didn't know you were cold ('til you felt my fire) // JENLISA AU

Chapter 2

It started for Jennie, as it did every day, at 5:00am sharp.

She was a creature of habit and routine, and starting the day out identically helped her to get in her focus for the tasks at hand. She showered, dressed, and headed downstairs to the large kitchen to grab her breakfast and make her lunch. Her parents were both already gone to work, and Jennie liked the solitude of her mornings.

As she double checked all her homework on the kitchen counter while sipping on her instant breakfast shake, she noticed a small red thing, the corner of a paper, under the fridge. Curious, she knelt down and grabbed the small protruding triangle and pulled.

A red envelope, grimy with under-fridge dusted, was revealed, with 'Jennie' scrawled on it in her mother's handwriting. Curious, Jennie unsealed the flap and pulled out a card, which turned out to be a simple flowery one from the 'Happy Birthday: Daughter' Hallmark section. On the inside it just said 'Happy birthday dear, we're so proud of you.' with a $20 bill.

Hm, so that's what happened to it.

Her birthday had been months ago, she was closer to her next at this point, but the card she usually got to accompany her cake had been missing. Instead she had come downstairs to just the bill with a smiley-faced post-it note. She thought her parents had just decided to forgo the, truthfully, useless cards altogether, but it looked like they had just managed to lose it and didn't get a replacement.

Jennie clicked her tongue and pocketed the bill, throwing the card in the trash.

She checked the time and began packing up to prepare for her commute to school.

BMBYH Highschool wasn't within her neighbourhood, but it offered a special curriculum called the 'Progress Program' for gifted students, who could apply from any area in the city, where students could learn faster paced and specialized courses in their chosen academics. Progress Program students were often first picked on university applications, which was an excellent edge as schooling became more competitive.

The downside was that the Boombayah district of the city where the school resided, while once a thriving middle class suburb, had fallen dramatically since the latest rerouting of the commute train and BMBYH was now the local school for... rougher sorts, according to her mother. Many of the Progress Program students came from the wealthier neighbourhood like Jennie's, and there was a constant, tense class divide in the school between the Progress and 'local' students as a result.

Still, the edge the program gave for school applications wasn't something to be sniffed at and so young Jennie had visited the school for a day, following a freshman student for a sense of what the program would offer. She was unsure if the school, with it's ageing structure and small classrooms, would be a good fit for her but after sitting in on a few Program courses she began to warm up to the school's charm.

Her mind was made up when, over lunch, a freshman girl with bleach blonde hair in a self-made jean vest, edges frayed and jagged from where the scissors had torn the sleeves off, had gotten into a fight with a senior over smoking in the bathroom and kicked a stall door so hard it was knocked right off. The freshman had stormed out of the bathroom, cigarette still smouldering between her teeth, made eye contact with a shock-frozen Jennie, flipped her off and stormed away.

Jennie had been, for lack of a better word, starstruck.

The senior girl limped out and apologized to Jennie for 'the fucking vandal' (which the freshman Jennie was following explained was an epitaph for the local kids (Jennie would later learn the wealthier students had their own designation of 'Pinksy')) and that she hoped it didn't affect her opinion about the school but Jennie didn't mind at all.