A/N: This is the companion piece to Wanting Something More. It deals with the same timeframe, the same events, and follows the same plot as my first story, Wanting Something More, only it is told from Jordan's point of view, rather than Lydia's. I'm not sure how often this will be updated, as I'm writing it and the sequel to WSM, Distance Makes the Heart, at the same time. I plan to upload one new chapter of each at the same time. This story is completely from Jordan's point of view, just as Wanting Something More was completely through Lydia's eyes. A lot of the dialogue is going to be identical to what you've already read, but I plan to write other scenes that weren't in WSM, so it isn't the exact same story word for word. If you want to read it, great, if not, that's fine, too. I just ask that if you read, you review! Please! ~*Bri

Chapter One: Remembering

The majority of students will tell you that the day they go back to school is the worst one all year. Most of the time, I'd agree with that. But I was ready for Monday to get here...because then, I would officially be starting my senior year. My last year as a high school student, and the finale to a long and successful period in my life. I'd had my share of hardships, sure, but I'd had plenty of great times and I'd had the privilege of being able to call many wonderful people my friends. I was proud of what I'd accomplished in high school: becoming president of FCA my sophomore year, maintaining a 3.8 GPA, doubling up on core subjects for the past two years, playing on the drum line for three years, and finally, my senior year, giving up marching band to play football. Most guys would consider making the team without ever playing high school football before their crowning glory and highest achievement, and maybe it should have been for me. But there was one goal eluding my conquest, making all my other accomplishments seem petty and worthless—and that was Lydia.

Lydia wasn't my girlfriend. I'd never even thought of her as more than a friend. In retrospect, it's a work of God that I ever saw her, much less befriended her. She'd only moved to Kentucky just before her sophomore year, friendless and virtually family less. She'd wanted to stay in Ohio with her father, but after a long and emotionally stressful court battle, she'd been forced to stay with her mother and stepfather and move to Kentucky. When I first saw her, she was sitting alone at lunch, and no one else at her crowded table had bothered to even ask her name. I picked up the blue plastic chair I'd been sitting in and carried it above my head to her table. I sat it down next to her and introduced myself.

She'd been taken aback at first, and I probably would have been too if some stranger had just popped up next to me and started talking like they'd known me for years. Gradually, though, she warmed up to me and two weeks later, I was still the only friend she had—so I brought her over to my table of friends and introduced her to them. As it turned out, Lydia and Elaine Jacobs had a class together, and within weeks, they were fast friends.

Bringing Lydia out of her shell would have been enough, and for a while, I thought she was finally settling in and getting used to living here. Then she started showing up at lunch on the verge of tears, and I'd swap seats with Stephen every day so I could sit next to her and find out what was wrong. Usually, her mother or stepfather had said or done something to her. Lydia became my strongest supporting evidence for my belief that you don't have to hit or rape someone to abuse them…Lydia's emotional and mental state was so damaged, I was pretty sure her self-esteem was in the negatives.

Around October, I noticed that Lydia had stopped eating lunch. I started to half-tease, half-warn her that if I found out she was anorexic, I'd have to hurt her. Soon after, I found out she'd been purging, and I was shocked. She begged me not to tell anyone, and I didn't. She was too fragile, physically and emotionally, for me to take the risk of losing her trust, and therefore not being able to help her anymore. I never understood why she did it, because she was a pretty girl and had always been thin. I tried to make her eat, and was able to several times, and I constantly begged her to stop, telling her she wasn't fat, that in fact, she was beautiful.

Things worsened when our classes changed in January—I no longer had lunch with her, so I could no longer plead with her to eat. Every time I saw her occasionally in the halls, she looked thinner and thinner. I couldn't stand seeing her like that, and not being able to help her. I resorted to calling her on the phone and talking to her, trying to convince her to eat. Whenever I tried, she'd just close up and refuse to listen to me. It got to where it hurt me to hear her voice or see her wasting away, and I didn't understand how her mother didn't notice what was going on. Then again, Lydia had always told me that her mother didn't care what she did. At any rate, it got to the point where I started avoiding her so that I didn't have to see what was becoming of the once bright and beautiful girl I'd befriended.

When the summer began, I had hope for her. She'd always been happier with her father…maybe with him, her self-esteem would rise and she'd start eating again. We emailed each other a few times, and all I managed to get from her was that she was following a rigid exercise program. I remembered thinking that exercise was the last thing that girl needed. Around late June, the emails stopped, and now, the week before school began again, I hadn't heard from her in over a month.

I wanted more than anything to help her get better. That had always been my goal with her…to help her heal the emotional wounds that her parents' divorce and custody battles had inflicted, to help her get over her feelings of guilt, to help her see what a wonderful person she was. Then it was to help her eat before she killed herself. A horrible thought entered my mind—what if she was dead? What if she'd finally skipped one too many meals, and had died? Or was in the hospital, or an eating disorder clinic? That would explain why I hadn't heard from her…but no…that wasn't like Lydia. She would have let me know…she always let me know. Always trusted me with secrets she told no one else. She would have told me.

All my thoughts about Lydia that night had been inspired by a simple accident. I'd been putting up a book on the shelf when I knocked off my yearbook from the year before. I'd bent down to pick it up when my eyes fell on the page it had opened to…I found the last name Holland and scanned the row until I found Lydia. She was there, as she'd been when I'd first met her…healthy, though not happy, and pretty in her own way. Her blonde hair framed her face the way it always did, but her blue eyes were listless, not shining as they had been during the short time before she started her struggle with anorexia. Even though anyone looking at her picture could see she wasn't happy, she was still a beautiful girl.

I smiled and closed the yearbook, then slipped into bed. Lydia's face appeared in my mind's eye and I wondered what she was doing. I doubted I'd see her the next day at registration—there would be 1600 other students picking up their schedules, so what were the chances that I'd see Lydia? Slim to none. Turning over, I said a silent prayer for Lydia, hoping that she was safe.