JESS

Introduction

The day she didn’t get asked to prom, it rained. The drops were like tears, sliding and slipping down the windshield. She thought hard and long about it. “Yeah,” she thought to herself, “they’re crying for me.” But it didn't comfort her. If anything, it made her feel worse: who sits in their friend’s car and contemplates the world crying for the girl who wasn’t going to get asked anyway? She couldn't even figure out why she was crushed at all. It’s not like she had been expecting to get asked in the first place. Well, maybe a little. But it was more of a pin-sized beam of hope that penetrated the darkness of her lost dreams. You see, she'd given up long ago, on dating. After going through 12 years of school and never getting asked on a date, she just wanted to forget about love. She still had a crush, but didn't quite know why. She felt like crushes were life saving and life destroying at the the same time. They brought those little pin points of hope to your soul. But in the end, they only destroyed you. Or at least that was her experience. Story of her life. In her life, she'd only had three or four, but they were hard to let go of. She told herself it didn’t matter, but something just kept eating at her heart and she couldn’t ignore it. She thought, for just one second, that maybe he would have asked her. But she had ruined it. Given up her chance. She sighed, and sat there, sitting in her friend’s mom’s mini van, wondering why she translated the rain into tears.