Welcome To My Life

To say our lunchbreak was awkward would be an understatement. I was sitting at a table with Jenna and Alex, who refused to talk to each other. Well, Jenna refused to talk to Alex, in spite of his numerous attempts to apologize to her. So instead, Alex and I were talking about their performance at prom next week and Jenna had mostly just been quiet.

"I hate that I still haven't seen you perform" I whined.
"Yeah and whose fault is that?" Alex joked.
The white band aids covering his nose helped me remind it was very much my fault.
"How's your nose?" I asked him.
"It doesn't hurt as bad as it looks" Alex shrugged.
I looked at him intensely. "You're lying."
"Fine, okay, it does hurt, but you have to stop beating yourself up over it." Alex gave me a stern look.
"How can I?" I asked him. "I punched you!"
"Because I forgave you" Alex said simply.
"Yes, but you're too nice for your own good" I disagreed.
"Liz, stop. It happened, we can't change that. What matters now is how we move on from it. So please stop talking about the past and start talking about the future" Alex said, on a tone that made me realize it was time to shut up about it.

"Well, at least I will get to see you perform at prom" I changed the subject.
"There you go, talking about the future!" Alex nodded approvingly. "Speaking of which, do you have a prom date already?"
"Yes, in the couple of days I've actually been to school here, I managed to find myself a date" I replied sarcastically.
"Good point. So okay, I was wondering if you'd want to go to prom with me?" Alex was blushing.
For a moment I looked at Jenna, who acted like she didn't hear Alex ask me to prom. "Yes, of course" I agreed to Alex's proposal.
Alex smiled and we were all quiet for a moment.

"I'm gonna go" Jenna said, while she got up.
"No, you're not. Sit down" I said forcefully.
Jenna raised her eyebrows at me, but did as I told her.
"The one you have to be pissed at is Jack, not Alex" I continued. "Jack outed you in front of the whole school, Alex simply thought he could trust his friend."
Jenna scoffed. "Trust Jack? Have you mét Jack?"
"You once trusted him" I said sharply.
"Yeah, and look where that got me: I am now his personal punching bag" Jenna answered, sounding more sad than angry.

"How about we work on that?" I suggested. "Make you more defensible? I can teach you a thing or two"
Jenna hesitated. "Though I don't think violence should ever be the answer and I don't approve of fighting fire with fire, that might actually be a good idea... I don't want to be afraid of him anymore..."
"You're actually afraid of him?" Alex asked, sounding worried.

For a moment I thought Jenna was gonna ignore him or make some mean comment, but she seemed to not be so pissed at him anymore.
"How can I not be?" she asked. "Half of my body is bruised from him pushing me against lockers. I'm in pain all fucking day."
I was kind of shocked to hear that. I hadn't ever thought about the physical pain Jack caused Jenna, just about him being violent towards her, and the mental pain he had caused her, of course.

"This can't go on any longer" I say resolute. "We have to end this."
"You are not going anywhere near Jack" Alex warned me. "He just might seriously injure you if he gets the chance"
"Not at school he wouldn't" Jenna disagreed. "Just imagine his parents' reaction if he gets suspended."
"That's true but he's pissed. Really pissed" Alex said, with a face that told me he was serious. "Rian texted me last night that all of us should probably stay away from Jack for a while as he said quite some worrisome threatening stuff about us yesterday."

"He can't just get away with this because we're all scared!" I exclaimed.
"Yeah well, you can't exactly go to the cops either as he will definitely press charges against you if you were to do that. That is, if he hasn't already" Alex said carefully.
I didn't know what to say. The thought of Jack pressing charges against me hadn't even crossed my mind. No, all I worried about was that I didn't want to get expelled which is why I didn't fight Jack at school. But of course, if I fought Jack outside of school, I would have to deal with the police, the real deal...

"Of course he's pressing charges" I sighed. "I would too if he'd beaten me up like that..."
"Yeah, I'm afraid you're right" Alex admitted.
"You did get him pretty bad though" Jenna said, sounding impressed.
I shrugged. "It's not like I actually knew what I was doing..."
"Hence the broken nose" Alex joked.

I wanted to reply, but my phone suddenly rang. My phone didn't recognize the number, but I sure did. The area code of my hometown. It was one of my parents. I just stared at my phone, not sure if I was going to pick up. I didn't exactly want to talk to them and I figured they called because they heard about what I did to Jack.
"Shouldn't you take that?" Jenna asked.
"I don't know" I shrugged.
"Who is it?" Alex asked.
"It's my parents home number" I replied. "I don't exactly feel like talking to them about how I shouldn't go around and break noses."
I pressed 'decline' and my phone stopped ringing. "I'll call them back later" I shrugged.

Just as I was thinking about whether or not I was actually going to call them back, the school bell rang, meaning we had to get to our next class. Alex, Jenna and I got up and headed for our next class.

Just as I was about to enter the staircase, I noticed two cops over at the administration. Two cops and Jack. "Fuck" I cursed under my breath, causing Alex and Jenna to look in the direction I was looking at.
"Do you think..." Alex started, but he didn't have to finish his sentence, as Jack noticed us and pointed at me.
"There she is. That's my cousin." I heard him say.
I gave Alex and Jenna a worried look. For a moment I thought about running away, but I knew I wouldn't get far and it would only make whatever the police has in store for me worse. Even if I wanted to run away, I didn't think I could. I was completely transfixed as the cops followed Jack up to us. Students gave us curious looks as they were passing by, but all I could think of is the possibility of having to go to jail.

Notes

Okay, so should I even bother apologizing for not updating for over 2 months? *shame on me*

I've been busy, but I mainly just didn't really know how to continue. I have to write an actual book for school, so that's what I've been doing, and today the writing was going pretty well, so I decided to read this entire fanfic again in hopes of getting newfound inspiration. Probably not a very good idea as I am already having trouble writing a story in Dutch as I tend to want to use English words but I had to continue writing this fanfic at some point.

Title credit: All Time Low - Dancing With A Wolf