Lennon's Jinx (Lennon's Girls #1)

by Chris Myers

  I answer with some hesitancy. “Mom?”

  “I just spoke to Bill. He told me about the marijuana he found. Is this another attempt to place the blame on him? How could you do this to me?”

  “But Mom—”

  “After all I’ve sacrificed, the long hours at work, traveling all the time, so that you can have a home, and this is the way you repay me.”

  Happy Birthday to me. If I had a bottle of pills, I’d dump them down my throat this instant. Rena takes the phone from me and hangs up on my mother.

  “Are you going to tell me who now?” Rena asks.

  I bite my lip and tell her the whole story. I’d always left off Step-monster because it’s too embarrassing.

  Rena wraps her arms around me. “I’m sorry. If you would’ve told me, Bill would’ve never hurt you again. I always thought it was Michael because none of us really knew him.”

  I barely went out with him after meeting him at another school during a choir competition.

  Rena grasps my hand and leads me to her car.

  A limo waits for the Tylers. Jonathan says, “Currie will be more comfortable with us.”

  Lennon doesn’t respond. He picks up Currie and slides her into his SUV. “I’ll see you at the house.” Before he gets into the car, he glances over his shoulder at me and gives me a weak smile.

  My whole body aches, especially for him, even my feet. It’s like I’ve been walking on broken glass all day. Other than the cupcake and Lennon singing to me, this is the worst birthday ever, but it’s even worse for him. If he loses Currie, he loses his whole world.

  “Happy Birthday,” Rena says, handing me a small package. “I know this won’t make up for your day.

  “Thanks. It wasn’t all bad. There was one good part.”

  As Rena drives us away, I realize I probably won’t see Lennon for a long time, and that cuts even deeper.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JINX

  As we drive away from the hospital, Rena’s Honda fishtails in the slushy snow. Rain drums on the hood, adding to my pounding headache.

  Now that I’m going to be homeless my life couldn’t get any worse…and Lennon. I can’t stop thinking about him and Currie. It’s pathetic that he has to put up with his parents throughout this ordeal. He has nobody right now. If he loses Currie, he’ll be completely alone. He’s got it worse than me.

  “I know you probably don’t want to go out, but Iz and Gabby sort of planned a little get together for your birthday,” Rena says as she drives us through town and the rain turns to snow. “I told them you probably wouldn’t be working with Indigo Blues tonight after what happened to Currie.”

  “What’s our other option?” I pull down the visor mirror to examine where Step-monster hit me. It doesn’t look as bad as I’d imagined. The surgeon did a good job of stitching me up.

  Rena smirks. “Go home and hang out with parental units.”

  “A drink sounds better.” Much better.

  “Good. They’re at Candor. Is that okay?”

  It’s a local bar in Naperville where Zach sometimes hangs with Kelly, but I don’t want to make them go all the way into the city for my sake. “That’s fine.”

  If Zach goes to Kichee’s Joint instead, we won’t be there. He will stay in Chicago once he’s downtown. He’s spent almost every Friday night there since I joined the band. It’s curious. He wants to see me sing, but he’s still with Kelly.

  Rena nods at my cut brow. “Want to talk more about what happened to you?”

  I don’t have to hide anymore. If I can talk to a complete stranger about it, I can tell anybody, which means I should come clean with Iz and Gabby.

  When I was fifteen, Rena begged me to tell my mom if I wasn’t going to tell her who raped me. I just couldn’t, not after what we’d been through with Dad and her struggling to get a job and working all those hours to get us out of debt. And she stopped believing anything I said after Step-monster ratted on me over my weed.

  “Did you report the attack today?” Rena asks.

  “I had to. Lennon and Currie made sure I did, and now I’m homeless.”

  “Bill must’ve lied to your mom. Give her a few days to calm down. It’s probably a huge shock to find out the man she trusted is a dirt bag and that she left you alone with him.”

  “I’m eighteen now. Mom doesn’t have to take me back. What am I going to do?” I should’ve told her when I was fifteen.

  “It’s temporary,” Rena says. “Bill has fooled her since the beginning. It’s not something she can quickly untangle in her known universe.”

  Candor’s parking lot is packed. Someone must’ve dropped Iz and Gabby off because I don’t see either of their parents’ cars.

  “Does it look bad?” I ask, touching my stitches.

  Rena slings her arm around me after she has parked. “Makes you look bad ass.”

  Pain burns through my shoulders and ribs where I was slammed against the wall. “Ow.”

  She grins. “Sorry. A few drinks and you won’t feel that anymore.”

  “I hope so.” I stop before we go in, standing in a few inches of fresh snow on top of a layer of mud. “Lennon opened up to me.”

  “Really? I’ve tried to dig in his dirt to get the scoop on him since middle school. Helping him with math hasn’t gotten me anywhere. What did he say?”

  “Lennon told me about his first time. He bought me a cupcake and sang Happy Birthday to me.”

  “Lennon did? When that boy falls for a girl, it’ll be like a concrete block crushed his skull. He won’t even know what semi hit him. That girl could be you.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Has he asked you out?”

  “No. He told me he’s never dated.”

  “There’s always a first,” Rena says.

  What if he did ask me out? What would I say now?

  We go in and find Iz and Gabby drinking appletinis. They flag the waitress to come over as we arrive at their table.

  “Two more,” Rena says to the waitress.

  “Can I see some ID?” the waitress asks.

  Rena rolls her eyes and hands her the fake ID. She looks at it then at Rena. I hand her mine. I always feel nervous even though the IDs can fool the government.

  “You guys don’t look twenty-one,” the waitress says.

  My stomach knots. We get this some times. “Looks can be deceiving,” I say.

  “Whatever,” the waitress says, heading back to the bar.

  A DJ spins music in the booth above the floor. It’s filled with peeps dancing and grinding.

  Two gift bags sit on top of the table. I add Rena’s present to my treasures. If I didn’t have friends, I’d be completely lost.

  “Thanks, you guys,” I say.

  Iz and Gabby break into song for my birthday, not as melodic as Lennon’s but sweet just the same. Rena joins them.

  “Give us the scoop,” Iz says. “Your day was far more exciting than ours.”

  I tell them everything, not holding back. The past few years I’ve come to school, hiding my shame. I can be honest with them now.

  Gabby rubs my back. “We’re so sorry. I’ll kick his ass for you.”

  “I’m holding you to that,” I say.

  We raise our glasses.

  “To a life free of Step-monster and other jerks,” Iz says.

  Until I have to face Him in court. Lennon will be there, which is my only consolation. He has started to grow on me in a most peculiar way, like a favorite alternative ballad.

  “There’s a really cute guy who hasn’t been able to take his eyes off you since you and Rena walked in.” Gabby turns her head toward the one that is standing with three other guys. It’s the right number of guys to girls this time.

  He raises his beer to us then returns talking to his friends.

  “I’m sort of guy’d out right now.” I sip my appletini.

  Iz elbows me. “The case of the Lennons.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I sa
y. I’m teetering on his fence. At the moment, I could fall either way.

  “Iz, enough already.” Gabby shoves a gift bag to me. “Open mine first.”

  I part the tissue paper to find something silky and shiny inside. After I draw it out, I wish I hadn’t. A ruby red camisole and thong underwear shimmy out of the bag. The guy grins at me and points to the lingerie so his friends notice. They have a good laugh while I stuff it back into the bag, my cheeks burning.

  The next bag has a card where Iz’s dog Sport taps out my birthday age. When I open the card, the dog lies on his back with all four legs pointing in the air. The caption reads “Oh no, you killed my dog.” It makes me laugh. The first time in a long time.

  Her bag contains a bootlegged CD of an underground band that Currie loves, Crank. The lead singer is some stupid blonde who thinks she’s the it girl. One night when Kelly wasn’t around, Zach spent hours talking to this girl. Maybe at the end of the school year, I can talk the guys into entering Indigo Blues in the Battle of the Bands. It’s a ways off. I’m sure Crank will enter and then I’ll show her who’s best.

  The last little box is from Rena. I open it and find a sterling silver chain with a silver medallion. The engraving says “BFF forever.”

  “Thanks. You guys are the best,” I say, touched by their thoughtfulness. I’m not sure what I’d do without them, especially Rena. Her place is like my second home and right now, the only one I’ve got.

  Like a puppet tied to a string, I rotate my head toward the door when it squeaks open between songs. Zach and Kelly parade through it. She’s wearing a really short flouncy dress with her white wool coat draped over her shoulders. Her five-inch heels and short dress accentuates her long legs. She’s taller than him in those shoes. Zach has on his suede jacket and jeans. He spots me and diverts his gaze when Kelly turns to see who he’s staring at. She frowns at him.

  The guy across from us finally gets up the nerve to walk over to us. “Would you ladies like to dance with us?”

  “We’d love to,” Iz says. “I call dibs on the cute blond with you.”

  “I’ll take our purses and coats over to Lance.” Gabby picks up our stuff, goes over to the bar, and hands it to him.

  He jams it behind the bar and waves at us. We haven’t been here in a while, but he never forgets the night we closed down the bar, singing at the top of our lungs at the crowd because the DJ had freaked out on acid and could no longer perform his duties. So we improvised and kept the bar rocking until it closed.

  The guy who came over to our table leads me to the dance floor. He’s cute, not too much older. I’m glad I came out. I toss my hair to the music and shake my hips.

  Lennon dancing with Rena enters my mind. He can really move. It’s hard to believe when he’s kind of quiet at school. He surprises me all the time, like today, taking charge of me and then Currie, then delivering the cupcake.

  Zach stares at me hard, only because Kelly has left him to go talk to her friends. She runs with the Country Clubbers. They hang out at the club pool during the summer to tan their perfect bodies.

  “How did you cut your head?” the guy asks, holding my hips while I sway to the music.

  “Car accident.” From his expression, he believes my lie. I don’t have to go into details with him. He’s not a somebody. Maybe he could be if I wasn’t preoccupied with thinking about Lennon.

  I look over at Zach. He meets my gaze then glances back at Kelly. He gets up and heads straight for me while she’s busy gossiping with her friends.

  My knees tremble as he nears us. I don’t want him to make a scene while I’m dancing with someone.

  He walks right up to us. “Can I talk to you, Jinx?”

  “Can’t you see we’re dancing?” the guy says.

  “It’s okay,” I say, winking at him. “I’ll be back. Old boyfriend, you know.”

  “Yeah, been there before. I’ll wait, but don’t be too long.” He touches my arm before I leave with Zach.

  Kelly is oblivious to us. She must have some juicy tidbit because her friends sit on the edge of their seats. Why does he like her? She’s stuck-up and badmouths everyone.

  “What’s up?” I ask, trying not to inhale his Halston cologne. He’s wearing my favorite, and it makes my knees wobble.

  Zach studies the ground. “I want to talk with you alone.”

  I glimpse Kelly still chatting away with her friends. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea with Kelly here.”

  “Forget about her. She won’t even notice I’m gone. I’m just an accessory for her.”

  That’s harsh. Are they having problems?

  Zach leads me outside to his hatchback Civic. He opens the door for me, and I slip inside.

  “Thank you,” I say. He was always a gentleman. Lennon does this, too, until I told him I could open my own.

  The car is freezing, so Zach starts it and turns on the heater. After a minute or two of awkward silence, he asks without looking at me, “How did you cut your eye? I don’t want you to avoid answering my questions anymore. I want the truth this time.”

  I wish he would’ve confronted me before, but I let him drift away by not talking to him or answering his calls. I miss us being together.

  His gaze finally meets mine. “When you quit talking to me, what happened? What did I do to make you hate me?”

  His words cut all the way through to the bone. “Nothing.” I take in a deep breath. “It wasn’t about you.”

  Zach clutches the steering wheel. “Then what? What made you hate me?” Tears well in his eyes. I never really thought about how much I hurt him. At the time, my pain consumed me and ate away at me so that I couldn’t face him or anyone else.

  “I don’t hate you.” If anything, I still love him. I wonder what it would’ve been like to have been with him when we turned sixteen. How perfect it would’ve been if that night with Step-monster hadn’t happened. According to Lennon, Zach would’ve disappointed me. I think not. “I was raped after that party, the one you didn’t show up at.”

  “I couldn’t go. Mom wouldn’t let me out of the house.” Zach stops. “What? You were what?”

  “My stepfather raped me. Mom had gone out of town, and he was supposed to watch me. I came home drunk, and the next day, blood stained my bed, and it hurt, really bad.” The pain and humiliation of that night rush back to me. I don’t want to cry, so I stop talking long enough to fight off my emotion.

  Zach pulls me into him and holds me. “I’m sorry. How often did it happen? Is that what happened to your eye?”

  “He only raped me that once. Today, he thought, because I turned eighteen, that I would want to…you know. When I said no, he did this.” I point to my eye.

  “How did you get away from him?”

  “My car broke down, so Lennon was going to give me a ride. He must’ve heard us fighting because he walked right into the house. I was lucky he showed up when he did.” My thoughts go to him. He’s in the hospital now, freaking out over Currie, the only family he’s ever really had. Somehow, I feel I should be there for him like he was for me today.

  Zach’s face crumples. “You like him, don’t you?”

  I laugh, though there may be some truth in his words. “Lennon’s not as bad as I’d imagined. He’s broken, like me.”

  “That’s not enough to base a relationship.”

  “You’re with Kelly.” I don’t mention I’m not with Lennon and probably never will be, though I can’t stop thinking about him and what he’s going through.

  “Not much longer. We really don’t have anything in common. She’s so…I’m not sure how to end it.”

  I wanted this for so long. My heart aches for Zach, to be nestled in his arms and feels his lips burn into mine, but then my mind drags me back to Lennon. It’s as if a piece of me wants to be with him, if only to be his friend.

  My door opens. I practically fall out until I catch the sides of the door. The fresh cool air brushes my cheeks.

  “What the hell
are you doing?” Kelly screams at me. “I leave Zach alone for two minutes, and you think you can waltz right up and take him from me.”

  “We were just talking,” I say in my calmest voice. It’s understandable why she’s upset. I shouldn’t be out in his car alone with him because they’ve been dating since the day Zach and I parted ways. She couldn’t snatch him up fast enough. Zach was on the market a whole day when she landed him, literally, in the backseat of his car. It was the talk of the school. So much for our planned sweet sixteen birthdays.

  “We weren’t doing anything,” Zach says. “And it’s not like you weren’t preoccupied.”

  Kelly jerks my arm practically out of its socket. “Get the hell out of this car, bitch.”

  She’s so much bigger than me. I’ve been used as a punching bag enough today. I don’t want to get hit again. I glare at Zach for him to do something. Lennon would’ve made her go away by now. He has no problem reacting.

  Zach gets out of the car. “Leave her alone. I’m the one you should be mad at. I asked Jinx to come out here with me.”

  “Oh come on,” she says to Zach. “Jinx has had her eye on you since you dumped her.”

  “Is that what you told her?” My voice rises.

  “No. I said we drifted apart.”

  Kelly’s got me half way out of the car. I weigh just under a hundred pounds and Kelly is five eight, almost as tall as Zach. She’s going to hit me. I can feel it. I shrink away from her coiled arm and the perfume she must use by the gallon.

  She jerks me up to a standing position. “You got Lennon. Every girl in school would die to have him. Why do you need Zach? How did you get Lennon anyway? His first virgin. Or are you still teasing him like you did Zach?”

  What has Zach said to her? Anger flares deep inside me.

  Zach has made it halfway around the car while Kelly has a fistful of my shirt. I cringe and shut my eyes. When I do, Lennon pops into my mind. How he pushed Step-monster off me.

  I open my eyes when no punch has landed. Rena has a hold of Kelly’s free hand. “Let go. Now.”

  “What are you going to do, Little Black Sammette?” Kelly asks.