If I Tell

by Janet Gurtler

  “So,” Lacey called out in a singsong voice from a table in the café. “What’s up with you and Nathan?”

  “Nothing,” I snapped to cover my embarrassment. “Nothing is up with me and Nathan,” I repeated for emphasis.

  “Is that right?” a deep voice asked. “I definitely thought something was up.”

  Nathan was slouched over a chair behind Lacey’s. She opened her eyes wider and lifted her hands in a defenseless pose. “He made me,” she mouthed.

  I didn’t see any restraints on her.

  Nathan glared at me. “Why’d you take off on me? You ignored my calls all weekend too.”

  My stomach turned. I fought an urge to rush away. I didn’t want to deal with Nathan, but I also didn’t want him thinking we had something going on.

  “My cell was out of juice. You didn’t call my house,” I stammered.

  “Like I’d call your house. Your grandma would freak if she knew we were hooking up.”

  “We’re not hooking up.” My insides recoiled as if he’d asked me to perform live with him at a rap concert.

  “Why not? I thought we were cool,” he said as if we’d been more than drinks and hormones.

  Was he serious? He thought we were an item? I sighed and plunked down in the seat beside Lacey and slid my guitar under the table.

  “Sorry, Nathan.” I breathed deep and searched my brain for words. “I drank too much. It was stupid. We’re friends. Let’s not get weird, okay? Can’t we pretend it never happened?” I flashed a feeble smile and glimpsed at Lacey for help.

  “Pretend it never happened?” Nathan pounded the table with his fist. “You weren’t acting like a friend.”

  I shrunk down farther in my seat.

  “Nathan. Chill,” Lacey barked. “Leave her alone. She’s a kid. She doesn’t usually drink, and she’s not experienced.”

  “She’s experienced now.” Nathan’s voice sounded ugly.

  I glared at him, the echo of my heart thumping loudly in my ears. I opened my mouth to defend myself when Jackson walked up to the table.

  “Hey. How’s it going?” He touched my arm, and something about it felt protective.

  My skin tingled and my face burned.

  “Hey,” Jackson said to Lacey. He didn’t greet Nathan.

  “What do you want?” Nathan snarled.

  “Relax, my friend.” Jackson sat in the chair to my left. He raised his hand. “I come in peace.”

  Nathan slammed his fist down on the table again, so hard this time that it shook. “Screw you,” he said to Jackson. “And screw you,” he spit at Lacey. “And screw you too,” he said to me. “Or maybe I already did?”

  “You did not!” I yelped.

  “Grow up.” Lacey pointed to the exit of the coffee shop. “Get out of here until you cool off.”

  I glanced around the café. All eyes were on us. I wanted to crawl under the table.

  “Amber’ll ban you if you keep this up,” Lacey told him.

  Nathan leaped to his feet and gave her the finger. He glared down at me and stormed out of the café.

  “Hmmm. I guess you’re not on his Christmas list,” Jackson said.

  A loud laugh escaped my throat, like an unexpected hiccup.

  Lacey crossed her arms over her chest. “Nathan’s being an asshole because he feels rejected.”

  “Well, he must act like an asshole a lot then,” Jackson quipped.

  I giggled again but covered my mouth when Lacey scowled. I couldn’t help it. My nerves, plus relief that he’d left, made me giddy.

  “You know how he feels about you, Jaz. You shouldn’t laugh at him,” she said.

  “How he feels?” I turned my nose up.

  “He has a thing for Jaz,” Lacey said to Jackson but her eyes stayed on me.

  “He has a thing for every girl who breathes.”

  Jackson leaned across the table. “Hold your breath around him in the future,” he whispered.

  I ducked my head, but it was too late to hide my smile.

  Lacey cleared her throat and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I’ve gotta go get washed up before my shift.” She stood. “Don’t forget who your real friends are.” She ignored Jackson and spun on her heels and walked away.

  Jackson watched her go. “I guess that doesn’t include me.”

  “She should talk.” I chewed my lip, the light mood gone for good.

  “I thought she was your BFF.” Jackson made quote marks in the air.

  “So did I. I was wrong.”

  He brushed his bangs out of his eyes. “So, how come you hang out with those two anyway?”

  “Lacey is my best friend. Was my best friend,” I corrected myself. “Nathan and her go way back. They’re roommates.”

  “They’re a lot older than you.” He twirled his hoop earring as he studied me. “You really shouldn’t mess around with him.”

  I ducked my head and kept my eyes on the table. “I’m not. Anyhow, Lacey has been my friend since I was fourteen.” I had an urge to cry. Because she wasn’t my friend now. Not anymore. And Nathan wasn’t my friend either. I wouldn’t miss him though. He never really had been.

  Jackson held out his hand. “All I’m saying is maybe you need some friends on the same page.”

  “I have Ashley.”

  He shrugged.

  “She goes to our school. The swimmer. She hangs out at Marnie’s too.”

  He nodded. “I’ve seen her around. I don’t know her. ”

  I didn’t want to explain further, so I pretended to study my nails. Easy for him to talk about making friends. He’d barely lived in Tadita six months and already got invited to parties. He probably made friends by dealing. It explained the calls on his cell.

  “Nathan’s not your type, and I don’t mean because he’s black.”

  I glared at him. “Nathan is not my boyfriend. And that has nothing to do with it.”

  “Good. He’s too old for you.”

  He stared at me until I blushed and looked away.

  “So who are you interested in then? Maybe you need a real boyfriend.”

  My stomach flipped, and my cheeks warmed. I prayed he couldn’t tell my mind had conjured up a picture of him. Him as my boyfriend.

  The trouble was that his voice sounded casual, almost brotherly, as if he was about to suggest setting me up on a blind date. Just what I needed. Love help from the juvenile delinquent I secretly crushed on. Man. I was seriously messed up.

  Jackson pointed to my guitar. “How about someone who digs Neil Diamond?” He smiled and my heart actually hurt.

  I leaped up, unable to sit still and listen to him trying to set me up. “We should get ready for work.” I picked up my guitar case and slung it over my shoulder.

  Jackson glanced at the clock on the wall. “Yup. I guess we should.”

  “It’s not really your business, you know. Who my friends are.”

  He lifted his shoulder. “Fair enough. Just that I thought I was one, you know? Seems to me you’re a girl who could use some laughs.” He got to his feet and held out his hand. “After you.”

  I scooted past him a little too closely, and his hand brushed against the exposed part of my skin. A shiver tingled up and down my back, but thankfully he didn’t seem to notice my reaction.

  “Maybe you could play your guitar just for me someday,” he said.

  “Maybe you could hand over your next paycheck.”

  He laughed, but his cell rang, and he turned his back to me and answered it.

  “Yeah. I got your stuff,” I heard him say into the phone.

  Great. Friends with a drug dealer. Grandpa had to be rolling in his grave. Again.

  ***

  Over the next few weeks, Jackson and I worked a lot of the same shifts at Grinds. I wondered if it had anything to do with Amber’s scheduling. She liked to nag me about needing more friends my own age and was probably stepping in. I liked talking to Jackson, but we had an unspoken agreement. Some things we didn’t
discuss. Lacey. Nathan. His phone calls that I suspected had to do with drugs. I ignored them because his offer of friendship had become a pseudo-reality. My first friendship with a boy.

  I kept forgetting to bring his hoodie to work, and he eventually told me not to worry about it, and I kind of claimed it as my own. I didn’t wear it, but I wrapped it on my shoulders to keep warm when playing guitar in my room.

  I thought about inviting Ashley to hang at the coffee shop to show people I wasn’t as bad off as everyone thought, but she had swim practices after school. Besides, I didn’t want to subject her to Lacey’s wrath.

  Ashley invited me to swim with her, but that wasn’t going to happen. She also asked me to hang with her and Marnie, but I didn’t want to be a third wheel and said no.

  Lacey’s calls and pleas for forgiveness eventually tapered off. I never stayed for coffee with her or Nathan after work, and I didn’t go to parties or hang at their house anymore. The time I used to spend with Lacey I spent alone playing the guitar. I wrote some new songs, driven by feelings I couldn’t express any other way.

  I kept my distance from my expanding Mom too, because when I saw her stomach, all I could think about was Simon. The secret ate away at me, but I couldn’t do anything except keep it inside and hope that was the right thing to do. Sometimes I wished I’d never been at that party, that I’d never seen Simon and Lacey.

  I wondered what was worse, knowing or not knowing?

  chapter nine

  My fingers strummed the strings of my guitar. I closed my eyes and bobbed my head, feeling the sound more than hearing it. I hummed, rolling new words to the melody over in my mind. I tried different versions of the chorus, playing the same chords over and over. I’d been composing and rewriting for weeks.

  Then, forgetting about chord progressions or melody, I improvised a new sentence to see if I could open my mind and get it right. I didn’t have it yet, but I trusted my process. It would come.

  I strummed, searching the music and letting sound wash over me.

  “I saw you there, exposing your lies.”

  The phone rang and I snarled at it, but Grandma had told me she was expecting a call, so I put down my guitar and leaned across my bed to pick it up.

  “Jaz?”

  “Hey, Mom.” Damn. I’d been too out of it to check the call display.

  “Hi, honey. I’m so glad I finally caught you. I haven’t seen you in ages. You should see me. I’m huge. Bloated. I look like someone injected my entire body with helium. I think the baby dropped though…”

  She went on and on about week thirty-four of her pregnancy, describing new symptoms and ailments. In vivid detail. After she mentioned hemorrhoids, I tuned out until she said, “Will you go shopping with me? Take my mind off it?”

  “Uh…” I tried to think of an excuse, but my mind was still too slow.

  “Please,” she begged until I agreed to meet her at the mall after work.

  When I hung up, I picked my guitar back up but instead of my own song, I played Grandpa’s favorite Neil Diamond song. The same song Jackson had sung the night he drove me home.

  “Sweet Caroline,” I sang and closed my eyes. The hole Grandpa had left throbbed in my heart, and I couldn’t breathe properly for a second.

  “Jasmine?”

  I jumped at the sound of Grandma’s voice and pulled my fingers off the strings almost guiltily.

  “I didn’t hear you come home.” I put my guitar down on the bed.

  “I just came from the church. I could really use your help.”

  “What’s up?”

  “There’s an open volunteer spot,” she said.

  I waited. I’d heard a million variations over the years since Grandma retired from nursing. For as long as I could remember, I helped serve Thanksgiving dinners to the needy at the local church. At Christmas I helped put together food hampers. Then there were Grandpa Joe’s impromptu concerts at the Senior Center and community fund-raisers Grandma volunteered us for.

  “Our seniors group needs a volunteer on Wednesday nights. Kind of a karaoke thing. They need someone to play guitar. The man who was supposed to handle it had a heart attack.”

  I wrinkled my nose, thinking how much I didn’t want to play guitar for a bunch of off-key old people. “There’s no one else?”

  Grandma shook her head and pressed her lips tight, and I knew she wanted me.

  I sighed. “All right. I’ll talk to Amber about not scheduling me Wednesday nights.”

  “Thank you, sweetie.” Grandma sat on my bed, her slight frame barely indenting the comforter beside me. “Are you working tonight?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. You can talk to her tonight.” She smiled. “You could use some nights out. Other than work, I mean.”

  Things were pretty bad if Grandma thought a night out with senior citizens would do me good.

  “I go out. I hang out with Ashley at school and I work.”

  “Hmph. I’ve never even met this mysterious Ashley. When are you going to have her over?”

  “For a play date?” I said. “We’re a little old for that.”

  “I’d like to meet her. I don’t care that she’s gay, you know.”

  I stared at her, wondering how she even knew that.

  “I’m not stupid, Jazzie. I catch on. I read between the lines. And while I may not understand the whole homosexuality thing, I certainly appreciate that it is a reality. I’m a pretty flexible old woman, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  I held in a laugh and managed to keep a straight face. “Well, I didn’t think you’d care. She’s a competitive swimmer, and she’s really good, so she spends most of her time in the pool. Which is why she doesn’t come over, not because I didn’t think you couldn’t handle it.”

  Grandma harrumphed at me. “She swims? I wish you’d swim. I never understood why you gave swimming up. You know, your grandfather overruled me on that one, but I’ve always regretted not putting you in more lessons. What if you fall off a boat?”

  “When’s the last time I was on a boat?”

  Grandma cleared her throat. “You never know when life will invite you on a boat.”

  “Really, Grandma? I’ve made it this far without an invite.”

  “Well, that’s because your grandfather was as afraid of the water as you were. All the more reason to get you swimming. I might want to take you on a cruise or something, except I can’t because you don’t swim.”

  “You would never go on a cruise,” I told her. “You’re too busy.”

  “Well, someday I might want to.” She harrumphed again. “Your grandpa was stubborn. Just like you. He didn’t want to make you feel bad about fearing water. I thought you should overcome it. I should have put my foot down.”

  She cleared her throat and glanced at the watch on her thin wrist.

  “Why don’t you bring Ashley over after work if she’s not swimming? I’d like to meet her.”

  “I’m meeting Mom after work to go shopping.”

  “You are?” She frowned and sat down on the end of my bed. “Can you do me a favor? She’s really not dealing with her last trimester well. Poor Simon.”

  I reached for my charm and rolled it in my fingers. “Poor Simon? He’s the one who got her pregnant.”

  “Your mom’s acting very temperamental.” Grandma’s expression looked as sour as it did when she drank her daily green-vegetable supplement. She’d tried to make me take that stuff, but it tasted truly horrible. I made such a big deal about gagging that she gave up on trying to force me.

  “She’s put on a ton of weight, and she can’t walk without waddling. Plus, it’s been raining around here for weeks. Who wouldn’t be grouchy?”

  Grandma stood and went to my dresser. “I think it’s more than that. She’s upset all the time. Pregnancy isn’t supposed to be so, I don’t know, hard. She wasn’t like this with you. Maybe it’s because she’s older? I hope she and Simon aren’t having problems.”

  She pi
cked up my framed picture of Grandpa from my dresser, smiled at it, and put it down. “Anyhow. Would you do me a favor and talk to her? You know your mom. She won’t listen to me. You’re better with her about stuff like this.”

  “I am?”

  Grandma nodded. “Yes. She listens to you. You know she isn’t always very secure about herself. She’s had to make some tough decisions in her life, hold her head high while people criticized her.”

  Including her own mother, I wanted to add. Grandma was hard on her sometimes. She didn’t let Mom forget she was the one who raised me.

  “Try to get her out of her bad mood,” Grandma told me, as if I had a magic wand I could wave that would cheer up my mom instantly. “Maybe take her some of those fresh homemade chocolate cookies from Grinds. She loves those. She needs to cheer up for the baby.”

  Grandma reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Buy us some treats too, if you want.” She handed me the money.

  I shoved it in my jean pocket, wishing twenty dollars would buy Mom a new boyfriend. Now, that’d be a real treat.

  ***

  After my shift, I hurried into Amber’s office at the back of the coffee shop.

  “Hi, Amber.”

  She glanced up from the schedule on the computer screen in front of her. “Hmm?”

  “Um. Would it be okay if I took Wednesdays off for a while?”

  Amber chewed the pen lid in her mouth, staring at the spreadsheet in front of her. “It’s not a busy night. Shouldn’t be a problem. What’s up?” She looked up at me for a second and then glanced back to her screen.

  “My grandma wants me to volunteer at the church.”

  Amber tore her eyes away from the computer screen. “Church?” She grinned.

  “As a musician-slash-helper for the seniors. Sort of like karaoke night. I’ll play guitar.”

  Amber laughed. “Really? That’s awesome.”

  I shrugged. “Grandma always gets me into stuff like that.” I thought about what Mom had said. “I think she wants to save the world.”

  “From what?”

  “I don’t know. Good music?” I smiled. “She thinks everyone should join in her efforts.”