The Beautiful Between

by Alyssa B. Sheinmel

  “No watching scary movies.”

  Kate wrinkles her nose. “I can watch whatever I want.”

  “Yeah, but then who gets woken up at three in the morning when someone else can’t sleep?”

  “You do,” Kate says proudly. “But that’s totally your job.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. Look it up in the Big Brother’s Guidebook.”

  Jeremy grins. “I’ll do that, kid. Good night.”

  “‘Night!” Kate calls after us.

  In the elevator, Jeremy says, “She likes it better in my room.”

  “Why?”

  “Dunno. Hers has all that medicine in it, but she liked it better in mine before too. I think ’cause it’s messier. She’ll never make a mess of her own, but she likes mine.”

  I smile, because I completely understand that.

  Jeremy knows exactly when to arrive at Brent Fisher’s so that it’s already crowded, but not packed. We settle on a leather couch in what looks like Brent’s parents’ study and drink beer. The apartment smells like smoke, and someone says that it’s a good thing Brent’s parents won’t be back for a week; it’ll give the place time to air out.

  “Cole! Sternin!” Mike Cohen calls to us from across the room. “You made it.”

  Jeremy nods, smiling.

  “You want a beer?” he shouts. Jeremy and I hold up our drinks to show that we already have beer.

  “Isn’t this Fisher’s party?” I whisper to Jeremy, feeling cool enough to refer to Brent by his last name.

  “Mike Cohen likes to play the host at every party, no matter who’s throwing it.”

  I nod. “I see.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Jeremy says, and I like the implication that this is the first of many of these kinds of parties.

  Everyone comes to Jeremy, and since I’m sitting next to him, someone is almost always talking to me too. The beer makes me warm.

  I see Brent across the room, leaning in close to kiss Marcy McDonald’s neck. Marcy surveys the room, clearly relishing her role as the lady of the house. I glance at Jeremy to see if he’s noticed her. I know I’m not his date or anything—it’s more that I’m worried he’ll be upset to see her. I have a feeling that whatever it is that broke them up has something to do with Kate. It’s the only thing I can imagine Jeremy getting that upset about.

  Jeremy is looking right at her. He looks at me, quietly angry.

  “Do you want another drink?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I say, even though I know I’m getting drunk and I’m a little worried about how it’s going to end up.

  “Okay.” He takes a breath and stands up, going in the opposite direction from where Brent and Marcy are standing. With any luck, they’ll have moved by the time he comes back.

  They do move—toward me. Just like that, Marcy is sitting next to me. She perches on the couch, perky and straight-backed. I’m sunk in, my bare arms sweating against the leather. It’s like I’m Cinderella, the messy girl covered in soot, and she’s one of the prince’s other suitors; pristine and poised, light on her feet, bred to be the girl he chooses.

  “So, Connelly, you and Jeremy, huh?”

  I shouldn’t be surprised that she knows my name, even though we’ve never really been introduced—after all, I know hers—but I am. I try to sit up too, and immediately regret the attempt; I’m settled so deeply into the couch that I have to use the arm of the couch to pull myself up, like I’m such a mess I can’t even sit up on my own.

  “What?” I say dumbly, so embarrassed by now that I’ve forgotten what she said.

  “He’s a good guy. Just, you know, stay on his good side.”

  Her breath hangs in the air between us, smelling of cigarettes and liquor. I guess mine smells like that too.

  “Marcy, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’ll find out,” she says, and makes a big show of crossing her legs and nodding knowingly. I don’t want to participate in this conversation, and I think that if I just sit here quietly, she’ll go away. With Jeremy gone, no one else is coming over to talk to me.

  Now he’s coming back. Oh shit. I want to sink into the couch. Actually, I’d prefer that Marcy sink into the couch, all the way in and through to the other side, and then Jeremy can sit right where she’s sitting now, hand me my beer, and everything will be fine.

  “Hey, Marce,” Jeremy says politely.

  She looks up at him. “Hiya, Jer.”

  He hands me my beer and offers her the other.

  “No thanks. You know I don’t like beer.”

  “I forgot,” he says, but then he takes a swig from the bottle that she just refused, like he’d always planned to keep it for himself. He looks down at her, deliberately but not impolitely, waiting for her to get up and walk away.

  She begins to stand. “Listen, Jer, I didn’t do anything wrong, okay? I never did anything wrong.” And then she walks away, presumably to bitch about us to someone else.

  Jeremy sits down next to me. I know he’s still not going to tell me what happened between them, but he doesn’t have to now. Just knowing that she hurt him is enough to make me hate her too.

  “You having fun?” Jeremy asks me.

  “Well, the last three minutes notwithstanding—yeah, I’m having a great time.” I smile wide, and Jeremy grins back at me.

  It’s after two when we leave the party. Jeremy is clutching my upper arm. I don’t think I’m that drunk, but he seems to feel responsible.

  “I really am fine, Jeremy.”

  “Whatever. I’m walking you home.”

  We stop outside my building and Jeremy lights us two cigarettes.

  “It’s nice out.”

  “No it’s not, kid. You’re just too drunk to notice how cold it is.”

  “Am not!”

  “Are too!”

  I stick my tongue out at him and he grabs me and messes up my hair.

  He tosses the butt of his cigarette on the ground.

  “Now remember, lots of water, and try to sober up some before you fall asleep.”

  I nod obediently.

  “You’re going to have a hell of a headache in the morning,” he says, almost apologetically.

  “I don’t mind,” I say cheerfully. I’m such a dork that I’m excited to have a hangover.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  He kisses me on the cheek goodbye and walks to the corner. I watch him get into a cab. I don’t know exactly how this has happened, but it turns out that Jeremy is the first best friend I’ve ever had.

  12

  At school on Monday, I feel like everyone is looking at me differently. I wonder if they think I’m Jeremy Cole’s girlfriend, or if that would ever even occur to them—because what would Jeremy be doing, dating me? But I feel like more people are smiling at me in the hallways, rolling their eyes at me when a teacher assigns a lastminute paper, exchanging looks with me in between classes. Something is different, I’m sure of it.

  Before first period, Emily Winters comes up to me.

  “So what’s going on?”

  I look at her blankly. I’m sitting on the floor by the lockers, going over our English reading. I know what she’s getting at. In a minute I’m going to have to say “just friends,” and I’m fine with that, I’m happy about that—but once I say that, the significance with which she’s looking at me, the importance she’s attaching to me, will go away.

  “I heard you went to Fisher’s party with Jeremy Cole. I didn’t even go!”

  I’m not sure what to say. That isn’t really a question.

  Emily sits down next to me, leans in conspiratorially. “Why didn’t you tell me you guys were hanging out?”

  What would I have told her? I didn’t even know what we were doing at first; whether we were hanging out, how long it would last. There might have been nothing to tell.

  Emily continues without waiting for an answer. “So come on, tell me—you guys hooki
ng up or what?”

  My hands start to sweat. I don’t know how I feel about the fact that people are talking about me. It’s strange enough that people I never talked to before are now talking to me. I feign nonchalance. “Emily, no, that’s gross—he’s a friend.” I purposely don’t say “just a friend,” because the word “just” doesn’t feel accurate.

  “Honey, ain’t nothing gross about Jeremy Cole.” I notice for the first time that Emily is actually only trying to sound older and wiser; before, I always felt like she really was.

  Nonetheless, I feel my face turning bright red. Not because I have a crush on Jeremy—yes, of course, he’s gorgeous and a girl would have to be blind and deaf not to have some kind of crush on him—but it’s more than that. There is so much that’s private and there’s so much I don’t want to give away, that I want to keep for just Jeremy and me.

  “Dude,” Emily says before heading off to class, “it is so not fair not to dish.”

  I wonder if Emily will spread gossip about us. It doesn’t matter, because the gossip she’d spread wouldn’t be the truth—the truth is way too complicated for gossip.

  Jeremy isn’t in physics class, and I don’t see him at lunchtime. I think something must be wrong—maybe Kate has taken a turn for the worse—and I want to call him. I go so far as to sneak into the nurse’s office to use her phone (she never seems to notice that the entire student body uses her phone for personal calls, since we’re not allowed to use cell phones in school) when I realize I’ve never called him before. I don’t even have his home number, though it would be easy enough to get it from the class directory, where I imagine he got my number. But I can’t imagine calling when he’s never actually given me his number—it seems an invasion of privacy. And maybe if there is something wrong, I should wait until I hear from him—he would tell me if he wanted me to know. Maybe I shouldn’t assume that whatever it is that’s keeping him out of class today is any of my business.

  I leave the nurse’s office and head back to the cafeteria. I’ll grab something and bring it up to the library to eat there. Mike Cohen comes up to me as I’m spreading peanut butter over a bagel.

  “Sternin, hey, you seen Jeremy?”

  “No, I don’t think he’s here today.”

  “Oh, dude. I’ll give him a call.”

  I don’t know if I’m supposed to answer that like, Yeah, good idea. How come Mike can just go ahead and call like it’s nothing, while I’m completely paralyzed by the possibility?

  “Hey,” Mike continues. “You know what? Just tell him I was looking for him, okay?”

  “Sure.” Mike assumes that I’ll be talking to Jeremy sometime today, so he needn’t call. I feel like I’m lying to him. But I like the way everyone is treating me, now that they know I’m friends with Jeremy Cole. So I don’t tell Mike he should go ahead and call Jeremy; I let him think that I’m in a position to convey his message.

  And maybe I am; Jeremy will probably still come over for our bedtime cigarettes later.

  Mike surprises me by asking, “Do you know—have you seen Kate lately?”

  “What?” I say dumbly.

  “We were just wondering how she was doing.”

  “We?”

  “You know—the guys and stuff.” Maybe Mike Cohen’s position as the host of every party makes him the student body ambassador too.

  “Oh.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  I pause. I guess by now everyone knows that Kate is sick, but maybe they’re actually being sensitive about it. Mike sounds genuinely concerned, so I say, “Yeah. I saw her the other night. She’s doing okay.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let everyone know.”

  I nod and smile. I guess one of the nice things about being the prince is that your subjects really do care about you and your family.

  When I get home, my mother suggests we have dinner together. This doesn’t happen often—mostly she leaves me money to order in or I make something for myself, usually ramen or something like it. We go to the diner across the street, where my mother insists on waiting for a booth even though there are plenty of tables with chairs available. When we do finally sit, I order a grilled cheese. It arrives greasy and lukewarm. My mother gets a hamburger. I eat her fries.

  “So, how’s school?”

  “Fine. You know, physics is killing me, but I’m bringing up my grades.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm?” I ask.

  “Is that Jeremy’s help, do you think?” I wonder if this is why she suggested dinner, why she opened the conversation by asking me about school. Maybe she thinks that Jeremy and I are dating but she wants to hear it from me, if for no other reason than to say, “Well, I knew that.” It makes me sad, how little she knows me.

  “Maybe. He’s a good tutor.”

  “Well, he’s more than a tutor.”

  Here it comes.

  “I notice he comes over late at night.”

  “Oh?”

  “Why don’t you invite him up? You know, at a more reasonable hour. I could make us dinner.”

  “You don’t cook.”

  “Sure I cook!”

  “When? You never cook.”

  “I do too; I make chicken and pasta and mashed potatoes.”

  “Not all at the same time, I hope.” I’m laughing, because I can’t remember her ever having cooked a meal for me.

  “Connelly.” My mother puts her hamburger down on its plate and looks at me seriously, and I wonder when this became a serious conversation. It had seemed like I was just teasing her a second ago. “I cook.”

  “Maybe you used to,” I say quietly.

  “What?”

  “Maybe you did a long time ago, when I was little or before I was born, and you just don’t realize that you stopped.”

  She surprises me by considering this. In the silence, something occurs to me, and I surprise myself by asking her, “Did you cook for Dad?”

  “For your father?”

  “Yes.” I can hear the panic in her voice. I don’t know why it seemed natural to ask about him now.

  “Yes,” she answers, speaking slowly, not looking at me. Then she smiles, looking at her plate as she says, “He liked my spaghetti with meat sauce.”

  She continues before I can answer.

  “You liked it too.” She looks up at me, smiling. “I have a picture of you eating it. You’re covered in tomato sauce.”

  I should stop asking questions before she gets upset, but I want to know more—even just a little, but more. “If I was covered in tomato sauce, I must have been pretty young in the picture, right?”

  “Yes. I guess so.”

  “So it was when Dad was still alive?” I press.

  “I don’t remember,” she says, and she’s looking at her plate again, not at me.

  “I think,” I say carefully, “that you must have stopped cooking after he died. Maybe you just forgot.”

  “Maybe,” she answers, still not looking at me. When she speaks again, she changes the subject. She looks straight at me and her face is bright: “Will Jeremy be coming over tonight?”

  “I don’t know.” I suspect it’s the doormen who’ve been telling her that it’s him—otherwise, how would she know? It could be anyone, for all she knows.

  “Well, you can invite him up. We have a terrace, you know.”

  I shrug.

  I find it surprising that she’s acknowledging that we’re smoking—the doormen, I guess again—but doesn’t seem to mind it. I suppose that the fact that Jeremy is a Cole makes up for his smoking. I wouldn’t want Jeremy coming up. Jeremy and I smoke downstairs. But my mother doesn’t need to know that I feel that way, especially since I can’t explain it. He’s been up to study often enough. But the smoking, my coming downstairs, all of that—it’s our ritual. Or maybe there’s something about having him come up when I’m in my pajamas, ready for bed, that makes me nervous.

  We’ve finished eating. I ask for the check, hoping to speed u
p our exit; to get back to my room, where Mom usually doesn’t bother me. I don’t want to talk about Jeremy. I don’t want to tell her about our friendship, about Kate’s illness, about what I’ve found out about my father. If it’s okay for her to keep something like that a secret from me, then I suppose I’ve earned the right to keep pretty much anything secret from her.

  My mother and I never fight. I can’t remember any major fights or childhood temper tantrums. She never assigned me a curfew and I never came home late until the other night, after Brent’s party, and then she didn’t ask where I’d been. We get along fine this way.

  13

  “What’s your middle name, Connelly?” Jeremy asks me later, when we’re smoking. He hasn’t explained why he wasn’t in school today, and I don’t ask.

  “My middle name?”

  “Yeah. In the handbook, it just says Connelly J. Sternin.”

  “What’s your middle name?”

  “I asked you first.”

  “I asked you second.”

  “Staddler.”

  “Jeremy Staddler Cole?”

  “Yeah. My mom’s maiden name.”

  “Mine’s Jane.”

  “We have the same initials,” Jeremy says, exhaling smoke.

  “CJS.”

  “JSC.”

  “That sounds like the name of a college.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, like … Junior Southern College.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it’s a particularly good school.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Yeah, it’s where the students who got rejected everywhere else end up.”

  Jeremy puts on a fake newscaster voice. “Yes, at JSC we say YES to YOU.”

  I giggle.

  “You know, it’s funny, I keep thinking about applying to school next year,” he says.

  “Well, we know you’ll get into JSC.”