Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend (16 page)

“What are
you
doing, Jamie?” is Conrad’s brilliant reply.
That’s when I know he’s been drinking. If he were sober,
there’s no way that would be a good enough answer for Conrad,
the master of insults.
Jamie looks around to see if anyone important has noticed that
Conrad can’t really stand up straight. I can tell that he’s trying
to figure out a way to get Conrad out of the gym.
“Let’s go,” he says, throwing an arm casually around Conrad’s
shoulders and trying to turn him around.
“Aw, you wanna leave already? But we haven’t danced yet!”
Conrad insists, grabbing for Jamie’s hands.
Jamie steps back, both hands up in the air. “You can’t be
drunk here.”
“I want to dance with you!” he yells in Jamie’s face. I can smell
the alcohol from where I’m standing. Ms. Maso and Mr. Camber
look up to see what’s going on.
“Conrad, be quiet or you’re going to get Jamie in trouble,” I say.
“Every fucking thing’s about Jamie. Everyone wants Jamie.
Must be hard to be Jamie,” Conrad says, his eyes glittering
brightly. “Not as hard as being you, though.”
I’ve been waiting for this.
“What do you have against Deladdos, huh? Last year you go
crying to the principal about Regina, and this year you go crying to the principal about me?”
“I didn’t say anything about Matt Hallis!” I yell at him, knowing that what I’m saying is technically true—but only technically.
“Sure, that’s why we all ended up in Chen’s office,” he replies,
rolling his eyes. “You’re dull and predictable, you know that?”
“Did you even think about Jamie when you asked him to go
with you to Matt’s? What if he’d gotten arrested again?” I spit the
words out, forcing him to take a step backward. “You’re selfish.”
“Let’s
go,
” Jamie says again as Camber stands up and starts to
make his way over to us.
“You don’t understand the first thing about me,” he slurs. “You
don’t understand a fucking thing about a fucking thing.”
“You’re not that hard to figure out, Conrad.”
“Go on, tell me
one
thing you understand.”
“I understand why you’ve always been a jerk to me.”
“Jerk.” He laughs, snorting. “Can you even say the word
dick?
Or does it scare you?”
“Rose,” Jamie warns, his eye on Camber.
I keep going. I hate myself for it, given what I now know about
Conrad’s life, but I keep going.
“First I thought you hated me for taking Jamie away from Regina. But now…”
I hesitate—the words I intend to say are setting off air-raid
sirens in my head. I try to listen—I really do—but I just can’t.
“What? Say what you were going to say!”
“Now I know it’s because you think I took Jamie away from
you.
”
I got him—I got him good. I wasn’t even sure I was right, but
I can see now that I am. And that Conrad totally thought no one
knew his secret.
Jamie closes his eyes like he wishes he could go back in time
just ten seconds and stop me from saying it.
He knew. Jamie already knew.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Conrad speechless. He wobbles from side to side for a second, and then turns toward the
exit. Camber tells him that if he leaves he can’t come back in,
but Conrad blows past him. Camber watches how he’s walking
and then follows him.
Jamie’s eyes go dark as a wall comes down between us.
“I hate how he talks to me, and to you,” I say, sounding angrier than I am because I’m embarrassed by the crappy thing I
just did. But I’m sick of Conrad—I haven’t been able to get away
from him since I first saw him standing on that diving board.
Talk about destiny.
“His life sucks right now,” Jamie says.
“Yeah, well, so does mine,” I answer.
“No shit,” Jamie says, making it completely clear that he doesn’t
understand my lack of compassion.
I don’t, either, to be honest.
Jamie goes after Conrad. Should I follow him? Apologize to
him?
Or should Jamie apologize to me?
I wonder as I watch him walk away from me again—after getting close to me, after touching me—to take care of a Deladdo.
I’m officially done with the tolerance dance.
Stephanie is dancing her heart out in front of Angelo’s table,
but I don’t see Tracy anywhere. I grab my coat and put it on even
though I’m still sweaty from dancing—I don’t want to see even a
glimpse of the Valentine’s-Day-red dress I’m wearing.
I head to the hall where a photographer was set up, figuring
Tracy might be there taking her own photos. But the photographer is packed up and gone.
The hall is quiet and slightly eerie, with only the emergency
lights on, but I can see someone down there. I take a few steps to
get a better look, and I can just make out Tracy leaning against
the lockers with someone.
I hear her laugh her special flirty laugh that she’s perfected
over the past two years, and I turn around to head home on my
own.
And then I hear Peter.
Now I understand why Tracy’s been so confident lately about
college guys.
I turn back around and stand very still, listening, trying to
make sure I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing. Then I head
down the hall. When I’m standing a few feet away in a pool of
red light from the emergency exit sign and Tracy finally sees it’s
me, her flirty look slides off her face. For a second, even Peter
looks freaked out to see me standing there.
“You guys are such liars.”
“Rosie, we didn’t—” Tracy starts.
“Hang on,” Peter says to her. “What are you talking about,
Rose?” He is suddenly super pissed off. “We didn’t lie to you
about anything.”
“You’re together, and you didn’t tell me. That seems like a big
fat lie to me.”
“It’s not any of your business,” he shoots back.
“It’s
not?
” I ask, astounded.
Tracy looks like a deer caught in the headlights. “Rosie, I
swear, we haven’t seen each other since Christmas Eve. This is
the first time.”
“I’m such an idiot. You both suck,” I say.
“Anytime you’d like to grow up would be great, Rose,” Peter
says angrily.
As I stalk off down the hall, my phone vibrates and I furiously
yank it out of my pocket, tearing the lining of my coat, and see
a text from Vicky.

veracity
(noun):
reality; truth
(see also:
once you learn or say something,
you can’t unlearn or unsay it
)

IT’S THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING, AND IT’S SNOWING.
My mother and Dirk Taylor have gone out three times. At least.
I lost my best friend to my brother. I also lost my brother to

Jamie hates me for what I said to Conrad. I still can’t figure
out why I said it, to be honest.
Normally, I’d be punching walls over all this.
But today…I’m fine.
I don’t mind the snow. I’m not mad about Kathleen and Dirk.
I don’t care what Peter and Tracy do.
Because today, after school, I’m auditioning for Angelo’s new
band.
I am ready to meet my destiny.
It takes me three tries to open my gym locker. I’d like to say
it’s because my hands are shaking from a post-gym-class endorphin rush—we did sprints—but I can’t remember the combination to my lock, even though I’ve probably used it a thousand
times by now.
I’m nervous.
But it’s a good nervous. I know “Cherry Bomb” backward and
forward. I can sing it in my sleep. I probably
do
sing it in my sleep.
Angelo has been emailing me MP3s of old-school punk to “educate” me, as he calls it, since FTS broke up. Their lead singer
got signed to a label, but the rest of the band didn’t. Angelo says
he doesn’t care because the guy was a loser, but I know he’s totally bummed. So now he’s starting a new band, and he wants a
“badass girl singer” because he’s “done with dicks.”
He thinks I could be the one.
I think maybe I could be the one, too.
First the MP3s he sent were just girl singers, but now they’re
guys, too. Bad Brains, Social Distortion, Black Flag, The Dead
Kennedys, The Sex Pistols, The Clash. Until now, Peter was responsible for my taste in music—Amy Winehouse, Snoop Dog,
Led Zeppelin—but Peter’s got nothing on Angelo. He’s probably
never heard of half these bands.
The truth is, I don’t always know what to do with the stuff
Angelo sends me. I mean, I don’t know how to study it, or make
myself sound like it. I don’t even like all of it. But it’s furious,
and furious singers blow my mind. I go down in the basement
and sing myself hoarse for an hour before I go to bed, and it’s
like someone just opened up the top of my head and let all the
rage out into the atmosphere. When I’m done, I’m so calm I can
fall asleep in minutes if I want to, and I hardly ever see freaky
things in my head anymore.
Bye-bye, Insomnia; later, Horror Show. Take that, suckas.
The bell rings for the end of the period and I barely have my
clothes on. I was so sweaty from sprints that I had to take a
shower and although I tried not to let the water touch my face, I
still need time to fix my makeup. I am going to be seriously late
for French. I hear the herd shuffling out of the locker room to go
to the last period of the day. I grab my bag and run to the mirror.
The girl who’s staring back at me has on cat-eye black liner and
thick mascara; choppy, short bangs that she did herself last night
with a pair of pinking shears; and a single blue streak in her hair.
Needless to say, the girl’s mother flipped this morning.
I told Mom the blue would wash out and the bangs would
grow in. She forced herself to calm down—I actually thought I
saw her mouthing the numbers as she counted to ten—and then
looked me up and down. I said I was going for an Excene Cervenka sort of thing.
I waited for her to ask who or what I was talking about, but
after a second she nodded—is it possible that she could actually know who Excene Cervenka is?—and I saw her make the
decision not to say anything about the black tights with holes
in them, or the Doc Marten’s and vintage dress I borrowed from
Holly.
Holly said I could keep the dress because it never fit her right,
which is just Holly’s nice way of saying it’s way too big for her.
I look different. I
am
different.
I’ll bet Tracy would totally put me on The Sharp List today.
Not that I’d let her.
Things actually aren’t terrible between me and Trace. It just
feels like we’ve been taking a break from each other since Valentine’s Day. Peter and I haven’t really been acknowledging each
other, either, which isn’t that different from how things have been
since he came home anyway, except for that one night.
I have to admit that I miss Trace—more than him, probably
because I’d already been missing him for a long time and I’d gotten used to it. It’s just that I don’t want to be around her. I don’t
know how things are supposed to work now. Like, if I tell Tracy
something, does she automatically tell Peter? And does Peter tell
her stuff about me, stuff that I might not even tell her?
I think she gets it, because she hasn’t been sending me The
Sharp List. To be honest, it’s sort of a relief not to be working
for her anymore.
When I think about it, I know I should be happy for them.
She’s liked Peter forever, and he’s probably having the second
worst year of his life. He needs someone right now, and she can
help him in ways that my mom and I can’t. Or won’t.
I
want
to do the mature, grown-up thing and be happy for
them. But I can’t. Not yet.
I’m fixing my eyeliner and hoping that Monsieur Levert won’t
care if I’m a few minutes late—as long as I can explain why in
French—when the next class starts to come in.
“It’s black with a really low back—I’m totally going to need
double-sided tape to keep my butt from showing,” I hear Lena
say. “What’s yours look like?”
“I don’t have mine yet. But Anthony likes me in red,” Regina
answers with the enthusiasm of someone talking about cat litter.
They come around the corner and stop short when they see
me.
“You can pay professionals to cut your hair, you know,” Lena
says, looking at my ragged bangs. “They can color it for you, too.”
When I don’t say anything, she asks, without bothering to
hide her disgust, “Why do you look like that?”
Regina stays silent, staring at me.
“I have an audition,” I reply.
“For a freak show?” Lena says, pleased with herself, looking
at Regina for approval.
“She’s her own freak show,” Regina says.
In the mirror, I watch her go down one of the rows of lockers
to start getting ready. Lena follows her like a devoted pet. Other
girls come in, see Regina and Lena together and decide to find
a locker in another row.
“This is what it looks like,” Lena says, showing Regina something on her phone. Regina barely glances at it. When Lena sees
me watching them, she asks with totally fake innocence, “Going
to the prom this year?”
Regina laughs flatly. I pretend I can’t hear her, digging through
my bag for my makeup remover so I can clean up the mascara
smudges under my eyes. Lena tosses her phone into her locker
and pulls her sweater over her head—she’s wearing a push-up
bra that makes her look huge—and she shakes out her hair like
she’s in a movie or something.
“You guys want to share a limo?” she asks Regina.
Without thinking, I spin around.
“Wait a minute,” I say to Regina. “You and Anthony are going
to prom with Lena and Matt?”
I think it’s probably the first time I’ve ever spoken to Regina
first.
Now it’s her turn to pretend she can’t hear me.
“After everything Matt did to your brother?” I continue.
She starts to pull off her boots.
I surprise myself by adding, “You remember him, right? Conrad?”
Lena rolls her eyes dramatically. “Everybody goes through initiation when they join a team. Conrad made way too big a deal
out of it. So did you.”
“All I did was help Conrad out of the pool,” I say. “I didn’t
make a big deal out of anything.”
She readjusts herself as if she’s not satisfied with the way her
push-up bra is working. “Everybody knows you told Chen it
was Matt,” she says. “You can’t keep your mouth shut when it
comes to Chen.”
I look at Regina to see if she’s going to get in on the action,
but she’s weirdly focused on getting ready for class. She’s modest compared to Lena, who is now stripping off her leggings and
prancing over to the mirror in her matching lace bra and panties, pretending she doesn’t notice people noticing.
But Regina turns her back to us as she steps out of her jeans.
I look in the mirror again, finish erasing the mascara smudges
and spend a little more time arranging my messy bangs just so
it doesn’t seem like I’m rushing to get away from Regina and
Lena. I stick my eyeliner and remover back in my bag and I’m
just about to leave when Regina pulls her shirt over her head.
The bruises on her back are fading. In fact, if it weren’t for the
hideous fluorescent lighting in the locker room—which is for
sure designed to keep students from looking at themselves when
they should be going to class—I probably never would have noticed them. But right now, in here, they’re unmissable. And big.
Fist-sized, you might say.
They make me wonder what she’s hiding on her front.
Lena is now going on and on about the prom after-party, debating the merits of renting a cottage on the beach or just going
to a hotel like last year. When she finally senses my stillness, she
looks at me, and then turns to see what I’m staring at. She gets
just a quick glimpse before Regina pulls her gym shirt on and
yanks her blond hair free of her collar.
Lena’s eyes get huge, and she can’t help but turn back to me
for confirmation that we’re seeing the same thing. We look at
each other for a long moment, trying to read each other, trying
to figure out what to do.
Lena makes a decision before I do, spinning around and picking up right where she left off, babbling about how she might be
able to scam her parents into renting the cottage on the beach.
But I’m not that fast. When Regina sees my face, she knows instantly what I saw. Or what I think I saw.
“Anthony likes it rough,” she says.
“Likes what rough?” I ask without stopping to think.
“Sex. Do you know what that is?” she asks in a fake little-girl
voice. She’s in bitch mode, and she’s going to do everything she
can to turn this around on me. I brace myself. “You better figure your shit out fast if you’re still after Jamie. Because he needs
certain things,” she says, drawing the words out to make them
sound as dirty as she can. “I lost it to Jamie when he was living
with us. So I would know.”
I want to put my hands over my ears—I can’t have this conversation with her. I don’t want to hear the details. I don’t want to
know how it was. I don’t want to hear anything about it. I don’t
want to spend a second thinking about the fact that she knows
way more about what to do with a guy—with Jamie—than I do,
and that there’s no way I can compete with that.
I find myself thinking about how I knocked her to the ground
on the track last year.
Breathe,
I tell myself.
Regina knows exactly how to get me—she always has. She
and her brother are both so good at it. They must have gotten
that particular talent from their father. Because I’ve been in a
room with Mrs. Deladdo, and there’s no way Conrad and Regina
learned how to destroy people from her.
Regina waits for me to say something with that dead smile
on her face.
How is it possible to hate someone so much and feel bad for
her at the same time? My head is going to crack open with the
pressure of those two conflicting things.
“Why do you want to keep Jamie and me apart so badly?” I
ask her as calmly as I can, trying to keep my hands from balling into fists. I want to hear her say it—I just want her to admit
to me that she’s still in love with him.
She tosses her bag in her locker and slams it shut with a bang.
“Because you’re full of shit, Rose,” she says.
That’s not even close to what I was expecting her to say.
“What does
that
mean?” I ask.
She takes her sweet time spinning the dial on her combination
lock, then she picks up her sweatshirt and faces me.
“You’re never gonna be with Jamie. You might give it up to
him, or go out with him to piss off your parents,” she says, knowing full well that my father is dead. “But you’ll leave—you don’t
think Union is good enough for you. And you don’t think Jamie
is, either.”
Her words lodge under my skin like tiny shards of jagged glass.
It happens so quickly that I almost don’t realize it.
Almost.
The bell rings for last period.
Lena goes into the gym with a quick glance at me that I can’t
read.
Regina starts to follow her. “No way are you better than us,”
she spits at me. Her voice is hard but there’s sadness in her eyes—
actual, genuine sorrow.
She doesn’t believe what she just said.
When the door to the gym closes behind her, I stand still, trying to get myself together, to shake off the waves of confusion
and fear and fury that always follow a conversation with Regina.
Those word shards pulse under my skin.
I bolt, later than I’ve ever been for a class, catching a glimpse
of blue-streaked hair in the mirror as I run by.
For a second, I don’t recognize myself.

The snow slides down my bare neck as I stand in the slushy
parking lot waiting for Angelo, who is fifteen minutes late. I
didn’t wear a hat or a coat or a scarf—they didn’t look right
with my outfit.

I’m freezing.
My brain has been stuck in an ugly loop since French and I
haven’t been able to get out of it. I picture Regina’s bruises. Then
I think about Jamie seeing bruises on her once, up close and personal; Jamie living in her house; Regina losing her virginity to
him. And then I’m trying to imagine doing that. With him. And
thinking about how it must feel to share that with someone, and
then see that someone with someone else. And then I understand why Regina tried to hurt Jamie by going out with Anthony.
Thinking about Anthony sends me back to the bruises. And
it starts all over again.
Those bruises are from Anthony. They have to be.
I remember the way he grabbed her arm at the swim-team
party, hard enough to change the color of her skin. I wanted to
peel his fingers off her. I wanted to help her and I didn’t know
why.
I knew something wasn’t right.
Does Jamie know? Is that why he’s so protective of her?
He can’t know. He would have gone after Anthony a long time
ago if he knew.
So do I say something?
If I tell Jamie, Jamie will start something with Anthony, and
they will probably kill each other—literally. And what if I’m
wrong? What if Regina was telling the truth, and she and Anthony do certain things—and I have no clue what those things
would be—and she ends up with bruises? Then I’ll look like a
total and complete loser.
Is that possible? Do people do stuff like that?
But if I’m not wrong, and I don’t tell Jamie, Anthony will keep
hitting Regina and Regina will just keep letting him…because
she doesn’t know any better? Because she thinks she deserves
it? Because it’s all she knows?
What if she needs help, and I don’t do anything?
The thing is, I made a promise to myself at the beginning of
this year that I was going to stay out of other people’s business
and not open my mouth. I’ve already gone back on that once,
for Conrad.
Do I really owe Regina anything after the things she’s done to
me and the way she treats me?
I kick at a giant pile of gray slush and send dirty chunks of
ice flying. Why do I keep ending up with information that other
people are supposed to have, information that I can’t give them
without causing a train wreck?
I can’t think about this right now. I need to think about my
audition—about all the music I’ve been listening to for weeks,
about the fact that this could be my shot to be the kind of singer
I want to be.
I shove Regina from my mind.
I’m looking for inspiration in the most depressing, hopeless,
gray March sky I’ve ever seen when Jamie’s car pulls up next to
me.
“Angelo asked me to get you,” he says, leaning over to talk to
me out the passenger-side window.
Someone told me once that guys couldn’t be beautiful—girls
were beautiful, guys were handsome. Jamie’s definitely handsome and hot and all that. But he’s also beautiful, even when
he’s mad at me.
If Jamie’s surprised by my new look, he doesn’t show it. In
the back of my mind, behind all the other stuff that’s going on
between us, I’m disappointed that he doesn’t say anything, that
he doesn’t notice I’ve changed.
“Where’s Angelo?” I ask.
“Still working. You ready?”
I’m freezing—there’s nothing I’d like more than to get in the
car and feel the heat blasting—but no, I’m not ready. I’m mad
and confused and freaked out. I wasn’t expecting to see him;
I have no explanation for what I said to Conrad at the Valentine’s Day dance; I can’t say anything about Regina because I’m
not sure what I saw and I don’t want to seem clueless or stupid.
My brain ties itself in knots.
Jamie leans over a little more and opens the passenger door
from the inside. “We gotta talk,” he says.
I’ve been feeling pretty great about my hair and my outfit all
day, but the second the car door closes behind me, I feel like an
imposter, like I’m wearing a costume. As we leave the parking
lot, I pull down the visor to check myself in the small mirror, to
remind myself what I look like today, who I am now.
It’s not lost on me that I’ve looked at myself in the mirror more
in the past twenty-four hours than I have in the past two years.
But I don’t mind my reflection anymore—in fact, I sort of can’t
stop looking. Maybe because I finally like what I see. Or maybe
it’s that I no longer don’t like what I see.
Is that an example of a double negative that actually makes a
point clearer? I’ll have to ask Camber.
I can feel Jamie watching me as I look in the mirror. I ignore
him and shove the visor back up, my fingers raw and red from
being outside with no gloves or pockets. I can barely feel them
when I start picking at the holes in my tights to make them bigger.
“What you did was fucked up,” he says.
My face gets hot. I yank on my tights too hard and two
medium-size holes become one giant one. I pull my dress down
to cover it. “You’re mad at me?”
“You could say that, yeah,” he says.
I hate knowing that I did something that made him not like
me. Something still stops me from apologizing, though.
“So what happened after you left?” I say, trying to sound like
I don’t care.
“I took him home.”
“You brought him home like that?”
“Mrs. D’s seen worse,” Jamie says.
“How did you get past Camber?”
“Camber’s all right,” he answers, as if that explains everything. While we’re stopped at a light, he uses his sleeve to wipe
off the inside of the windshield, foggy with our breath. Then
he leans back against his door and just looks at me until I can’t
stand it anymore.
“I said it because it’s true. And you know it.”
“So?” he says, sounding genuinely confused, like he doesn’t
understand why Conrad being in love with him is a big deal.
The light changes.
He starts driving again.
And I realize that it’s not a big deal. Not in the slightest.
Somebody loves somebody who doesn’t love them back. It’s
just something that happens—probably all the time, if you’re
Jamie Forta. No biggie.
So why did I think it was a big deal? Because Conrad is gay?
Because Jamie isn’t?
What’s my problem?
Regardless of the answer to that question, one thing is clear:
Jamie Forta is obviously a way better person than me.
Maybe that’s what Regina was really trying to tell me.
I suddenly feel defensive. “Conrad was being a jerk. I wanted
to shut him up.”
“You did a good job. He hasn’t talked to me since.”
“Well, maybe you can have your own life now instead of taking care of the Deladdos,” I grumble.
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I see Regina’s back in
the harsh fluorescent light of the locker room.
“Can I turn the radio on?” I ask.
“You don’t wanna talk to me, either, huh?”
I turn away from him and start making dots in the fog on my
window. The more dots I make, the more I can see. A weird, spotted version of Union goes by in a gray blur of clouds and slush
and road and buildings. I’ve never really thought about Union,
about whether it’s a good place or a bad place. It just…is. I
am
going to leave someday—I’ve always had the feeling that life is
happening somewhere else and it’s up to me to find it.
But I’m not the only one. I bet there are more people who
leave Union than who stay. What’s the difference between them?
What makes one person leave and another spend the rest of his
life here? Is one choice better than the other?
Do I think I’m better than Union? Better than Jamie?
I know I’m going to college when I graduate. I don’t know what
Jamie’s going to do—he probably doesn’t know, either.
Does it matter?
“I’ve never seen you like that,” he says.
The sudden rush of shame makes me feel sick to my stomach.
“Yeah, you have. Last year, when you stopped me from hitting Regina.”
I really wanted to hurt her. But she wanted to hurt me, too, in
any way she could think of. Does that justify what I did?
I study the pattern I’m creating on Jamie’s window. “Did you
lose your virginity to her?”
It takes Jamie so long to answer that I wonder if I actually
asked the question out loud or not.
“Where’d that come from?” he asks.
“Today she told me she lost it to you when you were living
with her.” He looks stunned, like he can’t believe she told me
that. “Is that when you first found out? About her dad?” I ask.
I can tell by the way his jaw is sort of moving back and forth
that he’s angry, but I’m not sure if he’s angry at me or her.
“Why the fuck is she telling you stuff like that?”
Now it’s my turn to be angry—it pisses me off that he even
has to ask that question.
“Because she hates me, Jamie, and she’s in love with you, just
like Conrad! For all I know, Mrs. Deladdo is, too.”
Jamie makes a sudden right, and I grab on to my seat belt because I feel like I’m going to go flying into him. He pulls into a
parking space behind a random building and slams the gearshift
into Park. Then he takes a long, hard look at me.
“You don’t know anything about Mrs. Deladdo, or what she
did for me.”
Great. Another Deladdo mystery. “Well maybe you’ll tell me
someday,” I snap. “Otherwise, I can just find out from Regina
next time she wants to use something she knows about you
against me.”
Jamie rubs his face with both hands like he’s trying to erase
this whole conversation, and then he crosses his arms. “You’re
sort of a pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Me?” I ask, totally floored. “
I’m
the pain in the ass?
You’re
the
one who kisses me and takes me out on a date to tell me we can’t
go out on any more dates and then comes to my house and puts
his hands up my shirt and kisses me—again!”
In the silence, the snow turns to sleet, rattling on the outside
of the car, bouncing off the hood. Jamie lets out a long exhalation and runs a hand through his hair.
“I haven’t been a virgin since I was thirteen.”
This information sends such an unexpected, crazy rush of
heat through my body that I get dizzy. The car suddenly feels
like a million degrees inside.
“You were thirteen?” It comes out a whisper.
“Uh-huh.”
“With who?”
“Girl at a party. She was high. We all were.”
“You were at a— When you were— But—”
I don’t know which question to ask first. I can’t conceive of a
world in which a thirteen-year-old boy would be at a party getting high and having sex.
Shows you how much I know.
“How old was she?” I ask.
“Seventeen.”
“Isn’t that…illegal?”
“Probably.”
“And you were high? When you were thirteen?”
“Yes,” he says deliberately, like he’d like me to stop asking
questions.
It works. I am silenced, confused by the jealousy and desire
and awe competing for attention in my brain as I try to picture
Jamie Forta at thirteen, high, having sex with a seventeen-yearold.
When I was thirteen, I was collecting horse stickers.
I’m silent for so long that he shifts forward a little to get a better look at my face.
“Did you like it?” is the only thing my addled brain can think
to ask.
“There was nothing to like.” The way he says this doesn’t tell
me how he feels about what happened, but the words themselves
make me want to take his hand and feel the warmth of his skin
against mine.
“How did you end up at that party?”
He shrugs like he’s not quite sure. “I was on my own a lot
then. I did shit I shouldn’ta done.”
“You’ve been…having sex since then?” I ask quietly, both
afraid of and excited by what I know he’s going to say.
He gives me a half smile. “Yeah, nonstop,” he teases.
I’m too intrigued by his crazy story to be embarrassed by his
teasing. “Do you like it?”
It’s at that moment that Jamie notices that I look different. His
gaze goes from the top of my head down to my feet, taking in the
bangs and the blue streak, and the dress, the tights, the boots. I
can’t tell if he likes what he sees—I can’t read his expression at
all. But when he meets my eyes again, he reaches up and traces
his fingers down the blue.
“Sometimes.”
He likes it. Sometimes.
My stomach does a weird little flip and I want to roll the window down for air and let the frozen sleet land on my face. My
head is tingling from the feel of his fingers in my hair and my
eyes want to close.
“Like when?” I manage to ask.
“When it’s somebody who means something.”
“Are there a lot of people who meant something?”
“No.”
“Did Regina?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah.”
I suddenly realize that Jamie might be the only guy who has
ever been good to Regina in her whole life.
Ever.
“Do I mean something to you?”
His warm hand slides around to the back of my neck and
just rests there.
“What do you think, Rose?”
The sleet comes harder now, the rattling louder.
“You remember the kitchen on Christmas Eve, and outside
Tracy’s before school started, and last year—Valentine’s Day and
homecoming?”
He nods.
“Why do you always disappear after?”
He looks at me as if I should already know the answer to that
question.
I suddenly wonder if Regina has ever told Jamie her theory
about me, about how I think I’m too good for him and would
never truly be with him.
“What if I told you…I love you” is what I say.
Jamie’s beautiful hazel eyes lock on mine, and his whole body
freezes—I don’t even think he’s breathing. Then his hand slowly
disappears from the back of my neck and he turns his head away
from me slightly but keeps his eyes on me, as if he’s not sure
he heard me correctly, but if I said what he thinks I said, then
there’s something very, very wrong with me.
“You’re looking at me like I’m crazy,” I whisper.
“Yeah, well…”
“You can’t say you didn’t know.”
Jamie turns away, placing his hands on the steering wheel
like he wants to drive away from our conversation before I can
say anything else.
“Don’t, Rose.”
“Don’t what?”
“Everything’s gonna be different soon. It’s not worth it.”
“To you?”
“To
you.
You don’t love me, Rose. Trust me.”
All the air leaves my lungs in a rush.
His cell phone buzzes and he digs into his pocket. “Yeah,”
he says, answering it. “Yeah, we’re coming.” I can hear Angelo’s
voice, though I can’t hear what he’s saying. “All right.” He jams
the phone back into his pocket, twisting to look over his shoulder
while he backs out, pulling onto the main road as if we hadn’t
just been talking about love.
As if I’d never said anything at all.