Brian was in my Pre-Calc class my junior year.  For the first 6 weeks of school there was an empty seat next to me.   I used to wonder who would fill that seat and the impact that the person would have on my life.  Brian was in a car accident right before school started and once he healed he came back to class.  We would chat a bit.  He was one of Tommy’s friends so I knew of him.  We exchanged email addresses and over Christmas break we would talk constantly.  I wasn’t happy in my relationship with Tommy and Brian was the shoulder I needed to cry on. 

After many hours spent on the phone with Jessica (who naturally was also suffering the same affliction) we decided we needed to see what else was out there.  Together we left our old men to pursue new possibilities. I was settling into my relationship with Brian when prom time came.  I had a beautiful dress, a handsome date, and a great time.  The next day I paged Jessica to see how of my wonderful night.  When she called me back she was in tears.  Her mom and her had gotten into a huge fight on the way to church.  She wanted to get her driver’s license (she was almost 17) and her mom said not until she got a job to pay for the insurance (seems reasonable enough) but her mom said that she couldn’t get a job.  She didn’t want Jessica to grow up too quickly.  Things escalated and when Jessica was getting out of the car her mom drove off in the process she managed to hit Jessica with the car.  Jessica was only scratched and bruised, but emotionally she was devastated.  This was it; she didn’t want to have anything else to do with her parents.  She called Steven and while she was waiting for him to come get her, she wrote her parents a hate-filled letter in which she threatened to kill them. Now she was sitting at Steven’s house waiting to see what would happen next.  She couldn’t tie up the phone long so we said goodbye and I told her if she needed anything all she had to do was call.  While I was unsure what would become of my best friend, I knew that she still cared about me.

The next weekend (May 15th) Brian and I decided to go to the Factory. This was a church sponsored hangout for the local teens.  It was more like an opportunity for them to preach to the junior high crowd, which came on a regular basis.  Brian and I decided to try it just this once since he knew some friends who were also going.  I actually had a good time.  We played pool, basketball and arcade games for a while.  But then the people in charge of it decided to start preaching.  Now I have nothing against preaching, but for some reason that night I was upset.  As I was sitting there listening to them preach I got really worried about Jessica.  I hadn’t heard from her in over a week, which really scared me, since I didn’t think she had come home yet.  I spent the rest of the night in tears worried over something, which I just couldn’t quite put my finger on.   Brian and I left the Factory early that night and on the way home I calmed down a bit.  I decided that I was just being my usual paranoid self and that I needed to focus on reality and not a bunch of “what ifs.”

 A week later I called her house.  This was when my bubble burst and the walls grew.  Later I was able to piece together enough information to get a rough idea of what happened that day.  Ten days earlier her parents received the hate-filled letter and were devastated.  They couldn’t believe their wonderful little girl could be so upset. Instead of arranging professional intervention, they took the letter to the police.  The police told her parents if they wanted to they could press charges and Jessica could wind up in jail.  Her parents used this as a threat.  They had a family friend pick Jessica up and take her to Louisiana.  Jessica thought she was just going to talk with her father, but then he laid down the ultimatum.  Either she stay in Louisiana in a program called Teen Challenge where she could finish high school or they would press charges against her and she would wind up in jail.  Jessica felt very threatened, but there was nothing she could do.  She regretfully decided to stay in Teen Challenge and finish up high school.
 

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