Crazy in Love

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  No. None of this matters. I would never do anything to upset The Girls. So surely all will be well.

  I park Fred, and The Girls are on me before I switch off the ignition.

  “Hi, guys!” I call, as they back away enough to let me out of the car. I lock it and face them. I’m going for a look that says, “What’s going on? Did I miss something? Duh.”

  It’s just three-on-one at the moment. Cassie, Jessica, and Samantha against me. All part of the good branch.

  Cassie is the first to speak, probably because her home was the scene of the crime. “We wanted to . . . well, we thought you ought to know. People are talking, Mary Jane.”

  I frown. Think deer caught in the headlights meets Snow White. "Talking? About what?” I sling my backpack over one shoulder and start heading in to school.

  Jessica elbows Cassie, who says, “About Jackson. It’s all over school.”

  “Huh?”

  “Seriously,” Cassie continues. “I mean, Star’s got to know.”

  “Okay,” I say, doing my best to maintain the Snow White deer look, which isn’t easy because Plain Jane is calling me a slut. Never mind the fact that the only time Jackson and I touched was when our hands met under fluffy white puffs of corn in the popcorn bowl. “Star’s got to know what?”

  Lauren and Nicole are coming toward us, and the odds have just slipped to five against one.

  “Hey, Lauren! Hi, Nicole!” I wave.

  They don’t.

  Nicole is the big deal in Thespians. She’s had the lead in every play since first grade. Right now, she could be auditioning for Gone With the Wind, the part where somebody breaks the news to Scarlett that the Civil War thing is out of hand.

  “We have to talk, Mary Jane!” Nicole exclaims. She glances both ways, as if crossing a street, although we’re all on the sidewalk. I suspect she’s making sure she has an audience.

  “We’ve just been with Star,” Lauren adds.

  Someone gasps. I think it’s Samantha.

  “Star?” I glance from friend to friend.

  “She was crying,” Nicole whispers.

  The Girls emit sympathetic ahs.

  So do I. I think I’m drawn in by Nicole’s acting ability.

  Nicole shakes her head and sighs deeply, empathetically, dramatically.

  “Star’s crying?” I ask. But I don’t believe it—not for one minute. Star Simons shedding tears? In kindergarten, she thought Bambi was funny, and that includes the big-bang scene with the offstage deer mom. I’ve seen Star remain unmoved when everybody else in fifth grade cried their heads off because our class pet, Ginny the Guinea, got loose and ate Mars, Venus, and Pluto from Jenny Strand’s Styrofoam science project and died right in the middle of our classroom, her little guinea pig legs all pointing to the ceiling fan.

  “Wait a minute. You’re not trying to tell me that Star’s crying because of me?” I ask, clarifying things. “Or because of something I’ve done? No way!”

  Nicole is obviously Star’s direct ambassador. “The guys, well, some of them, the ones who were at Cassie’s with us last night, I guess they’ve been all over how you and Jackson . . .”

  “Jackson?” I’m offended. “And me? Who said anything about Jackson and me?”

  “I know we didn’t say anything,” Jessica offers, glancing at the others for nods of assent.

  “There’s nothing to say!” I insist. “I can’t believe anybody would even think about Jackson and me in the same thought.”

  The Plain Jane inside my head reminds me that I have thought of little else for the past twelve hours, that I purposely and traitorously got up early and spent extra time on my hair this morning in case I happened to bump into Jackson in the hall. She calls me disloyal for fixing my hair and adds that it doesn’t look that great anyway.

  I try again. “I would never hurt Star. Doesn’t she know that? Jackson and I were just goofing around.”

  “She’s really upset,” Nicole says, not letting go of her ambassador mission.

  “You guys were pretty chummy,” Jessica offers.

  “You really did look like you were talking,” Samantha agrees.

  M.J. is screaming in my head, Excuse me? Did I miss the part where Star and Jackson got engaged?

  “Plus,” Nicole begins, glancing away, as if searching the audience for answers, “Star knows about you and Jackson leaving the party together.”

  “Leaving together?” My voice cracks. “To get more pop? You’ve got to be kidding me!” I turn to Cassie. “You were all about me going out to get more pop, Cassie!”

  She shrugs, noncommittal, apparently waiting to see how all this shakes down.

  “Fred was practically the only car there!” I remind them. “We had popcorn and no pop! Okay, no diet. And you can’t count ginger ale. Unless you’re desperate. Or hurling. Somebody had to go.”

  “And somebody named Jackson had to go along for the ride?” Lauren mutters.

  “He volunteered!” I protest. “Nobody else did. Massive pop is heavy, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  The truth is, I was so nervous being in Fred alone with Jackson that I couldn’t have taken advantage of the situation if I’d wanted to. We drove to Fast Gas two blocks from Cassie’s house, bought pop, and I drove us back. I think we talked about the weather, although I did make him laugh once.

  Nicole takes it upon herself to set out the facts of the case for the jury. “I’m just saying that Star knows you and Jackson left the party together . . . and came back together.”

  “After four minutes!” I cry. “With diet pop!”

  Plain Jane has stopped calling me slut and is now whispering that I should just calm down and assure my friends that this whole discussion is simply too silly for words. I’m not pretty enough to be anybody’s girlfriend, much less Jackson House’s.

  And suddenly, I don’t know who to believe. Plain Jane or M.J.? Nicole and Lauren or me? I don’t know what to think. Or what’s really real. What if I am actually turning into a boyfriend thief? That is so not me! I am and always have been loyal and true to The Girls.

  “Help me, you guys!” I sniff with total sincerity. The tears that are making my friends blurry are real. “I can’t stand having you guys think I did something wrong. I can’t take it if you’re all mad at me.”

  “Oh, Mary Jane, we’re not mad at you!” Cassie gives me a hug. She’s an inch shorter than I am, with too-blonde hair that can change faster than a chameleon. When she hugs me, all seven of her stairstepped silver earrings cut into my chin. Thank heavens she’s wearing a coat, or who knows what damage her belly rings could cause.

  “Promise? You believe me, don’t you?” I ask. “Because I really didn’t mean anything. You know me. I was just horsing around.”

  “The guys are calling it flirting,” Nicole relays.

  “Flirting? I wasn’t flirting! Why would they say that? Why would those guys try to start trouble? Why would they make something up about Jackson and me? I feel so horrible that Star bought into this trash. I feel like it’s my fault.”

  Jessica and Samantha have joined in the group hug. Nicole and Lauren stay where they are, apparently firmly in the Star camp.

  “You didn’t do anything,” Jessica says. She lets go, backing out of the hug, and I can see she’s crying, too, which makes me cry more, which . . .

  Girls. You gotta love us.

  “Hey,” Cassie says, wiping her eyes with the flared sleeve of her vintage black velvet jacket, “how much trouble did you get in when you got home last night?”

  "Enough,” I answer, shooting her a pitiful look designed to enhance the sympathy factor. Parent-friend dynamics can be pretty tricky, so I say no more. It is never cool to be grounded when you’re a senior in high school. But it’s also uncool not to be grounded when you do something grounding-worthy. Being trusted by the rents creates suspicion.

  “My parents didn’t even wake up when I got in,” Samantha informs us.

  “Thank goodnes
s for late-night martini habits, huh?” Cassie says.

  “Well.” Nicole is on the wrong side of the odds now—two to four. But she and Lauren are standing strong, unmoved, ambassadors to the Star. “I can’t be late to Spanish again,” Nicole says, turning to go. Lauren follows suit.

  “Nicole!” I shout after them. She turns. “Tell Star I’m sorry if something I did upset her. Okay?”

  She nods, but it’s more like a chin jerk. No smile. The kind of thing you’d do if someone gave you a left uppercut.

  This is not over.

  Yet as I walk into Attila Ill, my girlfriends surround me. We are comrades. We are one.

  I am grateful.

  But the day is young. And as we step inside the crowded, noisy halls of Attila Ill, M.J. is already murmuring, Now where is that major hottie? Jackson House, here I come!

  3

  Betrayal

  We Girls split for our lockers, then dash to first-hour English. Half the class was at Cassie’s last night. The sleepy-looking half. At least I won’t be the only one to crash and burn on this test. What is it about Shakespeare that makes him so test-worthy?

  Mr. Schram frowns as I skid in just under the bell. The man was born to be an English teacher. He looks like those old English kings in PBS movies, the seriously obese fellows, who graze from long wooden tables piled high with barely cooked pigs and enormous turkey legs they fling over their shoulders after devouring. His too-small tweed jacket, a souvenir of better days, has no chance of camouflaging his tremendous belly. The entire Attila Ill football team couldn’t apply enough power to button one button on that jacket.

  “Cutting it close, aren’t we, ladies?” he observes, as Samantha and I step over outstretched legs to get to the empty seats.

  “Sorry,” says Samantha, snatching the first empty chair.

  I am not looking for Jackson House, although I can smell him and sense his presence. Plus, I know where he usually sits. I have blinders on as I slide through his territory, third row, third seat, and take a seat in the far back corner, where no one, not even Ambassador Nicole, can accuse me of flirting.

  I am being watched. I sense this without looking around. Observed. And not just by our English teacher.

  I risk a bored glance to the front of the room and can see Nicole out of the corner of my eye. She’s turned around in her front-row desk so she can keep an eye on me. I’m starting not to like that girl.

  I long to gaze over at Jackson. What if I caught him looking at me? What if our gazes met?

  “I hope you’ve all been studying your Shakespeare,” Mr. Schram warns. “Julius Caesar, to be exact.”

  “The Shake!” Jonathan Anderson cries, fist raised in salute. I went to homecoming with him our sophomore year.

  Jonathan Anderson, Plain Jane muses. As I recall, he dumped you for Melissa Charbon because she had breasts.

  Ah, the ever-insightful Plain Jane.

  But it’s M.J. who gets in the last word on the subject of Jonathan Anderson: You could get Johnny back if you wanted to, wrestle him right away from Theresa Magill, his current girlfriend. But Jonathan Anderson is no Jackson House.

  I pull out my English book, hoping that I’ll magically spot quiz answers as I flip through the play. I heard enough of the plot in the background last night to know bad characters plotted against good characters. At least one person got killed. Somehow I don’t think these are the kinds of details Schram will be looking for. All I can hope for now is the essay question, friend and only hope of the unprepared. Or matching. I love matching. I’d like to meet the person who invented matching. Levels the playing field. Gives all of us a fighting chance.

  Someone moves the chair next to mine and drops into it. That smell. That presence. It can’t be. But it must be.

  “So, are you ready for this?”

  I look up, and I’m staring into the most beautiful brown eyes—yes, I’ll say it, twinkling eyes—of Jackson House. I don’t care what Plain Jane says. No one on the face of this earth has brown eyes like these.

  I am without speech, so I combine two gestures. I shrug and shake my head. At the same time.

  This makes him smile, showing perfect white teeth. And a dimple on his left cheek. “Well,” he says, “at least we’ll go down with smiles on our faces. That was fun last night, Mary Jane.”

  I want him to say my name again. If I could speak, I would ask him to.

  Inside, I’m not only speaking—I’m arguing:M.J.: This is so cool! He likes you! He likes you!

  Plain Jane: The boy is only staring at you because you have a zit forming on the tip of your chin, right where you always get one.

  M.J.: If he were any hotter, this whole building would burst into flames!

  Plain Jane: Do you want to lose every last friend you have? Think about Cassie and Samantha and Jessica. Are you going to give up all your real friends for a guy? Lay down your book and step away from the boy!

  M.J.: Forget everything else. Grab the man and kiss those lips—

  “No talking,” orders our teacher, as if speech were an option. He passes out his quiz, starting with the front row.

  “Good luck,” Jackson whispers right before Schram gets to our row.

  Our row. I love the sound of it. Our row. Like our song. Or our house. Or our children.

  “Miss Ettermeyer?”

  I look up at Schram because that’s me. Mary Jane Ettermeyer.

  “A pencil? Or pen? You’ll need one to answer the question. ” Our teacher says this as if he’s repeating it, as if he’s been standing there, asking me if I need a pen. I think he has been standing there, asking this frivolous question.

  I reach for my pack and start to search for pen or pencil, when one appears in front of my nose. It is held by Jackson House. Oh, lucky, lucky pencil.

  “Here. You can use this,” he says.

  I think I manage to give thanks. Out loud. I take the pencil and can feel the heat of his strong fingers. I clutch Jackson’s pencil, lift it to my nose, and inhale. It smells like him, like a forest after the rain. Jackson House has given me his pencil.

  I think I’m going to cry again.

  When I come to, I glance around the room. At least a dozen pair of eyes are aimed at me. At us. Us. Us. Us.

  How much did they see? How much do they know?

  “You have thirty minutes to answer the essay question with as much information as you can supply,” Mr. Schram announces. “You’d better get started.”

  It’s an essay question. Yes! Maybe things are turning my way after all.

  I straighten myself in my chair, feeling better about my chances of survival than I’ve felt in forty-eight hours. I can do essay questions. I can sound smart and logical, frequently without knowing anything about what I’m writing about. The trick is to number your points: “There are three main points the reader has to consider when discussing ...” Knowing names and dates, of course, is always a bonus. But even those can be omitted, with the artful use of however and therefore. Mix in a little smart-word exchange, like utilize for use, or explicit for clear, cognitive processing for thinking, that kind of thing. And you’re there. At least a C.

  Then I read the question.

  It’s a joke. I look up suddenly, suspiciously. Others are writing. Nicole is chewing on her pencil. Lauren is scribbling a hundred miles an hour. But they must have had a hand in this. It can’t be a coincidence.

  The essay question is:

  Examine the theme of betrayal in “Julius Caesar.”

  I’m still writing when everybody else appears to be done. It’s not that I’ve written so much. It just took me forever to get over the question.

  Mr. Schram comes and stands beside my desk.

  “Wow,” Nicole says. She acts like she’s saying it to Lauren, but she’s so loud I hear her clear across the room. “Looks like Mary Jane knows a lot about betrayal.”

  I stop writing and hand over my paper and wish I were somebody else. Cassie doesn’t stand up for me. Ne
ither does Samantha. Or Jessica. Plain Jane is pretty much agreeing with Nicole (which makes calculating the odds of “them” against “us” next to impossible).

  I vow I’ll forever stay away from Jackson House. My girlfriends are too important to me. Girlfriends are forever. Nicole is right. How could I have even thought about being with somebody else’s boyfriend? I’m not like that. I’m loyal. I’m trustworthy. I’m—

  “You can keep the pencil.” He, Jackson, stands up and smiles at me as if he hasn’t heard Nicole. “See ya.”

  I watch him walk out of the room. I have his pencil. His gift to me. A token. His words, his promise—“See ya”—echoes in my heart. What does he mean by that? “See” as in “seeing each other”?

  I will have to ponder those two words. I shall mull them over and over and over, reading between the lines. I will dissect those words within an inch of their lives.

  The room has nearly emptied now. Except for Nicole. Cassie and Lauren are hanging by the door, like they’re waiting for the show to start.

  I don’t want a show. I don’t want to talk to Nicole. (I am definitely not liking her now. Did I ever like her? Yes, we were on the same tree, but different branches.) I want to go somewhere quiet and ponder “See ya.”

  I move to the door, but Nicole blocks my path. I don’t think she’s the kind for physical violence, at least not on behalf of someone other than herself. Not that I haven’t seen my share of fights at Attila Ill, and the majority of them female. And she does have about an inch and ten pounds on me. And fingernails. But Nicole is too much of a girlie girl for hand-to-hand combat. I think.

  M.J.’s voice is the only one talking in my head because Plain Jane is too scared.

  “Nicole,” I say, following M.J.’s lead and refusing to cower before the Ambassador, “who are you going out with these days?”

  This appears to throw her off guard. She’s only here as an ambassador to the Star. Her personal life has nothing to do with the current situation. “I—I don’t know,” she stammers.