Just Friends (19 page)

“I’m sure once you both have a chance to—”

“No. It’s over.” The tiny Christmas balls hanging from her ears swing madly as she shakes her head. “I told him he was the one who’d ruined everything. I was really looking forward to this party and now I’d rather be stuck in an elevator full of people with bad breath. I told him to pull over and let me out of the car. I said I wouldn’t go to heaven with him if Saint Peter himself was waving us through the gates.”

It has to be asked. “What did he say to that?”

“He said I didn’t have to worry. He had no intention of driving me anywhere and he pulled over and let me out of the car.” She yanked another tissue from the box and wiped at her eyes. “So I came to you.”

Calmer now, she peers at him as if she couldn’t see him before. “Is your hair wet?”

“Just a little damp.”

“You’re not wearing a shirt.”

Maybe Simon was just a little right about self-absorbed.

“I just got out of the shower.”

“Oh God!” She claps a hand to her mouth. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. If you’re busy—”

“I’m not busy. I was dirty, that’s all. Why don’t you let me make you that tea?”

She does remember how to smile. “Is it flowers?”

“Yeah. It’s flowers. But I guarantee it’ll make you feel better.”

“Okay. If you guarantee it.”

He can’t believe his luck. She had a fight with Dream Boy. She came to Josh for comfort and support. She threw herself in his arms (though it was, of course, more like he was in her arms). She’s not going to be making out with Simon in some darkened corner of the Kopel house; she’s going to be drinking flower tea with Josh. He will never ever complain about Fate again. Merry Christmas, Joshua Shine! Hope is ringing bells.

He puts on the kettle, then races into the bedroom. He rings Carver to tell him he’s not going tonight after all. Carver wants to know why not. “Not feeling so hot,” says Josh. “Probably because I was standing in the cold half the day singing ‘Frosty the Snowman’.” Then he calls Sal. “But I won’t see you till the new year,” says Sal. “It’s not like you have to do anything except sit. You really feel that crap?” Josh says, yes, really. “Did you tell Ramona?” asks Sal. And why would he do that? “She’ll notice I’m not there and figure it out for herself,” says Josh. He left the shirt he planned to wear on his bed. Charley Patton, thinking it was laid there for him, is asleep on it. Josh tries brushing off the cat hairs, then rummages on his desk for tape, but that doesn’t work very well either. By the time he gets back to the kitchen it looks as if a steam locomotive has just passed through. He somehow burns himself grabbing for the handle. He makes the tea. Then he decides that crying may have made Jena hungry. He opens a box of biscuits, puts some on a plate, and puts that and the cups on a tray. Sugar. She might want sugar. He puts the sugar, a spoon and a saucer for the teabags on the tray, too. Perfect! The host with the most.

As Josh comes into the living room he notices that something has changed. He can feel Hope having a relapse. Jena is no longer slumped on the sofa, eye shadow and eyeliner smeared around her eyes. Her make-up’s been repaired, and she’s standing up and putting on her jacket. She’s smiling. A lot. So much that someone just arriving would never guess that she’d been sobbing her heart out only minutes ago.

“Simon just called.” Her voice is as bright and happy as her smile. Apparently Simon is no longer a creep. It truly is the season for miracles. “He’s coming to get me.”

Josh holds out the tray. “What about the tea?”

“Oh, Josh, I’m really sorry. You’ve been so great. But you were totally right. Si’s really sorry. You should have heard him apologizing. And, well, you know…”

A horn sounds in front of the house.

He knows now.

Josh watches her run down the front path and get into Simon’s car. He sees them kiss. He feels as if he’s jumped out of a plane and his parachute failed to open.

And then he hears Hope die.

Christmas
came. Josh and his mother went to the Minamotos for dinner – tamales, declared by Jade Minamoto to be a holiday tradition, just not one that originated north of the border – and a game of charades that left them all exhausted with laughter. Ramona was ecstatic over the yoga DVD Josh gave her; her gift to him was a picture of them doing double bridge together, in a frame she made herself from the linoleum tiles they’d eventually rescued from the dumpster. Jena texted him in the evening to thank him for the silver tree charm, XX, but she was busy with Simon and he didn’t see her again until school started.

And so Christmas went.

And so came another year.

“What a Happy freaking New Year this is turning out to be!” Jena drops onto the sofa like a stone. A large, and very angry stone. A stone that’s been chipping the polish off its nails. “Really, Josh. I mean, it’s only just started and already it’s major bad news. I can’t wait for February. February’s usually depressing enough, all dark and miserable, but this year it’s bound to top itself. Do something really awesome.”

“You mean like a vampire invasion of Parsons Falls?” Besides unblocking the Capistrano toilet and protecting Jena from intruders, it has become his job to make her laugh. “Can you picture Mr Burleigh wearing a necklace of garlic and a crucifix?”

She manages a smile, bleak as February. “They’d probably kill us all.”

“Not necessarily,” says Josh. “You might not die. You might become a creature of the night and live for ever.”

“Stop trying to cheer me up.” Jena grabs a cushion and hugs it against her. “This is serious. If I was smart I’d dump Simon right now. That’s what I’d do if I had any brains.”

If she was smart, she’d have dumped Simon the day she met him.

“I know that’s what I should do. Just end it. Before he makes me totally nuts.”

So why don’t you?
Cut the cord. Push the button. Slam the door in his handsome face.

Josh puts their drinks and a bowl of chips on the coffee table. “Don’t tell me – let me guess. You and Simon had another fight.” Never mind the vampires, next thing you know, there will be cows flying over Parsons Falls and rabbits falling on the rooftops instead of snow.

Jena hugs the cushion harder. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

And that is how the new year has been going. Jena and Simon fight, then Jena and Simon make up; they make up; they fight. One minute Jena and Simon are the twenty-first-century Romeo and Juliet (but without the family feud, poetic language and shadow of doom hanging over them), and the next minute they’ve had another blow-up, and are more like Captain Kirk and Khan. Sometimes after an argument they aren’t speaking for minutes, and other times for hours. The record so far is a day and a half.

When she isn’t volcanically mad at him, Jena says that the reason she and Si argue so much is because they’re such passionate people. “It’s a very highly charged relationship,” explained Jena.

Like an electric chair
, thought Josh.

They can argue about anything and everything – from what kind of topping to get on their pizza to the long-term effects of slamming a car door too hard. There is nothing so insignificant that the two of them can’t make it into a case worthy of being heard at an international court of law.

“Isn’t it pretty exhausting?” asked Josh. It definitely exhausts him.

Jena said, “Not really, I mean, it kind of makes you feel alive.”

“A good version of ‘Mary, Don’t You Weep’ does that, too,” said Josh,

Nonetheless, if you happen to be Josh, the best thing about this – apart from the fact that the Capistrano-Copeland relationship seems about as stable as a rabbit on skates riding on the back of a tortoise – is that he is now the go-to guy for couples counselling as well as emergencies. Since they are always fighting, Josh now sees Jena as much as Simon does.

“So what was it this time?” asks Josh. “You tie your laces the wrong way?”

“It’s not funny.” She definitely doesn’t look as if she thinks it’s funny. She looks as if she’s never laughed in her life. “You think I’m crazy putting up with him, don’t you? You think I should dump him.”

Right in the middle of the ocean. Weighted down with a couple of buildings and a tank or two. Any ocean will do
.

“I never said that,” says Josh. Though God knows there have been enough opportunities to make the suggestion. Their relationship is like a war that is occasionally interrupted by periods of peace. “So, seriously, what’s it about this time?” He sits down beside her.

She smiles sourly. “Not shoelaces.” She tosses the cushion onto the couch. “Some stupid football game, what else?” Making football sound like something disgusting and possibly depraved. “He broke our date so he can watch some stupid game with his buddies.”

Simon’s an idiot. He should have lied. Even football heroes must get sick once in a while. It’s not like he didn’t know how she’d react.

“But that’s what guys do. Not break dates. Watch football together.” This, as we know, is hearsay, of course. But though Josh’s own experience of watching football games is non-existent, he does understand that it’s not something you do alone. It’s a herd activity. Like cows watching someone cross a field. “Maybe it’s a special game or something.” Although he did think the special games had passed; since Simon spent New Year’s Day watching the Super Bowl. (Josh spent it consoling Jena.) “And you know how Simon is about football. Expecting him to miss a special game is like expecting the Pope to miss Christmas.”

“And what am I? Pot Noodles?” If Jena were a cartoon and not a human being there would be smoke pouring out of her ears. “I said I’d watch it with him. Which I think was pretty nice of me. But oh no, he always watches with the guys. It’s their
ritual
.” Not a ritual like dyeing eggs for Easter, obviously; more like sacrificing newborn goats at a full moon. “God forbid he should change his
ritual
just to spend a Saturday night with
me
. The world would probably end.”

Josh wouldn’t break a date with Jena if he had acute appendicitis. He’d rather die in her arms.

“Jocks,” Josh jokes. “Who can understand them?”

“Who wants to?” If Josh isn’t careful she’s going to be mad at him, too. “So what do you think?” A lot of girls look like deformed potatoes when they scowl, but Jena still looks pretty. Just unhappy. “You do think I should dump him, don’t you?”

“It’s up to you, Jen. It’s your life. I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
No matter how much I’d like to
.

“But you must think I’m nuts, right? Putting up with him and all his crap. Everybody must think I am. Label me ‘loser’ or what?”

She couldn’t be more nuts without turning into a bag of almonds. But rather than lie or tell the truth, he sidesteps the question. “I don’t think everybody thinks you’re nuts. I bet you’re the only person he annoys so much. Everybody else likes him. Remember you told me how popular he is? School legend and everything?” To be fair, though, even Josh would probably like Simon if it weren’t for Jena. Not a lot. Not enough to want to be stranded on an iceberg with him or give him a kidney – but enough not to really want him stuck in the middle of the Atlantic trying to drink seawater and to fish with his hands, either. “They’d probably question your sanity if you broke up with him.”

“That’s what Tilda says,” says Jena. Of course it is. Tilda likes Simon, the government seal of approval. “She says I’d be out of my mind to break up with him. She says the girls are lined up around the block to take my place. It’d be like dumping Prince Charming.” Jena groans. “But what if I go out of my mind if I don’t break up with him? I dig the passion and everything but I don’t know if I can take the stress.”

“You don’t have to listen to anybody else,” says Josh. “Not Tilda. Not me. Not all the girls who are sitting on the sidewalk in front of Simon’s house waiting for you to tell him it’s over. What you do is nobody’s business but your own. You have to do what you think’s right.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” says Jena.

Because he looks like a small nocturnal primate and will never find himself in this sort of predicament? Because everybody thinks he’s crazy already? Because he has “loser” stamped all over him in glow-in-the-dark ink? He can’t bring himself to ask for clarification.

She gives it anyway. “Because you’re not like me, Josh. You don’t care what people think. You always do what you think’s right. You don’t just go along with what everybody else is doing so they like you. You don’t care if you’re popular or if people think you’re a little weird.”

Does she think he goes out of his way to be odd, to be different? That when he was in elementary school he decided it was better to be bullied, made fun of and excluded from all the other reindeer games than to go along with everybody else?
Let’s take that road with all the rubble and pitfalls in it, build some character!

“I didn’t choose to be short and funny-looking, Jena, and I didn’t choose how I am. It’s just me. I’ve always been like this.”

Her mouth shrugs, her shoulders shrug, her foot bangs against the coffee table. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? I’ve never been like that. I know you probably think I’m pretty shallow – okay,
very
shallow – and sometimes part of me wishes I could be more like you. But I can’t. I can’t help it. This is me. I really care what other people think about me. I don’t always want to follow the leader, but it’s so much easier. I want to be liked.”

“Everybody wants to be liked.” Does she think, given the choice, anyone would go for being disliked? “I know I do.”

“No, you don’t. Not the way I do. Fitting in is really important to me.” Her hands beat the air like lost birds. “You don’t care about being…”

Ridiculed? Pitied? Ignored? Disliked by the General? Looked down on by Simon? The boy who, years from now, when people flip through their yearbooks, will be the boy they don’t remember at all?
Who the hell is that?

“In the popular group.”

He strikes a bravura pose. “I’m pretty popular in my group.” And her friends aren’t. Nobody cares about them except themselves.