S1 Episode 4

An Identity Crisis

Welcome to Trainwrecks, a free-to-read fiction serial that follows a group of six Seattle-adjacent friends from the year 2004 to the year 2015. Join Luna Cruz, Sebastian Velasquez, Dimitri and Victoria Hale, Duke Kingston, and Jasmine Nolan as they stumble their way from adolescence to adulthood, falling in love, making mistakes, overcoming their pasts, and staying together through it all.

For series introduction, character profiles, relationship charts, and general orientation, check out the Table of Contents!

Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter (Coming 9/25/24)

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Jasmine waited until the last minute to tell her parents about Victoria’s sleepover party, and as predicted, the barrage of questions began the moment the words were out of her mouth.

“Where is the sleepover happening?”

“Is Luna’s mother going to be home?”

“Will there be boys at this party?”

“The Cruzes don’t drink alcohol, correct?”

Another teenager would have found these questions oppressive, maybe even insulting, but Jasmine couldn’t help being amused by their concern. A few years ago, they wouldn’t have asked. They’d have waved her off and told her to have fun, passed her to strangers without a second thought because they trusted their daughter to be exactly where she said she’d be. They’d learned the hard way what a mistake that had been.

Jasmine, seated on the living room recliner, answered every question her parents fired at her. And even then, her father called the Cruzes to verify the details—thankfully they were used to his interrogations by then.

Jasmine was only a little embarrassed by this. But it wasn’t her father she was ashamed of, it was herself. She was the one who had given her parents reason not to take her words at face value. She was the one who’d snuck out of friends’ houses to party and drink and have sex with men who shouldn’t have even been looking at her. She was the one who’d appeared at the door with handprints around her neck one night, pale and trembling, and irrevocably changed all their lives.

“You may go,” her father said when he got off the phone. “We will drop you off at eight o’clock. The Cruzes will take you to church in the morning. We expect you to call at eleven from their home phone.” His face relaxed a bit. “And if at any point you feel unsafe or uncomfortable, contact us immediately. We’ll come get you.”

Jasmine stood up, walked over to the sofa, and gave her father a quick hug from behind. “Thanks Dad.”

He patted her arm—his wordless way of telling her he loved her—and she made her way upstairs to pack for the sleepover. Once upon a time, she’d seen her parents as nothing more than people who’d been put on Earth to serve and entertain her. What a fool she’d been.

And speaking of fools, her younger self waited for her in her bedroom when she got there. “You’re really going to this girl’s birthday party?” she sneered. Jasmine imagined her as forever fourteen, dressed in whatever showed the most skin possible, her eyes full of boredom and disdain for the world around her.

“She’s part of the group now,” Jasmine told her.

“I’m sure you love that. Another pretty girl to take all the attention off you.” Her younger self lay across the bed like a panther on a tree branch. “And worse, she’s one of those idiots who doesn’t even know how pretty she is. Walking around dressed like a fucking Puritan so guys can go crazy wondering what’s under all those clothes.”

Jasmine shut her eyes against her own malicious thoughts. “Victoria isn’t like that.”

“But look on the bright side: she’s related to Dimitri, so that’s one less person who’ll want to fuck her.”

“Shut up,” she hissed, and when she opened her eyes again, she was alone in her room—like she always had been—with the reality that she hadn’t changed. Not really. She may have been washed and saved by the blood of the Lamb, but she was still the same jealous, prideful, and mean-spirited Jasmine underneath all her pretending.

And she hated herself for it.

~*~

Luna had gone all out for Victoria’s slumber party. There were board games, snacks, a stack of movies to watch, craft kits for making friendship bracelets and other costume jewelry, props for photos, and an entire book of truth or dare prompts. And as if that hadn’t been enough, she was also baking cupcakes.

“Did you throw this party for Victoria or for you?” Jasmine joked when she saw everything laid out on her bedroom floor.

Luna grinned. “Both!” She’d never had a huge slumber party either, so this was new territory for two out of three of them. Jasmine had been to sleepovers before, but they were the kind where she’d arrive, get changed into something sexy, then move to a secondary location for the real party.

Sebastian stopped by on his way out, his electric guitar slung over his back. “Duke claims he wants to play some real music to cleanse his palate from all the boring school music.”

“Classical guitar is real music,” Victoria snapped, and Luna heaved a sigh. Apparently, Jasmine was missing out on a lot of arguments at Remington.

“I’ll tell him that. Night, girls. And happy birthday, Victoria! Those Jammie Dodgers are from me.”

As soon as he was gone, Victoria broke out into a shy smile. “He’s so sweet! How did he know I love Jammie Dodgers?”

“He probably asked Dimitri,” Jasmine said dryly, then winced at her attempt to diminish Victoria’s happiness. What was wrong with her? She had no romantic interest in Sebastian. Their friendship was not exclusive. Victoria could like him if she wanted to. “I’ve never had a Jammie Dodger before. May I try one?”

“Certainly!” Victoria handed the biscuit over without a second, selfish thought, and Jasmine allowed her guilt to humble her as she chewed on it.

Luna prompted Victoria to pick their activities, and at first she was so embarrassed that she begged Luna to choose for her, but Luna refused, so she settled on Scrabble. “Oh good,” Luna said, “if you’d picked Monopoly, our friendships might not have survived the night.”

“No, if she’d picked Uno our friendships wouldn’t have survived the night.” Jasmine poked her freckled cheek. “You’re particularly vicious when it comes to Uno.”

“Says the girl who had two monopolies and a ton of hotels built by the end of our last game.” Luna bumped her shoulder against hers. “You should have seen it, Victoria. We were all rolling for our lives trying not to land on her corners.”

Jasmine lined up her Scrabble tiles. “I bankrupted Dimitri in one turn. He was so mad. Best game ever.”

They played for an hour, until Victoria suggested they watch a movie before it got too late. She picked up Mean Girls from the pile of DVDs. “I’ve been curious about this one,” she said.

“It’s so good,” Luna told her. “You guys load it up. I’ll go make popcorn!”

Jasmine almost offered to go help her. She didn’t want to be alone in the room with Victoria, couldn’t trust herself not to say the wrong thing or purposely misinterpret her intentions. But she forced herself to stay. If they were both going to be Luna’s friends, then she had to learn to get along with her.

Victoria settled on the sofa, looking less self-conscious than before. She really was beautiful, Jasmine noted, with her bright green eyes, her mix of Indian and Japanese facial features, her darker skin, her neatly trimmed nails and long piano-playing fingers. When she wasn’t scowling, there was a sweetness to her that Jasmine couldn’t have faked if she wanted to. Envy stabbed her heart. How nice it must have been to be so innocent.

Victoria caught her staring and blushed. “S-So how did you meet Sebastian?” she asked.

“Middle school.” Jasmine forced herself to smile. “We didn’t become friends until last year, though. No one wanted to sit with me at lunch, but then one day Seb ditched his other friends, walked right up to my table, and sat down.”

Victoria’s eyes widened. “Why wouldn’t anyone sit with you?” Her tone suggested that she found no defect in Jasmine, which refreshed her emaciated ego.

“Because I was the school slut,” she said. “Started making out with guys when I was eleven and moved on from that pretty quickly. The good girls were afraid of me. The Asian girls wanted nothing to do with me. The white girls looked down on me. And everyone loved to have jokes at my expense, but I just laughed along with them.” The shock on Victoria’s face should have made her feel good. It should have told her how different she was now, how much she’d improved since coming to Christ. But she only felt slightly hysterical, like she was terrified of this sweet, innocent girl’s judgment despite having handed her the power to dole it out. “When I converted to Christianity, everyone acted like it was only a matter of time before I went back to my old ways. No one believed that I had changed. No one except Seb.”

“I don’t like hypocrisy,” he’d said when she asked him why he was sitting with her. “And anyway, you seem like the realest person in this cafeteria right now.”

What did it mean to be a real person? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t know if she was a good Christian girl or a self-absorbed megalomaniac. But all she’d wanted in that moment was for someone, anyone, to try and get to know her. Sebastian had been first. Luna second. Perhaps Victoria could be third.

“Well,” she said at last, “I think it’s perfectly ridiculous, all those people judging you for having sex. They were probably just too scared to admit they’d been doing it themselves.” Victoria crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s no one’s business what you do with your own body.” And then her confidence fled, replaced again by shyness. “I’m sorry that happened to you, though. I think you’re a nice person…”

Jasmine felt the ice around her heart melt a little. “Thanks,” she muttered. “You seem pretty nice yourself.”

A few hours later, near the end of the movie, Jasmine went downstairs to call her parents. Mrs. Cruz smiled at her from the dining table, where she sat doing the finances for her dance studio, the dog sprawled out at her feet. Faintly, the sound of Mr. Cruz’s guitar could be heard through the walls. The phone rang twice before her mother’s anxious voice answered. “Jasmine?”

“It’s me,” she said. Perhaps her mother would always sound like that when she answered the phone now, and that would be Jasmine’s punishment for all her past sins. But at least she could be there to reassure her every single time. “Just checking in.”

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