“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Not in a shed. But I got you locked in your house. I suck.”
“Yes,” she says plainly. “You do.”
“Runner-up then?”
“Runner-up,” she agrees, taking the turn too fast. Our bodies slide to the right.
For the next few minutes we don’t speak. I watch tiny drops of rain collect on her windshield, fading the colors of the cars and the street, softening their edges, smudging their borders until I can almost pretend we’re actually passing from the moss-green rectangle of Division 14 to the cornflower blue of Division 11, which juts up against the high school. Kris doesn’t turn on her wipers. She taps her fingers on the steering wheel, nods her head, ashes her cigarette. She drives us to school like it’s any other day.
I rub my palms on my jeans and lean back in the seat, squinting through the watercolor windshield, looking for the piles of leaves Kris likes to drive through.
“Nice jeans, by the way.” Kris doesn’t look at me when she speaks.
“Thanks.” I wait for her to ask where I got them, but she doesn’t. “On your left,” I call.
Kris spins the wheel with one hand. Gold and crimson leaves hit the windshield. When we’re on the right side of the street again, she takes a long pull on her Camel and starts an old conversation, one we should have had yesterday. “Top Ten Plays.” The words come out coated in smoke.
Kris and I usually commemorate the last day of Thanksgiving break by doing our homework, eating massive amounts of chips, and counting down the Top Ten Plays of the holiday. That’s what Blue Sunday was supposed to be: bitching about the depressing prospect of lockers and hallways, and laughing about our fucked-up families. Not getting each other grounded or hooking up with people on our Do Not Call lists.
“You want me to go first?” I ask.
“Unless you want to hear the top ten shittiest Thanksgiving movies on cable,” Kris says, exhaling through the thin slit of open window.
“Okay,” I say. “Number ten,” I start, then stall. I still don’t know where to begin. The weekend rewinds in my mind: the cold breeze rippling the pond; Hudson’s warm mouth pressed against my neck; the things he said after the soccer game, in the basement, at the bonfire—about who I am, and how I left Jolene.
Jolene, who still smells like cinnamon, even when she’s throwing up; whose weight I carried across the lawn; who looked up at me, so drunk she could barely see, like she was expecting me.
And that’s when I realize why I don’t know where to begin. Because this started way before I ignored Kris’s call. It started a few weeks after the manhunt game, when Jolene sent me a text and I didn’t mention it. I didn’t answer it, either, but I kept it. I kept all the texts Jolene sent, the same way she kept all those things hidden in her treasure box. I looked at them and wondered what they could be.
Kris flicks her cig to the road and spins the wheel. We slide to the left. In the paper version of things, we’re in moss green. In real life, we’re at school.
“Was it that good or that bad?” she asks, slowing down to search for a spot, since the lot is full. I scan the sides of the street and help her look for a Corolla-sized opening.
“Both,” I say.
She nods.
“I can do that.” She slams on the brakes and pulls up three inches from the parked cars on our right. I don’t bother looking back. To me it always seems like we’re going to hit another car, or a curb, even though Kris always parallel parks perfectly. When she’s finished fitting us into the space, she smiles to herself. Then she turns off the car and faces me, a stray red curl falling in front of her wide green eyes. She doesn’t move it to the side.
“Okay. Just number one then,” she says, crossing her arms.
I tighten my grip on the straps of my backpack and hold her stare. Ten through two can be anything—like the time Kris’s uncle squeezed her mom’s ass, thinking it was her aunt’s, or when Jake snorted Sprite out of his nose. Number ones are different. They’re Trivial Pursuit questions that don’t make any sense, late-night theories about how the school is really a reality show run by robots. Stupid stuff no one else would think is funny.
“Okay,” I say as a group of sophomores walks by, dressed in variations of the same outfit. “Number one.” My temples knock out a loud beat on either side of my head. “Driving Jolene home from Bella’s party.”
“Bullshit,” Kris says, loud enough to make a few of the sophomores whip their heads around, searching for the sound.
“True shit,” I say, taking a quick breath.
Kris narrows her eyes. I wait for her to be angry, pissed, surprised, shocked. Anything. But all she says is:
“Interesting.” Then she reaches behind my seat and lifts her bag out of the back.
“Interesting?” I repeat as I step out onto the thin strip of grass next to the sidewalk and slip my backpack over my shoulders. “Meaning?”
The first bell rings. Kris slams her door and walks onto the lawn. I fall into step next to her, but our strides don’t match.
“Meaning,” she says, swinging the heavy school door open for me, “you’re not the reason I missed curfew, even though I’d love to let you keep believing that.”
“You’re the worst,” I say as I walk past her.
“Runner-up.” She lets the door shut behind us. Our eyes adjust to the fluorescent light as we walk down the hall.
“Then why’d you get grounded?” I ask. “What happened?” My hand moves to my back pocket in search of my to-do list. But the pocket is too small, and the list isn’t there. I didn’t make one this morning. I shove my fingers into the tight pocket anyway, so it doesn’t look like I had my hand on my ass for no reason.
“More like who,” Kris says, eyeing a line of giggling, lip-glossed, hand-holding freshmen headed in our direction.
“Okay, who?” I ask. The girl on the end is talking to her friend. She doesn’t even see us. That’s how sure of her world she is. That’s how invisible we are.
“Bella,” Kris says as the girl walks into her. Kris stays stiff, knocking the girl sideways, into her friends. They’re startled, but like birds, they swerve back into formation.
“Bella?” I ask. The second bell rings. Kris and I walk backward, away from each other.
“Bella,” Kris calls out, like it’s the name of some mystical creature.
I turn my palms up to the ceiling and hold my hands out to the side in question. Then I crash into a classroom door. The first row of my Spanish class laughs. So does Kris, from the opposite end of the hall. Later, she mouths as she ducks inside a doorway down the hall.
I lower my head, sidestep Señora, and shuffle to my seat. She pulls her lips down into a questioning frown and shoots her brows to the ceiling. Then she brushes her hands together as if wiping them dry.
“Welcome back, chicos,” she announces, and shuts the door.
Señora is at her desk grading papers, her thick glasses balanced on the end of her nose. I’m sitting in my assigned seat, staring into space. I should be conjugating irregular verbs. Instead I’m trying to picture Bella and Kris, and whatever strange, otherworldly event could have brought them together.
Because when Kris and I left the manhunt game, we didn’t just leave Jolene. We left Bella, too. And corner tables in the cafeteria, prime seating at school assemblies, underclassmen adoration, the social ease of being the most sought-after juniors. Pretty much everything. We dropped so far from popular that we couldn’t even see Jolene. And that was the point. If nobody cared about us, nobody talked about us. We were free. At least that was Kris’s reasoning.
And I agreed. I did. That doesn’t mean I don’t pick up my cell every now and again and scroll to Bella’s name. After Kris, Bella is my oldest friend. I’ve never laughed so hard as the first day I went over to Bella’s house in fifth grade, and we made up fake names and a full-on choreographed dance with costumes to the latest Taylor Swift. Bella was like that, even then: she could make a pa
rty out of anything. But each time my finger hovered over her picture on my screen, I heard Jolene in my head. I imagined what she must have told Bella—the story she spun about why Kris and I left, complete with details and dialogue, wide eyes and surprise. It would have sounded real. It would have been real as soon as it left Jolene’s lips. That’s what made Jolene so convincing: she didn’t tell stories, she believed them. Her steady eyes, her sure voice, and her smooth delivery left no room for doubt. And anyway, if Kris and I were going to carry out her plan to live in the sewer of social life and become untouchable, being seen with Bella—party-planning queen of our class—would have ruined it. So even though Bella had sent me a few texts right after the manhunt game, and even though I’d typed some replies, I’d never hit send.
But Kris had made a clean break. Now all of a sudden she feels compelled to risk everything—her curfew, and our carefully crafted status as nobodies—for Bella? It doesn’t make sense. I try to think of something that will make it fit into the map of Kris, but I come up empty. When I think of Kris, I think of her with me.
It reminds me of that game we used to play at intermediate school dances, the one where you cross your arms at the wrists, clasp each other’s hands, and spin around as fast as you can.
For over a year we’ve been letting the rest of the world whirl around us while we held on so tight we couldn’t see anything but each other. But just because the background spun and blended and bled into streaks, it doesn’t mean it disappeared.
I tap the point of my pen on the sheet of paper in front of me and look over the list of irregular verbs and their meanings. We’ve done this before. We do it every year. “To keep us fresh,” Señora says. As if we’ll start to rot if we can’t remember how to say She went, He goes, I’m going.
Maybe she’s right.
CHAPTER 12
AFTER SPANISH I hook my thumbs under the straps of my backpack and walk the usual route to homeroom: down the hall, up the stairs, stick to the side so I can exit right. My shoulder brushes along the wall. I examine some random girl’s ponytail. Because this is part of the usual too: swallow, tense, breathe, don’t look at Jolene.
Even though Block 241, where the high school sits, is a solid square of moss green according to Sanborn, the land is divided. The masses stay to the right. Royalty lounges on the left, at Jolene’s locker, where she holds court, and Hudson’s hand. Or, at least, where she used to. It’s the first place I saw them together after the manhunt game: Hudson’s head lowered, Jolene’s neck extended, their lips meeting. I should have looked away. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you see people kiss. But I couldn’t believe it. His hand on her hip. Her head tipped so they would fit. Not in a dark room or a secluded spot under the stars, but under the fluorescent lights for everyone to see. I stood there watching them, willing Hudson to pull away. And for the briefest second I thought he might. His spine straightened, his hand seemed to push back instead of pull in. But his eyes didn’t fly open to find me. Jolene’s did. Deep in a fresh kiss, she stared at me, like she knew exactly where I’d be.
I hadn’t known until that moment that I’d really do it—leave Jolene and Hudson. Everyone. That I was done. Sure, that’s what I’d told Kris. And yeah, I hadn’t spoken to Jolene since the manhunt game. But it had only been a few flat, end-of-summer days. I’d still felt her with me: her voice reciting the two little girls before I fell asleep, her breath on my neck. I’d wondered how long she’d stay mad at me.
I’d wondered about Hudson, too—why he hadn’t returned my calls. I’d convinced myself he was dealing with his dad’s drinking, his mom’s leaving. That he was gaming with Cal or tired from tryouts. That everything would be fine the first day back at school, easier when I could see him, and he could see me, and he could smile, and we could laugh like that night in the grass.
But when I finally saw Hudson, he was with Jolene. They were kissing. I looked then, but never again.
Until now.
I turn my head. I can’t see at first. There are too many people. Backpacks, shoulders, mouths, sweaters, and heads block my view. I move from side to side and squint my eyes. My stomach gets tight and my breath jagged, as if when the crowd clears, it’ll be last year again and I’ll see them. But as the crowd thins, the scene looks nothing like it once did. Hudson isn’t there. Neither is Jolene.
She isn’t talking to Bella outside history, either. Or leaving the gym when I walk in.
I don’t have to walk the long way to psychology. I don’t have to fix my gaze and stare off into the distance. I don’t have to count my steps in my head to know how close I am to the next assigned seat. At first it’s weird, not having to avoid Jolene. I feel like I’m floating. Not in a weightless, amazed way. More like a drifting-into-the-ether kind of thing. Like I’ve been disconnected from something essential, something that belongs to me. My shadow, or my reflection.
By the middle of the day I start to wonder if she’s sick, even though the thought is ridiculous. Jolene’s never sick. Even when she’s sick she’s not sick. She shows up at school. She doesn’t like to miss anything, unless she has a reason.
“You walk through the hall like nobody’s here.”
I stop halfway into physics and turn around. Someone slams into me, curses. I step to the side and let the stream of people rush past me into class.
Hudson’s back is up against the locker, his headphones down around his neck. A tiny, tinny version of a song surrounds him. Maybe that’s why he seems a world apart from this: the lockers; the classes; the kids doing double takes, shooting us surprised eyes and singing their own, hushed song as they pass by (Is that Mattie with him?).
Or maybe it’s because when I look at him, he takes me away from it.
“Maybe they’re not,” I say, lowering my chin, looking up at him through my lashes. I’ve never done it before, but I’ve seen it. Jolene used to look at him like this.
Maybe we’re both not here, Jolene said, my stomach to her back, our bodies curved together in her bed.
Maybe I wished you gone and you disappeared, I think.
The idea startles me.
“Maybe not for you,” Hudson says, lifting his hand a few inches in the air. Mine rises to meet it. Our fingers twine. “But the rest of us do have to deal with them sometimes.”
“Too bad,” I say, leaning into him the way she did.
“Yeah.” He ducks his head toward me, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me right here in the emptying hallway; instead he pauses, his mouth near my ear. “Meet me at the bike racks, on the north side, before the end of lunch.” Then he stands up and loosens his grip on my hand. It slips slowly from underneath the unbuttoned cuff of his flannel.
“Okay,” I say.
Hudson nods, brings his hands to his headphones and flips them over his head. He takes a breath, like he’s been holding it all this time, and shoves his hands into his pockets. Then he gives me the start of a real smile, but turns before I can see the rest, leaving me alone when the bell rings. I slide inside the closing classroom door. I can already see the diagram of lenses on the board.
I stuff a sad-looking fry in my mouth and round my back as I lean over the cafeteria table toward Kris. I checked my phone again on the way to lunch, but I don’t have any new messages. It’s been over a week. This is the longest Jolene’s ever gone without texting.
“Bella was crying on the third-floor stairs?” I ask, licking the salt off my lips.
“Crying doesn’t really do it justice,” Kris says, examining the outside of her burger. “It was more like keening. You know, that kind of piercing, high-pitched cry that sounds like a sick animal? It was like that.” Kris takes a tiny bite, then makes a face and puts the burger down on her plate. “She was really freaking out.”
“She must have been,” I say, sorting through my fries for the crispy ones.
“Meaning?”
“Nothing,” I mumble. But Kris has her green eyes on me. I meet her gaze, picture
the cafeteria spinning behind her, around us. Then I finish chewing, swallow my food, and say, “It’s just that, you know, there was a time you wouldn’t be seen talking to her.”
“True.” She taps her nails on top of her Coke, lifts the tab, cracks it open. “But there was also a time I wouldn’t be caught dead at one of her parties.”
“Noted.”
Kris looks over the tray of food in front of her before shoving it aside in disgust. She wraps her hands around the cold soda. Frost forms on the can in the outline of her fingers.
“So, you two just hung out in her room?” I ask.
“Pretty much.”
“Romantic,” I say. My eyes drift toward the clock. There’s only ten minutes left in the period. “Then what?”
Kris takes a sip of soda, bends the tab on her can up and down, up and down, until it breaks off in her fingers, then she drops it into her palm and closes her hand around it. “She started talking,” Kris says.
“Now that sounds like Bella.” I sneak a look at my watch. I’ve got to go. “Did she ever stop?”
“Not for a while. At first it was hard to hear her. Because of the keening. But once I got her in her room, she calmed down.” I nod. I’m trying to listen, but my mind drifts to Hudson. The headphones nestled around his neck, covering the curve of skin I almost-kissed. “Anyway, when she finally stopped to take a breath, she told me some extremely choice things about our all-time favorite, and your very own number one.” Kris is grinning now, her voice getting louder. “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen; I’m talking about Jolene.”
Jolene.
Of course.
The same day I watched Hudson and Jolene kiss for the first time, I watched Jolene and Bella, too. From across the cafeteria, where I sat with Kris (legs crossed, trays balanced on our knees, backs cold against the windows, butts hot from the heater), I saw Jolene turn the full shine of her eyes toward Bella after she spoke, like they had a private joke. I recognized that look. I remembered how it felt: the swell in my chest, the glow of being chosen. Of belonging. I still felt knit to them, and to the table where we’d staked our claim. But after that day half the seats stayed empty. Phantom limbs. Every once in a while someone joined them—Bella’s cheer friends, Jolene’s groupies, boys, athletes, even the most ambitious underclassmen—but no one’s ever been granted a permanent seat. Most days it’s just the two of them. Eating. Preening. Leaning. Whispering.
Underneath Everything Page 9
