Been Here All Along

by Sandy Hall

  But Ravi hated her. He claimed she was his archnemesis. Teo didn’t see it, but he also wasn’t interested in fighting with his best friend about a girl who didn’t really matter.

  It would suck to have Jane around all the time. Ravi would be so pissed off. He practically lived at Teo’s house in the summer because his parents refused to put on the air-conditioning unless it was over a hundred degrees outside, and Ravi couldn’t handle that.

  Maybe Teo’s mom wouldn’t hire Jane. There was still hope.

  But hope died moments later when he heard his mom offer the job to Jane, who accepted it on the spot.

  Of course.

  Teo took a deep breath, preparing to tell Ravi the news. His fight-or-flight response kicked in, which was really more like an all-flight, all-the-time response. Conflict was not his forte. He would rather go back to studying chemistry than tell Ravi this news. Maybe they would never be at his house at the same time, and Ravi would never have to know the truth.

  But the thought of Ravi coming upon Jane in the kitchen one morning after a sleepover, and the yelling that would ensue, was enough to force Teo to suck it up and tell him.

  Ravi’s answer was immediate.

  The next five words came in separate texts.

  Teo let out a long breath. This wasn’t going to end well.

  Chapter 3

  Margo had one thought on her mind all day, all week, even all month if she was being honest with herself. There was one thing that was keeping her up at night, making her feel guilty, and taking up a lot of brainpower. She kept telling herself that ripping off the Band-Aid would feel so much better than dealing with the pit in her stomach and her clammy palms every time she thought of this one particular thing: finally coming out to her parents.

  They were nice people. They wouldn’t disown her for being bisexual. At least that was what she told herself over and over again on her way home from work every day.

  She thought about different ways to come out. Maybe write them a heartfelt note or perhaps hire a skywriter.

  She grinned, thinking about that one as some butthead nearly sideswiped her car. Jane wouldn’t be pleased if Margo hurt her precious 1998 Buick LeSabre. It seemed like every driver on the road was out to get her, always honking at her and giving her the finger. Like she was trying to get into a car accident.

  Margo was happy every day she made it home alive, and today was no different. She pulled up in front of the house and sighed with relief.

  As she walked through the front door, she accidentally let it slam behind her, alerting the lady of the manor to her presence.

  “Margo, is that you?” her mom called from the kitchen.

  “No, Mom. It’s a burglar.”

  “A burglar wouldn’t call me Mom.”

  “I know, Mom. It’s a joke.”

  “Oh,” her mom said, sticking her head around the corner. “Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. Let your sister know. I don’t want her to be shocked when she’s forced to come downstairs for dinner.”

  Margo would have laughed, but she felt for Janie. Sometimes it seemed as if her mom and her sister couldn’t agree on anything, not even something as simple as dinnertime.

  Margo trudged up the stairs and dropped her stuff off in her bedroom before peeking through the slight opening of Jane’s bedroom door.

  “Hey,” Margo said, opening the door a little further.

  “Hello,” Jane said, her voice dull.

  “Mom wanted you to know that dinner will be ready soon.”

  “Cool.”

  Margo glanced around the room. “Why do you have a poster of a blue phone booth?”

  “It’s not a phone booth. It’s a police box,” Jane said.

  “What’s up?” Margo asked, leaning on Jane’s desk. There was an odd feeling in the room. Jane was curled up on her bed, staring into the corner of her room.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Jane muttered.

  “We have at least a few minutes before Mom forces us to eat dinner.”

  Jane smiled at that. Their mother loved staying on schedule.

  “She’s going to kill me,” Jane finally said.

  “I’m probably going to need further information to decide whether you’re exaggerating.”

  “Mom got me an unpaid internship at the university, and I went out and got myself a babysitting job instead.”

  Margo tsked. “Yeah, Mom’s gonna be pissed.”

  “Thanks for your support,” Jane said, flipping over facedown on her bed.

  Margo took a seat on the bed and patted her sister’s back awkwardly. “You know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “So why’d you do it?”

  Jane rolled over and sat up. “Probably because the idea of driving to and from work with Mom every day basically sounded like hell.”

  Margo nodded. “She really does like to get on your butt about things.”

  “Can’t you ever say ‘ass’?”

  “She really does like to get on your ass,” Margo repeated.

  “Thank you. It sounds better that way. Like you’re actually on my side.”

  “I am on your side.”

  Jane frowned. “I don’t think anyone is really on my side.”

  “So where’s the job?” Margo asked, rather than arguing with Jane’s statement. She knew it would only end with Jane going off on a tangent about how the rest of the family were geniuses and Jane was a poor little imbecile. She’d heard it all before.

  Jane shook her head. “That’s kind of the worst part. At the Buchanans’.”

  “Shouldn’t that be good news?”

  “I don’t know. When I asked the Magic 8 about it, it seemed hesitant.”

  “How can the Magic 8 seem hesitant?”

  Jane handed the toy over to Margo. “It kept telling me to ask again later.”

  Margo closed her eyes and held the ball, concentrating on the question or else she knew Jane wouldn’t accept the ball’s answer. “Will Mom flip out on Jane?”

  Margo looked at the answer and read it out loud. “‘Ask again later.’”

  “Maybe it’s broken,” Jane said.

  Their mother called them for dinner then, interrupting Margo’s answer.

  “What were you two doing upstairs?” their mom asked when they came into the kitchen to fill their plates.

  “Girl talk,” Margo said with a grin toward Jane as they took a seat at the table.

  “Where’s Dad?” Jane asked.

  “In the basement. He’s worse than you two.” She stood up from the table and called through the basement door for her husband to come eat before the pork got cold.

  Once everyone was seated, Jane took a deep breath. “I got a job,” she said.

  “Yes, Jane,” her mom said. “At the university.”

  “Um, no, a different one. Connie—you know Connie around the corner—needed a babysitter for the girls this summer. She’s taking a ton of classes and, well, I got the job. I’d really like to help Connie out.”

  “That’s nice of you,” her dad said, smiling genuinely, obviously oblivious to his wife’s unhappy glare.

  “I got Jane an internship at the university this summer, Steven. It’s going to look great on her college applications.”

  “The pay is really good,” Jane continued. “I don’t have much savings, and the job Mom found is unpaid.”

  “You know, Linda, maybe Jane finding a job on her own is a good thing,” he said pointedly.

  “Maybe she needs to be more concerned about her future and less concerned about making money,” her mother said.

  “Or maybe she needs to do what she enjoys.” Her father’s eyebrows went into his hairline—that was how hard he was trying to make this point.

  Jane sank back into her chair, looking relieved. Her mother leveled her gaze at her.

  “Do you really want this? It’s going to be hard, much harder than filing. Being a babysitter isn’t as easy as it looks. Especially
for kids as energetic as those Buchanan girls.”

  Jane sat up straight. “I want to. I swear. I went over there yesterday, and they interviewed me. It seemed like a lot of fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun. Even if it is hard work, it seemed like it could also be a lot of fun. And the girls seemed so excited.”

  “All right.”

  “All right, I can do it?”

  “Yes,” her mom said. “It’s good that Connie will have some reliable help this summer. From what she tells me, Teo is in a funk. Being rude and always out with that boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “That Ravi. The one who used to always tease you so much in middle school.”

  “Thanks for the reminder, Mom.”

  “Maybe he liked you,” her dad said.

  Before Margo had a chance to tear into him about how sexist and awful it was that boys could tease girls under the auspices of “liking them,” her father stood and started clearing the table, and her mother followed. Margo’s rant would have to wait for another day. Along with any chance for her to come out.

  Even if her parents had stayed at the table, there was no way she could have come out to them after that display. It would have been foolish to even try to talk to them when they both had Jane on the brain.

  Or at least that was what Margo told herself so she would stop feeling like such a coward.

  She would come out when the time was right, on her own terms.

  “I need to get back downstairs,” their dad said. “I’m working on a huge submarine model, and I’m at the trickiest part.”

  Margo rolled her eyes but helped with clearing the table.

  Only Jane sat there through the cleanup, looking stunned.

  Margo took the seat across from her once everything had been put away and the dishwasher was humming.

  “It sucks that Mom acted like that,” Margo said when their mother had slipped out the back door to take the trash to the garbage cans.

  “Thanks,” Jane said. “But it actually went way better than I’d expected. She didn’t even mention me quitting. I thought for sure that would be her fix for everything.”

  “What would you have done?”

  Jane looked thoughtful. “I would have really pushed the whole ‘helping a neighbor’ angle. She would have eaten that up. I think luck was on my side, though, since mom had talked to Connie recently.”

  “True,” Margo said.

  “I wonder what’s up with Teo. I thought he was always some kind of perfect son.”

  “Yeah, perfect Teo, always doing what his mom needs him to do, never complaining.”

  “He practically ruined our childhoods by being so perfect. And now he’s off with Ravi Singh, making trouble every night.”

  “Wait, has Teo really gone all bad-boy?” Margo asked.

  “No. I don’t think so, at least. It’s probably more along the lines of Mom totally misconstruing something Connie said and turning the fact that he’s not home much or whatever into a much bigger deal than it is.”

  Margo squinted. “Yeah, I just really can’t imagine what kind of trouble those two would even get into.”

  “I bet they mug old ladies.”

  “And knock over mailboxes with baseball bats.”

  “Take candy from babies,” Jane said.

  “Hot-wire cars,” Margo added.

  “Drink wine coolers and stay out past ten.”

  “Yeah, they’re totally badass.”

  Jane pumped her fist in the air. “Yes! I love it when you curse.”

  Margo giggled at her sister’s enthusiasm for swearing.

  Margo almost told Jane her secret right there in the dining room. It had been a long time since she’d felt this close to her sister. Sometime in her teens Margo had lost touch with Jane, and then when she left for college, she never seemed to have the time. But maybe this summer would be a good chance for them to become friends again.

  It couldn’t hurt to have one.

  Unfortunately, their mother came back in from the yard, and their dad starting yelling from the basement, and the moment was lost. But Margo promised herself that she would find another one and not let it pass her by.

  Chapter 4

  On her first day of work, Jane slipped out the front door with a yelled good-bye toward the back of the house.

  “But what about breakfast?” her mom called from the kitchen.

  “I’m not hungry.” Jane slammed the door good and hard to punctuate that sentence.

  She ate a granola bar that she found at the bottom of her backpack and washed it down with water from the bathroom sink. It might not be the most balanced breakfast, but it got her out of the house nice and fast.

  She marched down the street and around the corner, proud that she was actually going to be twenty minutes early. If only school were this close to her house, she might be early for that sometimes, too.

  Connie had told Jane to let herself in the back door when she arrived, because it was sometimes hard to hear the doorbell from inside the house, and Connie wanted Jane to get comfortable streaming in and out anyway. Connie had had a key made for her and everything.

  So Jane let herself in through the back door and was met by a shirtless Teo in the kitchen.

  If she were a different kind of girl, she would have let out a wolf whistle.

  For the record, she’d seen him without his shirt plenty of times in the past. He was the kind of guy who would mow the lawn without a shirt on or would whip it off while playing soccer with his friends. He was a lifeguard, for God’s sake, Jane told herself. She’d seen his naked torso on numerous occasions.

  But somehow, while he was sleep-mussed and standing in his own kitchen wearing only a pair of basketball shorts, it was a completely different story.

  She tried to calculate the last time she’d seen him without his shirt on and realized it was probably last summer. Jane would guess he’d done a lot of abs work during those long winter months, because she could basically count his six-pack.

  “You’re early!” Teo said, putting down his glass of orange juice and covering himself with a paper towel.

  Jane turned away to hide her laughter and the blush that was traveling up her entire body, only to walk directly into a kitchen chair.

  “Sorry,” Jane squeaked, apologizing to Teo and the chair she knocked over.

  “No, it’s cool. Just a little surprising,” Teo said, looking at the paper towel as though he wasn’t entirely sure how it had gotten in his hand. He put it down, then went into the laundry room and grabbed a sleeveless T-shirt, pulling it over his head as he reemerged.

  “Thanks. I obviously can’t handle the sight of boy nipples,” Jane said, blushing even more deeply and slapping her hand over her mouth. I shouldn’t even be allowed to speak, she thought.

  Teo’s eyes went wide, and he blushed as deeply as Jane had.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and balled her hands into fists.

  “What are you doing?”

  She carefully opened one eye so she wouldn’t totally lose her concentration. “I’m trying to sink through the kitchen floor.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  “Any advice?”

  “I’ve never actually sunk through a floor before,” Teo said, but now he was smiling, and Jane could at least relax a little.

  Jane cleared her throat. “So, um…”

  “Teo,” an annoyingly familiar voice said from the basement stairs, “I thought you were bringing down Pop-Tarts.”

  Jane thanked all the gods she could think of that someone was about to rescue her from this embarrassing moment.

  Unfortunately, that someone was none other than Ravi Singh.

  He took one look at Jane, and then, making a production of ignoring her, he turned to Teo. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Good morning to you, too, Ravi,” Jane said.

  “Oh, Jane, how lovely to see you,” Ravi said with the kind of fake grin usually reser
ved for creepy clowns in horror movies.

  Teo just stood there with his mouth open. He had backed himself into the doorway. Jane figured he wanted to be able to beat a hasty retreat if she and Ravi went nuclear on each other.

  “You want a Pop-Tart?” Ravi asked Teo, holding the box he had found in the pantry and offering one to him but not to Jane.

  Truth be told, Jane did want a Pop-Tart, but she certainly wasn’t going to ask Ravi for one as if she were some kind of peasant asking for a boon.

  “I need to get out of here,” Ravi told the room. “I have SAT prep this morning. I need to get my score up if I’m serious about applying to anywhere Ivy League.”

  Jane rolled her eyes and tried not to regurgitate her granola bar.

  “How did you do on the SATs?” Ravi pointedly asked Jane, stuffing half a Pop-Tart into his mouth.

  Lucky for Jane, he wasn’t the first person she’d had to dodge on this matter. “I did perfectly fine for where I want to go.”

  “And where do you want to go?” Ravi asked, gesturing with the other half of his Pop-Tart. “I think you’d be good with one of those HVAC repair programs, or maybe a gas station attendant.”

  “Gee, I don’t know, Mom. Maybe wherever you aren’t?”

  Teo snorted and Jane looked over at him, shocked. Ravi usually tossed insults at Jane, and Jane took them while Teo stood idly by, ignoring their back-and-forth.

  As Jane was about to go on, feeling bolstered by Teo’s seeming appreciation of her level of wit, all three of his sisters came spilling into the kitchen.

  “Jane, Jane, Jane!” they all said at the same, each of them trying to tell her something different.

  Buck walked in then, too, and patted Teo on the back.

  “You’re looking good this morning,” Buck said to Teo, squeezing his biceps on one arm. “Did you start using heavier weights, like I suggested?”

  Jane would have died on the spot, but Teo seemed to take his stepfather’s words in stride, even if he curled in on himself a bit, crossing his arms and stepping away from Buck.

  Jane would have liked to stay and listen to the rest of the exchange because, damn, she should be getting exercise tips from Teo, and maybe Buck, too, if he was the genius behind Teo’s new body. Unfortunately, the girls were all desperate to take her to the basement and show her various toys.