The Downfall of the 'It Girl'

Just a little drive, with a little bit of soul searching along the way....

Making my way down the street, I pulled onto the one of the three main roads leading through town. Instead of turning left, like I was going to school, I hung a right, turning the radio on to the first local station that the ‘seek’ button found. Some country station, yee-haw. 

As the businesses scattered along the road gave way to a recently-built subdivision, I continued on, my mind carelessly drifting over everything that had happened in my life, exactly how I got to be the Jenna Matthews that I was today, here and now.

Dad leaving obviously had a pretty big hand in things, of course. Maybe his absence played a major role in just exactly why I felt this incessant need to have a boyfriend. It was almost like said boyfriend was basically helping fill whatever empty void that my father leaving had created and left. I guess it made sense, in a Sigmund Freud kind of way, anyway.

But then there was Landon. Yes, he was my first ’real’ boyfriend, and my ‘first love,’ and all that jazz, but, besides all that, and the instant popularity that I had found myself nearly overwhelmed with upon officially becoming Landon Craig’s girlfriend, him being my boyfriend started to slowly fill this empty, voided hole that I hadn’t really realized was there before we had started dating. Having not just Landon as a boyfriend, but a boyfriend period began to fill an absence that my father had left way back when he deserted me and my mother. I finally began to feel like I was worthy of the attention and affection that only someone of the male persuasion. 

But then all of that came crashing down around me that night at his house when I had changed my mind about following through and handing over my V-Card to him. The shit had most definitely hit the fan then, and the hole that he had unknowingly been filling suddenly became much bigger and deeper than it had ever been before. My world had come crashing down all around me, my theoretical rug had been swept right out from underneath my already unsteady feet. 

So there I was: alone again. Jenna Matthews against the world, or so it had seemed to me, anyway. And then, along comes Calvin Hall, entering stage left. He was everything that my first boyfriend and ‘first love’ should have been. But he hadn’t been; just another case of being a day late and a dollar short. If Calvin had come before Landon, there never would have been a Landon for me, I was more than sure of it. I wouldn’t have all of the ‘what might have been’ issues with Landon that I currently found myself battling with day in and day out. Landon really was like a parasite, in so many different aspects. 

But Calvin. Sweet, sweet Calvin. I really was undeserving of any and all attention and/or affection from him. He deserved better, so much better than me. I felt more and more like I was a sort of ‘thorn’ in his side, a constant headache that wouldn’t go away, regardless of how many Aleve or Excedrin’s he swallowed. He had talked to me and become my friend, my one and only friend in the entire world, when everyone else had deserted me, satisfied with throwing me and my remains to the dogs; the ‘dogs’ in my case being the entire world. 

He had become my friend, and, possibly because of a subconscious desire to begin trying to fill that incredibly deep, dark hole once again, my feelings for him quickly became much more than just ‘friends.’ And, as my uncanny luck would have it, he actually shared the same feelings towards me as I did him. And, for the briefest of moments, everything in Jenna’s World was super-duper, one hundred and ten percent hunky-dory. And then, the unimaginable happened, the unthinkable. Call it fate or karma, or whatever you will, the complete and total bliss that I had found myself relishing in came to a screeching  halt.

Had it been something Landon had said or done to Calvin? Or had it been something Sarah had said to him during their fateful encounter in the school office? Or, and this I thought was more than likely the case, or what had gotten the ‘ball rolling,’ had it been something that I had said and/or done? It wasn’t totally unlike me to turn everything I saw or touched into a heaping pile of crap, honestly. For as long as I could remember, disaster had seemed to follow me around like a curse-- looming around, waiting for the most inconvenient times throughout my life to royally screw everything up that it possibly could.