends. Apart from me, of course.
She chuckled, like she expected the question and slid her hand into our box of Oreos. She opened one and licked the center before popping it into her mouth.
"I have a sister," she told me. My eyes widened a fraction. I didn't know that. She nodded at my reaction, still chewing as she continued. "We were pretty close when we were younger. We both couldn't stand our parents constantly breathing down our necks but it was worse for her. She's the older one. She was expected to be the perfect one."
I could relate with that. My dad was always pressuring me to be perfect back home. Being here freed me. I felt bad that Jenny's sister faced those problems in my happy place; that she couldn't see the beauty of the people here and the beauty of the town because of her parents.
"Her name is Elizabeth. Lizzy. She ran away from home when I was in 5th grade. She didn't want to have to come out to my parents because they had this idea that she would grow up and have babies with some boy from Harvard or something," she sighed, her voice quivering as she spoke. "She left a note but she should have just announced it to the town with the way my mom spread the news around. For a while people used to refer to her as 'Lizzy the Lezbo chick'. It sucked."
I had never met Jenny's mom. Or dad. I had never really thought of Jenny having a family. All I could imagine was her sitting in our dining room for dinner, laughing at my mother's jokes and acting like she was part of the family. Honestly, to me, she was. I slid my hand into hers, squeezing it to encourage her to talk to me.
"Christina and her friends made it seem like being a lesbian was contagious," she laughed, bitterly, "They never used to talk to me because they thought I would make a move on them or something. It was pathetic. Gosh, I was pathetic!"
