CHAPTER 11 – Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

We sat around the kitchen table discussing the situation we found ourselves in.

“You look nice today” Tim had commented to me as I walked out so I did a little curtsy with a smile in return.

I didn’t feel nice after last night. My legs and arms were all scratched up and I had my first period. I felt blah and had really just thrown on a pair of jeans to cover up all the cuts and grazes. The fact that the jeans hugged my figure and emphasised my long legs, small waist and rounded butt was lost on me.

“We need to find her” Jeff was saying to Mom as I sat down with a bowl of cereal looking at everyone questioningly.

“Jacinta’s gone honey” Mom said to me by way of explanation.

I slopped milk into my bowl and thought about the news that had just been presented to me.

In one way I wasn’t surprised by it after the threats the skinny gangster had breathed last night. I figured Jacinta had probably laid awake thinking about them for a long time. I knew that she and Jeff had formed a close friendship over the short amount of time they’d known each other and that the attraction they each felt was about as obvious as a pimple on a teenager’s nose. She and I had also formed a friendship based on our experiences plus I just really liked her she was, as far as I was concerned, an awesome person. The fact she was incredibly sexy and classically beautiful wasn’t lost on Jeff either. She must have felt an agony of guilt for dragging our family into this whole mess.

But she wasn’t what she seemed either, she’d stolen money from a cartel of gangsters who obviously specialised in kidnapping and prostitution and goodness knows what else.

So the question was……….what else didn’t we know about her?

I gazed out the kitchen window lost in thought as the other three talked round and round in circles about what they should do. The sky was grey and threatening this morning with low clouds sailing slowly past in a sullen and intimidating march. It didn’t often rain down here in Southern California but when it did it was like the heavens opened and angels poured colossal buckets of water out that drenched and swamped everything. Water would run inches deep down the roads, overrunning the drains and flooding neighbourhoods. As a little kid in San Diego I’d love those days and we would go out and play in the storm waters coming home soaked to the skin, much to our delight and our Mom’s disgust. To her credit though she never stopped us, always letting us have fun and play together. She knew it was forming the bonds of love and friendship that made us the family we were.

“My heart always said people were inherently good, but my experience says otherwise” Mom was saying to the boys when I cut in.

“I know where she is right now”

“Aye, what?” Tim said

“I know where she is, I can take you to her”

“Where” demanded Jeff

“Up at the airport, at the end of the runway, that’s where she hid the money”

“And how do you know that Jade?” queried Mom with a frown on her face.

“Well when I was talking to her last night she was telling us, me and Jeff, about this freaky guy who used to take her up to the end of the runway and fu… umm have sex with her while the planes flew overhead.”

“Yessssss” go on said Mom

“Anyway she knows that area really well cause he did it with her lots. Plus when we found her in the sand dunes she had dirt all over her even under her finger nails but she was in a SAND dune. She had obviously been somewhere before that and I figure she’d been digging with her hands. Who would ever think to look for a sack of money at the end of an airport runway?”

They all looked at me incredulously at first then comprehension dawned.

“I’m going up there” said Jeff

“I’m coming too” Tim replied jumping up from his chair.

“Me three”

“No” said Tim a hard look on his face

“Why not?”

“Because you’re too young Jay I don’t want to see you get hurt, there could be trouble”

“What if I insist” I snapped back fire in my eyes

“Then I’d insist back”

I knew I had lost and I sat back in a huff, pouting.

Mom chuckled and I looked at her angrily

“What?” I blurted

“I’ve never seen you pout before Jade, you look absolutely gorgeous”

I couldn’t help it and a half smile came to my face

“They’re right you know, what if something happened to you? They could never live with themselves.”

“Yeah, well I looked after myself pretty well last night”

“That’s different Jade, and you know it. It was a situation you just fell into. Let the boys go up and get her, you have to go to school.”

The high pitched ‘barp’ of the boy’s two stroke trail bikes shattered the morning stillness and they took off in a cloud of blue smoke. I had to stay now anyway.

“Make sure they text me and let me know if they find her, please Mom” I pleaded

“Of course honey, now go and finish off getting ready for school and pack a coat it looks like rain”

“Sure Mom” my mood was as dark as the clouds hanging over our house.

School was about as boring as it could possibly get that day although I couldn’t concentrate on much of anything anyway. I must have seemed like the quintessential sullen teenage girl and I suppose if I was being honest that’s what I was. Jaz and the other girls asked if I was okay and I blamed it on having my period. That involved about 15 minutes of advice and giggling over all the names girls give our peculiar monthly visitor. ‘Fred the Red’ instantly became my favorite.

About half way through Period two during Math my phone went off in my bag. I was in an agony of indecision knowing if I pulled it out and looked at it I risked having my phone confiscated for the rest of the day. We had Mrs Revell for Math and she was a stickler for the rules but my curiosity won in the end and I just had to know.

I tried to get the phone using all my teenage ninja stealth tactics while the class was working quietly on a problem and Mrs Revell had her head down doing something at her desk. Leaning over my long blonde hair got in the way and I brushed it behind my ear. That caused the girl beside me to shuffle in her seat and I froze. Nothing happened so furtively I reached down and held the phone inside my bag as I read the text.

All it said was “Got her, talk tonight. T”

I breathed a sigh of relief that was short lived as a beautifully manicured hand was held out in front of me. The long nails were perfectly shaped and painted a deep crimson color. I looked up into my teacher’s face and tried to smile but none was returned.

“Miss Chamberlin, you know the rules. You can pick your phone up from the school office at the end of the day.”

“Aw Miss please” I begged but it was futile, I was losing every argument today.

I dumped the phone into her hand and she walked away giving me the obligatory “get on with your work” line. She was a young teacher only recently married. Tall and slim with a great body and long silky hair, every boy in the school lusted after her. Today she was wearing a tight pencil skirt and high heels that made her backside sway very, very sexily. All the boys in the class had looked up and were following her every move with greedy eyes. I understood what they were doing with my mind and I knew that as a boy I would probably be trying to hide a very involuntary erection about now. But as a girl although I could appreciate another woman’s body aesthetically it did nothing for me sexually. Just as my body had changed I knew that my mind had too and was still changing. As slowly I embraced who I was as a young woman I knew it was boys that I was becoming attracted to.

Two things happened at lunchtime, firstly it began to rain. Like always big fat raindrops came down one by one. To me it always seemed like a naughty little boy was throwing eggs as they splatted individually against the concrete then it would get faster and faster until a curtain of water would appear before your eyes almost like magic and rivers of water would pour through the drains with little bubbles on top being carried away to oblivion. It was the kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters, so much in a hurry to hit the earth it has no time to flow down the spout. I was mesmerised by the rainfall; I got lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world.

Second we girls had to congregate in Mrs Shirley’s office to organise the charity scheme that was our punishment. I had noticed Morgan wasn’t at school today and I had determined I would try and catch a lift to his place to chat. He lived in a house right on the beach with a swimming pool and large reflective glass windows that looked out toward the ocean. Sometimes I envied the wealth and privilege he’d been born into but if I was truthful I wouldn’t have given my family or my life up for anything.

We haggled and laughed together as we discussed who we should give the money to and how we should raise it. Mrs Shirley sat at her desk pretending to work but now and again would throw a suggestion of her own in that would steer us in a whole new direction and I suddenly realised that she was really enjoying these crazy, happy girls all talking and laughing at the same time and bringing her office to life. By the end we had brought it down to two options and about three schemes. I was swayed toward giving the money to an organisation that fought the sex trade of young girls in South East Asia and especially in Thailand while a couple of others wanted to organise to raise money for water tanks in villages in Tanzania. We went away agreeing to come to a decision the next day and as I looked back I noticed Mrs Shirley gazing down at her desk a big smile on her face. Looking up she waved to me and I waved back. There was a lot I could learn from that woman I thought as I skipped along the corridor to my next lesson my grumpy mood of this morning forgotten.

The end of the day finally arrived and I rushed off to pick up my phone from the office so I didn’t miss my bus down to Dave’s. Walking out of the office I bumped into Lauren one of our group. She was easily the quietest of us all but also the highest achiever. Tall with long, straight auburn hair cut with bangs and big brown eyes, she had the body of a dancer which is what she was. She was walking with a guy, taller than her with dark hair and carrying a camera. His eyes were a deep blue and I instantly recognised him as Lauren’s brother Phil. He was a photographer for the school newspaper and had earned the nick name ‘Peter Parker’ after Spiderman’s alias and if truth be told he did look a lot like Andrew Garfield the actor who actually played Spiderman in the movie.

His real passion was photographing landscapes and the ocean however and I had often seen him down at the beach in the water taking pics of surfers and waves when I was a boy.

“Hi Jade hey do you know Phil my brother?” Lauren asked introducing us and I looked at him noticing for the first time how handsome he was from a girl’s point of view.

“Hi” he said sticking his hand out to me and looking at me in the eyes. His look didn’t waver he didn’t run his eyes down my body or look at my breasts he just stared into my eyes.

“Umm hi” I answered staring back at him. Shaking his hand felt like a jolt of electricity right through my bones.

“How are you?” I asked

“Really well thanks” he kept looking into my eyes and I felt that at any second I was going to melt into a little jelly on the floor.

“Still coming to the sleep over Jade?” Lauren asked and it broke into the moment and I looked at her

“Ah yeah, absolutely can’t wait, hey gotta go” I added “gotta get to work down at the surf shop. Really nice to meet you” I said to Phil and he smiled shyly

“Nice to meet you too Jade, hope to see you later”

“Yeah, that would be nice” I replied skipping off noticing how strangely wet I felt.

For the next few hours, okay for the next couple of days, I couldn’t get his face out of my mind. I hoped we would run into each other again soon. There would be a few questions asked of Lauren on Friday night I decided.

I didn’t notice but she was digging him in the ribs as they walked off and he kept staring back at me for a long time.

Jumping on the bus we drove through the pouring rain toward my stop. Tyler wasn’t there today and I hoped he wasn’t sick or something. Maybe his Mom had just decided to pick him up because of the weather.

Unsurprisingly there were few customers in the shop today so I busied myself tidying stuff up and making the place look neat. Maybe I took after my mom a bit after all. Dave sat in his little office out the back doing the books so I went in and plonked into a chair facing him.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, anything” he said

“I’ve noticed that sometimes when you look at me you kind of look sad and I was wondering if I’ve done something wrong?”

Putting his pen down he hung his head for a second then looked up at me taking a deep breath.

“You’ve done nothing wrong Jade, nothing at all it’s just that, well when you came into the store the other day and every time I’ve seen you since you’ve reminded me of my own daughter.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, I mean I haven’t even met your wife”

“Yeah well there’s a reason for that you see about 10 years ago before I even knew you or your family, my wife was involved in a car accident. Actually it was a day like this pouring with rain and she was driving home after picking our daughter up from school. She would have been about your age at the time.” He choked up a bit but kept going.

“Anyway my wife was killed instantly, the other driver had crossed over into the wrong lane, couldn’t stop, hit them head on. My daughter survived, they cut her out of the wreckage, took her to hospital, then called me. When I got there she was pretty banged up so they let me just hold her. We talked for ages about stuff, you know things young girls like, what she wanted to do when she got out of hospital. I just held her Jade, I prayed like you wouldn’t believe but I guess it must have been around two in the morning I felt her go. She died in my arms.”
“Her name was April, it was the month she was born in, she had long blond hair and she loved to surf so you see when I saw you that first time……” He stopped a single tear ran down his cheek. I didn’t know what to say so I sat there, quietly, collecting my thoughts.

The rain had stopped and all I heard was the drip, drip, drip of the spouting as water ran off it.

“I know I’ll never replace your daughter Dave” I said finally “but I do know one thing, I love you like my Dad and I love surfing with you and hanging out together and working for you so you know if you ever want to yell at me or treat me like your own daughter…..”

“That’s just it Jade remember I told Rich that you were like my daughter?”

“Yeah” I answered

“Well you see I meant it.”

No more words needed to be said we understood each other utterly and completely.

“And there’s another thing, I really like your Mom, in fact I was thinking of asking her out.”

Dave took me home and when we got there he came in. Jacinta was sitting at the table with Jeff and Tim, Mom was standing over them. In the middle was a stack of money.

“How much is there?” I asked in wide eyed wonder I’d never seen that much in my life.

“800,000” Jeff said

Dave let out a low whistle.

We all sat together me on one side of Dave, Mom on the other. It felt good to have him there; his strength and wisdom would be needed.

It was time to go to war.

CHAPTER 12 – No Other Way

After school the next day I decided to go to Morgan’s place and talk with him. I wasn’t really sure how it would pan out but I was determined to put a few things right with him and ask him to come back to school.

The night before had been interesting to say the least, Jacinta had run off to retrieve the money and had wanted to give it all back to the gang. As I had suspected she had gotten to the point where she just didn’t want to put us in danger anymore and had decided to give herself up to them despite the consequences, which for her would mean having to sell her body again, heroin addiction and eventually a slow and agonising death.

I thought of that decision as I walked down the road toward Morgan’s and how Jacinta was willing to sacrifice her life and happiness for our family. What was so special about us that would make her do that? Not one of us wanted her to even go there, not even in her dreams and we all confirmed that vehemently, even Dave told her she was being silly which earned him a swift look from Mom. I thought she was going to flick his ears but instead she smiled at him with her eyes and my heart leapt. I could only imagine what my mother was like when she was younger, she must have melted the hearts of many young men with her kindness and beauty. Dad was a real fuckwit for leaving her I thought.

Mom had wanted to go to the police lay the whole story out to them which I agreed with but Dave and the boys had reservations. They argued that the police would need names, dates, facts and details and places. The testimony of an ex-heroin addict prostitute who was also at the moment an illegal alien wasn’t going to cut it in any court of law. Unless we could give them the rest, all they would do is take the money, put it in storage and basically cut us loose. Maybe they might be able to catch and arrest the two hoods who chased us but gangs like that had plenty more to take their place. The police couldn’t protect Jacinta or us forever and we all knew that this was an amount of money that they would kill us for to get back. I guessed they would probably kill us for revenge and to make a point to anyone else foolish enough to cross them too. Even if the police were investigating these people it would be on-going and take a long time to get convictions and break them up. In the meantime we would be on our own.

Finally we decided to hide the money and hide Jacinta. The easiest place to do that was at Dave’s, as he lived on the other side of town about as far away as you could get from gangs and trouble or so we hoped. When things cooled down Dave reckoned we could somehow give the money back and if we were lucky the gang would go away. Jeff, Tim and I would continue on at school as normal and life would go on.

If that didn’t work and they got violent Mom had asked and Dave just said “Leave it with me” The way he said it was chilling, I hadn’t heard him talk like that before. There was more to him than I thought.

Dave had asked Jacinta what she remembered when she was taken, where she was kept.

“Not much really, I was handcuffed and they put a hood over my head. I know their distribution center is big, it’s where I was taken first, there were cells where they kept the girls like me, they had no windows except in the doors so they could check on us and it was dry but musty you know and there was always this sound a drone like air conditioning.”

We nodded and she had gone on.

“They had drugs there and money lots of cash, it’s where they got the girls hooked on heroin or whatever they wanted really. They preferred drugs that didn’t wreck our skin, kept us hooked but they wanted us to still be pretty for the clients. They never gave us meth for that reason, I’m glad that stuff is really evil. After a while I figured out we were underground and there were numbers on the walls which puzzled me for ages till I figured it out.”

“An old military establishment” Dave had said, “long abandoned and long forgotten by now most likely.”

Jacinta had nodded yes then told us how she had then been bundled into a van, once again handcuffed and hooded. She had counted the seconds in her head as they drove then added up the minutes until they reached San Diego where she had been dropped off at a place, a brothel, where she had been put to work. She thought the whole trip was no more than an hour maybe an hour and a half from start to finish and it was windy, lots of corners at first but then they hit a freeway and it was fast and straight. That’s all she remembered. It left us thinking.

Mom had insisted that I should go to the sleepover with the other girls and asked Tim if he would drop me off as she had to work. He begrudgingly assented after I smacked him over the arm. He then effortlessly picked me up and dumped me on the living room sofa and began to tickle me mercilessly. This led to Jacinta jumping on top of him then Jeff jumping on her. I think I was flattened to the size of a pancake as Mom and Dave just laughed at us while I squealed and yelled like a girl, which is exactly what I was now.

Morgan’s house was huge with one of those solid front doors with a brass knocker thing that no one used because it also had an electronic bell to push. Mrs Chapman answered the door and I introduced myself.

“Hi I’m Jade, I was wondering if Morgan was home, we go to school together”

“My” she said “you are a pretty wee thing aren’t you. Of course, he’s in his room, come in.”

With that she led me into the house, which had some pretty impressive views of the ocean. I noticed some surfers riding waves out front of the place and wished I could be out there too.

“Morgan! There’s a girl from school here to see you”

I heard a door open on the floor above us and Morgan came out looking over the balcony.

Seeing me he sullenly said “What do you want?” with a sour expression on his face.

“Don’t be rude Morgan!” His mother said “come down here and have some manners”

He stomped down the stairs, his whole body language telling me I was the last person on the planet he wanted to see.

“I’ll get some lemonade for you two” Mrs Morgan chirped “please sit down Jade”

I sat demurely as possible saying thank you and giving Mrs Chapman a smile.

‘What a lovely lady’ I thought ‘I wonder what happened that made Morgan such a bully?’

I sat with my knees together and leaned forward toward Morgan. I had worn a short skirt today with a top that showed off some of my cleavage, I had wanted to look as girly and feminine as possible. I wore makeup and had even put nail polish on for the first ever time, well I had Mom do it anyway. It was a cool shade of dark metallic green.

I wanted Morgan and his parents to identify with me fully as female and by the looks I got all day at school from the boys, I guessed I’d been successful, at least with them.

Mrs Chapman brought out two glasses of lemonade and placed them on a table in front of us. Making an excuse she walked off toward the kitchen leaving us alone.

“So” said Morgan “what do you want Jade”

‘Hmmm good start’ I thought ‘at least he called me Jade’

“Well I guess first off I wanted to apologise for the other day. What we did to you was mean and I feel really awful about it, so sorry. Secondly I wanted to ask you what I’d done to make you hate me. It’s not like I’m really going out of my way to try and hurt you, I mean we hardly know each other and third I was hoping you’d come back to school”

Morgan looked down at his feet. I knew he was thinking about his answer and probably how open he wanted to be with me then he took a deep breath.

“As soon as you turned up, you know as Jayden, you were popular with everyone. You were handsome with the blond hair and green eyes and all the girls were ga-ga over you. You had the cool big brothers and you all had that surfie vibe going on. You all turned up on those trail bikes with the boards under your arms and you were tight, like nothing in the world would ever tear your friendship apart. I don’t think I’ve ever been so jealous of anyone as much as I was with you. I have no-one like that; I’m the only child in this family, my parents stopped after me. Do you know what I’d give to have what you have?”

I looked at him as sympathetically as I could. I wondered if I’d still been a boy whether we would be having this conversation right now. As a girl he was opening up to me, sharing his feelings, but I was remembering my beating.

He went on “now look at you a real babe. I can’t win Jade, you even beat me in the surfing comp and you’re probably right you’ll beat me as a girl in the next one as well. When I saw you at school the first time, you know in class, all I wanted to do was ask you out, yet I felt so angry that you had turned into well you. I attacked you instead”

He looked at his feet

“I’m really sorry but I don’t know how to make it right.”
“Come back to school” I said “learn to be kind especially to girls instead of hitting them. You don’t have to be a player Morgan; lots of girls would go out with you if you just changed your attitude and stopped trying to be some kind of macho gangster. You know thinking about it I have just the group for you to join to help you do just that. It’ll be a bit embarrassing at first, you’ll be the only guy but it might just help.”

“Doing what? Why would I want to? If I did would you come out with me on a date?”

I sighed, he really didn’t get it. All he was doing was making excuses and feeling sorry for himself.

Standing up I moved to the window looking out. Morgan followed and stood behind me, I felt his breath on my neck. Suddenly I felt his hand on my bottom moving down my skirt and toward the hem. I grabbed his wrist but he was way too strong for me. I realised that in my naivety I had dressed not in a feminine way like I thought but far too sexily, in a way that just turned Morgan on. As far as he was concerned I was a conquest, a girl for him to win.

“No” I said but he kept his hand on me, moving it up the inside of my skirt toward my panties. I was helpless to stop him so I twisted, turning to face him our noses nearly touching. He pressed me against the cold glass of the window and leaned against me. His fingers reached the edge of my underwear while I tried desperately to stop him.

“Come on Jade, I know you want it, why else would you come over here?”

“To talk Morgan, that’s all, to let you know I was sorry, don’t you get it? Get off me or I’ll scream”

His eyes went cold and he backed off

“Fine, you might as well leave then.”

“Alright” there was no argument from me at all and I headed for the door as quickly as I could.

Mrs Chapman came out from the kitchen

“Oh you’re leaving already?”

“Yes, thank you for the lemonade Mrs Chapman but I have to go, homework and stuff you know” I smiled at her

“Well come over again whenever you like dear, I’m sure Morgan would love to see you again”

“Yes right” I said as I walked through the door vowing that returning was about the last thing I would ever do. Some leopards really don’t change their spots I thought as I practically ran all the way home and threw myself on my bed. I had come face to face with one of my greatest weaknesses as a girl. Had we been alone together Morgan could have done whatever he wanted to me and I would have been powerless to stop him.

I had begun to accept myself as female, had enjoyed dressing and feeling sexy, the friendship I was developing with Jaz and the girls was fun and exhilarating and the relationship with my Mom was getting better and better. Being a girl was becoming normal for me, being a piece of meat for any random guy especially low life’s like Morgan was not. I was determined never to get myself in that situation again.
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Friday evening came around quickly and the situation I had found myself in with Morgan was semi-forgotten as I prepared for the sleepover. I was unusually excited and viewed this as yet another initiation into girlhood. Tim had Mom’s car as she had taken the bus to work and I jumped in beside him.

“Thanks for taking me”

“No problems sis” he smiled over to me as he put the car in gear and drove off.

Jaz’s home was located further back inland at the foothills of the San Diego Wildlife Preserve and was nearly as flash as Morgan’s place. It stood two stories high and had a swimming pool out the back sparkling blue as the sun began to set behind us in the west.

I jumped out of the car and Tim got out too.

“Gotta see you to the door” he said and walked beside me as we approached. To say I felt safe and secure in the presence of my brothers was an understatement. They were my greatest friends and biggest heroes. As a girl they had protected me, accepted me and continued to love me through everything just as they said they would.

The door opened before we even got to it and Jaz bundled out stopping still when she saw Tim. She was a tall girl but only came up to Tim’s shoulder but then again so did I. He had wide shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist which always caught the eye. His wild brown hair fell down to his shoulders and was kind of curly like mine not tight curls but loose and long. He was trying to grow one of those goatee beard things which Mom hated but I thought looked really funky, not that I’d tell him that.

It was his eyes though that was his most amazing feature. Whereas Mom had said I’d inherited my grandmother’s dark green eyes Tim had inherited Moms. They were a deep blue and whenever he looked at you it was like a laser beam had been turned on and he was looking directly into your soul.

He turned them on to Jaz and smiled.

“Hiya” he said “I’m Tim”

To her credit she composed herself, just, and reached out her hand.

“Hello I’m Jaz”

They touched and I smiled, I recognised what she was feeling. I think she probably hid it a little better than me though.

We walked to the door and I gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek.

“See ya tomorrow Jay”

“Yeah tomorrow”

He wandered back to the car while Jaz stood at the door watching him. We both waved but she didn’t move until he had driven off.

“You really like him?”

She glanced at me and smiled.

“Yeah I really do”

“You know he’s one of the good ones Jaz, he’s loyal, funny, kind. If you want him I won’t stand in your way but you have to promise me, like really promise me that you won’t hurt him”

“I promise Jade, with all my heart I’d never hurt your brother”

“Good”

“And besides did you see his ass when he walked off OMG!”

We laughed as we walked inside. I was the first one there and was introduced to Jasmine’s mother and father. They were both jovial and friendly and I was quickly made to feel like I was part of the family. Before long I was sitting at their breakfast bar chatting to Jaz’s Mom while a glass of orange juice sat in front of me just waiting to be sipped.

As the others arrived the house filled up with girls and excited giggling and chatter filled the lounge room. Jaz had decided we would all sleep in there on some big foam mattresses so we could lie down, watch a movie and eat pizza together. Her parents were a great couple and gave each of the girls a hug as they walked in; everyone obviously knew each other well.

Once we had settled in and Jaz’s parents had been banished she turned to me and said

“Jade we know you’ve been through a pretty tough time and we wanted to do something for you. We’re all really glad that you’re here and our friend so we want you to come to my room cause well just come with us”

They all smiled and clapped their hands in front of them as girls do and Jaz took my hand leading me to her room and made me sit down.

She began to comb out my hair as the others watched and then Sarah and Debs took turns to work some magic on it that I didn’t understand twisting and turning my hair until it was pinned into the most striking shape. It’s called a ‘chignon’ said Lauren as I looked at myself, my long neck emphasised by the beautiful hair-do they had created. Lauren and Jaz then went to work on my face giving me what they called a smoky eye that darkened the lids and made my eyes look exquisite. They did my make-up foundation, bronzer, blush but left my lips nude just adding a little bronzer with gloss over top.

Lauren stood behind me her hands rested lightly on my shoulders as Jaz pattered over to her bed where a large box tied with a green bow sat. Calling me over she said open it and as I did a dress was revealed. It was a deep green color with silver sequins sewn onto it, thousands of them near the top fading to just a few on the skirt. The bodice was sleeveless while the skirt flared out from my waist made of organza with a satin under skirt. It reached to the floor and I gasped.

“It’s for you” said Jaz as tears prickled my eyes. No-one had ever given me a gift as expensive as this before and I was truly touched.

“You’re not allowed to cry you’ll ruin your makeup“ said Sarah as they helped me out of my clothes and into the dress.

Jaz leant me a pair of her very high heels and I put them on then looked at myself in the mirror.

Her parents had tip toed in and were watching from the door way as tears filled my eyes and I thanked each of them.

“You are gorgeous” her Dad said, “Jaz told us what happened to you and how you were beaten up by a boy at school but also how you wouldn’t let it get you down and well this is our way of saying we care about you. We hope you’ll wear that to the dance coming up at school.”

Her Mom chimed in “Jade you’re more than gorgeous you are stunning my girl, can we take some pictures?”

I didn’t have much choice and so I stood there posing as they snapped away with their digital camera, some as a group and some of me individually. I wobbled around on heels much to everyone’s amusement and decided I needed to get used to walking in them.
Jaz took the camera and connected it to her laptop and downloaded the photos. We sat as she made a slide show and played them on the screen. I was amazed at how I looked I didn’t recognise myself with the dark eyes and sculpted cheek bones.

She then opened her Facebook page and before I could protest she uploaded a few pics onto her timeline. Within seconds a ton of people had ‘liked’ the photos and comments were being made asking who the girl in the green dress was.

She laughed delightedly and simply answered ‘Wouldn’t you all like to know’

I changed back into my comfortable clothes but decided for the time being I liked my hair and make-up this way so didn’t change it.

We had pizza and watched a weepy movie and I relaxed in the company of my friends. It was an awesome evening and I appreciated all they had done for me. Saturday morning came all too quickly but Mom finally picked me up and after talking for a little while we headed home with a large box sitting on the back seat and a green bow around it.

I didn’t know it but another little present had been slipped into my bag with a little note. One I would find later that day.