Fight Like A Girl

“Scott!” The music was overwhelmingly loud and was getting to be too much for Jenna. However, upon seeing her friend, her tolerance for it extended for just a bit longer.

“Scott!” The brunette made her way through the crowd as best she could, doing her best not to shove and antagonize the wrong partying drunkard.

“I thought I saw you come in. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” She smiled, only for it to almost immediately fade.

 “Are you okay? You missed our tutoring session today-- I’m not mad or anything but you weren’t answering my texts and I got worried.” Scott has been acting rather differently lately, and Jenna didn’t want to pry but-- Scott was a good kid. If he was getting mixed in with the wrong people or the wrong stuff, she thought that maybe she could be of some help.

“You seem different lately, Scott. Distant. Spacey. You know, Jackson thinks you’re juicing-- you know, if something’s going on, you can-- you can talk to me. You know that, right?” She felt like she was yelling.. was she yelling?

“I didn’t mean to cause problems between you and your neighbors. I’m sorry.” Jenna had taken several precautionary methods, namely to hide her dirty little secret, of course, but the neighbors knowing about it definitely wasn’t something she’d expected-- she thought she’d been careful enough.

Things had calmed down now, and while Eddie hadn’t meant to make the poor girl flinch and shrink back and begin to cry, it was what happened. Embarrassing. Jenna was stronger than that. She had no idea where that had come from at all. 

“You just-- you couldn’t possibly understand. My dad spent my entire life putting so much pressure on me-- they all did, all of them over in Texas-- they pushed me so hard and demonized my mother every chance they got. Do you even know what my dad would do if he knew about Elias? Or that I was sexually active, much less smoking? He’d kill me. He’d blame it on my mom, who has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. If he knew about Eli I’d be on the first flight back to Austin. Do you know what that’s like? At all?”

“i told you, we’re not twins. my dad’s name is alan. not sam. i’m not named after anyone, my parents just liked the name samantha.” 

she can’t help the slight frown as she keeps going. “i’m not a victim of anyone.” years ago, she might have felt like one, but not anymore. faction paradox doesn’t control who she is now. “and before you think that’s me confessing, i still don’t want to kill you. i’m just here trying to live my life, that’s all. i didn’t even know you existed.”

“i’m sorry, this isn’t the first time for what?” she knew something big had to have happened, but she never would have expected something like that to happen in real life to anyone. “i’m not brainwashed. i’m not trying to wreak havoc. i’m not your twin. is there any way to convince you here?”

Jenna didn’t know any Alan, that was for sure. “You mean your dad isn’t Samuel Garrett?” Okay.. weird, but again, could have been another Ana situation, right? Stolen at birth? Though, as this continued, the more and more unlikely this sounded even to Jenna. Aspen would have told her long ago and if Aspen hadn’t, surely Sam would have told his daughter.

“What do your parents look like?” Jenna asked, her eyes falling to the other’s pockets. “Do you have a cellphone? Any pictures?” Jenna finally lowered the knife, taking out her own phone.

“My mom looks like this.” she said, scanning through her photos, showing this other Sam a photo of Aspen and Jenna together. “My dad, also Sam, looks like this.” She had to scan through her photos a bit further for one of the two of them together.

“Do your parents look like that too? Do you have an Abby? Wait-- do you have a boyfriend?”

“i’m not trying to take over your life!” she has no idea what’s happened in this girl’s life that that’s her first assumption. then again, her first assumption was that her old timeline was coming back to haunt her again. maybe neither of them has had a normal life. normal is pretty relative at this point. 

she holds her hands up, taking a half step back with a nod. “alright. not coming any closer. you really don’t need to worry.” it’s not the first time she’s had a knife pulled on her. somehow, she feels like it won’t be the last. 

“my name’s sam. do you want to know physically or chronologically?” any chance of seeming normal went out the window the second they saw each other; no point in pretending now. it’s better to just get right to it. “physically i’m 22. am i allowed to ask your name and how old you are now?”

“Ha! I got you. Sam, huh? Like my dad? That Sam? You’re named after him?”

Jenna’s brain flew directly over the question of chronological age and focused on the number.  “That’s impossible. You’re not twenty-two, moron. We’re sixteen. Whoever raised you and told you you were is lying... or you are. I can’t figure you out yet. Are you the victim here? I mean-- not if you want to kill me. That’s not very victim-y.”

There couldn’t possibly be any other explanation for this. Right?

for a long moment, she can’t think of anything to say, trying to process everything that she just heard. she knows that none of that is right–her other self’s childhood had been the exact same as hers, nothing like what this girl is describing right now. “i’m not here to kill you. this is just… a very weird situation.”

even for her life. 

“we’re definitely not twins. and you’re not who i thought you were, either. so i have–no idea what’s going on here, honestly, and i don’t like not knowing what’s going on. so i’d appreciate it if you didn’t use a knife on me, so we can at least try to figure this out.” 

Jenna didn’t know what to think. She couldn’t be too careful around this one, not after what her moms had went through with their own evil twin mess.

“I’m not telling you anything else about me. You’ve heard enough. I’m not giving you information so you can just mimic me to my own mother and take over my life.” She sounded like a nutcase right now, sure, but this wasn’t an everyday situation either.

She pulled the knife from her purse, extending the blade. “I won’t use it if you don’t give me a reason to. So.. just stay back, okay? Don’t come any closer. You tell ME what I want to know, not the other way around. Got it?”

 Jenna took a few steps back, still holding the blade outward toward the stranger, forcing a distance.

“how–how are you here? how are you alive?” she never had the chance to meet her other self, only saw the flashes of her life every once in a while, but she knows how it ended. she’s gone to the grave more than once, feeling that someone should remember her. “and why aren’t you british?”

Ew. She spoke again. 

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but my mom would have told me if she’d had twins-- or even thought she had twins-- I’ve already been through this once in my life, I’m prepared for this.” She had never met Ana, Mia’s evil twin sister who had wanted to destroy her, destroy her life and then take over said life but she knows what it did to her mom. Jenna wasn’t going to be the Mia in this situation! Not by a long shot!

“If you’re here to kill me or-- or-- kidnap me or whatever it is that you’ve plotted? Simply don’t. My mom was fifteen when she had me-- us? You can’t blame her for that. So.. fuck off. Okay? I have a knife.” 

Jenna knew Eddie wasn’t the biggest fan of her father. No one on the 118 was, that was for sure. Hell, even his own daughter had plenty of criticisms.

“You remember what my old last name used to be, right?”