By the time Friday rolled around, I didn’t know how I would survive the entire weekend without seeing her, so I wrestled up the courage to ask if she’d like to go to a movie with me on Saturday night. It was the first time I’d ever asked a girl out on a real date, and I found myself wishing that I’d cleared it with my parents first, to make sure they would let me go, and to ask if they’d drive us.
But my lack of planning didn’t matter in the end, because Jeannie made a face. “I wish I could,” she said apologetically, “but I’m going to Mark Hennigar’s party. Are you going?”
Struggling to scrape my dignity off the sidewalk, I shrugged indifferently. “I’m not invited.”
Her face lit up and she spoke with enthusiasm. “I’m inviting you right now. You should come!”
I felt awkward about it because Mark Hennigar was in the eighth grade. He was into sports like hockey and football. I didn’t know him at all and I suspected there wouldn’t be too many friends of mine at the party.
“You could bring Gordon,” Jeannie said. “Mark won’t mind. I’ll tell him you’re both coming with me.”
Still feeling weird about it, I said, “What about your friends…Kimmy and Natalie and that new girl?”
“They’re all coming, too,” Jeannie said. “See? Everyone’s going to be there.”
We started walking again, but I still felt unsure. “I don’t know.”
“Please, Jack? It won’t be the same if you aren’t there. I won’t have any fun.”
Then it happened. She touched my arm, gave it a squeeze, and it sent an electric jolt of exhilaration through my whole body.
“Come on,” she said, bumping me with her shoulder. “Say you’ll come. I really want to slow dance with you.”
Slow dance?
And that was that. My heart was on the ground. I was in a daze.
“Okay,” I heard myself saying. “What time are you going?”
“Kimmy’s parents are dropping us off at eight.” She began to back away as she strolled into her driveway, clutching her books to her chest in the most charming way imaginable. “So I’ll see you tomorrow night?” she said hopefully with a delicate raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, I’ll see you then.”
“Awesome.”
I turned to walk up the hill to my house at the top of the street, resisting the urge to take off in a run, because I wasn’t sure if she might still be watching me through her front window. As always, I wanted to play it cool.
o0o
“You should totally kiss her tonight,” Gordon said as we walked through the dark neighborhood toward Mark Hennigar’s house, a few blocks away from where I lived.
“I don’t want to rush it,” I said. “If it happens, it happens.”
“Don’t be a chicken. My mom always says that you don’t get anywhere in life by waiting for stuff to happen. You have to go out there and grab what you want.”
I shook my head at the ground. “I doubt she was talking about me kissing Jeannie Morrison for the first time. I’m definitely not going to ‘grab’ her.”
Gordon continued to try and persuade me. “Mom was talking about everything. Besides, if you don’t kiss Jeannie, she’ll think you’re not interested. And remember, she’s in the eighth grade. She’s used to older guys who know what they’re doing. She’s going to expect more from you than a peck on the cheek.”
I doubted most of the guys in the eighth grade knew what they were doing any more than I did, but Gordon did have a point. I didn’t want Jeannie to think I wasn’t interested, but I had no idea how to get further than a peck on the cheek. It made my stomach roll with nervous knots.
When we rang the doorbell, Mark’s dad greeted us at the door, told us to keep our shoes on, and sent us downstairs to the rec room—a wide open space, completely dark except for a few strings of colored Christmas lights draped from the ceiling. A long table with a plastic checkered tablecloth stood against the wall with bowls full of chips and cheese sticks. Beneath it, there was a cooler on the floor, filled with ice and canned pop. Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive was blasting from a stereo in the corner, and though it was precisely 8:00 p.m., we realized we were early. There were only three girls in the room, seated on the brown sofa. We had no idea who they were, and we were too shy to go and talk to them.
“Let’s get something to drink,” Gordon said as we moved across the room to the snack table. We busied ourselves with cheese sticks and cola, and looked up uneasily when Mark Hennigar came bounding heavily down the stairs with about six guys.
To our immense relief, he gave us a nod and said, “Hey guys,” before he leaped onto the sofa next to the girls and made them laugh and squeal.
The other guys went to change the music, and I felt about as comfortable as a zebra in a raincoat.
Then the doorbell rang. I heard the sound of laughter and conversation upstairs. About thirty seconds later, the basement was full of kids—but still, we didn’t know anyone very well.
I never felt so uncomfortable in my life. I just wanted to sink through the floor and crawl home. Gordon looked pale and fidgety.
Then the doorbell rang again.
I watched the stairs expectantly.
My heart dropped.
There she was. At last.
Jeannie and her friends came hurrying down. She paused on the bottom step, scanned the dimly lit room for a moment, and found me. Our eyes met and her face lit up with a smile. She waved at me, and suddenly I had no desire to leave the party. Somehow I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be.
Looking back on it now, I recognize how true that sentiment was—even though the night turned out to be as disastrous as any night can be when you’re thirteen years old, and head over heels in love with the prettiest girl in school.
Chapter Five
Shortly before 10:00 p.m., a bunch of kids went outside to sit on white plastic lawn chairs arranged in a circle on the grass, even though it was the middle of October and too cold to be sitting outside without a jacket.
The cold didn’t bother me of course. How could it, when I was feeling on top of the world—because five minutes earlier, Jeannie and I had slow danced in the dark, and I was brave enough to kiss her—to make out with her, actually—to the tune of Lionel Richie’s Hello.
Afterward, Gordon questioned me insistently about what it was like, but I didn’t want to talk about the particulars. It was private, between me and Jeannie. She and I were an item now, and I was already planning when and how I would ask her to junior prom, which was still an entire school year away.
Gordon and I sat down on a couple of chairs under the deck because we didn’t know anyone on the grass. I checked my watch. My parents expected us home by 11:00, and it was almost 10:30.
Then the most unexpected thing happened. That new girl, Millicent, spotted us and approached, stomping up the grass as if she were on a mission. Gordon sucked in a breath, and I wondered if he might have a thing for her, because she was kind of cute. Not beautiful like Jeannie, but there was something awkward and nerdy about her, which Gordon probably found attractive.
“Hi Jack,” she said, standing in front of us.
“Hi Millicent,” I replied.
She shifted uneasily and looked around. “Are you having fun?”
“Yeah, it’s an okay party,” I replied, even though on the inside, I was bouncing up and down on a mental pogo stick.
Her shoulders rose and fell with a frustrated sigh and she looked me straight in the eye, accusingly. “Did you give my letter to your brother?”
Here we go…
“Yes.”
“Did he read it?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
She blew out another quick breath, as if she were frustrated with me. “He was supposed to be here tonight. Do you know if he’s coming?”
I shrugged again. “He didn’t mention anything, but we don’t talk much.”
Just then, the sliding glass doors opened and thre
e of Aaron’s friends walked out. Millicent gasped and watched them stroll onto the grass and join the others.
“He’s here,” she whispered, watching the door and waiting for him to step out as well, but he didn’t. Her eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “Where is he?”
She sat down between Gordon and me. “What should I do? He’s probably inside. Should I go in? Should I try and talk to him?”
“Wow, you’ve got it bad,” Gordon said.
“I can’t help it,” she replied, sounding all swoony and in love. “He’s just so cute.”
Cute? She thought Aaron was cute?
She took hold of my arm and shook me. “I need to do something, Jack, or I’ll go crazy. Will you come inside and introduce me to him? Even if he read the letter, I’m not sure he even knows who I am.”
My head drew back in surprise. “You’ve never talked to him before?”
“No, he’s in the ninth grade!” As if that explained everything.
“Did you sign your name to the letter or was it anonymous?” Gordon asked.
“I signed my name,” she replied. “And I caught him looking at me yesterday at recess, but I don’t know how he feels. Could you ask him?”
“Me?” Was she nuts?
“You’re his brother.”
“Just because we’re brothers doesn’t mean we like each other.” I paused. “What does Jeannie say? You should ask her.”
Millicent huffed. “Jeannie was the one who encouraged me to write the letter in the first place and tell him how I felt, but it’s not working. I wish he would just talk to me. Or something.”
“Maybe he’s just not interested,” Gordon said, and I gave him a look, because Millicent didn’t seem in any state to hear something like that. The poor girl was obsessed.
“Please, Jack?” she asked. “Will you come inside and help me talk to him?”
Though it was the last thing on earth I wanted to do, I said yes because Jeannie was in there, and I figured I could use the excuse to ask her to dance with me again. So I got up and went inside with Millicent.
o0o
“Where is he?” Millicent asked, looking around the dark rec room where a few kids were slow dancing to Against All Odds.
I led her to the snack table, which had been replenished in the last half hour. “Look, they have Doritos.”
I grabbed a handful and stuffed them into my face, then glanced around for Jeannie, but I didn’t see her either.
“Did he not come?” Millicent asked, growing increasingly frustrated. She boldly walked up to Kimmy, who was waltzing with some guy. Millicent tugged at her arm. “Did you see Aaron come in?”
Kimmy stared at her for a few seconds and glanced around awkwardly. “I don’t know.”
“His friends came in a few minutes ago,” Millicent told her. “Was he with them?”
The guy waltzing with Kimmy leaned closer to speak loudly over the music. “He’s in the closet with Jeannie.”
Millicent and I both responded at the same time. “What?”
I felt stunned and paralyzed, while steam came out of Millicent’s ears. She marched straight over to the closet, flicked on the overhead lights, and whipped the door open.
There they were, for all the world to see, lips smacking and hands groping.
They jumped apart at the intrusion, and everyone in the rec room shouted at Millicent to turn off the lights, but she simply stood there, motionless, staring. I did the same from across the room, unable to swallow the Doritos in my mouth.
“You were supposed to be my friend,” she said to Jeannie. “You said we were blood sisters!” Then she turned and ran up the stairs.
Some other kid moved to switch off the lights, while Jeannie reached out to shut the closet door again. She met my gaze for a second, and simply shrugged with what struck me as an apology—as if to say: What did you expect? It couldn’t be helped.
My stomach dropped, and I wanted to pound my brother into the ground. But he was bigger than me and I knew I’d end up getting pounded—in front of everyone.
So I went outside to get Gordon and we left in a hurry, up the stairs and out the front door. It wasn’t easy to pass by the closet a second time, knowing the great love of my life was in there necking with the brother I despised. I wanted to cry, but not in front of everyone. Another part of me just wanted to hit something.
Outside, we found Millicent, sitting on the curb in tears.
“Hey Millicent,” I said gently. We sat down on either side of her. “Are you okay?”
She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her sleeve. “I can’t believe she did that.”
“Me neither,” I replied.
“She’s the one who kept telling me to go after him. She’d say things like: ‘He’s looking at you. I think he likes you. He’s checking you out.’ But none of it was true, and I don’t know why she did that when she liked him all along.”
“We thought she liked Jack,” Gordon said, and I felt like a fool.
Millicent turned to me. “I know, right? She was walking home with you every day. Did she ever let on that she liked Aaron?”
“Not once,” I replied, thinking back on all our conversations, and fighting to keep the hurt inside.
“Some friend she was,” Millicent said, shaking her head as a car pulled up. “Here come my parents. I gotta go. See you guys.”
We all stood up and backed away from the curb. Millicent got into the car and it drove away, while Gordon and I began to walk home in silence.
After a long while, he said, “You’re better off without her.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and shivered in the late October chill. “I guess so. I just thought she really liked me—but I won’t be so gullible next time. I think I’ll stay away from girls for a while.”
I didn’t speak to Aaron when he arrived home an hour later, but that was nothing new. When it came to women, I’d learned a long time ago that he would always have the advantage, and he would always win.
What I didn’t know was that sometimes in life, second place can turn out to be even better than first, for a variety of reasons.
In any case, the race wasn’t over yet.
Chapter Six
If I thought I had it rough on Monday morning—having to face Jeannie with no idea what to say to her—it was ten times worse for Millicent. Not only had she been rejected by the boy she liked, but she had also been betrayed by the girls who had taken her under their wing on her first day at a new school.
At lunch time, Millicent chose not to sit with them, and because she was new in town, she didn’t have any other friends to fall back on. Needless to say, I felt as if we had been shot by the same gun, and I sympathized. At least I had my best friend Gordon at my side.
“Look at her,” I said to him as we sat on our usual bench in the basketball court, unwrapping our sandwiches. “She’s sitting all by herself.”
I glanced across at Jeannie and her sickeningly fashionable entourage. They were watching Millicent and giggling.
“Why do they have to be so mean?” I asked. “They’re the ones who treated her bad. Now they’re making fun of her.”
Suddenly, my devastating heartbreak over Jeannie—which had kept me in my room sulking all weekend—turned to rage, and before I had a chance to think about what I was doing, I set down my sandwich and walked straight over to where Millicent was sitting, eating her lunch alone.
I sat down beside her. “Hey. Do you want to come and eat lunch with me and Gordon?”
She barely looked up. “Sure.”
Gathering up her sandwich, she stood and crossed the basketball court with me. I couldn’t help but glance back at Jeannie and the other girls who were watching us with frowns on their faces.
They turned away after that, left the basketball court, and stopped giggling at Millicent.
o0o
After that day, Gordon and I expanded our twosome to a threesome, and Millicent ate lunch with us ever
y day for the rest of the school year. She also came over to my house or Gordon’s house on weekends to play Space Invaders and Pac-man and watch movies with us, and she fit in with the two of us as if she weren’t a girl at all. We didn’t think of her that way because she wasn’t beautiful like Jeannie, and she had no interest in either of us, romantically. After the demoralizing debacle at Mark Hennigar’s party, I think we were all a little gun shy.
For a time, we commiserated about Jeannie and Aaron, but soon we began to discover that we had a lot more in common than just that. Eventually, we forgot about our broken hearts and all those stupid, mean, giggling girls. We just hung out together and had fun.
From that moment on, my whole world seemed to expand and become new and interesting, because Millicent was really smart and she talked about interesting things—things Gordon and I had never thought about before. Not just girl stuff, either. She knew things about new technology and medicine because her father was a doctor, and she had a room full of tiny dollhouses she had built. They were detailed and intricate, and she told us she wanted to be an architect when she grew up. She also built model cars and airplanes, and Gordon and I soon started building models, too. Not dollhouses, though. We built space ships.
I felt lucky to have the two best friends anyone could ever ask for. I only wish it could have lasted longer than it did.
o0o
When summer vacation began after seventh grade, the situation improved in the Peterson household. Normally, we all traveled as a family to our summer house on the coast of Maine, but during that particular summer, my mom got a new job with the city and didn’t want to ask for time off. So Dad took Aaron to Maine to go fishing and sailing without us, which was fine by me, since it was never my first choice to be stuck on a sailboat with my brother.
As a result, it came as no surprise that, with Aaron gone and my mother working full time, it was the best summer of my life. I had more freedom to go places and do things, without having to constantly check in at home.
The Color of a Promise (The Color of Heaven Series Book 11) Page 2
