The Road From Here

This chapter was written on Friday, May 26, 2006

Chapter Nine: Jennifer Holcombe, Part 1

On Valentines Day, (and I know this is backtracking a little bit, but it fits the chapter) I made two Valentine's for two very special girls. The first one was for Kristina Corey, my best friend. The second one was for Jennifer Holcombe.
  I had previously met Jennifer in the ninth grade. She had been Morgan Svitila's best friend, even jokingly Morgan's "other half," so I knew her a little. She worked up at the nursing home in the kitchen, and every once in a while, we would bump into each other in the halls near the dining room.
  At school one day, we bumped into each other again and started talking in the computer lab. We started to get to know each other a little better each day. Over night, I had developed a strong love for her, something I vowed I would never let happen again since my charade with Morgan the previous summer, but I couldn't help myself. Looking into her beautiful eyes, I saw something that I had been looking for my entire life. Trust.
  On Valentine's Day, I gave her the Valentine that I had gotten a detention for making in math class. It read: I must be gay, because I love Fred. Fred is her "guy nick-name" that some people call her as a joke. I don't understand the joke at all, but her "name" is Fred. She never actually said Happy Valentine's Day to me, and neither did Kristina. Like I said, Latisha was the only person who actually said "Happy Valentine's Day" to me.
  "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, ROB!" she screamed in my face in the halls. Remember that from chapter eight?
  We started emailing off and on and pretty soon, Jennifer was becoming one of the few people in my inner circle, and certainly one of the only girls. The only other people at that time were Cactus Mojave, Tony Dow, and Kristina Corey.
  At the end of February, we started a little inside joke in the lab during lunch one day. Jennifer, Kristina, and Cactus were looking up sex offenders in the area to see if anybody they knew was a sex offender. I thought it would be funny to pretend I was a sex offender and make my own profile. I added a picture, and the charge was raping Jennifer Holcombe. I printed it off and gave it to her, with the reason for my "capture" being Jennifer screaming "I know what you did last summer!"
  During the first couple weeks of March, we got closer and closer. Our friendship was growing faster than any other in my life.
  The week of Winter Carnival, I was doing a lot of janitorial work with the custodians to work off all the detentions I owed. That week I owed Mr. Grass six hours of detentions, and I do my detentions by helping out Scott and Carlton, the head janitors.
  All that week after school, I was emptying trash and vaccuming the classrooms. That was also the week that the classes were making their decorations for Winter Carnival. From my class, it was mostly girls after school making our hallway look like the Clue game.
  Latisha was there, and so was Megan DeLong. There was a bunch of other people there also, mostly girls except for Jordan Robinson. I think he was the only guy there, however.
  I was walking down the sophomore hallway with a roll of clear trash bags hanging out of my left pants pocket. I went into a classroom right beside where the girls and Jordan were working. Megan looked up at me.
  "You've got something big sticking out of your pants, man." she commented as I walked past her into the classroom. I ignored her stupid remark and emptied the trash cans in the Economics room. When I came out, Latisha started bitching at me to watch where I stepped, because they were making something for the decorations in the middle of the floor, and they were circled around it. Although I never even stepped near their little project, she was still bitching at me the rest of the way down the hallway.
  "WATCH WHERE YOU STEP, ROBERT ANDREW BRIDGES!" Latisha yelled, looking back at me. I kept walking away. I didn't want to interfere with their project, but I also didn't want to keep getting bitched at, so I left the sophomore hallway and went to the janitor's closet to get a vaccuum. Unfortunately, I had to go back to the hall that Latisha and her friends were working in to vaccuum the rooms down there.
  "Rob, you better not break that friggen vaccuum, dude, I swear to God. Those things friggen stink!" Once again, I ignored her and went into Mrs. Barker's room to vaccuum. I was having a really bad day, and it almost seemed like Latisha was trying to piss me off, so all's I could do was ignore her.
  The rest of that week followed suit. Everyday, the girls worked after school, and I would clean the classrooms and try to avoid them as much as possible to stay out of the way. I have to admit, they did a pretty good job decorating the hall by the end of the week, just in time for Winter Carnival.
  On the morning of Winter Carnival, I rolled out of bed and hit the floor. Not in a metaphoric sense, I literally hit the floor. That's a bad omen, dude, stay home like you did last year. That was the first thing I thought that morning. On the flipside, the Devil half of my conscience was telling me otherwise. Go, dude, or you won't get to see Jenn.
  I must be a Devil because I went to school that morning, late as usual. Ironic because the football team in Lewiston is the Blue Devils, and my favorite color is blue. Anyways, back to the story...
  When I got to school, I went over to the office to get a late slip. At that time, I had at least 10 tardies for that quarter. I walked up to the counter and told Wendy, the secretary, that I needed a pass.
  "I'm late again." I said, looking her in the face. She started me down. "So, what are you telling me for?" "I need a pass..." I said, rolling my eyes. She asked the stupidest question I've ever heard. "Well, you're not gonna get one from me." She said, her eyebrows shooting up on her forehead. She wants a staring contest, I'll give her one. My gaze lay unbroken. I squinted my eyes. "So your telling me, your just gonna sit there on your ass and not do your job?" I taunted, my lips curling downward. She looked back at me, seething. "Say it again..." she muttered under her breath. I walked away before she finished her sentance.
  I would just like to say that I think it's pretty cool how I dramatized that whole event, although in real life, it only lasted about ten seconds. Isn't it neat how I did that?
  I found Jennifer in the hall before homeroom that day. I said good morning, and I told her about how Wendy wouldn't write me passes any more. I met up with Cactus in front of my homeroom a minute later, and I said goodbye to Jenn and went in.
  We talked for a few minutes. I told Mrs. Jackins, my homeroom teacher, that Wendy was refusing to give me a pass, and that if I was late, she could mark me however she wanted. I didn't really give a shit to tell you the truth.
  I don't remember the order of how I spent that day, but I do remember exactly what happened. I spent most of that day with Jennifer and Cactus. Also, Jennifer's friend Laura MacArthur was with us. I had only known her for a few weeks, so I didn't know that much about her, but she was pressuring me about liking Jennifer. Most of it was through emails, but some of it was verbal.
  We checked out all the hallways with all the decorations. There was music playing in the senior hallway from a CD player, and one of the songs on the CD was Ride Wit Me by Nelly. I love that song, so I changed it and started dancing with a Bob Marley wig on. Rob Bradstreet walked by, and I tried to dance with him, but he just laughed at me. I was getting really pumped that day, but something was troubling me. I didn't know what it was, but it was ripping away at my attention to what was going on around me.
  The first event was the arm wrestling competition in the gym. It seemed like it lasted forever. Jennifer was called down to arm wrestle against her will. When she came back up to sit next to me, she seemed a little pissed that she had to go down, but she was okay. The best part of the arm wrestling was when the chemistry teacher, Mr. Gray, former military man, and the principle, the overweight Mr. Grass, went against eachother. This match-up got the crowd pumped.
  At first, Mr. Gray had Mr. Grass owned. He had Grass more than halfway down to the mat, when Gray's arm started to come back up. Maybe Grass had a chance. Suddenly, Gray's arm pulled back down, and started to fluctuate, lowering to the mat, then going back up, and then back down again. He was messing with Grass. He had Grass, and he slammed his arm down. The crowd went absolutely crazy!
  After the arm wrestling competition, Jennifer, Cactus, Laura, and I walked around aimlessly to all the different events. Later on that morning, the band I'm in, XLR8, had our first real practice of one of the songs we were going to perform at the spring concert, Dream On by Aerosmith. I picked the song because there is a lot of piano in it.
  We practiced in the music room. We moved all the instruments together and opened up the curtain to the cafeteria. There was about 40 or 50 people in the room. I decided to throw a little fun around and appease the "audience" while Rickey Antworth set up the drums, and Steven Miller got his guitar ready. I grabbed a microphone and sang a parody of The Star Spangled Banner to Russell DeLong.

The song has to do with foopa, a naturally occuring phenomenon where an overweight female has a large "balloon" of fat in front of her genitals. A crude term for this would be p*ssy fat, but I don't want to offend anybody more than I probably already am.
  I started to sing. "O say can you see Russell's foopa when he rolls out of bed? Momma warned you about eating that extra jelly roll, now look, he's paying a pricey toll. That's a gross nasty super-patch of foopa in your snatch. Listen to the hoop-la and get stopped for it by a state troopa." That probably isn't the exact words I sang, but it went something like that. Either way, everybody in the room was laughing, including Mr. J!
  After my "song", we were ready to practice Dream On. I opened the piano up to make it louder against the drums and Steve's electric guitar. Fat Head, our lead singer, was re-reading the lyrics to the song on a piece of paper.
  "Let's keep it slow." Miller said, doing scales. We were ready to start. The piano goes first in that song, so I had just started playing the opening chords to the song when Jennifer and Laura came in and sat down. I smiled on the inside. I can't wait until the concert, I told myself.
  We made a few mistakes that day, practicing that song. Fat Head stumbled over the words a bit, Rickey was off tempo on the drums, and Miller missed the solo part completely, leaving me playing the piano. I thought sure I was going to mess something up. Don't screw up, dude. You're the only one of us that hasn't screwed the song up yet. I told myself.
  I screwed up. Rickey was playing his drums two feet away from me, and he had missed his cue to start drumming louder during the chorus section of the song. Fat Head wasn't singing because he didn't know where we were, so Rickey didn't know it was the chorus. Only I knew where we were at that moment.
  At that second, Rickey figured out where we were in the song, and hit the crash symbol. He was right in hitting it, because he is supposed to during the chorus, but I didn't expect him to start playing by smashing the crash symbol with his sticks. It screwed me up right there.
  We finished the song, and went through it two more times. The second time, Tad Beavis sang it to see if he was better than Fat Head. Both of them tied, so Fat Head was still going to sing it for us, since he is an original member of XLR8.
  After the practice, Jennifer, Cactus, Laura, and I went to get some donuts and watch some of the other guys from the school play chess. After that, we went to the computer lab. In there, we watched some stupid videos online. About that time, Kristina started to hang out with us and follow us around the building. When we left the lab, we went to the gym. Somebody had asked Jennifer if she would do the rope climbing. While I was waiting for her to do that, I went out in the lobby. Cactus had stayed behind for something.
  When I got out there, I was a little suprised. Cactus was sitting next to Amber Dumond by the trophy case, and she was wearing his infamous brown coat backwards, as if she was cold. Cactus was sitting there talking to her, and AJ Mashburn came over and sat down beside Amber. I just stood there and talked to them out of boredom.
  AJ was freaking out because she thought sure that she was going to lose her arm wrestling final against Megan Pryor. I gave her a few of my personal techniques that she eventually used to win.
  That day, Jeff Asay asked Amanda Mott out, and she said yes. Within an hour of that, somebody was running their mouth about Amanda, and she called her mom. Her mom came and picked her up and brought her home. Jeff was ready to kill somebody. He came up to me in the lobby, and we seperated from the crowd to talk.
  "If if find out who was saying shit about Amanda, I'm gonna kick their ass!" He whispered under his breath. I supported him, and told him that whoever it was, if he needed somebody to watch his back, I would have it. He took off after that. 
  Jennifer, Laura, Cactus, and I walked around some more that day, and eventually ended up sitting down against the library wall across from the bathrooms. I had my CD player on, and Tupac was blasting out my headphones. I could hear Kristina around the corner from where we were bitching at somebody. Suddenly, Latisha and her group of friends came around the corner, and Kristina was standing there. They were arguing about something.
  "Why don't you say it to my face next time, bitch!" Latisha said to Kristina. "If you're going to kick my ass, do it right now!" I was going to get between Kristina and Latisha and break up the arguement, but I knew that Latisha would just tell me to shut the f*ck up, so I didn't bother.
  Latisha took off a minute later, and Kristina went the other way and disappeared around the corner. The rest of the day went by fast. At 2:30 PM, I said by to Jennifer and walked home alone. That was one of the best days of my life.
  On Wednesday, April 5, 2006, my world started to crumble again. What happened with every girl I have ever loved was starting to happen with Jennifer.
  I had stayed after school that day to clean out my locker and to help Scott empty some of the trash cans in the sophomore hallway. When I was done, I decided to just go home. I was coming down the main hallway when I saw that Jennifer had stayed after school to go to tech class. She was in the doorway to the computer lab looking back at me. I was going to say goodbye to her, but I stopped mid-stride.
  She raised her eyebrows up, gave me a "you can't touch this" look, and turned around, giving me the cold shoulder. I was confused, but I decided not to even ask her what was going on because she walked into the lab and sat down at a computer in the corner. I went out the back door of the school and started to walk home.
   The whole way home, I was thinking about what had just happened. Jennifer was playing on the same street that every other girl I had ever loved had played on. I was having a bad week up until that Wednesday, but I hadn't realized that my emotions were leaking out to the people around me. At that time, though, I still hadn't realized it.
  I sat up that whole night trying to figure out what I had done to provoke this kind of action from Jennifer. What did I say to her? What did I do to her? Was it something I was supposed to do, but didn't?
  My heart was aching the whole night. I love Jennifer more than any other girl I have ever met. What is happening to us? This can't be happening!
  Over the next few days, we didn't talk at all. She didn't smile at me in the halls like she usually did. She stopped getting excited when she saw me. She didn't email me any more. Kristina told me that she heard somebody say that Jennifer hated me. I couldn't figure out any of the shit I was going through at that time, but I wasn't going to lose Jennifer like I lost every other girl in my life.
  On April 12, 2006, we had emailed eachother and stated that we had a serious misunderstanding to work out. We both thought the respective other hated each other, but we couldn't resolve our issue then. Our problem led right up to April break.
  On Friday, April 14, 2006, the Friday before April Vacation, I was in Jennifer's seventh period chemistry class. I wasn't in there to talk to her, because I assumed that all we would have done was argue and bitch at eachother. I was in there to talk to Cactus.
  At the end of the period, when Wendy came over the PA to give the afternoon announcements, I went over and stood by the door. Jennifer was standing there, and she was purposely annoying me, doing sh*t like fake kicking me and shoving me and crap like that. I was really ready to say 'Cut the f*cking sh*t!', but I decided to just keep my mouth shut.
  "Rob hates me." she said to Jo-Ann Durham. I looked up. "No I don't." I said, almost to thin air. "Well I hate you." Jennifer replied, giving me the "you can't touch this" look again. Just then, the bell rang, and she disappeared out the door. She was gone.
     I didn't have any contact with Jennifer over April Vacation. All I had were my thoughts and emotions. She didn't email me, and I didn't email her. After all, she said she hated me right to my face. I didn't do a thing over April break. I sat in my room and wrote music the entire time. I went to work, and I saw her a couple of times, but I didn't say anything to her because she "hated" me.
  After we went back to school on April 24, we started emailing eachother again, trying to work out our differences and get back to being the best friends that we were before. The email that we sent back and forth went like this:

Jenn Holcombe <vicious_elmo13@yahoo.com> wrote:
Welcome stranger.. lol you never talk to me anymore :(  you hate me.. you hate me WHAAAA
Love
Me

Rob Bridges <sugeknight2007@yahoo.com> wrote:
no i don't hate you
you the one who said you hated me on friday and walked away from me before break

Jenn Holcombe <vicious_elmo13@yahoo.com> wrote:
I lied...

Rob Bridges <sugeknight2007@yahoo.com> wrote:
hard to know the difference when you love me one day and hate me the next

Jenn Holcombe <vicious_elmo13@yahoo.com> wrote:
i was having a bad day and u were being mean... so i told you that i hated you.. but i don't. haha and i never did. but i guess now it don't matter since you don't care....

Rob Bridges <sugeknight2007@yahoo.com> wrote:
how was i being mean?

Jenn Holcombe <vicious_elmo13@yahoo.com> wrote:
it was the day you were really really snappy... and it pissed me off.. you prolly woudln't remember.. but o well.. i just don't like being so "far" from you.. i know you hate it up here but, o well. i'm sorry

Well at least we were on the right track now, but we were still on shaky ground.