Poppy Jennings' Revenge

A week after I moved into the new house, I found ways to make myself feel a little more comfortable-- kind of. I taped old pictures of myself and friends on my wall and plastered a huge poster of the Golden Gate Bridge by my window. I knew moving usually meant a new start, but I couldn’t help but cling onto the past. My old yearbooks from previous grades were stored beneath my bed and my former school clothes for spirit days were folded neatly in a small tub in my closet. I kept them there for easy access if I ever wanted to be reminded of my old school in Frisco and the memories that plagued it.

I was hoping maybe if my parents saw how much I missed home they’d let me stay with my best friend, Jessica, in Frisco for the rest of my senior year. It was practically wishful thinking because both of my guardians were head strong and determined. Besides, that plan hadn’t proved it gone into play yet, but sooner or later it would. At least I hope it would.

“So, any last words or advice before I step into this high school you think that’s so great?” I huffed as I unbuckled my seatbelt. I twisted my body to grab my backpack from the backseat and heaved it up to the front seat.

My unshaven brother ran his hands through his tousled brown hair that was in desperate need for a haircut, “Uh…” he began, “Get good grades, don’t do drugs, and don’t get raped.” Blue’s advice had not advanced or evolved from the last time I asked him for some. He’s been telling me the same thing since middle school.

Sarcastically I answered, “Thanks, dude, I'll take that into deep consideration and thought.” Opening the car door, about ready to get out, I turned back around to speak to Blue.

“Can’t you convince mom and dad to home school me?” I asked, still gripping the handle of the door.

Blue rolled his eyes, “Dad is always going to be at work and mom works eight hours a day as a teacher. So unless you want to go back to the second grade, then no, I won’t ask mom and dad to home school you.” He moved the gear from ‘park’ to ‘drive’, “This school’s chill, it’s a lot more low key than the rival school across town. There’s a lot less drama here. Maybe that’s something you’re not used to, but maybe it’s something you need.”

Blue was right, I had enough drama for a lifetime or two.

“Look, just go in there with an open mind and try to be yourself. You’ll make new friends and you could forget all the bad things back in Cali. Think of this opportunity as a refresh or a restart button. You’ll do fine.”

Never in a million years would I ever think Blue would be the one to make me feel a little relieved about going into a new school, better yet, a new life. I guess he does deserve his spot as a big brother.

“Thank you, Blue, that was actually kind of nice.” I quickly gave my brother a side hug and got out of the car.

Before I shut the door, Blue managed to yell out, “But don’t be yourself too much, you know how drama seems to gravitate towards you!”

I turned around and smirked at him, “I’ll see you later!” I waved him goodbye and began walking across the drive through of buses dropping off teenagers.

Almost reaching the sidewalk, I heard a car hooking at me as it screeched to a halt in the middle of the drive way. I snapped my head to the car that almost hit me. The guy in the black Dodge Challenger had both of his hands gripped onto the wheel. His knuckles were practically as white as his teeth that were probably grinding in annoyance. He looked at me and gave me the, 'wtf, get out of the way'' face.

I finally realized that it was my fault for not carefully watching where I was walking and quickly shuffled my feet to carry the rest of my body onto the sidewalk. I lifted my hand to give him the ’sorry’ wave.

He shook his head and then continued on his route to the parking lot.

Good grief.

When I walked inside Lathrop, I was surprised to see that the school was bigger than I imagined. The main lobby was decorated with fake leaves taped up along the walls and small clusters of pumpkins that were not yet cut out into horrifying jack-o-lanterns. The school was definitely festive.

I walked into the main office and picked up my schedule for the new school year.

The pumpkin-like secretary reached over the counter to give me a bright yellow sheet of paper that contained my classes and locker combination, “Alright, here’s your class schedule!” The secretary lady—Mrs. Judy Parken— adjusted her reading glasses before calling out to a girl behind me, “ Hey Mallory!— I think you’ll like this school, you’ll have lots of fun,” Mrs. Parken said.

I turned my head and watched a petite girl that looked no younger than me stop in front of the office and took attention to Mrs. Parken. “Yes, Mrs. Parken?” She answered.

Mallory walked into the office and stood by me, smiling at the woman behind the desk. She was a lot shorter than me, probably standing as tall as 5’1. She reminded me of Hayden Panettiere on season 4 of her show Heroes. “This is our new student, Crymson, I see that you guys have the first two classes together, why don’t you show her around?” Mrs. Parken suggested.

Mallory looked up at me with beaming bright eyes, “Sure, Mrs. Parken! — I’m Mallory Sanders!” The blonde introduced as she reached out her hand.

I shook it and smiled, “I’m Crymson Venus, nice to meet you.”

“Same to you,” Before she lead me out of the office, she turned back to talk to Mrs. Parken about her locker, “Uh, Mrs. Parken, before I take this new student under my wing, in the meantime, would you mind finding me a new locker?” Mallory asked in a sweet honey suckled voice.

Mrs. Parken shook her head, “This is the third time you asked for a new locker, what’s the problem this time?”

Mallory rested her arms on top of the counter, “Well, the first time I needed a change was because the lock was totally busted and I always needed Jeff to open it for me, which was really frustrating and it made me late for my classes. Then the second time I needed to change lockers was because I had my classes switched around, and then my locker wasn’t near any of my new classes, and now… well…”

“Well what?” At this point, Mrs. Parken slid her glasses down to the tip of her nose and gave Mallory a nice stare down. It was obvious the secretary wearing the festive colored sweater just wanted to go back to her blueberry bagel sitting peacefully half bitten next to her Apple desktop.

“Oh nevermind,” she huffed out of the office and I trailed right behind her, “hey, can I see that?” Mallory said as she eyed the piece of paper in my hand.

I handed her the dead tree and she scanned it over like a printer, “Oh man, that sucks, you got my old locker.” She looked over at me and gave a ‘oh man, that sucks, you got my old locker’ look.

“It’s cool, I’ll manage.” I said.

“It’s right down here,” She led me down a hallway with purple colored lockers. A lot of students were rummaging through their backpacks and shoving things into their lockers before the school day started. “Here it is! Locker number 1315!”

“Thanks…” I looked down at the paper to find my locker combination and began twisting the lock.

“Hey, was that Blue’s car you came out of?” I heard Mallory ask from beside me.

“Uh yeah, how do you know my brother?” I replied as I pulled up on the handle, but the locker wouldn’t open. I tried the locker combination again, but the lock, once again, wouldn’t open.

“He used to date my older sister Ariana Anchors.” She answered as she lightly pushed me aside to have a try at opening my locker.

“Is this the same older sister of Jerrico?” I asked her.

“Yeah! Jerrico and Ariana are my half-siblings. Jerrico is a senior here, too!” she said smiling after she finally got my locker opened, “I actually don’t know, know your brother. He was more of a ‘I know you because you’re my older sister’s ex-boyfriend’ kind of deal, you know? He’s a lot closer to my brother Jerrico now, though. "

“Oh I see, that’s cool, so I guess our brothers and PJ are pretty close friends,huh?”

“Yeah, they kind of are,” She confirmed, “you know PJ, too? Man, you’re startin’ at the top aren’t cha?” She laughed as she leaned on the locker next to mine.

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion and chuckled, “What do you mean?” I questioned.

“Well, PJ and Jerrico are kind of hot stuff here. They’re the dynamic duo, especially on the basketball court. Their faces are always in the newspaper for something sports related and people here love them, even some of the teachers. They’re also upperclassmen, so their authority is even more intimidating.” She boasted, “and if you’re on their good side—and I know this sounds totally ‘typical high school story’ – but you’re kinda set.” She finished.

I shut my locker. “Hm, nice to know, I guess. I’ll keep that thought in mind.” After PJ and I met on the first day of my arrival, he’d come over frequently to hang out with Blue. But sometimes it seemed like he came over because of me. He’d ask questions about my life back in California and what my old high school was like. To kind of think of it, he sure knew a lot about me. But I knew nothing about him.

I looked down at the schedule in my hand, “So where’s my first class?”

Mallory pointed down the hall, “Its right down the hall and it’s the last room on the left! I’ll meet you in there in a sec, I have to go drop off my things in my locker.”

She gave me a ‘see ya later’ wave and disappeared in the flood of students to the opposite direction. I walked down the hall and turned on the last room on the left.

My first class was AP Chemistry. I didn’t even know why I wanted to be enrolled into the class. I didn’t even like chemistry--- science at all for that matter. The black marble tables were always a little too cold and turning the knobs to switch on the gas was always tempting. There were also too many rules to remember and who cared about significant figures anyways?

“Hi, I’m Crymson Venus, I’m a new student, and I was wondering where I should sit?” I was standing in front of the room behind the awkwardly tall male teacher. He was writing a formula on the board but stopped when he heard my voice.

The man turned around, “Oh hello, I was expecting you! How about you grab that one seat in the back row?”

I made my way to the back of the room and took a seat. A few minutes later, the bell rang and students began coming in one by one. I looked around the room and found Mallory plopped right in front of the classroom.

Great, I’m alone in the back.

Another bell rang and seconds later, I saw PJ rushing into the room and swiftly slipping by Mr. Atkinson, the Chemistry teacher, who was still cluelessly writing on the white board.

PJ took the seat next to me and usually, when people knew each other, they’d acknowledge each other’s existence. But he said nothing to me at all. But I brushed it off and paid attention to Mr. Atkinson up front.

Mr. Atkinson then began to pass out papers to everyone in the classroom. “Alright guys, this is the new assignment that is due tomorrow and this one is probably one of the easiest points you can get on an assignment, ever. So don’t mess it up.” He said.

Suddenly, I felt PJ staring at me. I turned my head to look at him, about to say something, but he beat me to it. “Look, I don’t know if you’re pretending to not remember who I am or if you really don’t remember.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, confused. “What? Of course I remember who you are. We were just hanging out last Friday.” I answered, unsure if it was the correct one.

He rolled his eyes and bitterly laughed, “Hah, why am I not surprised?” He grabbed the white piece of paper that was being passed around and wrote his name at the top.

I watched him create a ‘P’ then an ‘O’ and then the rest of his name.

Poppy Jennings

Why did that name look so familiar?

“Have we met before?” I asked, now questioning the situation.

I heard him mumble some words under his breath, but I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. He passed the last assignment paper to me before he did something that made everything clear to who he was.

I watched him reach into his binder to take out a black case that had the ‘Ray Bran’ name embroidered into it. He opened it and placed on the thick rimmed glasses that were inside.

When fully turned toward me, I got a good look at his face.

No way.

“Flower Boy!?” I said almost shrieking. I couldn’t believe it was him. I haven’t seen him since freshmen year. I heard he moved far, far away like Lebanon or something, but not here.

He hated me.

But I guess I kind of hated him, too.

Poppy glared at me and gave a toothy grin, “It’s a small world after all, isn’t it?” He said tapping his number two pencil on the table.

I was terrible to him. I made his life a living hell since fifth grade. I didn’t even remember why I did. I mean, he was my neighbor for the longest time and we were probably friends at one point. But then I became mean. I was actually kind of mean to everyone.

But to him especially.

“I-I can’t believe it’s you! You—you changed so much!” I paused to scan him over and over again in disbelief of how much he transformed. He lost a tremendous amount of weight, grew a ton in height (he was probably 6’4 now), his skin cleared up, and the way he dressed was as if he ripped the clothes out of a H&M catalog.

The only thing that hadn’t changed about him was those Ray Bans.

PJ snickered at me, “I guess you remember now. Good. So I guess you remember what you did to me, too?”

At that moment, a tsunami of guilt washed over me. I never felt so bad in my life. “Look, about what happened between us… I’m so sorry about what I did to you. I’ve changed and I realized what I did was wrong and I know saying sorry won’t clean up—“

PJ cut me off, “You’re right. It won’t. And I’m in the mood to hear your excuses, so just listen,” he paused to look up at the teacher, but then continued, “You have no idea what hell you’ve put me through. The embarrassment, torture, and the teasing....” he trailed off, "But I hope you enjoy your first day here, because it’ll be the only day that you will.”

Was he serious?

“I’m going to make your life as complicated as you made mine.”

And that was when I realized that he was serious and that I desperately wanted to find that 'restart' button Blue was talking about.