Everneath (6 page)

“Don’t—” he blurted, and I froze. “Don’t go. You don’t have to talk to me. I’m the one who should go.” His voice sounded achingly sad. I could hear him packing his bag.

Say something. Say something.
“Um…”

Jack paused, as if further movement might stop my words.

He was the reason I came back. I couldn’t scare him off. As hard as it would be to talk to him, it would be much harder to watch him walk out that door. “No,” I said. I took a shaky breath. “You don’t … have to leave. Please.”

He took his book back out and put it on his desk. I followed, setting my own books out.

“Thank you,” Jack whispered.

We didn’t talk for the rest of the hour.

Jack didn’t try to speak to me the following day. Or the day after. Or the day after that.

But he was in Mrs. Stone’s classroom, in the seat next to mine, every day for an hour after school, the only sounds coming from our pencils scratching against our papers. And the days passed like this quickly. Too quickly.

I stole glances at him. Sometimes he tucked his hair behind one ear, but mostly it hung loose around his face. Sometimes he had stubble, as if he were shaving every other day. Sometimes I was sure he could feel me staring. His lip would twitch, and I’d know he was about to turn toward me, so I would hurry and look at my paper.

And sometimes I would read the same sentence in the textbook over and over, and at the end of the hour, the only thing I’d learned was that Jack liked to tap his eraser on his desk when he was stumped, and when he would stretch forward, his shirt lifted, exposing a tiny bit of skin on his back.

I fooled myself into thinking it could go on like this indefinitely, us being together without any questions.

But on one of these afternoons, someone called Jack’s name from the hallway. I fought the urge to look up, because I knew that voice. It was the same one that told me bangs were definitely “out” on my first day of middle school. Lacey Greene.

After that I’d spent the rest of sixth grade growing them out. I learned early on that it was safer for girls like Lacey Greene not to notice you. Sure enough, Lacey didn’t notice me again until I started dating Jack last year.

“So, Jack, this is where you’ve been hiding out,” she said. I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined it working hard to look indifferent. I lowered my head closer to my notebook.

“Hi, Lace,” Jack said. He tapped his eraser on the desk.

“What’s so important that you’ve been skipping out on the the Ray?”

The Morning Ray was a hangout for students after school. We used to go there every day. I almost felt her eyes cutting over to me.

“Mrs. Stone said I could work on my personal essay here. For applications.”
Tap, tap, tap.

“I thought those weren’t due for a few months,” she said.

“That’s right,” Jack answered.

It was quiet for a few moments. Jack wasn’t going to elaborate. I tested the air, but I couldn’t really sense anything. It was more a lack of emotion than anything else.

“Just remember senior year is supposed to be fun, Jack.” She paused and then added, “You used to know how to have fun.”

Her voice held implications. I wondered how things had ended up between them after football camp, and if she blamed me. I could’ve blamed her. But it was so long ago.

“Thanks for the reminder, Lace.”
Tappity tap.

I heard her footsteps echo as she turned and walked away, and the tapping stopped. Whatever their past, there seemed to be nothing between Jack and Lacey now.

“Becks?” A different voice called from the hallway.

I looked up to find Jules standing in the doorway. She pointed to her hat, the red one I had knitted.

“I love it. Thanks.”

I smiled and raised my fingers in a little wave. Jules hadn’t joined me for lunch again, but she stopped by my nook nearly every day. A couple of days ago, I put the hat in a sack and gave it to her.

Jules glanced from me to Jack. “Hey, Jack,” she said.

“What’s up, Jules.” I could hear a grin in his voice as he spoke her name, and where moments ago the air was empty, now the space around us seemed charged with something sweet. Affection, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from Jack or Jules. Or both.

Something tore at my heart a little, at the thought of Jack and Jules together. Maybe I was imagining it. Tasting the air was still so new to me, I didn’t know which emotions belonged to the people around me and which ones were mine.

Jules turned and left. I could’ve sworn her cheeks were a little flushed.

Jack shifted toward me. “So, Jules gets a smile, huh?” I could feel his eyes on me, waiting for a response. He hadn’t tried to talk to me since that first day, and his voice directed at me again did strange things to me. Made my stomach flutter. Of course, Jack had always had that power over me.

I kept my eyes down, but I couldn’t stop my lips from turning upward.

“I see that,” he said. Jack always saw everything.

Christmas Dance. Three months before the Feed.

Jack took me to the Christmas Dance.

It snowed the day of the dance, making the Meier Farmhouse and Dance Hall look like something out of a painting, the lights on the roof glowing under sheets of white. And when Jack led me onto the dance floor and grasped one of my hands and tugged it up behind his neck, then placed his arm around my back, soft and low, I thought life couldn’t get better.

He pulled me close against him, our hands clasped next to his chest. The cedar from the farmhouse mingled with Jack’s aftershave, making a sweet, rustic scent.

“Becks, remember the first time we met?” he asked, his lips grazing my ear.

Of course I remembered. The events of that day were permanently etched into my brain. “You mean, the time you nearly beheaded me with a baseball?”

“I had to do something to get the new girl’s attention.”

“A simple ‘hello’ would have worked.”

He pulled me in tighter, as if that were possible. “Why did we wait so long to do this?”

“Um, because you were making your way through the entire cheerleading squad?”

He looked at me for a few moments, then shook his head and leaned in to brush his lips along my shoulder.

I closed my eyes. If this was what I could expect for the rest of my high school years, I never wanted to graduate.

Ever.

Later that night, I was alone in the girls’ bathroom. I’d just shut my stall when the bathroom doors opened. Several voices were in the middle of a conversation, and it sounded like one of the girls was fighting back sobs.

“You’re seriously, like, a hundred times prettier than she is,” one girl’s voice sounded loudly.

“Yeah. I mean, if her dress didn’t have those straps, she’d have nothing to hold it up.”

My cheeks went red as I glanced down at the thin straps on my shoulders. But what were the chances they were talking about me?

“Ignore them both! You’re at the Christmas Dance with Jake Wilson,” another girl gushed.

I froze. I’d seen who was on Jake’s arm as he entered the hall. Lacey Greene.

“Shut up, Eliza,” a new voice said. Lacey. It sounded like she was talking through tears. “That doesn’t help. I was supposed to be here with Jack.”

Crap. They
were
talking about me and my pathetic straps.

“But you guys broke up months ago…” another girl said before her voice faded away.

“It was just a break, Claire, and he knew it.” She sighed loudly. “I gave him everything. He told me he loved me. And the second that little slut gives him one opening, he takes off.”

“She didn’t—” one girl started to say, but then she stopped.

“If it makes you feel any better, Lace, he’ll be over her fast. She has no backbone. She’ll give it up, and he’ll get tired of her, like he does everyone else. Then maybe he’ll come back to you.”

My hands started to shake. I wasn’t just another girl; the gossip was overblown. Jack wasn’t going to get tired of me. Was he? He’d told Lacey he loved her. Was she lying?

I realized I was leaning against the stall door, my hand over my heart as if I could hold it in. Even if he did tell her he loved her, he was here with me. That meant everything, didn’t it?

The truth was, I didn’t know. I’d never had a boyfriend, and Jack obviously had more experience than me. I didn’t want to be like the others, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to be with him. It didn’t stop me from wanting him to want me.

I didn’t have an answer for that one, but at least I could show them backbone.

I flushed the toilet and swung the door open wide, staring straight ahead to the mirrors above the sinks. Their chattering stopped immediately, and they watched in silence as I marched over, washed my hands, took my time drying them, looked in the mirror, applied lipstick, and finally made my grand exit.

I hoped they were too busy looking at my determined face to notice my wobbly knees.

Jack was waiting for me when I opened the bathroom door. He grabbed my hand and whisked me away to the dance floor again, as if we were wasting precious seconds.

I tried not to let those girls bother me. The fact that Jack had dated Lacey Greene was common knowledge. Jack had dated everybody.

Everybody. Like really,
everybody.
Crap. What was I doing?

“Jack?”

“Mmmm?”

The band was playing a softer song, mellow and slow.

“Why did you ask me out when you did?” I tried to sound casual.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did something specific happen to make you ask me out?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What was it?” Had I thrown myself at Jack Caputo? Had I done something to get in Lacey’s way?

“You remember the first game of the season?”

“Yeah,” I said. It was Jack’s first game as starting quarterback, the youngest starter in school history. I remembered sitting in the second row, directly behind the team bench.

“After I threw for the first touchdown of the game?”

“Yes.” I still couldn’t figure out where he was going with this. Had I flashed him or something, and blocked it out of my memory? I was pretty sure I wasn’t holding up any large signs declaring my love or anything.

“Our defense took the field, and I was on the bench. When I turned around to look at the fans…” He paused.

Oh no. “What did I do?”

He smiled. “You looked at me. Not the game.” He sighed, as if reliving the memory.

I felt my face scrunch up in confusion. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He shrugged. “It was the first time I thought there might be a chance. I asked Jules about it.”

I bit my lip. “Apparently she doesn’t understand that trusty sidekicks aren’t supposed to spill secrets.”

In a flash, I was suspended in the air, the back of my head inches from the ground, Jack’s face a breath away from mine, his lips in a wicked grin.

I gasped, more from surprise at the sudden dip than from fear.

“There are no secrets between us, Becks.” His smile remained, but his eyes were intense.

I couldn’t answer.

He held me there for a few seconds more, then slowly raised me up, keeping me in his arms.

I bit my lip. “Then, can I ask you something?”

We stopped dancing for a moment, and he frowned. “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good. Shoot.”

“You and Lacey…” My voice trailed off.

“Me and Lacey…” he said, waiting for me to continue.

“Did you break up with her?”

“That’s
what’s bothering you? Yes, we broke up.”

I thought about what I’d overheard in the girls’ bathroom. “Does she … know that?”

Jack smiled. “I hope so. She was there.”

As if the conversation were finished, Jack pulled me close and we started to dance again. Then he said in my ear, matter-of-factly, “She’ll get over it.”

When he pulled up to my house after the dance, we could see the silhouette of my father in the doorway. “I think I’ll say good night here,” Jack said.

“My dad’s not so bad.”

“Oh yeah, he was great … right up until the time I started dating his daughter.”

I’d seen how my dad had become considerably colder toward Jack. There were little clues, like the other evening when out of nowhere he told Jack about how every football player he went to high school with had gotten fat after graduation. We’d been talking about what to make for dinner.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe next time.” I leaned over to peck him on the cheek, but he grabbed my face in both of his hands and kissed me. His breath tasted like the mints the chaperones had passed out when the dance was over, and when he parted his lips against mine, I shivered, but not because of the cold. I pressed against him even more and hoped the dark inside the car obscured my dad’s view.