The Last Girl

by Riley Shasteen

  “You are a slut,” a girl mutters as she walks by and her friends beside her giggle.

  “Mind your own business!” I yell after them.

  “You slept with Lance?” Daisy asks emotionless.

  Jessica and I just stare at the ground as I stupidly remember that Daisy never knew.

  “So, you’re telling me, you had sex with my brother, and the whole school found out about this before I did?” She’s is no longer emotionless; she’s pissed.

  “Daisy, I’m sorry, but I knew you would freak out-”

  “You’re damn right I would freak out. But, I’m freaking out even more knowing that you didn’t tell me!”

  “But, I just did!”

  Daisy laughs in a way that I had never heard before. “You’re unbelievable, Jessica. You really are.” Daisy pushes past her angrily and joins Nolan at the table.

  “Well, that went well,” Jessica says sarcastically.

  “She just needs to let it sink in, don’t worry,” I reassure, hoping what I say is true. “How did everyone find out?”

  “He must have told some guys on his soccer team or something. I mean, the only people I told were you and Hayden.” She pauses. “You don’t think Hayden-”

  “No,” I interrupt, “I don’t.”

  Cue another group of girls calling Jessica rude names.

  “She has ears you know!” I yell angrily, knowing perfectly well how Jessica feels.

  “Jenna, it’s fine. I’m just going to go eat in the library.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No. I just, kind of want to be alone right now. Get my head straight, you know?”

  I nod. “Yeah, okay.”

  Jessica smiles weakly and walks out of the room. I slowly walk to the table joining Nolan, Daisy, and Luke. I quickly glance around to see Hayden is nowhere to be seen (not surprising), Lance is sitting with Kelsey (as usual), and Zac is sitting with a new cheerleader (as usual). Today’s cheerleader of choice is a girl named Brianna. She has long brunette hair, like mine, and dark brown eyes. She is one of those girls who are naturally photogenic. She is also probably the smartest girl on the cheer team and has probably never spent a second in detention. I have English with her and she always argues with the teacher- and always wins. She is the total opposite of Zac.

  I walk up to him. “Zac? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Brianna looks at me and smiles, “Hey, Jenna.”

  “Hey,” I smile back.

  Zac gets up and we walk out of ear shot from the table.

  “Can we call a truce?” I ask.

  “A truce?”

  I nod. “I’m done playing this game with you; I’m tired of it. It’s not going to work out between us and we both know it. I need to focus on other things and you need to find someone better. We need to just be friends.”

  Zac smiles, “You’re right.”

  I stick out my hand. “So, friends?”

  He shakes it. “Friends.”

  “Good,” I laugh. “Now, can you stop messing with these cheerleaders? It really is terrible, Zac.”

  He nods, “I know, I’m done with cheerleaders.” He looks over at Brianna. “Except for that one.” She catches him staring and playfully waves.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “She makes me act like how I was when I was a freshman. Before my motorcycle and my jacket and before everyone thought I was a ‘bad boy.’ Back when I was just Zac. I can be normal around her.”

  “She’s very different than many other girls you’ve dated,” I say, surprised by what he said.

  “I know. I really like her.” He smiles again.

  “Well, good luck with that, Zacie-Pooh.”

  He laughs, “Thanks.” He turns to walk back to his table but stops again. “I’m sorry about what happened, between you and Hayden.” I look at him confused and then he answers my question, “He told me.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, thanks.”

  He nods and sits back down next to Brianna.

  “Hey, lazy,” Luke says as I sit at our own table.

  “For the last time, Luke,” I laugh, “I’m not lazy!”

  “So says the girl who slept all day yesterday.”

  “I was up for those two hours,” I point out.

  “Great progress, Jenna, great progress,” he says sarcastically.

  “How long have you known, Jenna?” Daisy asks me, clearly still referring to Jessica and Lance.

  I don’t want to tell her, but I can’t lie. “A week.” I pause. “Maybe two.”

  Daisy groans. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me. And now, my brother is ruining my best friend’s life and I can’t do anything about it.”

  “Daisy,” Nolan says. “You couldn’t do anything about it even if you had known earlier.”

  “I know,” she sighs. “I just feel like I should do something. But I’m still so pissed.”

  “Just stay out of it,” Nolan says. “You do not want to get involved. Besides, you have me, so who cares about anything else?”

  “Oh right, how could I forget I have Nolan the pig?” she says jokingly.

  “I am not a pig,” he laughs.

  “Says the boy who ate 3 whole McDonalds’s Big Macs in ten minutes.”

  “Hey, that was just plain impressive,” he argues.

  “It was unsettling.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Nolan says before grabbing her by the chin and kissing her.

  They are kissing for about five seconds before I interrupt, “Can I leave?”

  Daisy pulls away from Nolan and laughs, “Jenna, please, you were doing the exact same thing for the past two weeks.”

  I laugh because I know she is right and I am being huge hypocrite, but the comment makes me a little sad as well. “Fine, you may proceed,” I sigh.

  They continue to kiss and after a while of awkward silence and me and Luke just sitting there, Luke turns to me with a glint in his eye like he is about to tell a funny joke.

  “So, Jenna, want to make out?”

  Daisy and Nolan pull apart to each give Luke horrified looks, causing me to spend the rest of lunch laughing my ass off.

  Chapter 34: Talking It Out

  The last bell rings on Friday and I walk to the pickup area to wait for Linda.

  Finally, this week is over.

  It was a pretty boring week actually- when it wasn’t stressful. I barely saw Jessica because she pretty much never left the library. The name calling just got worse. When I was first picked to be the Last Girl and everyone called me rude names, it died down in about a week. But, in this case, it doesn’t look like that is going to happen anytime soon. Daisy and I feel terrible for Jessica, and Daisy even tried talking to Lance about getting everyone to stop the name calling. Of course, he didn’t do anything. Zac seems pretty happy with Brianna and that makes me feel a little bit better. Daisy and Nolan have been in the honeymoon phase all week which makes things pretty awkward for me and Luke, but he’ll just crack a cheesy joke about something and then everything is normal again.

  As for Hayden- Well it’s hard to say. I probably see him a lot more during passing periods now than I did when we were dating, which is really weird. We just walk right by each other. I try to make eye contact with him, but he either looks right through me or looks at whichever of his friends he happens to be walking with.

  I hate it.

  I don’t even understand why he’s ignoring me. Like he’s mad at me; which of course he shouldn’t be. Not my fault he didn’t expect to get broken up with after he grinded with his ex and tried to get me to sleep with him. I just wish things could go back to how they were before we dated. During the brief period of time after we met but before I stayed at his house. Like when I spent the day with him and we went mini-golfing. But, you know, before he kissed me.

  “Jenna!” I hear Jessica’s familiar voice call from behind me.

  “Hey!” I call back as she runs to catch up to me. That’s when I notice
her eyes are red and puffy. “What’s wrong? Did a group of girls corner you and call you-”

  “I kissed Hayden,” she interrupts me.

  “You- what?”

  “I kissed Hayden. Today in the library at lunch.”

  My heart starts to pound against my ribs as an image of Hayden and Jessica together pops into my mind. I quickly try to get rid of it. “Why?” It came out madder than I meant it to.

  “I didn’t mean to, Jenna, I swear. I’ve just been talking to him every day at lunch this week when I was hiding from the name calling and he was hiding from-”

  “Me?”

  She looks at me sadly. “Well, yeah.” I roll my eyes and she continues, “I never meant for it to go that far. It was just nice to talk to him. And you know I’ve always had a bit of a crush on him and today when he tried to kiss me I just couldn’t stop it and-”

  “Fine!” I interrupt, just trying to get her to shut up. I want to just go home and cry into my pillow- something I’ve been doing a lot recently. But that’s all I want to do right now. I want to leave this spot and get as far away as I can. And I can do that in two ways: one, I can tell Jessica to never speak to me again, storm off, and lose one of my best friends, or two, I can talk things out with her and finally end the drama between me and Hayden Sharpe. Even though I really want to choose option number 1, I can’t. I’m not going to lose a friend because of this, even though she can be a real pain in my ass and occasionally makes the stupidest decisions.

  This doesn’t technically mean they are going to start dating. I mean, to him it could have just been a kiss and nothing more and maybe he won’t ever talk to her again.

  Wait- what am I thinking? She’s one of my best friends and I’m hoping the guy she likes won’t want to date her! I’m a terrible person!

  Even though the guy she likes is my ex boyfriend and we just broke up less than a week ago. Oh, and here I am thinking I am a terrible person. She couldn’t have waited at least more than a week to kiss him? She had to do it now, when my metaphorical wound is still so fresh that it burns every time I see him? Or every time I see brown curly hair even if it doesn’t belong to Hayden because it reminds me of him?

  No, I need to stop thinking like that. I need to just clear my head. I mean, Jessica and Hayden would be great for each other. I had told Hayden “You want someone that you can go out and party with every weekend,” and it makes sense. At her first high school party Jessica got drunk and made out with a random guy. She would like going to parties with him. It was actually pretty perfect.

  I breathe in. “It’s okay, Jessica.”

  “W-what?” she asks a little surprised.

  “If you want to date Hayden, then I’m not going to stop you.”

  “You aren’t mad?”

  I pause, trying to figure out the best way to express my feelings. “To be honest, I am a little hurt that this happened and Hayden and I haven’t even been broken up for a week yet.”

  “You’re right. God, I’m such an idiot!” she says, scolding herself.

  “Jessica, don’t worry. I just need some time to get over it. To get over him.”

  She nods slowly. “I really am sorry. Ar-are we okay?” She looks at me with big brown eyes.

  “We will be,” I say as I hear Linda’s loud car engine make its way down the hill.

  I can tell they are home as soon as I walk into the door and smell my mother’s expensive perfume.

  “Mom? Dad?” I call as I walk into the kitchen. That’s when I see them both sitting down across from each other, clearly leaving me the chair at the head of the medium sized kitchen table. I fight the urge to run up and hug them, after not seeing them for about a month because- judging by the looks on their faces- it isn’t the right time for that. This feels strangely like a good-cop bad-cop interrogation, but I have the hunch the good-cop is on vacation.

  “What’s this about a slave auction?” my dad asks, no emotion showing on his face.

  Shit, how did they find out?

  “W-what slave auction?” I ask nervously.

  “We tried to pay Linda for a full four weeks of work but she said we only had to pay her for two because you weren’t here for two of them while you were staying at a boy’s house for the school’s fundraiser you signed up for,” my mother said, matter-of-factly.

  “Ohhhh,” I say, as if I just suddenly remembered. “That slave auction.”

  “Sit,” my dad says coldly, his eyes landing on the chair in front of me. I do as I am told. “Okay, so let’s hear what you have to say for yourself.”

  “I was just doing a fundraiser for my school,” I answer plainly.

  “A fundraiser where you stay at a boy’s house for two weeks without our permission,” my dad says, his tone rising.

  “Okay, I didn’t stay at one boy’s house for two weeks, I stayed at two boys’ houses for a week each. And technically, I didn’t need your permission since I didn’t need to you to sign a permission slip or anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter, you still should have told us!”

  “I told Linda.”

  “Linda isn’t your legal guardian!”

  “She is while you’re away.”

  My dad stops for a moment and looks at me furiously, before leaning back in his chair. My mom opens her mouth to say something and that is when I do something my parents don’t see coming- hell, I don’t even see it coming- I begin to cry. And not just cry, I begin to hysterically cry. I’m crying so much that my dad mumbles something like “I think you should take this,” and then gets up and leaves me and my mother alone. My mom leans over and hugs me and I cry on her shoulder for a couple more minutes.

  When I finally calm down enough to talk, she asks, “Jenna, what happened?”

  “I really messed up, mom,” I say in between sniffles. And then I tell her. I tell her everything. Starting from my first day of school when I heard about the Auction to today when Jessica told me she kissed Hayden. And when I say I tell her everything, I mean I tell her everything. I tell her how Jessica signed me up, how Zac punched Tom Stephens for me, how I dated Hayden, and even how Jessica slept with Lance. I left out the details about me sharing beds with Luke and Hayden, however. My mom may not listen very often, but when she does, she pays attention to details like that. And she’s a good listener. By the time I finish the story, the sun is setting.

  “I just don’t know what to do anymore. I am so pissed at her, but I don’t want to be.” I sigh.

  My mom nods, “I know how you feel, honey, I do. And I know you don’t want to see your best friend dating your ex. But, you have to cover up your feelings about it. You don’t want to lose Jessica as a friend and you want your friendship back with Hayden, this is your chance to get both.”

  I nod. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “You shouldn’t have done the Slave Auction in the first place,” my mom says shaking her head.

  “I told you, I didn’t have a choice. Courtney was going to put an academic dishonor stamp on Jessica’s record,” I say exasperated.

  My mom laughs. “You actually think that’s real?”

  “What?” I look up at her.

  “Honey, the school has more important things to worry about than Jessica signing you up for the fundraiser. It’s called an academic dishonor stamp for a reason; it is only for academic problems, like cheating on tests. If you had asked they would have just taken your name off the list.” She laughs again and my jaw drops.

  Courtney tricked us.

  “Oh my God, I’m such an idiot,” I say, putting my head in my hands.

  “No, you just weren’t thinking.” My mom lifts my chin up. “If you had come to me and your father at the beginning, we could have told you this and you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “But in a way, I’m kind of happy this all happened.”

  “Why is that?” she asks.

  “I met Luke.” My mother gives me a strange look and I continue, “I really like him, mom. More than I liked
Hayden.”

  “Then why are you still moping on about Hayden? If you’re already thinking about another guy, don’t be mad if Hayden tries to date someone else- even if it is your best friend.”

  “I know.” I nod. “It’s just hard.”

  “I know it’s hard. But, you have to move on. I mean, you have Daisy, and Jessica if you talked to her, and this Luke boy.” She puts on her stern parent voice. “But, maybe you should forget boys for a while and focus on getting your Biology grade back up.”

  I start to cry all over again.

  “What’s the matter now?” my mom asks concerned.

  “I just don’t know how I’m going to do that. I suck at Bio and…” I trail off.

  “And what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Jenna, tell me,” she says, fixing her brown eyes on mine.

  “I just, I just feel like you and dad only care about my grades,” I explain, focusing on the wooden floors beneath us.

  “Wha-?”

  “You guys are never home,” I interrupt, wanting to get my side of the story in before she goes off on me. “You never call me. And when you do call, it’s only to tell me I failed a test. It just feels like you guys don’t care about anything except my grades.” I wipe a tear off my left cheek.

  “Honey,” she pauses to fix my hair, “we only care so much because we care about your future. We want you to have options for college and then be happy with whatever job you have, not stuck at some boring, low-paying job.” Another tear rolls down my cheek and she continues, “We may have overreacted a little bit about your test, but we just want you to do well and reach your full potential. Do you get what I mean?”

  “I guess.”

  “You’re right though; we should be here more and when we are gone we should call more and check up on you. But, you know, you can call us too.”

  “I feel like I’m interrupting your work when I call.”

  She laughs lightly, “We may be busy, but we aren’t that busy that we can’t talk to you when you call- even if it’s only for five minutes during the work day. Then as long as you need at night. ”

  I nod slowly, “I’ll remember that for next time.”