Admiring From Afar

Cassandra’s POV

Why wasn’t Zack friendly with Jason? Cassandra thought to herself. Jason was a nice guy and she thought that he and Zack would have the most in common. They both played the bass and liked to skateboard.

Cassandra was pulled from her thoughts by Ana’s voice.

“Cass! You’ve gotta try this, it’s freaking delicious,” Ana told her while pointing to her plate.

“What is it?” Cassandra asked her friend while picking up her fork.

“I have no clue, but try it!” Ana told her.

Cassandra took a forkful of whatever was on Ana’s plate and ate it. Cassandra made a face that showed only disgust.

“I have a feeling you don’t like it?” Ana asked her friend.

“It’s gross,” Cassandra told her.

“Oh well, more for me,” Ana said with a smile.

They were at Jack’s house and the boys were in the basement practicing. Jordan Marie was at the doctors’ office so it was just Cass and Ana.

Ana finished eating and they went down in the basement to watch the guys.

They were in the middle of “The Girl’s A Straight Up Hustler”.

♫ Take off your makeup, put down the camera,
choke on the drama that makes me want to,
tear up the pictures and pages you've saved,
creating a life of trends and make believe...

She gets what she wants and she breaks what she gets,
get out while you can or she'll tear you to pieces
"Are you having a good time sweetheart?"

Take off your makeup, put down the camera,
choke on the drama that makes me want to,
tear up the pictures and pages you've saved,
creating a life of trends and make believe...

Carry on home,
I'll be waiting miles and miles away,
leaving you to be forever seventeen,
cleaning up the messes that you've made ♫

“That was great!” Ana exclaimed while jumping around and hugging Jack and kissing him.

“Whoa, dudes we don’t need to see that,” Zack told them.

Ana pulled away with a bright red face and she went back to her seat.

“We’re now going to play something new. It’s called 'Running From Lions' I hope you enjoy it," Alex said into the microphone. Cassandra just swayed to the beat, listening.

{&&admiring&&}

Cassandra was now at home cooking dinner for herself and Kelsey. They were going to have the all American hamburgers and fries. It was a pretty simple meal to make. Of course she would just put the hamburger meat in the pan, since it wasn’t really warm enough to barbeque and pop the fries in the oven. She was just about to take the fries out when she heard someone ring the doorbell.

Ding! Dong!

She quickly moved her hand up from the sheet of fries and burned the top of her hand on the hot metal rack above the fries.

“Shit!” she yelled and quickly ran her hand under some cold tap water.

Ding! Dong!

She heard again.

“I’ll be there in a minute!” she yelled to the person at the door. After her hand felt a little bit better she took it from the water and walked to her door. She opened it and saw that it was Jason of all people.

“What?” she asked him grumpily she was angry that she was stupid enough to burn her hand.

“What crawled up your pants and died?” Jason asked her taken back by her attitude.

“I just burned my hand,” Cassandra told him, “now, what do you want?”

“I just came by to show you the poster for out project,” Jason informed her. Cassandra’s eyes zeroed in on the huge poster board in his hands.

“Let me see it,” Cassandra told him. Jason turned it around and she saw that he did a great job. It was neat and had a lot of pictures as well as information about the pictures.

Everything was neatly handwritten and it was very pleasing to look at. “That looks great!” Cassandra told him with a huge smile. “We’re totally going to get an A.”

“We better!” Jason said with a huge smile as well. “Or else I’m going to make Mr. Quincey pay for my medical charges,” he joked while shaking out his hand.

“Haha,” Cassandra laughed sarcastically.

“Who are you?” a little voice said from Cassandra. Cassandra turned around and saw her little sister standing behind her with her blanket in her tiny hands.

“This is my friend, Jason,” Cassandra explained to her.

“Jason?” Kelsey repeated. She walked closer to the unfamiliar boy and looked up. “Hi,” she said quietly.

“Hi Kelsey,” Jason greeted with a smile. He crouched down to her level and started talking to her.

After a few minutes of Jason asking her how old she was and what her favorite color was Kelsey screamed.

“CASSIE! WHAT’S ON YOUR HAND?!” Kelsey exclaimed while pointing to the burn on her hand. This caused Jason to also see the burn.

“Nothing, I just burned my hand,” Cassandra explained.

“That looks pretty serious,” Jason told her. “I think you should go to the hospital to get that all cleaned up and medicated.”

“Well, we were just about to have dinner and it’s really not that bad,” Cassandra told him.

“We can stop on the way back to get dinner and it looks pretty bad,” Jason told her.

“We?” Cassandra asked him.

“Yeah, I’m not going to let you drive yourself to the hospital. I’m going to drive you and then we can go get dinner,” Jason told her while emphasizing the ‘we’.

“Are you sure? You don’t have to go anywhere?” Cassandra asked him. She looked at her hand and grimaced. It did look pretty bad. “I’ll be right back,” she told him. She ran upstairs to her room and grabbed her purse, which had her keys and her wallet, and walked back to the door.

“Ready?” Jason asked her.

“Yeah,” she replied. “C’mon Kelsey, we have to go to the hospital because I got a booboo,” Cassandra told her little sister. Kelsey just nodded her head and walked out the door. They got into Jason’s car and drove off.

They arrived at the hospital and with one look at Cassandra’s hand, the receptionist called a doctor. A few minutes later a doctor arrived and guided them to a room.

“I’m Dr. Hughes. Let’s see your hand,” he said and grabbed her hand. “Well, you certainly burned it,” he chuckled. “I’m going to put this burn cream on it and put a piece of gauze over it with some surgical tape. I’m going to give a prescription for the cream and you can buy the bandages at any drugstore along with the tape. I want you to change the bandage every 3 hours. Is that do-able?” he asked her.

“Of course,” Cassandra told him.

“Good, I’ll be right back to cover your burn. You can just wait here,” he told her as he walked out of the room.

“It’s a good thing that you burned your left hand and not your right hand,” Jason told her.

“Yeah, It’s a good thing that it’s not going to interfere with my writing abilities,” she said.

The doctor came back and bandaged up her burn.

“Oh, and for the minor burns on your fingers, just put some cream on them once a day and they should heal up quickly,” he informed her.

“Thanks,” Cassandra told him. He handed her her prescription and they walked out of the room. Cassandra went to the receptionist and paid.

Then, they made their way to Jason’s car and they drove to the nearest CVS. She got her prescription and the gauze and tape and they stopped at Friendly’s for a quick bite.