Just Friends

by Elana Johnson

  Dad had been preaching to me for years about keeping an eye on my sister, and while Lance was just as constant at my house as Omar, I knew he was not on Dad’s short list of approved boyfriends.

  In third grade, when Drew started kindergarten, I heard “Take care of her, Mitch,” every day as we left to go to the bus stop. In fourth grade, I heard “Make sure you get her after school, Mitch,” as if Drew couldn’t get to the bus by herself. And she hadn’t. I’d picked her up outside her classroom door every day. In fifth grade, I heard, “Listen to Mitch, Drew. Be safe, you two.” When I started sixth grade at the middle school, my mom cried because Drew would have to be alone at the elementary school as a third grader.

  This morning, Dad had grabbed the Pop-Tart from my hand at the same time he yanked his keys off the hook by the garage door. “Watch out for Drew,” were his parting words as he left for work.

  Drew was beautiful—not hot—because Mom was beautiful. Long, dark hair, with long, dark lashes. Just enough freckles to appease my mom and just enough curves to keep my friends coming around for more.

  I hadn’t had any problem keeping an eye on Drew until this year. Of course, she had really helped in the past by rolling out of bed and going to school in gym shorts and yesterday’s T-shirt. Then sometime over the summer she decided she wanted to shop for real clothes, and put gelly crap in her hair, and wear makeup that made her lips smell like strawberries.

  All her stuff crowded the bathroom counter and made my friends realize she wasn’t a boy, despite the masculine name.

  Lance caught my eye and made a kissy sound. Then he put on his protective facemask fast enough that I couldn’t punch him and took a position at the solder iron so we couldn’t talk. I bent over my miniature filing cabinet, thinking about my sister.

  She was all I had. Sure, she annoyed me pretty much all the time—she was definitely Mom and Dad’s favorite—but we watched out for each other. I bandaged her knees when she crashed her bike while Mom and Dad were shopping, and she took the blame for the broken window when I threw an errant baseball.

  We rode to school together everyday, and I’d spent so much time being her protector that I operated in that mode without a second thought. Keeping her away from my slobbering friends topped my Protecting Drew list. Holly would know what to do about Lance and Omar. Or at least she’d put her hands on her hips and tell them off for lusting after freshmen, even if the freshman in question did wear hookeresque clothing.

  I shoved away the thoughts of my sister’s pathetic dress code. She was right—I wasn’t her father, even if he did ask me to watch over her. I replaced my thoughts of Drew with those of Holly, but quickly found those just as frustrating. I’d survived her relationships before, and I’d do it again. When she and Greg broke up, she’d come back over and watch movies with my family, and after that we’d sit on the roof, and she’d ask what she’d missed.

  But right now, I just wished I didn’t need her advice so badly.

  Lunch followed me to the part of the cafeteria where the track team flirted with jockularity by sitting only a table away from the baseball team, which was located next to the football/cheerleader table.

  Ivy Olsen had already sat down and hadn’t saved me a seat. Sometimes she did, and sometimes she didn’t, but today, I really wished she had. Instead I sat next to a guy who threw javelin and passed my cardboard rectangubowl of salad to her.

  Ivy had a tiny waist that bloomed into a nice butt—the kind Lance would say “fit into his palms nicely,”—despite the gallons of salad she ate every day. She ran sprints, and her calves testified that she was really good at it. Ivy was easy to look at, with wide, green eyes, and hair the color of hot chocolate.

  I wasn’t interested in dating her, but I didn’t mind sitting next to her every day at lunch or running with her at my side.

  Ivy slid me her chocolate milk, and we combined our tater tots into one pile on the corner of her tray. I started mixing the ketchup and mayo packets she’d gotten while she finished her conversation with some girl who ran the medley with Holly.

  “Want to get a shake after the track meet on Friday?” I asked when Ivy turned her attention to me.

  Ivy seemed shocked by my question, and I realized my mistake. Did that sound like a date invitation? Before I could clarify, she said, “Yeah, sure. Sounds great.”

  “Great.” I started eating. I didn’t want to discuss every detail to death. I just needed someone to hang out with so I wouldn’t have to be alone. When Holly didn’t have a boyfriend, she and I did everything together. When she did, I filled my time with as many friends as possible.

  I let Ivy talk through lunch and we walked through C-hall and B-hall to English lit. At one point she slipped her arm through mine, but I didn’t do anything about it. I wished I had when we entered the classroom. Jade Montgomery turned as if she sensed my presence, and she smiled at the same time her eyes flickered to where Ivy had a hold of my arm.

  Confusion fluttered through Jade’s expression and she whipped her face back to the open book on her desk. She combed her fingers through her hair, bringing it down in a silky black wall between us. I remembered the first time I’d met her. It was just before school got out last year, and she was reading during lunch—that long hair a curtain between her and everything else in the world.

  I’d talked to her for just a minute, and then I’d spent weeks and weeks obsessing over her. Where did she live? Did she have a boyfriend? I figured out the answers to my questions through Facebook and some fine detective work. Turned out she lived only a mile from me, and when Holly stopped running with us, I suggested to Lance and Ivy that we switch our route so we’d go past Jade’s house. It was a simple thing that neither of them questioned.

  I couldn’t have been happier when I saw her in my English lit class—the only one we had together.

  Where Ivy carried the little bit of fat she had in her butt, Jade carried it in her chest. I’d looked—I was a male interested in females, after all—but that was it. Unlike Lance, I didn’t make crude comments, and I didn’t sleep with everything with an X chromosome. In fact, I hadn’t slept with a girl at all. Being the son of a volunteer-pastor father and a mother intent on making sure her only son knew how to treat girls was hard sometimes. Other times, I was glad I had a mom and a dad—something Omar, Lane, and Holly didn’t have—that cared enough about me to hound me about homework, chores, saving money, and serving others.

  Besides, most girls scared me. But if one existed who I wanted to get to know up close and personal, it was Jade Montgomery. She had miles and miles of skin the color of cinnamon. I’d seen a lot of it too, because I’d been sitting behind her in English lit since school started and she wore a lot of tank tops.

  She looked and smelled soft and smooth, like baby powder or fabric softener. Something I wanted to close my eyes and breathe in, and then open my mouth and taste.

  I swallowed as I extracted myself from Ivy so I could make my way to my seat. I wished I had my phone so I could text Jade. Instead, I leaned forward. “Hey, Jade.”

  “Hey, Mitch.” Her voice barely met my ears through the pre-bell chatter.

  “Want to come over after track?” I asked. “My mom’s making meatballs.”

  “Meatball Monday,” she said, turning and bringing back the smile that made me want to sit up taller and flex.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So you wanna come? Should I pick you up on my way home, or you wanna ride your bike over?”

  “You’ll have to shower before dinner, so I’ll ride over.”

  “Okay. Like, six?”

  “‘Like six’ works for me.” Her lips parted as her smile widened, revealing straight white teeth.

  The bell rang, and I sat back, proud I’d managed to turn our usual sixty-second conversations about literature and homework into an actual dinner invitation. With my family, but still. Jade liked to bike, and we’d talked about how she’d ridden past my house hundreds of times. Shoving away all thoughts
of Jade in tight sportswear, I attempted to tune in for what Mrs. Nordstrom called “a rousing discussion of Huck Finn.”

  My mind wandered to Ivy—I should’ve asked someone else to hang out after the meet. I’d forgotten how touchy-feely she could be. How possessive. She probably thought we were dating now that I’d asked her to get ice cream.

  Girls could be so complicated sometimes.

  I wanted Jade to think I’d asked her out, but coming to my house for dinner could hardly be considered romantic. Exciting, yes, because Dad always had a great story about his patients at the hospital, and Mom could charm a pumpkin into a carriage. Drew had taken up gossip at the same time she’d taken up makeup, and she could have a conversation with herself for hours.

  Sometimes I made it through dinner without speaking at all, which was just the way I liked it. With Jade there, though, at least I’d have someone to chase away the thoughts of how Greg wouldn’t let Holly talk to me, and how Holly didn’t defend our friendship to her boyfriends, and how I needed to ask her how to interact with Jade freaking Montgomery.

  A wave of frustration accompanied the totally un-rousing discussion of Huck Finn. Why did I waste so much time thinking about Holly? Who cared that she ditched me every time she started kissing someone?

  I’d be better off if I ignored her too. Starting now, I thought. Then I amended that to After I get my phone back.

  The retrieval of my phone took five seconds. I marched up to Holly’s locker after English lit. Greg was there, so I didn’t speak. I just held out my palm. Holly looked at me for a moment, then reached into her backpack and took out my phone. “I didn’t have time to slaughter you in Word Play.”

  I grunted as I took my phone and headed to AP biology. With any luck, Mr. Newton wouldn’t have “an amazing dissection lab” for us today. Lady Luck played on my side as Mr. Newton set up his projector and proceeded to show us slides of mutated cells.

  I switched on my phone and checked our game of Word Play, even though she’d said she hadn’t gone yet. Our obsession with the pass ‘n play word game had started our phone exchange two years ago. Since then, we texted each other from whatever device we had. My parents and friends knew that if they got a text from Holly’s number, it most likely came from me. The lack of punctuation probably tipped them off too.

  Sometime last year we’d migrated from just playing games to leaving each other messages. It started with a free app of the day. The Post-It note app. We both downloaded it, and now we had entire conversations on colored scraps of virtual paper.

  I opened my note app, and sure enough, Holly had started one by turning it purple and typing Mitch, we need to talk about

  My mind filled in that blank with dozens of options. Drew. Omar. Track. History. Greg.

  I reminded myself that I wasn’t talking to Holly about anything and closed the app. I opened my text messages and sent one to Jade. Looking forward to tonight! I hoped it was the right thing to say, but without Holly to collaborate with, I wasn’t entirely sure.

  3

  Holly texted and said she didn’t need a ride home after track. I drove home alone, for once enjoying the solitude that came when Drew wasn’t filling the car with her constant chatter.

  I turned the corner onto Varsity Heights, where I saw two people sitting on my front steps. Kissing.

  I leaned on the horn as I roared into the driveway. Drew and Omar jumped apart, and I leapt out of the car and had him by the throat by the time either of them had realized what had happened.

  “I warned you,” I said as I cocked my fist back.

  “Mitch, stop it!” Drew yelled, hanging onto my arm so I couldn’t throw the punch.

  “Go inside,” I barked. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Making dinner,” Drew said. “She knows he’s here.”

  “She know you’re playing tonsil hockey with him?” I kept my grip on Omar’s collar, letting my fury seep out through the tightness in my fingers. No one moved. I looked back and forth between my sister’s frantic eyes and Omar’s guilty ones.

  “Dude, you suck.” I thrust him away from me. “Yeah, you just…suck.”

  Drew stared at me. I put my arm around her shoulders and yanked open the front door. She entered first, throwing an apologetic look over her shoulder. I slammed the door behind me and stood there while my eyes adjusted to the shadowy living room. My heart beat like I’d sprinted a mile.

  “I like him,” Drew whispered.

  “He’s using you.”

  A second of silence deepened the rift between us. “I hate you, Mitch.” She hadn’t raised her voice, but her tone carried such hatred, I flinched. “Why can’t he like me back?” She ran up the stairs to her bedroom before I could answer.

  I might have said, “Because he never cared about you until you started wearing those skanky tops.” Which would’ve been true.

  Or, “Maybe I know more about Omar than you do.” And I did. I’d heard him talk about girls—too many girls—and not in the way I wanted him talking about my sister.

  Or maybe I wouldn’t have said anything.

  I sighed and went back outside to turn off the car and get my backpack. Omar shuffled down the sidewalk toward his house. I didn’t call after him, because I didn’t trust myself not to clock him right in that mouth he’d used to kiss my sister.

  “Mitch,” Mom said when I came in through the garage to the kitchen. It smelled like barbeque sauce and butter. “There you are. Jade’s in the backyard.”

  “Really?” I dropped my backpack and looked out the window above the kitchen sink. I hadn’t seen her bike out front, but I’d been pretty preoccupied with getting Omar’s lips away from Drew’s.

  “Backpack,” Mom said. “Not there. Shoes too,” she added before I could kick mine off next to the door. “She got here a few minutes ago. Said you’d invited her for dinner.”

  “I did,” I said. “But not till six.” The clock read 5:10.

  “Maybe she thought it was five,” Mom said, stirring something on the stove.

  I agreed with her so I could leave, but no way Jade thought it was five. I stepped onto the deck and yelled to the corner of the yard where she sat in the tire swing in the tiniest patch of shade. “I’m gonna shower and then I’ll be right out.”

  She waved and I ran upstairs to the bathroom Drew and I shared. After I got re-dressed, I checked my phone. Jade and I had texted through most of fourth period, when she had a college-prep computer programming class. The teacher managed two computer labs during that time, so Jade had a lot of unsupervised time.

  I imagined that she’d come early because she wanted to see me without my family hanging around. I set my phone on vibrate and went to join her in the backyard.

  “Want me to push you?” I asked. The September evening heat roasted my backyard, and I cursed our lack of landscaping as sweat ran down my back.

  She stood up. “Sorry I came early.” Jade wore dark makeup around her eyes, and her jeans fit well enough to make me take a second look to make sure I’d seen everything worth seeing.

  “Why did you come early?” I almost groaned at the stupidity of my question. Why were in-person conversations so hard?

  “Hey, you guys want some shade?” Thankfully, my backyard neighbor, Danny Lafariat appeared over the fence. Up and then down. Up, and down.

  “Hey, Danny.” I glanced at Jade. She’d come early—and for what? To go hang out with my neighbor? I raised my eyebrows at her, and she gave a little shrug.

  His yard had shade. “Yeah, let me tell my mom.” I texted her that we’d be at Danny’s and to text me for dinner, then Jade and I went through the gate. These actions allowed me to exist without talking, and Jade didn’t have to answer my idiotic question.

  We joined Danny on his trampoline, where we laid on our backs and looked at the sky. Not a cloud in sight, and enough wind and shade to keep me cool. I lay between Danny and Jade, and suddenly the need to say something overwhelmed me.

  “How’s the bal
lroom team, Dan?” I asked.

  Thankfully, he launched into his fall practice routine, and the dances the team needed to master, and who he was partnering. I knew from past experience that he’d fill the silence for a good ten minutes, and all I’d have to do was “Mm-hmm” every once in a while.

  Jade remained silent, and when I turned to look at her, I found her face close-close, watching me. She smiled, and I returned it. Danny spoke with his hands now, every move jostling the trampoline. On his next wild gesture, I slid my hand closer to Jade. My fingers fumbled over hers, my pulse pounding against the back of my tongue. She aligned them, causing sparks to flow from our joined hands up to my shoulder.

  After dinner—where Mom had been confused that Omar wasn’t with us—after I finished my homework, long after Jade rode home, I crept out my bedroom window to sit on the roof overhanging the porch. Jade and I had held hands for maybe four minutes, but I could still feel her palm against mine.

  Dad had entertained us during dinner with a story about a woman coming out of anesthesia who’d babbled about the secrets she’d learned while vacationing in Russia. I couldn’t stop laughing, even when I sneaked looks at Jade to see if she thought I was an idiot. At that moment, I didn’t care what she thought. It just felt so good to not be worrying about my homework, Drew and Omar kissing, and Holly’s silence.

  Drew hadn’t spoken to me during dinner, and she’d retreated to her bedroom immediately after. I’d wandered out front to say good-bye to Jade, and by the time I made it back to the kitchen, someone had done my after-dinner chores for me. I stopped in my sister’s bedroom to thank her, and Drew glared at me. “Like I would do your chores after you made Omar leave.”

  So I’d gone back downstairs and thanked my mom, who waved me away with a tired smile.

  Now on my personal patch of roof, outside with the night already descended on the neighborhood, I finally relaxed. I wondered how I could go from inviting Jade over for dinner with my family to asking her out to dinner with just me. From being friends to friends who held hands, and then maybe kissed.