From First to Last

“Red or black?” I asked Jason. He glanced over to the two nail polish bottles I held in my hands and made a quick internal decision.

“Black,” he replied, turning his attention back to his Call of Duty game. “But do that later, come play this new zombie map I got called Ascension. It's so rad.”

“Jason, nobody says rad anymore,” I laughed. I put my beauty products down on the bench and joined Jason on the lounge, picking up my controller and immersing myself in the game. This was a basic afternoon for Jason and I – sitting around playing video games until the heat or cold got the better of us and forced us to go lay underneath the air conditioning for hours with pizza. He was eight years my senior, but it never felt that way. I had been close to him ever since I was a baby, and my parents were close to his family ever since they were kids as well.

“Do you want to come over for dinner later? Pierce's getting the barbecue on.” I asked, not tearing my eyes away from the screen for even a second. Playing Call of Duty was hard enough in normal mode, so playing versing Nazi zombies required full attention.

“That sounds so nice...” he sighed. I knew he would have to decline, like usual. “I have to mark a whole lot of stupid papers by tomorrow. The worst part is, they're all Year 7 work. The amount of illiterate children in that grade is just shameful.”

“Do you know how I did on the most recent assessment? It took me hours to do that essay...” the game had been lost and the television was turned off. Jason sunk back into the edge of the lounge and ran his hand through his long, blonde hair that fell over his eyes. He gave me a sincere look that was almost apologetic.

“I didn't mark your essay. I never mark any of your work. I'm not allowed to.” he chewed on the edge of his lower lip. “Besides, if I did know, I wouldn't tell you.”

“You wouldn't tell me?” I scoffed. “Some best friend you are...”

He chuckled quietly to himself and stood up. He stretched his lengthy arms and legs for a second, before he dawdled over towards his desk that was positioned in the corner and leaned on the edge of the hard burgundy wood. On the desk was a stack of booklets, all with messy and almost illegible sentences sprawled across them that were just waiting to be ticked or crossed. There was also a pile of assorted coloured workbooks that were also awaiting the same fate as the papers. The rest of the desk was an absolute mess – teachers resource books were stacked in the bookshelf that sit atop the desk, alongside famous novels and historical works that I doubted Jason had ever read. Ornaments from holidays to other countries and photos were placed anywhere where there was space, and there were pieces of paper in all the tiny little gaps that made it a proper mess.

He looked at the pile of work that was calling to him to be marked and he let out a sigh. Sometimes, Jason really, really enjoyed being an English teacher. But other times, especially times that incorporated the over-the-top workload; he didn't enjoy his job whatsoever.

With the little pay he had received from his short time of teaching, he had managed to set up a very nice life for himself. His parents moved away from Milewood to live in another nearby state only months after his high school graduation, leaving him to live by himself on campus for the three of the four years of university. He moved into the house his parents owned that he lived in when he was younger, which was on a street right next to mine. Still being in high school, I was living with my mother and stepfather, but spent a lot of time at Jason's.

“I'll leave you to it then. I'll see you tomorrow in class.” I said, giving him a hopeful smile before walking out of his house and heading towards my own.

Milewood was just like any other coast side town. The whole area of the town was categorised into four parts. The first was the regular part of town, which was where a lot of the people I went to school with lived. It was an array of streets that were lined with regular sized modern houses, and a park or two in between. A few of these houses were close to the beach, but that was only if you were lucky. That was the area that Jason and I resided in. The next part was the shopping and business district. All of the areas weren't completely separate and merged together unexpectedly, so there was many locally owned convenient shops or clothing stores closer to the regular middle-class housing areas.
The further you got in, the classier the shops got. There were tall office buildings, accompanied by a large shopping centre that was right across from the beach. On the road alongside the beach were restaurants, pubs and cafes that served all kinds of food, as well as a few nightclubs. Closer towards the housing was a public primary school and a high school, which majority of people attended. On the opposite side of town were the university, and the private school of St. Ursula.

Near the business part of the town was the upper class housing, which was exclusively for the rich and famous. All of the houses were large, extravagant ultra-modern homes that were placed on the water, all of which had pools, spas, and backyard docks for people who wanted to go boating or jet skiing. These houses were often rented out during the summer to the rich families on holidays, so there would always be new people each year. The estates were literally millions of dollars because the town was such a tight-knit community that tourists often found cute, as well as the obvious appeal of the beach being right at the back gate, and the main shopping centre across the way. When I was a child, I dreamed of living in one of the houses in the upper-class district, but after learning how those houses can influence how a person treats other people less wealthy, I was immediately turned off the idea.
The last part of town was around the outskirts, where there was nothing but fields of grass, farms, forests and empty space beside the highways. Jason would sometimes drive both of us out to the empty fields or to the forest late at night, when everything was serene. It was where the town forgot about the middle and upper class differences and just let nature be their way of life. The people that owned the various farms were the loveliest people and were very welcoming of people like Jason and myself.

The walk from Jason's house to mine was immensely short because there was a shortcut between the lines of houses that separated my street from his – a small park. It was a grassy area that had a jungle gym and slides and a swing set. It had always been such a convenience for me when I was a child because Jason would always take me to the park when my parents didn't want to. He often took over the role of my big brother during my childhood on many occasions.

Neither of my parents were there by the time I arrived home. The autumn holidays were coming to a close and it was time to return to school the next day, but my parents were not returning home from visiting Jason's parents until the following morning. I was sixteen, which they deemed as old enough to stay at home alone, which I agreed with seeing as I had my own money and had my P plates, but being by myself in a relatively large house got awfully lonely.

I unlocked the front door and kicked my shoes off. The house was still as pristine clean as it was when my mother cleaned it before she left for Bella Vista. As soon as my mother and Pierce left, I found a nice photo of my brother and I when I was only 5, and placed it in the middle of the coffee table in between the lounges and the television. My parents never displayed any photos of Dallas. I was never too sure why, but I hadn't ever wanted to ask. The topic of Dallas was certainly a touchy subject for everyone.

I was dreading going back to school. It was the second term back of the first semester, but the first term had been rough for me. It was Jason's first teaching year, and he has somehow been assigned to teach my Year 11 Advanced English class. In a way I was glad he was my teacher, but it definitely was rough. My friendship group had always been aware of how close I was to Jason, but they weren't sure how to act about it. They were calling him Mr. Hayes while I was constantly referring to him as Jason, and that was confusing. I began spending my lunch times with Jason, which caused my friends to choose to stop talking to me. Occasionally in classes, my friends would talk to me like nothing ever happened. But as soon as that bell rings dismissing the classes, it's almost like I didn't exist.

After a while, the other teachers and the principal had become aware of my friendship with Jason. One day during the third week of term, he was called into a formal meeting with Principal Rowse and he was lectured on the rules of teacher-student relationships and how they should be kept professional, and how inappropriate his friendship with me was. Eventually he had to explain that we were simply close family friends and have been for almost his whole life, and after linking that to the Dallas situation, Rowse let up a little and didn't get Jason in trouble for talking to me at lunch times and driving me home after school. The teachers all began to treat me nicer after that. It felt like none of them wanted to say anything bad to me, as if I would become manically depressed if they did. Jason never told me everything he had said to Rowse about Dallas, but I thought that he mentioned some things I wouldn't have been happy about if I were aware.

After preparing everything I would've needed for school the next day, I quickly went to sleep, dreaming of my past and Dallas.