by Jon Jacks
What’s her secret?
Oh, and that guy you were after?
Maybe you’ve just gone and met someone who’s more fun to be with than he is.
And now you’re thinking: like wow, what did I ever see in him?
You think this is a joke, right?
A trick?
A let down?
No, it isn’t.
It’s the truth.
You don’t believe it?
Okay, so go ahead; wallow in your unhappiness
Perhaps that’s what you really enjoy.
Perhaps you don’t really want to have fun, is that it?
No?
Thing is, when all’s said and done, you’re the only one who can cure your broken heart.
Because, being honest, you were really the one who broke it in the first place, weren’t you?
No?
That’s silly?
Well, okay, so would your heart ache and hurt, would you cry yourself to sleep, if you knew that in ten years’ time you will have forgotten all about him.
Well, here’s a quick trip into the future for you; that’s exactly how you’ll look back on it all.
Either that, or you’ll be thinking you were crazy beyond belief, that it was a crazy time in your life, and thank goodness you came to your senses and didn’t end up with him.
Honest – that’s how it’s gonna be!
Trust us on this one.
*
Chapter 19
Heartache High.
A story that’s only as long as you want it to be.
*
Chapter 20
But he hurt me, you’re thinking.
Hurt me bad.
Sure he did, in his way.
But you prolonged that agony. Going over it again and again in your mind.
All the might have beens.
All the if onlys.
Torturing yourself.
You were the one who really broke your heart.
You couldn’t change him. You couldn’t change what he’d done.
But you let him change you in a bad way.
When what you should have done is change your attitude to it.
And you know what?
You’re a stronger person than you realise.
You’re a good person.
You’re a better person than he is.
He’ll look back one day and think, Hey, I really missed out on a girl who would probably have made me happy.
Okay, okay; so that’s all going too far – he probably won’t think that at all, will he?
But do you really care?
So why should you care what he thinks now?
You know what – just stuff the guy.
Who the heck does he think he is, thinking he has a right to hurt you?
Thinking he’s got control over you.
Thinking he’s better than you.
You’re not going to allow that anymore, are you?
You’ve been trying to work out who you are, going by what you think he thinks about you.
That’s just the way to drag yourself lower and lower, yeah?
You know what?
You’re going to make yourself so gorgeous tonight, you’re going to be getting admiring glances everywhere you go.
Because that’s the thing with Heartache High – it’s all down to you if you want to enrol here.
But whoever enrols can never leave.
But the day you change – that’s Graduation Day!
End
To fully understand why Stephanie Johnson had to write this Primer for Students,
you need to read the full novel, Heartache High
Available soon!
Be sure to read:
Heartache High: The Wakening
Chapter 1
I wake up, still drowsy, still half-asleep.
I can’t open my eyes for some odd reason.
I’m ridiculously weak too.
I can hardly move my arms
Hardly move in fact.
Like I’m heavily drugged.
I feel around with my hands.
I’m in a bed.
Reasonably soft, if over-tightly tucked in sheets.
Reasonably hard mattress.
It’s a narrow bed.
Like a hospital bed.
Again.
Perhaps it hasn’t worked.
Perhaps I’m still in Heartache High.
*
I’d been doubtful from the start that it would work.
But Gillian had insisted that I at least give it a try.
She’d come to me for help, having heard that I’d briefly managed to break free of Heartache High. If only for nothing more than a few minutes.
No one had ever achieved even that before.
In those brief few minutes, I’d managed to retake control of my own body and renter the real world.
I’d thought, in those few, exciting moments, that I might have managed to leave Heartache High for ever.
Gillian, of course, wanted me to try something harder.
Something even more impossible.
She wanted me to try and take over her body for a while.
*
It turns out that, just because I thought it was impossible, it didn’t mean it was impossible for me to move into Gillian’s body.
Because here I am.
In Gillian’s body.
Yet, strangely, weirdly – and it has to be really weird for any student of Heartache High to be surprised – I still seem to have woken up in the narrow, hospital-like beds our school dormitories are infamous for.
‘Gillian!’
It’s a girl’s cry.
Incredibly loud, incredibly excited. Even though it sounds like she’s only a couple of feet away.
Suddenly, someone’s by my side, leaning over me, breathing heavily, excitedly.
An eye mask is ripped away from my face.
I can see at last.
It’s a young girl. A younger version of Gillian.
Heddy.
This has got to be Heddy, Gillian’s younger sister.
She’s crying, but wildly, elatedly. She’s smiling too.
She’s crying from happiness.
‘Gillian! Gillian! You’re back, you’re back!’
She’s kissing me, hugging me.
I’m too weak to respond. Too weak to even speak.
Heddy briefly turns her head aside.
‘Nurse! Nurse!’ she yells urgently.
Nurse?
I am in a hospital bed?
‘Gillian’s come round!’ Heddy screams out elatedly.
‘Come round?’ I manage to croak.
There’s some form of thin, flexible tubing inserted into my mouth.
I can also feel other pieces of plastic tubing snaking over my body. Sense pin pricks too, where something like cold, thin bits of metal have been inserted.
The room around me has that spare bareness of a hospital room. I can hear the beeping of monitoring machines, catch glimpses of small, brightly flashing lights out of the corners of my eyes.
‘Gillian? Can’t you remember?’
Weeping yet also chuckling. Heddy gives me another loving hug.
‘Remember?’ I say confusedly.
Heddy is heading for the door.
‘You were in a coma Gillian! But I’ve got to tell everyone! You’re back now!’
*
Chapter 2
It wasn’t until Gillian had first smiled that I’d realised just how amazingly beautiful she was.
She’d found herself waking up at Heartache High little more than a day after me.
She had wandered around in an unbelieving daze even longer than I had.
She’d been miserable.
She’d refused to talk to anyone.
Which, of course, in many ways it was.
The end of the world she’d known, at least.
So, when she’d approached me, smiling, looking like she had hope again, I’d been more than a little surprised.
‘I need your help,’ she’d explained. ‘I just know my boyfriend’s in big trouble, back in the real world.’
Course, when she says ‘boyfriend’, she means the guy she spent all her waking hours, and most of her sleeping hours, dreaming about.
The guy she wished would be her boyfriend.
The guy who, in reality, ignored her.
Didn’t even know she existed.
That’s why we all end up here, at Heartache High; because we’ve all retreated into a little compartment of our mind where we can imagine our love has at last been recognised by the boy (or girl) of our dreams.
Though how any boy could be unaware that Gillian didn’t exist, I just do not know.
*
I really hadn’t thought it would be possible; to somehow move into Gillian’s body back in the real world.
When I’d achieved it in my own body, instead of wallowing in thoughts of nothing but Iain I’d had to open up my mind once more.
Open up to the other things in life I’d wilfully ignored.
My mum and dad, whom I’d hardly talked to when I still existed in the real world.
Cherry and Mary, whose calls I’d refused to take. Whose trips to the movies and the mall I’d no longer taken part in.
That’s how stupidly wrapped up in thoughts of Iain I’d become.
Turning my back on the real world.
Allowing my body to be taken over by the succubus Panthia. She’d effortlessly yet securely trapped me in that little part of my mind I’d already so willingly retreated into.
What a lonely existence that could have been.
Well, it would have been, if there hadn’t been so many other people just like me. People so wrapped up in their unrequited love that we’d all created some kind of telepathic connection between ourselves.
Created Heartache High.
But by thinking once again of all those things back in the real world that I’d ignored, I’d begun to spread back into areas of my mind I’d left unused for so long.
It had given me, however briefly, full control of my body back in the real world once more.
I’d seen Iain. Held him. Tightly
Heard from him how he’d loved me all along after all.
But he’d been too shy, too afraid of a humiliating snub from me, to even talk to me.
It was Iain’s love for me that had given me the power to briefly displace the succubus Panthia who had taken possession of my body.
Of course, she had soon regained control.
So what chances did Gillian have of regaining control of her body?
Almost none, I’d sadly explained.
As far as she was aware, the boy she was in love with didn’t share any such feelings for her.
Still, we’d sat down, tried it.
I’d told her to open up her mind to all those things in her life she’d cut herself off from.
Her parents.
Her friends.
Her life around town.
Life as it had been before she’d made the mistake of falling for a boy who’d shown no interest in her.
She’d tried it; but she didn’t feel like she was spreading throughout her mind once more, not the way I’d explained it.
She was still trapped in this deep, dark corner of her mind.
She’d wept in frustration.
‘I need to do this! He’s in trouble, I know he is!’
‘Look; let’s try something else,’ I’d said.
I’d held her hand.
‘Thinking about it,’ I’d pointed out hopefully, ‘we already have a connection, don’t we? The Heartache High connection?’
I didn’t really know how this would help in anyway; I mentioned it only in the hope that it would spur Gillian on to trying harder.
There was some small part of me already linked to her mind, I pointed out.
I just had to help her walk through her own mind, didn’t I?
Leading her by the hand into areas she’d refused to enter for so long.
Perhaps I had more confidence that this could be achieved because I’d more or less done it before.
I’d seen my mind as a world I could move around in.
So we held hands.
We closed our eyes.
We concentrated hard.
She told me about her family.
About her younger sister, Heddy.
(‘Her real names Henrietta; she’s wonderful. Do anything for you.’)
She didn’t mention her friends at school. Or even any friends outside of school.
I told her I didn’t want to know anything about him.
I could have added:
He didn’t exist.
He was the problem.
He was the reason why she was here, at Heartache High.
But that, of course, would have simply made her think all the more about him.
What a wonderful family Gillian had, I thought.
How foolish she’d been to cut them out of her life.
Heddy especially sounded truly wonderful.
The kind of sister I wish I’d had.
And, as I’d thought this, I’d found myself waking up in Gillian’s body.
*
‘I could see her! I could see Heddy! Sweet little Heddy! How could I have ignored her like I did?’
Back in Heartache High, Gillian is still alongside me, still desperately clutching my hand.
Yet, as I’m in control of her body, she can see through her real eyes, see the real world as if she were the one in control.
That’s how it works, see?
When I’d regained control of my own body, that part of my mind linked to Heartache High hadn’t just vanished of course.
So I’d existed, for real, in the real world.
Yet still retained contact with the friends I’d made at Heartache High, Jassy and Dave.
Odd, yeah?
Welcome to the strange world of Heartache High!
‘You didn’t tell me you were in a coma!’ I say accusingly to Gillian.
‘I wasn’t; at least, I didn’t know I was!’
‘Okay; that figures.’
There are quite a lot of things you forget about your previous life when you enrol at Heartache High.
Particularly around the period when you first move here.
‘You do realise, Gillian, that this didn’t quite work out the way we planned? I reckon I’m the one in control of your body.’
‘Yeah, I sort of figured that out when I could see Heddy, but couldn’t feel her hugs or kisses.’
I’d spent a great deal of time with Gillian explaining my own experiences.
When I hadn’t been fully in control of my body, I’d only had brief glimpses of the real world as if I were daydreaming.
I hadn’t been able to just conjure these insights up whenever I wanted; they just happened, much as you just suddenly find yourself dreaming.
‘And all this is okay with you?’ I ask Gillian. ‘I could try and–’
‘No no, stay where you are, please! This is better than nothing! Better than I could have hoped for a few days ago!’
‘It might be a brief stay; I’ve been lucky so far. I can’t understand why the succubus hasn’t put up more resistance.’
There has to be a succubus.
That’s the only thing that would have been keeping Gillian’s body alive, once she’d retreated into that little corner of her mind where she could just while away her time wishing life could be fairer.
‘It’s true nurse, its true! Gillian’s back!’
Heddy rushes into the room, almost dragging a dubious looking nurse with her.
It’s only when I
slightly turn my head to look at them that the nurse’s face breaks into a surprised smile.
‘Well I never!’
‘So can we turn it off now?’
Heddy dashes over to my bedside, excitedly throwing her arms around me once more.
She turns to the nurse, who’s diligently inspecting one of the beeping, blinking monitors surrounding my bed.
‘She doesn’t need all these machines now, does she nurse?’
Of course!
Gillian was in a coma – which means the only thing keeping her glorious body alive was all these life-support machines!
*
Chapter 3
Hah!
Some escape from Heartache High this is, eh?
We’ve woken up in a hospital bed.
Kept alive by nothing more than life-support machines.
I’d almost have preferred the succubus.
Which, by the way, doesn’t seem to be in residence.
Perhaps even succubae can’t do much with a body on life-support.
Perhaps the succubus moved out, taking over some other unfortunate girl.
Wait!
It’s just dawned on me!
‘Heddy,’ I croak, ‘you can’t turn off the machine!’
‘Why not?’ she asks. ‘You’re better now!’ she declares happily. ‘You don’t need it!’
Ah, but we do, we do!
I want to say it out loud.
But I know I can’t explain why the machines need leaving on.
Not to Heddy anyway.
If they turn off the machines, what happens to Gillian’s body when I leave? When I fully return to Heartache High?
Without the machines, without a succubus, Gillian’s body will die.
And when her body dies, the Gillian standing alongside me will also simply vanish too.
*
A dishevelled, exhausted looking man steps into the room.
His thick, dark hair is unkempt, his chin unshaven. There are dark blue bags under his eyes.
Even so, he has that rugged handsomeness of the sort of man advertisers just love to star in their TV commercials.
‘Dad!’ Gillian cries out, sobbing as soon as she sees the haggard state he’s in.
As he peers down at the bed, his eyes are full of disbelief.
I put on a pained smile for him, knowing once again that this is how Gillian would want me to greet him.
Thing is, I reckon he deserves it; he’s obviously got himself into this condition over the endless worrying he’s gone through as Gillian has lain here in a coma.
He strides across to my bedside. He throws his arms around me, presses his face tenderly against mine.
‘Gillian, Gillian! It’s true, it’s true!’