When Jenny and Mike returned that evening, Jenny's foster parents were already home. Jenny looked at the time; although they never got around to mowing the lawn, they stayed at Kris and Taylor's for about five hours until it got dark outside.
"Shit," Jenny breathed. She was still technically grounded from many things she had done lately. Her foster parents left her alone with a serious threat if they discovered she had left in their absence. When she agreed to go out with Mike she knew mowing a lawn wouldn't take very long and she could cover for it, but when she saw Kris at the front door all of that left her mind.
"What?" Mike asked.
"I'm still grounded," Jenny said.
"Then why'd you leave in the first place?"
"I figured mowing a lawn wouldn't take very long and I could be back before them. I didn't expect to be reunited with my family! By the way, make sure you keep today a complete secret. If Liz and Max find out where I was, or anybody else in high authority at that...well I don't know exactly what'll happen but it won't be good. Kris and Taylor could get in serious trouble, and the government will probably move me far away."
"Don't worry, sweetie, I won't say anything," he reassured her. "And since you're going to be in trouble anyway, do you want to do something else? Do you want to come home with me? Nobody else's supposed to be home for a while." Jenny looked at the house.
"I don't know..." She thought about it before turning back to Mike and nodding. "Sure. If I come home now or later it's not going to matter. I'll just get grounded for another week. Whatever." Mike started the car again and drove away. "I'm glad you got to meet Kris and Taylor. Well, you already knew Kris, but I'm still glad you know them. They're the closest thing to my parents that I have right now. Kris is my mother in every way except for looks, but you know what my mother looks like. Taylor is actually quite different from my father, but they're still really close and one of these days I suppose you'll get to meet him."
"Well from what Taylor said at dinner, it's sounds like they've already got him out of there," Mike said.
"Yeah but that's not definite. I mean look at how they got him in there to begin with; it was all really sketchy. I'm quite convinced that it's a conspiracy against my father or at least something like that. How anybody could think he was actually capable of such a thing, especially to my mother..." Jenny shook her head. "Whatever."
"I'm glad you got to talk to him." She raised an eyebrow. "As much as I care about you, Jenny, you're not a very happy person, and I've always wanted to see you happy. All I've wanted was for you to be happy, and I actually got to see that today. You deserve it; you deserve so much more than you have. I just wish there was something I could do." She smiled and took his free hand in hers.
"It's because of you," she told him. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have never seen them again. I owe everything to you." Mike pulled into his driveway, turned off the car, and looked at her.
"I love you, Jenny."
"I love you too." He smiled and briefly kissed her.
"Come on, let's go inside." He opened the garage door and the two of them went inside. Mike turned on some lights so they could see before turning to Jenny. "What do you want to do?"
"I don't know," she said, shrugging. She looked at the time. "Do you want to watch a movie?"
"Sure. Which one?" She shrugged again and followed him to the living room where the family kept their collection of movies. Jenny looked through it; usually when they watched a movie Mike picked one out for them, so this was her first time looking through the collection, and she was surprised to see all of her mother's movies present. They even had Front Desk, the movie released after Ginger died. The movie swept at the Oscars and Ginger won for Best Actress, an award accepted by somebody else on her behalf, giving a speech praising Ginger's life and out and out saying that Zac didn't belong in jail.
Jenny looked up at Mike, who was browsing on the other side of the collection, and pulled out Disgrace, the movie that won her mother an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, the one award her mother was alive to see.
"Let's watch this one," Jenny said, handing over the case to Mike. He looked at it.
"Really?" he asked. She nodded.
"I've never actually seen it before. I haven't seen any of Mom's movies; when she was alive I was too young to see any of them, and since then it's been a bit hard. I want to." Mike nodded.
"Okay. Do you want to watch it here or upstairs in my room? I don't know when anybody's coming home, in case you don't want to be disturbed."
"Upstairs is fine," Jenny said. She followed Mike up the stairs and to his room. She'd been in his room a few times before and when they went in, Jenny smiled to see that it was actually clean this time. "Wow."
"Shut up," Mike said. "I clean my room on Sundays; you usually see it on Saturday, when the mess has reached its peak." Jenny rolled her eyes and kicked off her shoes before climbing onto his bed. Mike put in the movie and grabbed the remote before getting onto the bed with her.
"You've seen this before, haven't you?" Jenny asked. Mike nodded.
"Yeah."
"Is it sad?" she asked.
"In parts," he told her. "But overall it's happy. It's a really good movie; it so deserved more awards than it got." Jenny nodded. "So you Mom actually has an Oscar?"
"Yeah. She has more now, but she got them all after she died," Jenny said.
"Where did she put it?" Jenny thought about it. It'd been a long time since she'd been in her home with her parents, and she tried to think if she ever saw where her mother's award statuette was.
"It was in her bedroom," Jenny said. "It was on a shelf with some other awards that my father had. They made sure to have it high enough so I didn't break it or anything because I ran around a lot, and I did actually break stuff a lot. Why do you ask?"
"I just find it weird that my girlfriend's mom won an Oscar, you know? It's not an everyday sort of thing."
"Well I'm not an everyday sort of person, Mike. You know that."
"Yeah, I know that," he said. "And that's stellar and all, but every once in a while I think of something like that and I just think it's weird. It's pretty cool if you think about it." Jenny shrugged; it was quite commonplace for her, but that was her life. She was very used to Hollywood, although most of her memories of that life were fading. She was used to movie stars and celebrities, having lots of people around at all times, and having her own personal bodyguard. She was used to paparazzi and having her photo taken. She was used to having to basically look good all the time because you never knew when somebody was going to take a photo. Besides that, her parents were loaded with money and could afford to look good all the time.
Jenny turned to the television across the room and nearly cried as her mother's face appeared on the screen; it was her mother the way she normally was. Ginger usually changed her features for a role, whether that be putting on a wig and changing the color of her eyes. This movie, however, was different. Although nobody knew it at the time, the movie was based on Ginger's true love triangle between Taylor and Zac; Ginger portrayed herself, although her name was changed.
"Are you okay?" Mike asked, noticing the tears in Jenny's eyes. Jenny nodded.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I...I just haven't seen her in any form since she died." Mike refrained from mentioning Jenny looked like a clone of her mother.
Jenny sat in silence, not moving the entire two and a half hours that the movie played. Mike had seen the movie a number of times and watched Jenny, watching her mother with diligence. Although the movie ended happily, Jenny still cried and when the credits began to roll she wiped at her eyes and looked at Mike.
"She's good," Jenny said.
"Yeah, she is."
"I'm just surprised my father let her make a movie about that." Mike turned off the movie, then looked at Jenny questioningly.
"What do you mean?"
"That was true," Jenny said, pointing at the television. "My mother really did have an affair with my Uncle Taylor before she and my father got married. Did you not know that?" Mike shook his head. "It was a secret until after my mother died and they had to talk about it during the trial. Then it was this big thing; I remember Liz talking about it."
"Oh." Jenny put her arms around him.
"Can I stay here with you tonight?" she asked. He raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"That means I'm tired and I don't want to go home. I want to stay here with you," she said. A small grin crossed her lips. "And if anything happens, then it happens. Can I ask you something?"
"Sure." He already knew the question.
"Are you a virgin?" He sighed.
"...Yes." Her small grin turned into a big smile.
"Really?" she asked. He nodded. "Aw, that makes me happy."
"Why does that make you happy?"
"Well I didn't think you were and I wanted you to be. It just makes me happy. I don't have to be jealous of anybody," Jenny said, giving him a smile. She expected him to ask her the same question, and when he didn't, she got upset. "Aren't you going to ask me if I'm a virgin?"
"Jenny, you're barely fifteen," Mike stated. She stood up.
"So you just suppose that I'm a virgin?" she asked. His eyebrows knit in confusion.
"You aren't?" he asked. She paused. She was so offended when he didn't ask that she forgot she didn't want him to find out the truth. Sighing, she looked at the floor.
"No, I'm not," she said.
"Oh my God! Jenny, you're fifteen! You were fourteen when we started dating! When did this happen?"
"Don't get like that!" she yelled. "I was fourteen. I was high."
"High? You were fourteen and you were getting high?"
"I've been getting high since I was eleven, Mike." He paused.
"Do you still do it now?" he asked.
"No. I have different friends now," she said. The look of disappointment on his face was unmistakable and she nearly cried knowing it was directed at her. "Listen, Mike..." He stood up. "What are you doing?"
"I'm taking you home."
"What?"
"I'm taking you home! I don't even know you, Jenny! I thought I did, but I don't. The Jenny I know isn't like that."
"Well I'm not like that anymore, Mike!"
"I don't even know what you're like now! You're fifteen, Jenny. I figured you're like me and my friends when we were fifteen, but you're obviously not. What kind of person does that? What kind of person, at fourteen, gets high and has sex? How many times did that happen, Jenny?"
"It was just the once. Jesus Christ, Mike, you're being way out of line here. Those were just the kind of friends I had."
"Those aren't friends, Jenny."
"They were the only people who actually accepted me! They were the only people who didn't beat me up and tease me every single day of my life because of who my parents are! Maybe they were 'the bad crowd' or whatever, but they were real friends. They're not the bullshit friends I have now that only like me because I'm dating you. The moment we break up they're going to drop me because I am nothing at that school without you. I'm going to be nothing next year when you leave because nobody will care, because you're gone and some other kid will be the most popular kid there. I ignore it; I allow myself to think that they really like me for me but they don't. They could care less about me. At least the friends I had in middle school liked me no matter what."
"They were the ones who wanted to be friends with you as long as you smoked out with them. You didn't have to do that, Jenny; you know better than that."
"You know what, Mike. I wanted to. They told me it'd make me feel better, and it made me feel better. So I did it and I liked it. I don't do it anymore because I don't need it anymore. I don't need something to make me feel better anymore. I stopped by myself. As a matter of fact, I stopped the day after I lost my virginity because I woke up next to somebody I barely knew and I realized that I didn't want to live like that. I have values, Mike, it just took me time to learn them."
"It just doesn't seem like you, Jenny."
"I just wanted to fit in somewhere," she said, her voice lowering to a more pitiful level. "The pot made me forget people were beating me up every day, that my mother is dead and my father's in jail serving time time for a murder he didn't commit. It made me forget all the bad stuff and that's all I wanted. I wanted forget the shit and just be somewhere where people liked me."
"You have that."
"Yeah. Now. That's why I don't need to do it anymore." He sighed.
"I guess I just was caught off-guard that you're the experienced one out of the two of us," he said.
"If it helps, I don't remember any of it."
"Really?" She shook her head.
"No. I mean I know it happened and all, I remember that we did it, I just don't remember what happened or how it felt or anything like that." He sat back down on the bed and she sat next to him. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said, shaking his head. "I overreacted. I just don't feel like I know you at all. I know what you're like now but I don't know how you got to be how you are now."
"Well," she said, pausing to kiss him, "that's why I should stay over tonight. We can spend all night talking about how I got to be who I am and how you got to be who you are."
"Okay," he said. She kissed him again and they fell backwards onto the bed. He was surprised at how forward she was being and when she started to undo his pants he stopped her. "Are you postive you want to do this?"
"Michael, I love you," she said. "Yes."
"I just wanted to make sure." He kissed her again and allowed things to continue.