Just Friends (16 page)

He doesn’t have to turn around to know that she’s still eyeing him. A digital surveillance camera: no film to run out.

“So where are you going?”

“I told you. Nowhere. Just going to go see the guys for a while.”

“You ironed your jeans to see the guys?”

“Gees… Look at the time.” His glass bangs against the counter. “I have to go. See you later, Mom.”

The last word he hears her say is “When” as he runs from the house, slamming the front door behind him.

As anxious as he is to see Jena, he doesn’t rush, taking his time to get his heart rate down and go over what he’ll say. As if the two or three hundred times he’s already gone over it aren’t enough.
Jena, you must know how much I like you… Jena, you’re the nicest and prettiest girl I’ve ever known…
Jena, I was thinking maybe we could go on a real date – you know, girl and geek, ha ha ha…
Maybe he shouldn’t say “geek”. Maybe she hasn’t noticed. He doesn’t want to put ideas in her head. Not that one at least.
Jena… Jena… Jena…
He couldn’t be more nervous if he were being chased by starving lions. He walks around the block behind hers, repeating his mantra over and over:
Jena, you must know how much I like you… Jena, you’re the nicest and prettiest girl I’ve ever known… Jena, I was thinking maybe we could go on a real date – you know, not as friends… I mean, we’d still be friends but… Jena… Jena… Jena…

At last he stands on her corner. His palms are sweating. Should he act like it’s just a regular visit, chatting about this and that and making jokes, or should he walk in, say, “Jena, there’s something I have to tell you before anything else.” And just blurt it out? Maybe he should have brought her flowers. Even one flower. A rose. He should have brought her a rose. A red rose. She would have been pleased, but surprised. “What’s this for?” she would have asked. And then he could have told her. “The red rose means love.” Does it? He thinks so. It means something. He has no idea. He takes a deep breath and marches up her front path.
We who may be about to die or at least terminally humiliate ourselves salute you
.

The door opens and his fears vanish.

“Josh!” Her face is flushed and her eyes shine. She is really happy to see him. Really, really happy. “Come on in!” She throws her arms around him. This is going to be way easier than he thought. “Oh, I am so glad you’re here. I have so much to tell you!” She steps back but doesn’t let go. “Oh, Josh!”

“Jena, I—”

He’s never actually seen anyone jump with joy before. “Josh. Josh. Guess what! You won’t believe it!”

He will. She missed him. She’s so glad to see him. Of course he’ll believe it.

“Josh…” She holds her breath for a second. “Josh – I met someone!”

Met someone… Met someone…
He doesn’t know what she means.
Met someone?
Someone like a movie star? Someone like the President? Met who?

“What?”

She jumps again. “You know! I met someone! I met a guy! This really cool guy!”

This can’t be happening. Not now. Not to him.

“You met a guy?”

Her face is luminous as a full moon. “Yes. Can you believe it?”

He may have to.

“He’s so incredible! Really incredible!” She’s jumping and laughing and still holding on to him. “It’s totally amazing!”

“It sure is.” He wants to go home. Right this second.
Beam me up, Scotty…
Go home exactly now. “That’s terrific!” He can’t quite manage a smile, so he puts on his chess face – give nothing away. “I can’t wait to hear all about him.”

He doesn’t have long to wait.

His name is Simon Copeland. He’s eighteen. Jena met him at the party. “I know it’s only been a few days—”

Four days. Four ordinary, twenty-four-hour days.

“It must seem pretty fast—”

Faster than light.

“But I’m a hundred per cent sure.”

“Sure of what? That he isn’t a serial killer?”

He can tell that she laughs because that’s such a ridiculous idea, not because she thinks his joke is funny. S for Simon; S for serious.

“You know what I mean,” says Jena. “In case it didn’t work out. I don’t exactly have a great track record.”

Unlike Josh.

Defeat makes him daring. “You don’t think it’s still a little early to tell if it worked out?” asks Josh. “Maybe you should give it five days. Just to be really sure.”

She laughs again: what a joker. “Oh, Josh!” No, she doesn’t. It has worked out, she’s absolutely certain; Jenevieve Capistrano and Simon Copeland are officially going out. What a difference a day makes. Or four.

“It’s just as well the Thanksgiving break isn’t longer or you’d probably be married by now.”

He’s never heard her titter before, but even that doesn’t make him feel any better. It seems that he can forgive Jena anything.

And it isn’t as if it’s all doom and gloom and news so bad he wishes an asteroid would hit the Earth. There is one fantastically good thing about Simon Copeland: he doesn’t live in Parsons Falls but two towns away. So at least Simon won’t be in Josh’s face every day. He doesn’t have to fear walking down a hallway in case he sees them holding hands; in case he turns a corner and sees them enthusiastically mixing saliva.

“He’s a friend of Anton’s.”

“Anton?”

She does have something in common with Ramona Minamoto, after all. The sigh. “Tilda’s boyfriend. Remember? You see him around school all the time.”

“Oh, sure. Anton.” Built like a cement mixer but much better-looking.

Anton and Simon got to know each other at various countywide games, even though they’re on rival teams. “Tilda said the minute she met Si she knew he and I were, like, perfect for each other. She said she could just picture us together. Isn’t that too much?”

Way, way too much. The Devil must be counting the minutes until Tilda Kopel can join him in Hell.

“I wasn’t even sure I should go to the party,” says Jena. “I was getting my period and feeling kind of gross but Tilda made me. She said what kind of friend was I to miss Anton’s party.” No friend at all, obviously. “I mean, can you believe it? I almost didn’t go! It makes you think, doesn’t it?”

It definitely makes Josh think. She almost didn’t go; she almost never met Simon. In which case, they would never have started talking; they would never have realized they were deliberately made for each other and they would never have become a couple. They would have been ships that didn’t even pass in the night, not ships that crashed into each other. There would have been a different ending, one in which Josh turned up on her doorstep with a bunch of red roses and she threw herself into his arms. Not into Simon Copeland’s. (Which are undoubtedly hard and muscular from all the sports he plays.) Josh has to concede that there is such a thing as Fate after all. Science and logic don’t stand the chance of a single drop of water on the desert at high noon next to Fate. He pictures Fate as a miserable, troll-like creature, filled with loathing and devious schemes, cackling under its breath as it destroys another life. And Fate, it seems, really has it in for Josh.

“I don’t even know what we talked about.” Her laugh fizzes like a shaken bottle of soda. “I was so nervous, you know? Like I was being interviewed for an important job or something.” Josh has a good idea of what that feels like. “Tilda said he’s a really big deal at his school. Hyper-popular and a football hero and everything. So you can imagine how intimidating that was. I mean,
me
? Why would someone like that want to go out with
me
when he could go out with any girl he wants?” To ruin Josh’s life, why else? “But Tilda was right about me and Si. She is pretty amazing like that. It’s a real gift.” That would be Tilda Kopel’s gift, of course; not the ability to talk to horses. “Si and I really hit it off. Like, instantly. It really was like we were always supposed to meet.” What Josh wonders is if Tilda has to actually boil frogs, newts and bat wings to make a magic potion or if she can cast a spell simply by twitching her nose.

Jena is happy; really, really happy. Happy like she’s six years old and it’s Christmas, her birthday and the last day of school all at once. As her friend, he should be happy, too. But he isn’t, of course. In theory, maybe. In reality, losing every game of the state chess tournament wouldn’t depress him this much. Even watching every one of his old vinyls melt would only come a close second.

“It’s incredible,” she tells him. “I never thought I’d feel like this.”

Josh never thought he’d feel like this, either. Until today he believed that this thing for Jena had made him feel about as bad as he could without some major tragedy befalling his family, but that was like thinking you knew what pain is because you stubbed your toe. He should have remembered that things can always get worse. And probably will.

“Isn’t that what everybody says?” asks Josh. Smiling so she thinks he’s joking.

“They say that because it’s true.” Jena’s is now the voice of experience. “You can’t even imagine what it’s like until it happens.” She pulls her phone from her pocket. “Hey. You want to see a picture?”

“Of what?”

“Oh Josh! Stop teasing me!” She takes a playful swipe at him. “Of Simon, of course.” As if there is nothing else on the planet worthy of a photograph.

This is just what was missing from his day, physical evidence. Now his misery is complete. It can’t be long before the asteroid hits.

“Sure I do.” Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Simon won’t be handsome with a heart-shifting grin. Maybe he’ll be kind of funny-looking. And short.

She taps at her phone for a few second, then holds it out to him, watching his face. Expectantly. “Well?” prompts Jena. “What do you think?”

Simon is handsome – male-model handsome. And tall. Very tall. Josh knows this because standing beside Simon in the photo is Jena, her head tilted against him.

“Yeah,” says Josh. “He looks like a nice guy.”

“He is a nice guy.” Josh should probably take a picture of her now, smiling like that. In case some day he has to explain the concept of “joy” to an extraterrestrial.
It looks just like this
. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

A smile, of course, is no indication of happiness. People have smiled on the gallows. Josh smiles now. “Me, too.”

It’s
a cold, grey Saturday morning, outlined in frost – early enough that most people are still indoors if not still in bed and the town is still closed for business, its awnings up, its gates down, its Christmas lights dark. Josh and Ramona, bundled up in heavy jackets, scarves, hats and gloves, are the only people on Main Street. Josh is pulling a large folding shopping cart with a bright orange liner (God forbid anyone should not notice it); Ramona carries an oversized canvas satchel over one shoulder.

“I really appreciate this,” Ramona is saying as she turns into the side street next to the deli. “I couldn’t do it alone.”

Because of all the time she’s been spending on the costumes for the school play, Ramona is late starting on her art project for the year and wants to be able to work on it over the upcoming winter break. This year’s theme is “How We Live Now”. Being Ramona (and her mother’s daughter), she couldn’t just do something straightforward like a photomontage of the town, which is what most of her class is doing. Oh no, not Ramona Minamoto. She has to recreate Main Street with found materials (found after someone else threw them out) – showing how we live and making a statement about our consumer society at the same time. Art without social or political comment is an ad, apparently. It goes without saying that Carver thinks Ramona’s is a genius idea. “Nobody could ever say Ramona’s just another pretty face,” said Carver. But Carver isn’t here lugging the cart behind him in the icy early light, he’s still sound asleep, enveloped in blankets and quilts, and no doubt dreaming of solar panels and wind turbines.

“And I appreciate the enormous self-sacrifice you’re making,” Ramona goes on. “I do know you’re not exactly a natural rag-and-bone man.”

Which, if anything, is an understatement of epic proportions. Ramona was probably dumpster diving as soon as she could walk, but Josh wasn’t raised to go through other people’s trash. Not only is it unhygienic, even though he knows it’s better for things to be reused and recycled than to go for landfill, it almost feels like stealing. If he’d been born in a Third World slum, his life dependent on scavenging the city dumps, he’d probably be dead by now.

His automatic response when Ramona asked him to help her was, “No. It’s really not my kind of thing.” She begged him. He hesitated. She played the one-of-your-best-friends card. Which was hard to refuse. He imagined her trudging through the chilly winter morning by herself while he was at home, warm and comfortable and eating toast with Charley Patton. And remembered all the things she’s done for him over the years. What kind of selfish, wishy-washy creep would refuse to give her a hand?

“Don’t you think we have enough stuff now? You don’t have to literally recreate the town.” They’ve been out since dawn and have probably gathered enough of other people’s garbage to make a dozen models. She has enough to make a model of all five boroughs of New York City if she wanted. “It’s getting kind of late, Mo. The stores’ll be opening up soon.”

“Just one more stop,” says Ramona, sounding as if she hasn’t made that same promise three times before. “I want to check out behind Milstein’s and the hardware store. That dumpster’s usually gold.”

Only she would know that.

What Josh wants is to be gone before the Saturday shoppers start arriving. He can already smell coffee and baking bagels; breakfast is about to be served. He’s willing to help, but less willing to be seen. What if someone from school spots them? Someone like Mr Burleigh. He already has a reputation – UFO champion, vegetarian activist, science-lab terrorist – he doesn’t need to add to it with junk man.

“You worry too much,” says Ramona. “If Burleigh saw us he’d probably think you’re planting a bomb.”

Or I don’t worry enough
, thinks Josh. There are already a couple of cars in the lot behind Milstein’s and the hardware store.