Alive
Chapter Eight
Dark brown eyes met blue eyes as Faith came face to face with JC for the first time in over four years.
Four years. An amazingly long time for people who had once been best friends.“How are you, Faith?”
“Fine. And you?” Faith asked.
“Good.” JC brushed past her, walking out of the store.
“You got rid of him quick,” Catriona commented.
“He doesn’t want to face up to the fact that he knows me.” Faith shrugged and picked up a bag of crystals.
"What was he doing in here?”“He said he wanted to talk to me.” Catriona stepped off the ladder. “He just wanted to be nice, he said.”
“Don’t trust him, Cat. I know personally that he’ll turn his back on you once he gets what he wants.” The
bitterness was obvious in her voice.“You know that for a fact?”
“Let’s just say I was actually happy to go to Saint Catherine’s because of the hell he put me through the
last half of middle school.” Faith sank down into one of the small armchairs scattered throughout the store.“What happened?” Catriona sat down next to her, in another chair.
*~*~*
~Four and a half years earlier~
“JC, wait up,” Faith Edwards called, walking out of her house. Her best friend, JC Chasez was walking
down the street, heading for school.JC paused and looked at her. “Hurry up, Faith,” he shouted. “I gotta get to school early.”
Faith run to catch up with him. “Why?” she asked, when she caught up with him.
“I have something to do.”
“What?”
“Do you always have to ask questions?” JC snapped
“Well, usually you tell me what’s going on.” Faith looked at him curiously, wondering what was wrong
with him. JC was always nice to her. He was one of the few people that actually were nice to her.“This time, I don’t want to,” JC told her. “I’m sick of having you follow me around and always asking me
questions. You’re annoying, just like your name.”Faith’s mouth dropped open as her best friend told her that. They were right in front of the middle school,
out in the open, where everyone could see them.“I can’t help my name,” Faith said. “My parents gave it to me. And you only had to tell me that my
questions were getting annoying and I would have stopped.” She was a curious person, with a love of learning. She just wanted to know what was going on in the world around her.“I kept on dropping hints-” a lie, JC knew, but he couldn’t resist- “and you didn’t get them. You’re just a
stupid girl, Faith Brittany Moonbeam Edwards.”Faith winced as he shouted her name. No one knew her middle names, given to her by her hippie mother
and traditional father. “JC, why are you doing this?”“Because I don’t like you, never have. And I want you to leave me alone.” JC stalked off, leaving Faith
standing in front of the school, alone and confused.During lunch time, JC was sitting with the popular group, and Aimee Meyer was sitting right next to him.
They were kissing and when Faith walked past them to take a seat at another table, she pulled away from JC long
enough to say, “There’s the stupid little girl with the strange name. Poor thing, to have a name like Faith Brittany
Moonbeam. She’s a freak.”Faith felt her eyes fill with tears as she sat at a table, all alone, and the rest of the cafeteria laughed. She
didn’t see JC glance at her with pain in his eyes.That was only the beginning of the worst year of her life. People mocked her name, called her- the
smartest girl in school- stupid, a freak. JC tried to talk to her every now and then, when they ran into each other in
the halls or when visiting the other’s family with their parents. Faith would just brush past him if she saw him in
the halls, and was coldly polite when they were around their parents.She grew to hate JC and the popular people he hung out with.
And after the jagged cut on her wrist, caused by her own hand, healed, she decided that if people were
going to call her strange, she’d become strange.*~*~*
Faith blinked tears out of her eyes as she rubbed the scar on her wrist. It was a inch and a half long,
running down her wrist, right across the veins. She finished telling Catriona why she and JC never talked and she
knew that he was a bastard.“They told him that he could become popular if he ditched me. And so he did. Don’t trust him or believe a
damn word he says. He’ll just end up hurting you.” Faith tossed the bag of crystals in the air. “I need to pay for
these. I was reading in one of my books that crystals are a good way to channel energy.”Catriona stood up and walked over to the counter. “You know I just remembered, I haven’t read my cards
in quite some time. I need to do that again.”“So do I. I haven’t read my cards since the day before the semester began.”
“We need to do that soon. Never know what they’ll tell us.”
*~*~*
JC walked down the street, his head bowed, as memories flooded his mind. He remembered in vivid detail
the day he’d hurt Faith. He didn’t know what had possessed him to do all of those things, especially tell the entire
school her name. She hated her name and he knew that. By the time the day had ended, he as genuinely sorry
about it all, and wanted to apologize. But Faith never talked to him, wouldn’t even acknowledge his existence.When they entered high school, he wanted to ditch all of his “friends” and become friends with Faith
again, but it was too late. Faith’s parents had shipped her off to Saint Catherine’s, a private all-girl school they
thought would help her. After her suicide attempt, he didn’t blame them for wanting to get her out of the area and
into a better place, where she would hopefully be happier.