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Post by _bjscw on Dec 23, 2008 16:48:22 GMT -5
Jeremy snorted, dismissing the idea immediately. Sure, he had plenty of ideas he'd like to put in action, but he just didn't think it was going to happen. "Nah... the school president stuff has kind of turned into a popularity contest. I'm not even sure half of the sophomores even know who I am." He chuckled, and then looked at Andrea. "Besides, I think Hannah just might murder me..."
Jeremy happened to look down at the grass at that moment, and realized they were standing in a patch of clovers. "Hey, I wonder if there's a four-leaf clover down here somewhere," He mused, getting down to his knees and starting to search through the grass. It was funny how easily distracted boys could be....
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Post by andi ! on Dec 23, 2008 18:47:21 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] "Hannah didn't graduate last year?" Andrea asked, incredulous and disgruntled. She had been so sure that Hannah was gone! Would she have to endure another year of her, really? Maybe even another two? Oh, that was a depressing thought. And she had been so convined that she was done with Hannah and her unexplicable hatred of everyone else in the entire world, herself included. Gosh darn it. "But realy, you'd make an excellent president," she added happily.
Her interest was picqued as Jeremy mentioned four-leafed clovers. Wildly entertained, she got to her knees as well, searching a patch of grass next to Jeremy. "I found one once," she stated dreamily as she scanned the clovers, gently pushing at some with her fingers, checking and counting their leaves. "My brother stole it, though," she added with a chuckle.
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 23, 2008 20:06:56 GMT -5
"Hannah's in our grade, Andrea. I think being gone for so long has made you lose your memory." Jeremy grinned, running his bony fingers through the clovers and looking closely for one with four leaves. He snickered at her story about finding one when she was young.
"You know, I had a similar experience when I was little. I found a four-leaf clover, got all excited about it, and next thing I knew Ben had eaten it. I remained disappointed for weeks." He smiled back on the memory, only to realize a moment later that he had just brought up Ben. Jeremy's smile dropped immediately, and he looked up in horror. "Sorry, I didn't mean to..." He trailed off, realizing he was probably just making it worse. He really had to stop talking.
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Post by andi ! on Dec 23, 2008 21:30:53 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] "Wait, what?!" Andrea exclaimed, totally bewildered. She thought a moment on the subject, then laughed. "Man, I was totally convinced that she was at least a year older," she explained with a chuckle and a shake of her head, smiling a crooked sort of smile. She did act a bit older. Or maybe it was her domineering ways that established her as a sort of authority figure, making it hard to think that they were the same age. Then again, same grade and same age were two vastly different concepts, as Andrea knew better than most. She was depressingly young for her grade. It was three months for her birthdays, and until then, Jeremy was two years older than her. It was ridiculous. So it was highly likely that, while in the same grade, Hannah was significantly older than Andrea's slight fourteen years.
She smiled softly at his story, looking down at the clovers. Ben. She wasn't even sure what to think about him at this point, honestly. She was so mad at him. Mad at him for not being there when she had needed him, mad at him for ruining his own life, mad at him for not letting her try to help him, mad at him for not trusting her. Andrea thought she was a relatively trustworthy person; why had she been the last to know about Ben's drug problem? Why hadn't he thought to come for her for help, to do anything but avoid her? But she couldn't make herself hate him, as much as she wanted to.
Now that she thought about it, it was the same feeling she had had towards Jeremy years before, only more intese. When Jeremy had told her what had happened, she was angry. And she had felt like she should hate him, like she was supposed to hate him. But she couldn't. Because, as much as she didn't want to and knew that he didn't deserve it... she had still been in love with him. And it was the same now, only if she was being honest, she had been more in love with Ben than she had ever been with Jeremy. Jeremy was perfect, and sweet, and intelligent. He was just like her. But Ben brought out a different side in her, and she had thought that she had brought out a different side in him, too. Maybe a better side.
A flood of emotions overwhelmed her as Ben was brought up. Anger, regret, lonliness, pity. And some pang of something stronger, something closer to affection, more like love. Which made her even more angry, because he didn't deserve that, didn't deserve to have her here, mourning his loss. And it wasn't fair. And yet, here she was, looking down at a patch of clovers with his twin brother, absently running her fingers through the small shoots, biting down on her lower lip.
Andrea forced her face up again, making eye contact with Jeremy. Then she pushed a small smile onto her features. "Don't worry about it," she replied, her voice a bit softer than usual. She paused, newly straightened and brace-free teeth pushing deep into the flesh of her lip. She shifted to her right, now sitting down with her legs crossed rather than kneeling, and commenced looking. Without looking up, she asked, "How is he?" She shouldn't care. She hated that she cared, hated how much she cared. But she hated not knowing more.
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 23, 2008 22:04:34 GMT -5
Jeremy kept his eyes lowered on the clovers, feigning deep interest in them while he silently regretted ever mentioning Ben's name. He could tell it had fazed her, even if it was just for a moment. He felt terrible; he knew how much Ben had hurt her, and she never deserved it either. Andrea didn't deserve any of the shit that the twins had done to her. Jeremy frowned.
"He's better," He said quietly, absent-mindedly picking meaningless three-leaved clovers. "He attended a drug program over the summer. I think he's done with the whole... cocaine thing." Jeremy mumbled, thinking about the long gap of time that his twin had not spent with him while busy recovering. Even though Jeremy barely hung out with him anymore, it still destroyed him inside to be separated from his brother.
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Post by andi ! on Dec 23, 2008 22:13:55 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] Andrea pushed her front teeth deeper into the skin of her lip. It was quiet for a moment as she trailed her fingers lightly over the clovers, pushing a few aside to get a better glimpse of others. Nope, no four-leaved clovers. She got divert her attention there for a while, focus on her disappointment in all of these stubborn clovers' unwillingness to sprout a fourth leaf. That made this silence more bearable.
She nodded silently as Jeremy spoke. "Good. I'm glad," she answered softly, pausing and then nodding her head again. "I'm... happy for him." She looked up at Jeremy. She wanted to prove to him that she was alright, prove to herself that she was alright. Because she was. She might be upset, but it didn't mean that she wasn't okay, that she couldn't be happy with Ben for getting his act together. "Really, I am," she assured him with a small smile, quickly redirecting her gaze to the grass and clovers again. She sat up a bit straighter and opened her mouth to speak, sure she had found one. But as she gently plucked the shoot from the ground, she counted only three leaves. Frowning, she sat back down.
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 23, 2008 23:07:32 GMT -5
Jeremy watched Andrea closely, now pretty much forgetting about the clovers. He didn't understand how she seemed to remain so strong and unfeathered by all of this. Yet another one of the amazing qualities of Miss Goodman.
"You know, you don't have to be. I mean, I would completely understand if you weren't." He murmured, wondering whether he was pushing it by going deeper into the subject. But Jeremy really wanted to know how Andrea truly felt about the whole situation. Curiosity killed the cat... "I mean... he was kind of an ass to you and all."
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Post by andi ! on Dec 23, 2008 23:23:58 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] Andrea lay her hand out flat, the clover she had thought to have four leaves laying on her palm. Was it weird that she felt badly? She had plucked it out of the ground for nothing; killed it, in essence. It was just a clover... But, oddly, she felt bad. Frowning to herself, she blew the plant from her palm and into the air. It was caught in a dull gust of wind, and took a few moments to drift back to earth a few feet away.
She sat quietly as Jeremy spoke, pushing her lips together in a line. She shrugged one shoulder when he was done, taking a moment before raising her gaze back up to meet his. "Yeah, he was," she agreed with a short nod. "But if he's getting things back together... Well, good for him." She paused, again looking down at the grass, again rooting her fingers around in the soft green shoots of clover and grass.
"I'm angry with him. But, I don't know, I can't make myself hate him." She smiled softly, looking up again. "It was pretty much the same thing with you," she added with a light laugh, hoping that that wouldn't hurt his feelings, but unable to do anything about that now. "And we're friends now, right? So I don't know, maybe that will happen again. Maybe, one day, he'll be able to trust me. And then we can really be friends. I don't..." She paused, trying to figure out how to word her thoughts coherently. "I know that I can't hate him. You can't just switch from liking to hating, can you? So I don't want to waste energy trying." Andrea offered him a small smile, shrugging again.
Knowing her eloquency at expressing her feelings, that might have arrived at Jeremy's ears a collection of random words, white noise. But at the same time, she was kind of glad to be saying it, uncomfortable and irrational as it was. In the book she was reading, Stephen King said something like "Crying is like pissing out your feelings." Well, she cried too much for this to be true. So maybe talking was her equivilant. And maybe if she talked about it, she wouldn't have to feel it so much. Maybe she was letting some of that out into the universe for someone else to feel, so that she could be done with it already. And that would be fine with her.
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 23, 2008 23:51:06 GMT -5
Jeremy nodded, seeming to understand what she was saying. Many times in his life he tried to hate Ben, but it was just impossible to do so. He cared about his brother too much to ever harbor such deep feelings against him. Of course, Andrea's bond with Ben was quite different from his own, but he supposed it was still the same concept.
"Hey... I'm still sorry about what I did to you back in seventh grade," He said hesitantly, peering over at her. "It was a really stupid and immature mistake. I would never do anything like that again now." Jeremy murmured, scratching the back of his neck. "As for Ben, I'm sure he's sorry for how he was last year as well."
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Post by andi ! on Dec 24, 2008 0:00:43 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] Andrea looked up when Jeremy spoke, offering him a small but genuine smile. "I know," she said with a nod. She knew he wouldn't do anything like that now, knew how much better than that he really was. And she didn't begrudge him something that had happened two and a half years ago. She hesitated as he brought up Ben, wondering how weird it would be if she asked what she was thinking. Probably pretty weird, she thought, and then decided to ask anyway.
"Has he said anything... about that?" she questioned, looking to Jeremy and cocking her head to the side. It'd been almost a year, so not only did she have no idea what she was supposed to feel, but had no idea what he was thinking. Which was part of the reason she was dreading the inevitable run-in, because it was bound to happen sooner or later. Maybe it would be a bit easier if she had some idea as to what he was thinking. Did he still hate her so inexplicably? Had she done something? Was he sorry? Did he care? It shouldn't matter... but it did.
She looked down again, thoughtful. Then she perked up, a grin coming to her features. "I think I found one," she exclaimed with a grin, leaning forward and almost falling in the process. She plucked the alleged four-leaved clover from the ground and turned to Jeremy, holding it up between them to be examined.[/blockquote][/font][/color][/size]
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 25, 2008 13:18:38 GMT -5
Jeremy shook his head. "He hasn't mentioned it yet. I've been meaning to ask him, but I think he's still a bit out of it ever since he attended the drug program." He murmured, not searching for four-leaf clovers at all now. He was too wrapped up in the conversation to think about anything else. "But I don't think he's mad at you anymore. I don't know why he ever was, seeing as you did nothing to him, but I guess he's over that weird attitude. If you guys do happen to run into each other... I'm sure he'll at least apologize." He wasn't sure whether speaking for Ben was a good idea, but he felt that his brother would be good enough to at least say sorry.
Jeremy's eyes lit up when Andrea plucked a four-leaf out of the ground. "Nice, Andrea!" He exclaimed, looking a bit closer. He could hardly believe that she actually managed to find one. Maybe it was a sign of good luck coming their way. Maybe.
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Post by andi ! on Dec 25, 2008 18:47:32 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] Andrea nodded thoughtfully as Jeremy spoke, looking straight ahead, eyes unfocused for lack of a target for her gaze. Usually almost hyper-aware of her surroundings, she get lost in her thoughts for the most minute of moments, nodding impassively and biting at her lower lip again. She wondered vaguely if Jeremy was trying to make her feel better, or if Ben would actually apologize. And if Ben would, would he do it because he felt he had to, because courtesy forced him to? Or would he mean it, be sincerely sorry? What bothered her most of all was that, if he did apologize, she would never know the answer to that question, never really know why. But she figured it was irrelevant at the moment.
She smiled again as Jeremy complimented her clover-seeking skills, somewhat bashfully. Glad for the change of subject, she twirled the greenery between her fingers thoughtfully, gingerly. Then she beamed and held it out to Jeremy. "You take it," she said cheerily, extending her arm towards him.
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 25, 2008 19:47:40 GMT -5
Jeremy chuckled. "Ah, but I don't want to hog it all to myself. Besides, you're the one who found it," He thought about it for a moment, and then snapped his fingers. "Hey, do you think it'll lose the luck if we each take two leaves? I don't think it will. We'll both just receive partial luck. That way we can share it equally." He nodded, taking the little clover and the myth of it's luck seriously for a moment.
It was good that he was having this conversation with Andrea. Not the thing about clovers, of course, but just talking to her in general. It was helping Jeremy drift back into reality, helping him remember that there was a life outside of homework and obsessing over Nina.
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Post by andi ! on Dec 25, 2008 19:54:43 GMT -5
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[/size] i shed what escape my fiction provided ,
i lived a lifetime inside of my shelter thought it about time to see outside it[/center][/font] Andrea thought for a moment, wondering whether or not splitting a four leaved clover in two would in deed compromise its luck. She wasn't sure. She did believe that they were lucky, but wasn't sure if it would stay so lucky after being eviscerated. But maybe it would. Then again, she figured that if she was lucky enough to find a four-leaf clover to begin with, she was lucky enough not to need it, not that she had ever considered herself an especially lucky person. So, smiling, she offered Jeremy a noncommital shrug.
"I think that sounds reasonable," she agreed, beaming. Andrea paused, almost ready to break the thing herself. But something felt weird about it, so she handed it to Jeremy, smiling sheepishly. "I'd feel weird breaking it in half," she admitted with a light, airy laugh, holding it out to him, allowing him to take the reigns on that one.
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Post by _bjscw on Dec 25, 2008 20:04:21 GMT -5
He laughed as he took the clover. "Leave the dirty work to me, then. Watch ripped a four-leaf clover in half end up being some sort of unlucky curse," Not thinking twice about it, he carefully tore the clover in half and proceeded to hand Andrea one of the two-leaf leftovers. "Here's hoping it works."
Suddenly, Jeremy's watch began to beep insanely. It scared him out of his skin, and he quickly looked down at his wrist to see what the hell was going on. An alarm was going off, and the message on his watch said, 'MRS. SMITH'.
"Oh, crap. I forgot I promised my math teacher I would help her out with something. I guess I've got to go." He explained, standing to his feet and stuffing his half of the clover in his pocket. "I'll see you around?"
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