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Alex hated being seventeen.
He was caught up in everything —the gossip around the school surrounding his home life, the girls he messed around with for one night before moving onto the next. Nobody could leave him alone. He only had two real friends, and even they didn’t provide anything useful other than companionship and an occasional beer.
He was worried constantly; about his brother getting good enough grades to pass his class, to his sister having clean enough clothes that the teachers wouldn't send her home with a shake of their heads and an instantaneous call to child services.
Constantly in a state of exhaustion, he wanted to quit. Quit his job at the crappy bar he had worked for the past year despite being underage —quit this so-called ‘life’ he had made himself in the run-down town in the middle of nowhere Iowa.
Everyone around him would be so disappointed; his coaches, his teachers... because there he was —Alex Karev in all his glory, a kid who came from nothing, who went out onto the mat and won match after match, helped win game after game on the field, while still maintaining good enough grades to get a full ride scholarship to Iowa State.
Who was he if not the one they could show off like a prized pony, exploited until everything about him and his life would become the topic of the school?
He was constantly being told how he should ‘enjoy his youth’, embrace being young and having his whole life ahead of him.
Each time he heard that it made him want to cry.
Because he didn’t stick up for himself, he threw punches at a bag that could only settle anger until the next thing set him aflame, and then it was a loop that never seemed to end.
He was anxious and nothing could help. Nobody was able to pitch in; his mom in an almost constant catatonic state on the couch, his brother needing more help than just the hour or so he was able to provide for homework every night, his sister needing to be shown more attention and acknowledgement to her existence than the few minutes he carved out in the morning to do her hair.
Everyone around him said that these were his golden years. He should make the most of it being the kind of person he was —young, smart, talented, handsome. He just wished he could disappear, fall off the face of the earth and maybe then it wouldn’t feel like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Maybe then he wouldn’t need to be a parent to two kids who needed someone more stable in their life than someone who would leave for college in a few months time.
Pulling into a free spot in the parking lot, he slams his head against the steering wheel of his beat up pick-up truck, running his hands through his hair, exactly the same as it had been when he rolled out of his bed that morning, no time to focus on something as miniscule as his hair when his sister was coming down with a cold.
“God, it’s brutal out here.”
Jo hated being seventeen.
Insecurities ate her up inside, and being around perfect girls with perfect clothes did nothing to settle the constant thoughts that screamed inside of her, critiquing everything about her from the shape of her nose to the way she looked in a form-fitting top.
The problem was that she had friends, and a few of them at that. She always worried about what they thought about her, whether or not they liked her or thought that she was just someone who latched onto them because there was no one else who would take her in.
She was scared, because even if her ‘friends’ weren’t the cheerleaders with shiny blonde hair and laughs as fake as their nails, they weren’t the only ones who hid behind a mask, because as it turns out that girls with curly brown hair, glasses, and braces were just as capable of being someone else as the ones who had everyone’s eyes on them.
She loved the people she even didn’t like, hated every paper she wrote for class, and she didn’t think she fit in, could barely say without sounding like a show-boat to prove that she was smart, and despite spending almost all the free time she had in her car, she couldn’t even parallel park.
Nervousness seemed to pick up around every hallway corner she turned, another friend asking her when they would get to spend time at her place, meet the parents they all naturally assumed she had. She was a wreck.
Where was her teenage dream? Where was the sweet sixteen party she should've had with a mom and dad in the backyard of their house, with shiny streamers and begrudgingly taken photos with her parents? Where were the nice clothes and party’s she should be able to go to, but ultimately couldn’t thanks to the pressing issue that was her car? Where was her life supposed to be, because the backseat of her Toyota didn’t seem like the answer.
Her golden years were the worst of her life, a constant state of never being good enough, never liking the way she was perceived. She wished she could disappear, leave without a glance back at the life she had grown accustomed to, but still detested nonetheless.
Faux friendships were really a stab in the heart, a crush to the already low ego she held, and getting up each day to fake smiles and fake words took a toll that would surely leave a bigger mark in the long run than it already had.
A warning bell rang, and she ran a comb through her hair, a desperate attempt to tame the mess that came with cramming the small backseat of an already small car. She looks at herself in the mirror, deciding that her hair was as good as it was going to get. Sighing, she gently rests her head on the steering wheel, grasping her hair tightly in her fists.
“God, it’s brutal out here.”