Dare || m.c.

School was awful on Thursday. Not only was Jade sleep deprived, she also kept thinking about last night and how she had completely broken down in front of Michael. He hadn't been a smart ass like he usually was. In fact, he had been kinder than she deserved. He had been incredibly honest with her, giving her every reason to trust him. He showed her a fucking scar that his father gave him when he was seven. She didn't know the details, but she wasn't an idiot. It wasn't difficult to connect the dots. What was difficult was trusting Michael. Last night, she was hoping that he would fail. That he wouldn't be able to give her a reason to trust him. Then she would've been able to throw it in his face and prove to him that trusting people wasn't worth it. But no. That asshole had to go ahead and make her a part of something far too personal to share with someone who wasn't even a friend.

Michael could be nice, she knew that now. But she still didn't understand it. He said he liked her. What did that mean? Guys like him didn't go for girls like her. Jade wasn't insecure by any means; she knew she had a decent face and a decent body, but her and Michael were just too different. And she didn't believe in any opposites attract bullshit. She had taken a psychology class at school and that's where she had learned that. And it really wasn't a hard concept to understand. In chemistry, they attracted, but that was different. How could two people who are complete opposites of each other in every way be attracted towards one another? And suppose there was physical attraction, then that's all it would ever be. If they didn't have things in common, they wouldn't be able to understand each other. They needed-

Why was she even thinking about this? It would be one thing to be Michael's friend, but that's all they would ever be. If they got to that point. Nothing more. Regardless of what Michael might've meant by saying he liked her. If friendships were hard to maintain, then relationships were a fucking disaster. Not that Jade would know anything about that.

All she knew was from a terrible experience during her sophomore year. She had gone out with a guy named Zach for a few months until she got wasted at a party and went home with Zach, whose parents were very conveniently not home. That's where Jade lost her virginity and two days later at school was labeled a whore and a slut. Apparently, she had slept with just about every male in the school and now no one wanted anything to do with her, not even the people she had considered her best friends. Zach didn't even look at her.

"You're disposable," were the last words he ever spoke to Jade.

That was the answer to Michael's question. That was why she couldn't afford to make friends. Because making them was easy. Losing them hurt like a bitch. Knowing they never really cared was a like a fucking slap to the face. That was also partly why she didn't trust people. They betrayed you at the most unexpected turns. Just like her parents did.

*•*•*

After school, Jade spent a solid hour doing homework. She had missed a shit ton of work in the past three days, even though it was towards the end of the year. Her and Ashton worked together in her temporary room, helping each other with things that were maybe too hard to do by themselves. Jade had always been a stellar student, even though people constantly thought otherwise because of the way she chose to dress. Not only did she enjoy most of her classes, she needed the grades to get into a good college.

After her mom started drinking a little too much, Jade had stopped thinking about getting into college right after high school. She was going to get her mother the help she needed and get her life back together. That was why she couldn't just pack up and leave with Ashton. They both had lives that they couldn't just randomly drop. Now she planned on graduating high school and working for a while before starting college and doing something productive with her life. Even though it was a mess right now.