1Socialite for a Sister:
Someone once told me that in order to live, you must search for your existence. But where do you look? How do you look? These questions had haunted me for quite some time.
When I was younger, I remember one time when my mother laid me down to sleep; she looked at me in the eyes so coldly that I'd thought she was about to disown me. I might have been about 12 years old, but I remember the scene so vividly. As she tucked the comforter around my already mummified body, she looked down at me-never breaking contact and said, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" the only thing I really remembered at the time was "when you grow up". When my silence indicated that I had no idea, she nodded and smiled sweetly as she bent down and kissed my forehead, murmuring the words of sleep: "good night".
~*~
"Jae," whispered a soft voice into my ear. "Jaaaeeee!" it cooed as it jumped on my bed.
Lazily, I opened one eye. After seeing whom it was, I sighed and rolled over in bed.
"Jae, come on. Mom told me to wake you up, so get up," said Christina, or Tina, my sister.
I sighed dramatically and rolled so that I was on my back. Tina was already dressed and ready for school. She lay beside me as the two of us stared blankly at my eggshell white ceiling. I turned my head to look at her.
"Was she mad?" I asked.
Tina turned her head towards me and grinned. "She never found out."
I laughed softly as I gently shoved Tina off my bed. Tina's the wild child. Last night she snuck out through her bedroom window to go to a party down the street from our house. I saw her climb out and I nearly ran to the window and shouted down at her. But as I looked down at her through her window, she looked up at me and winked. That's when I decided that if Tina was gonna get caught, it wasn't going to be by me.
"So I met a guy last night," said Tina as she pulled out clothes for me to wear.
"Nothing out of the ordinary," I reminded her as I put some toothpaste on my toothbrush in the adjoined bathroom we share.
Tina shrugged. "He was cute," she simply replied.
I popped my head out of the bathroom to look at her. "What about Chris? Your boyfriend?"
Tina gave me a very brief look and said, "I'm not interested in him. I simply said that he was cute."
"Huh," I said as I shot her an uncertain look. I finished brushing my teeth and took a quick shower. Once I was out of the bathroom, Tina said, "Oh by the way, the cute guy's giving us a ride to school today." and with that she zipped out of my room and from the thump-thump-thump, she trampled down the stairs. I gaped at the open door to my room and sighed as I slammed it shut and proceeded to change for school.
Tina knows that I don't socialize well. She's practically made it her mission to find me a guy. A car honked from outside and Tina called me down.
As I stepped out of my house, shouting a goodbye to my mom, Tina hollered for me to hurry up. When I get nervous about anything, especially boys, I start scratching off the nail polish from my nails. But as I looked at my newly painted red nails, I just couldn't.
I brought my eyes to glance at the moderately furnished green Honda hatchback. In the driver's seat was presumably cute guy, while in the cramped back seat was Tina and Chris engaged in conversation, most likely arguing that her top is too revealing.
"Jae, come on!" shouts Tina.
I nod a little and make my way around the car and to the passenger's seat. As I pulled my seat belt securely around my chest, cute guy started the car.
"Hey Jonah this is Jae, my sister. Jae, Jonah Wilson."
"Hi," I quietly greeted.
Jonah quickly glanced at me, smiled, and murmured, "Hi."
From the mirror above, I saw Tina roll her eyes.
When we pulled into the Johnson High School parking lot and Jonah cut the engine off, Chris turned to Tina and begged her to put her jacket on. Tina refused, setting off like a rocket and out of the car where Chris proceeded to follow her, screaming at her from a distance.
"Lovely couple," whispered Jonah as he and I glanced out my window.
"Oh, just wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet." Jonah smiled as he and I kept watching. "He'll tell her she looks beautiful but he doesn't want to share her with anyone. She'll tell him that he's always acting jealous and if he kept it up, she'd dump him in a heartbeat. He'll stop chasing after her, pause, and walk in another direction where she'll finally walk in another direction where she'll finally notice that her boyfriend leash has come loose and he's run away. She'll apologize and put the jacket on but only zipping it up half way. And the rest is movie romance."
Jonah looked down at me, eyebrows raised and I thought he was going to say something mean, but he just smirked.
"You're odd," he told me.
"Thank you," I said grinning wildly.
He tilted his head and gave me a crooked smile and a tiny chuckle.
We got out of the car and moved towards the school. He was about 5 feet 7 inches tall to me 5 feet and 1 inch. It was obvious that he was new to our school. As we walked down the hallway together, I noticed almost everyone staring at me. I felt pretty giddy.
The bell rang, signaling for us to move to homeroom. Jonah waved goodbye to me as he and Chris walked down the hall. Tina passed by me and wiggled her eyebrows. I shook my head and walked to homeroom.
~*~
Later, when it was lunchtime, half the school was swooned over the New Yorker, Jonah. Apparently he was sent over to our little corner of the earth in Connecticut because of various reasons.
Reason number 1: His parents died and the authorities sent him to live with his aunt.
Reason number 2: New York didn't want him. (When I heard this one, I simply laughed and walked away.)
Reason number 3: He was caught doing drugs at a party down in SOHO.
Reason number 4: Because he wanted to.
I decided that if I were to agree with any of these reasons, it would most certainly be the latter. Right. No one wants to come to Sherryton. That's like saying that you'd prefer to sleep on the floor when your Aunt Carol comes to visit and your mom makes you give up your bed for her, no one wants to.
I found a seat underneath a tree and I was about to take a bite into my sandwich when Carrie Stanton, the grade A class bitch/head cheerleader, comes bounding up to me and with an oh so perky bop of her ponytail and the fakest smile I have ever seen, she says, "Hello!"
I nearly drop my sandwich I'm so in shock. "Uh...Hi."
She seats herself by my backpack; smoothes down her skirt and says, "So are you and Jonah together?"
I blink. Twice. I stare intently at her expecting to see a crowd of cheerleaders and jocks laughing at a nearby table at my mere stupidity and lack of fashion sense.
"Are you...joking?" I ask her. She looks dumbfounded-scratch that just dumb. "I just met him!"
She shrugs and I could see her lips move into a silent 'duh' as she says, "So? Everyone's saying that they saw you walk down the hallway this morning with him and that he dropped you off at school."
"So what?! He dropped my sister and her boyfriend off too!"
She just stared at me as if I was speaking Hebrew. Please, someone just stop the madness. And as if on cue Jonah, the subject at hand, comes walking over to me with his lunch at his side in a paper bag.
Carrie raises her left perfectly plucked eyebrow and leaves, but not before saying hello to Jonah and walking backwards to glance oh so obviously at his ass. Very nice, Carrie. Bravo.
What an idiot.
"Who was that?" Jonah asked me as he stared after Carrie.
I shook my head as I watched her go back to her groupies and giggle furiously. "Not who was that, but what was that?"
I shivered uncontrollably as I looked back down at my sandwich. Jonah chuckled at this as he pulled his own out. Then it hit me: Jonah's eating lunch with me. My mind waited a few seconds to take it in. Nope, still in a daze.
No one eats lunch with me, so I figured that he's only here eating with me because he had no one else to eat with. But just then, a few guys from the rebel clique had waved Jonah over. He put his sandwich down and said he'd be right back. I nodded and watched him go.
"Hey!" squealed Tina. I smiled at her as she sat down. "So everyone's talking about you and Jonah."
I nodded. "Why?"
Tina shrugged and said, "Don't know." Then she smiled and it was at that moment that I realized that having a socialite, as a sister was bad. Very, very bad.
"What did you say, Tina?"
Tina furrowed her eyebrows and innocently said, "I didn't do anything!"
I gave her a skeptical look. Jonah waved to one of the guys and came back towards me. Tina hastily got up, dusted her self clean and waved to me and then to Jonah.
I watched Tina go as Jonah sat back down.
"So there's gonna be a party on Friday," he said to me. And I smiled because he was struggling with his words. "Wanna go?" he asked.
I nodded my head. "Sure," I said.
I half smiled and we ate our lunch.
~*~
A/N: Please review. Thanks. : )