Honestly,you'd think you would know a person pretty well after . . . one sec while I count . . . . just under six years. And all it takes is sharing a class together for the first time to totally change that.
Maybe I should explain. Jessica is one of my best friends, one of the closest people to me. I'd like to think so, anyway. I've known her since summer camp, just before sixth grade. Until the beginning of this school year, to me she's always been Jessica: introverted, shy, opinionated, fellow geek Jessica. Jessica who I watch Merlin and Vampire Diaries with, whose fanfiction I tease her about while I read it over her shoulder, whose dog I help her chase around the neighbourhood.
Then we got AP English Literature together. We sit next to one another even.
Jess is clingy and an isolationist . . . me and Kate are pretty much her only friends. Even though we've shared a table with six other people at lunch for two years now. But even Preston, friend of all, has mentioned that she doesn't like talking to people. She just its there, talks to me and Kate, and ignores everyone else. She has told me that my sister and I are her only 'real' friends and she'd probably be in a mental hospital if not for us.
Jess hates people easily, even fictional/dead ones. We're reading 'Brave New World' in class, and she won't stop repeating that she hates, hates, hates it, would rather read the most boring books on the planet, and that the characters should all die, along with the already-dead author. If she woke up in the book, she says, she'd murder everybody in it. I also found out today that she can speak very easily of having Christian Fundamentalists thrown out of funerals and purposely run over. Frankly, that she could say that about anyone scares me, and now I'm reconsidering coming out to her like I'd planned . . . Why?
Because Jess is narrow-minded and hypocritical. She refuses to even consider the idea that someone believing in deity is valid - Kate and I, apparently, are the sole exceptions. I've been fine with that - she has the right to her opinion, after all, even if I disagree. Even if she loudly states her dislike of anyone that disagrees with her. She is smarter than everyone else, because they are all jerks. At the same time, she is a stupid idiot who can't get her grades up . . . yet is on honor roll and been asked to join the dual enrollment program. She can't make friends - but she shouldn't have to talk to the idiots she shares classes with, becaue they annoy her. The army is stupid, but we should just nuke the terrorists and 'be done with it, already!'
You think you know a person. Don't get me wrong, the Jess I know and love is still there . . . but now I see another side to her, as well, and it's making me change my views on her. It's also making me take a long, long look at myself.
Frankly, I'm not sure I like what I see, and a conversation I had with my dad today compounded that. It was while we were having a bite to eat with all the other JROTC cadets and parents in the school courtyard before the annual awards ceremony, and he asked why I was sitting with him and not one of my cadet friends. I was honest - I don't have many, and the ones I do have were busy getting food or talking to their parents, or plattons-mates. I sighed a little, mentioned how I wished I was better at making friends - I know my social skills tend to lean toward the awkward end of the scale.
Next thing I know, Dad mentions that, well, it might be because I scowl at everyone, and seem to value most in a person their ability to leave me alone. I see everyone as an idiot and they have to prove to me otherwise.
Just . . . like . . . Jess.
They say that one hates in others what one hates most in themself. I think its true, and now I'm trying to change it. Once Dad and I finished up, I ran to the ladies' and noticed that, hey, yeah, I do have a semi-perpetual frown. So I tilted my lips upward, and headed out in search of my few friends.
Didn't see them.
Instead, I started chatting with a girl I half-recognised from being in either band or near me in the parade our JROTC program was in a few months ago. It could very easily be that I recall her from both. And you know what? After a few moments of awkwardness on my part, thinking 'OMG, OMGs, I don't know what to do here!' it turned out that talking to people? Is pretty easy. It's like parties, I guess - a lot easier once you actually get on the dance floor(and have lots and lots of Pepsi.)
So I talked. I laughed. I glomped my friend Kiera when she walked by. When she introduced me to her boyfriend, I quoted 'The Big Bang Theory''s latest episode and explained the origins of the Vulcan hand sign. At Little Shop practise, I left my book aside, and doodled on Jade's and Katrina's arms, as well as my own. I debated the merits of the Green Lantern over those of several other comic book characters. I periodically lost track of my cell phone and memo book. I shrugged and just joined in the last scene in the play, ran around the auditorium behind Brandon, and had a hey old time laughing about it. Ms Gale didn't even call me out on it. I goofed around with Allie about the 'dirty teenager-found meanings' behind every single song in the play - her quote, not mine.
And I feel great. I've been smiling for most of the day, and I'm just so very, very happy.
I need to talk to my dad more often.
- Janie L.
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