The Brave One *Book 1*

The Woman in the Photo

Gloomy clouds lined the sky. It didn’t help my problem. I still had to tell my parents about the fight. The embarrassment. I felt like a character from my favorite online blog. I was Ginny, the lying troublemaker who always seemed to make a mess of something that didn’t need messing with. And she always got in trouble. Did I mention that? I sat down on the bus and sighed. Another girl about my height sat next to me. “Are you Jada?” she asked. Her lips were chapped and her hair was so yellow like way too bright popcorn and….well she looked scared. “Uh, yeah” I stared at her with disgust. “I-I’m Boe. The new girl. Boe Lannavan. Don’t-“but she was already gone when she started talking. “IT’S NOT HALLOWEEN YET!” I shouted over the noises in the bus. It lurked to a spot in front of a large house. For a second I thought I saw Boe. But when I looked closer there was nothing there. Just the faint sound of cats. “Hear that?” I asked the girl next to me on the other side of the aisle. Mistake. “OMG! Did you just S-P-E-A-K TO ME? UGH, I think she spit on my Da-resssss!” she gave me a glare and went back to talking about Justin Bieber and how messed up his life was right now. I felt a lot like him right now. The bus stopped in front of my house. My parents were standing out on the driveway in PJ’s. One said SEASME STREET (my dad’s) and the other said I WUV U JADA (my mom’s). It wasn’t the first time she had been a total creep. That’s my mom. And it wasn’t the first time my dad had said he would wear a shirt with baby show’s all over it. But this….was going too far. Everyone was laughing at me including the snobby girl I was going to call Gla Re. I stormed up to them and waited for the bus to leave. “Jada Lennie Kurupsi! IN THE HOUSE NOW!”  my mom pointed to the stucco house and I followed reluctantly. “Yes mom?” I stared at the wood floors to keep from crying. “Look. We know you got the third D of 10th Grade. And were not….happy about it. So, our punishment is only fair. You will work on your neighbor, Quinn Flames backyard and clean up all the trash that seems to pile up there. Then you will get a tutor, and his name is Matt Pieter. I think-“my mom began. “DAD! NO. QUINN FLAMES IS MY E-NE-MEE! I MADE THAT VERY CLEAR. AND MATT IS THE WORST GUY IN HISTORY. HE’S SUCH AN UGLY LITTLE-“ I started. “Genius?” my dad got up and took out a book from his many collections. That’s what my parents are into. They like all kinds of books. And I guess I do too. Well, if blogs count. Blogs are my life. I have 4 of them. One of them is an old one, which I barely use and it was my 5th grade one. Sometimes I give all those 6th grade suckers some advice, but I’m pretty sure no one else uses it or comments. My newest one is all about Friends. My 2nd to last one was about boys, but as of now, any chance of meeting Prince Charming is not exactly an option but you can always hope, right? The third one I made is about Parents but like the 1st one it’s pretty much hopeless. “JADA!” my dad shoved the book roughly into my chest. I doubled over, slowly got up and read the front cover. “Geniuses” from December 2013. I went to the first page and right there was Matt Pieter. But he wasn’t smiling. He was with two basketball players who were kind of cute. Matt was too. But the real thing that I noticed was that he wasn’t smiling. The caption said: 3 lead football players who absolutely love basketball. In the background I saw a woman. She looked scared and worried, and she was staring at Matt. Her head was cocked and Matt…wasn’t smiling. I must’ve been 15 then. “You see? Matt’s not all genius” my mom took back the book and placed it on the shelf. I would have to look at that sooner or later. “But you understand why you are being punished right?” my mom asked. “Yeah….I do” and all I could think about for the rest of the day was how sad Matt looked. And the woman staring at him, so intently.