Just Friends

by Elana Johnson

  When track ended, I decided to go running after school. It would keep me in shape for the mile sprints I might have to do, and give me a reason why I couldn’t hang out with Lance—not that he was asking. We hadn’t spoken since the messed-up press conference, and I heard his voice saying, “Your presence is a lecture, dude.” I wanted to brag about sneaking over to Jade’s, tell Lance all about what we did in her backyard, let him know that I wasn’t as perfect as he thought I was. I didn’t, mostly because I didn’t know how to approach him, and partly because I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted him to know about my midnight misdeeds.

  “Take the keys,” I said to Drew one Monday before school. With the track season over, I wouldn’t have the daily opportunity to run away from my issues. “You can drive home, right?”

  “Where are you going to be?” she asked.

  “I’m going to run home.”

  Drew raised her eyebrows. We hadn’t discussed my sneaking out, though she covered for me every time. We also didn’t talk about her doctoring her attendance records and sneaking into the gym with Omar. I knew she was doing it; she knew I knew. It seemed as though we’d reached a truce, doing what we could to protect each other and be with the people we wanted to be with.

  “You’re really going home?” she asked. It was about six miles from Stony Brook High to my house, and I needed the thirty minutes of non-thought. I wanted to stop by the student center after school too. Jade’s art was on exhibit and would be taken down by the end of the week.

  “Yep. So no kissing on the front porch. I don’t need to see that.” Drew scowled as she took the keys, and I turned toward Senior Row. Charity almost slammed into me. “Auditions are tomorrow,” she breathed, like she’d been running around looking for me. “I think we need to practice again. Can you meet at lunch, because I was thinking we need a live pianist instead of a recording, and Darren said he could get the music ready by tonight if we wanted to go over to his house later, and I—”

  “Charity,” I cut in, sort of looking over her shoulder and sort of trying to calm her down. Lance stood at my locker, leaning against it and chatting with Holly. I didn’t like how close they were standing, but Charity’s panic was almost a tangible thing.

  “I can practice at lunch,” I said, looking away from Lance. “But I don’t think we need to worry about it that much.” We’d sung the song to death. The bell rang before Charity could protest, and the halls started to clear.

  I still hadn’t gotten the books I needed for calc and French, but Charity was still speaking as I stepped around her. I focused on the two people at my locker. One of them leaned forward, and the barest of kisses happened right there in the hall. Maybe not lips against lips, but definitely in the near vicinity.

  I blinked. Holly settled back fully on her feet and turned to leave. She stopped when she saw me storming toward her. “Did you just kiss him?” I practically yelled. I looked over her head to my friend. “How long has this been going on?”

  Lance held up his hands—I noticed there was no blush on his face, despite the fact that he was sucking face with someone he had no right to hurt—and backed away from me. By the time I looked back to Holly, she’d ducked around me and was at the corner leading into the main hall.

  I stood in the now-empty Senior Row, fuming mad with no one to be angry with. I didn’t even know why I cared. Holly could kiss whoever she wanted. But Lance Higbee? The guy who’d kissed everyone on the girl’s basketball team? And the girl’s soccer team. And every chick in the entire drama club.

  Even Charity had vacated the area, probably because my fury was a scent on the air. I needed to get to first-period French, but at that moment, I didn’t think I could fold my body into the desk. I spun and headed to the locker room.

  With any luck, I’d get there before a hall monitor spotted me, and then I could leave campus for the day. Drew already had the car keys, and I didn’t give a crap about my classes.

  No such luck. Timmy Jacobsen aka The Hall Warden wrote me up for being out after the bell, and I snatched the citation while he was still talking. I stormed past the student center and changed direction. Inside, the air felt calmer. The space was filled with displays, some holding paintings, some with drawings, and a few pedestals with sculptures. Each was labeled with the name of the student and the title of the collection of art.

  I ducked between two displays when an administrator walked by, and I found myself staring at Lance. This rendition of him showed his vulnerable side. It was almost a profile of him, as if Jade had captured the idea that Lance truly did have different sides to him. He was smiling, and the light reached all the way to his eyes. His hair fell across his forehead, and his strong jaw was done in the darkest pencil. Jade had let the paper seep through in his teeth and eyes, and the space around his head. It was a stunning piece.

  Next to him, Holly’s picture hung. A full portrait, Holly’s shoulders were bare and disappeared at the bottom of the page. Her hair was up, secured at the back of her head the way it had been on Homecoming night. She was smiling without teeth, and she looked contemplative. Or calculating. I wasn’t sure which.

  I looked to the next drawing. I sucked in a breath as I looked at myself. I wasn’t smiling. I was looking down at something on the ground, an intense look of concentration on my face. I could’ve been doing homework or getting ready to start a race. No matter what, I looked intense, mysterious. Unhappy.

  Was this how Jade saw me?

  Just below that, Omar’s smiling face peered out from the canvas. His skin was shaded to show his Hispanic heritage, and his black-as-night eyes were shining with laughter. This was the epitome of Omar. His good-naturedness, his spontaneity. She’d captured it all in pencil strokes.

  Above the display, Jade had titled the collection “Friends.”

  A hard knot settled in my stomach. I’d been a crappy friend to Lance, Holly, and Omar. I hadn’t spoken to any of them in weeks. I’d said mean things to them, pushed them away so I could spend more time with Jade. I’d ignored my sister’s pleas, instead using her to further my relationship with Jade, to lie to Mom and Dad.

  I studied Holly’s picture again. I saw her as the girl who moved in next door, who laughed at all my stupid jokes, who told me how to act around girls. I thought of Lance’s color-coded closet, his perfect GPA, the real person he was under the façade. I couldn’t look at Jade’s art for another second. I ran out of the student center and down the hall toward the locker room. I changed my clothes, left my backpack in my gym locker, and set my feet free on the pavement.

  By the time I ran past Jade’s house, I’d taken off my jersey and shoved it in the waistband of my shorts. It flapped against my right leg with every step, but I didn’t care. It set the pace, and I needed the distraction. Because my thoughts were bleeding into my running. I turned around and ran back to Jade’s. I stood in the front yard, just looking at the mansion.

  Without thinking, I strode up to the door and knocked. My side hurt and my leg muscles were twitching, unaccustomed to this sudden stop and lack of cool down.

  Mrs. Montgomery opened the door, smiled for a fraction of a second, and stepped back with a startled gasp. “Mitch,” she said, skating her eyes from mine to my bare chest, my feet, and back to my face.

  “I’m sorry,” I panted. “I was just running by, and I know Jade’s not home, but I just wanted to say that it sucks that you’re watching us so closely, and we haven’t even done anything wrong.” I paused to catch a proper breath. “That’s it. I like her a lot, and I don’t want to hurt her. And yeah. That’s it.”

  Mrs. Montgomery looked at me as if I’d sprouted horns and then told her she would too if she talked to me for too long.

  “I’m gonna go now,” I said. I really needed to, before I said something stupid about how I’d been kissing her almost every night in the backyard.

  She nodded, and I leapt down her stairs and continued my frantic pace as I tried to figure out what I’d just done.

>   Another mile down the road, and I came to my block. I forced my feet into an easy rhythm, and began my usual cool down procedures. I paced in front of Holly’s house, thinking about Jade’s drawings. She’d put my pictures in a group with Lance, Holly, and Omar and called us friends. My chest tightened. They were my friends. I’d just turned into New-Mitch, and he was someone who didn’t care about them.

  I marched up to Holly’s front door and turned the knob. Mrs. Isaacson never locked the house. It was dark and warm inside, an instant relief from the chilly November wind. I paused at the piano in the living room, skating my fingers along the sheet music poised there. I couldn’t read music for crap, but I imagined Holly’s able fingers on the ivory keys.

  I allowed myself to miss her. We hadn’t exchanged phones in so long I wondered if we ever would again. I couldn’t get the image of her in that emerald green dress out of my mind, and I couldn’t believe she and Lance were openly kissing in Senior Row. What had happened on Homecoming night? To me, and how I saw Holly? To them?

  I tore my gaze from the piano, the memories that accompanied it too painful. I wandered upstairs to the bedrooms, noting that Scott’s was completely empty even after all these weeks. Not even a box or spare piece of furniture had been moved into it.

  I imagined Holly walking past this emptiness every day, and some of the anger I’d kept boxed up faded into sadness. I remembered her saying You can’t take that away from me too, Mitch about reading my texts.

  I realized she didn’t mean that I had specifically taken something else from her. Just that she was losing a lot, and I didn’t even know it.

  I went past the bathroom and into Holly’s room. She was just as neat as she’d always been. Her clothes didn’t litter the floor, and her A-Day books were stacked on her desk. Her bed was unmade, but I didn’t dare touch it. Instead, I climbed out the window and sat on her roof, just five feet from my own.

  My sweat cooled, and the sky turned a dark shade of gray as a storm rolled in. I went back in Holly’s room and stood there, looking around at everything that epitomized the girl I’d grown up with.

  I re-lived the kiss in my kitchen whether I wanted to or not. So many things came at me at once. Holly’s smell. Her smile. Her laugh. The way her mouth felt against mine.

  I saw Omar kissing Drew for the first time on our front porch. I remembered kissing Jade in my car that night when her dad came out wearing his disapproving frown, and sneaking over there after, and really seeing her come to life through the drawings on her bedroom wall. I heard myself say those hurtful things to Lance at the press conference.

  I clenched my fists, trying to keep the fissure from breaking fully. My teeth ground together. I shook.

  I let myself fall.

  Holly found me in her room when she got home from school. “Mitch,” she gasped. I rolled over in her bed and looked at her. I didn’t even care that my tears had dried to my face, or that I wasn’t wearing a shirt, or that she was holding a baseball bat.

  She dropped the makeshift weapon and hurried to my side. “What’s the matter? What happened?” Her hands hovered just inches from touching me. Her gaze swept from my head to my feet, searching for injuries, but my wounds weren’t visible. She looked out the window as if the answer for my being in her bedroom might be hovering there. “Is your mom okay? Drew?”

  I shook my head and willed the tears to stay contained. I tried to sit up, but she shoved me back down. “I’ll be right back.” She sprinted out the room and a minute later the front door slammed. I suspected she’d gone to my house to see if everything was okay, then she’d return more confused than ever.

  I knew I was. Holly and Jade had gotten all mixed up in my head. Friends? Girlfriends? I didn’t know. It was like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. Every time I’d tried while lying in Holly’s room, they’d morphed into a warped version of themselves I didn’t recognize. Holly with her stupid, emerald Homecoming dress. I couldn’t see her properly—the way I used to—without seeing those bare shoulders and her long legs. And Jade with her soft lips and light laugh didn’t mesh with the reports of her acid tongue and jealous tendencies.

  They’d definitely become unrecognizable. Or maybe I had.

  I’d pulled myself together by the time Holly came back—with Omar. I’d gotten up and put on my running jersey so we didn’t have to co-exist in the same space with me being half-naked. Or mostly naked as my training shorts can hardly be called a piece of fabric.

  “Mitch?” Holly asked as she entered her bedroom. “Are you all right?”

  I stood and couldn’t quite look her or Omar in the face. “I’m okay.”

  Holly put her hand on my arm, and that simple motion steadied me, anchoring me to reality. I felt the chasm inside me opening again, and I worked to close it.

  Omar and Holly exchanged a glance. “I’ll wait downstairs, okay?” The genuine concern on his face made my heart squeeze so tight. He cared about Holly, maybe as much as I did. She nodded and we listened to his footsteps as he went downstairs.

  “So everyone is alive and fine at your house,” Holly said, leaning against the doorframe and watching me. “Your mom said you missed all your classes today—she’s pretty pissed, just as a heads up. Also, Charity was pretty hysterical at lunch. She screamed your name from the door of the cafeteria. Ivy had to tell her you weren’t there.”

  I’d need to text Ivy and tell her thank you. My phone had buzzed several times throughout the day. I’d ignored it, instead choosing to re-live memories of growing up with Holly and the things we used to do together.

  “Remember when you had that puppy?” I asked. The surprise on Holly’s face was immediate, and quickly morphed into a smile.

  “Boots,” she said.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “We found out Mom was allergic to dogs,” she said. “And by allergic, I mean she doesn’t like them.” Holly laughed, but it sounded forced. “She took him to the pound, and they placed him with the Fischer’s. Remember Blair Fischer?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t have many friends, which was another thing I’d realized while lying in Holly’s bed. Just her for most of my life. And Danny when he moved in, because he had a trampoline and we didn’t care that he liked to dance. I had Lance and Omar, but right now neither of them liked me very much.

  I held everything too close, too tight. Holly had been the release for that, and while she’d had other boyfriends, none of them had hurt the way Greg had.

  “You shut me out,” I said, my voice alien and raw. “Then you’re kissing me. I don’t know what any of it means.”

  She looked past me, confusion filtering through her eyes. “I don’t understand it either.”

  “Why did you kiss me?” I shuffled forward, and she mirrored my movement as she slid backward into the hall. “Please,” I begged. “I have to know what that meant.”

  “Why do two people kiss?” she asked, her freckles popping out as she blushed. She gestured to me and then to her.

  So she did like me. “But how—? When? Why then?”

  “You said you missed me,” she said.

  “So what?” I asked. “I did miss you. I still do. You’re my best friend. You tell me how to act around girls, and remind me of my homework that’s due, and know what to do about… everything.”

  “You said history was torture without me.” Her voice sounded small. “What was I supposed to think about those texts?”

  “That they meant ‘I miss you’ and ‘History sucks without you’.”

  She looked away from me so fast it was as if I’d slapped her. Did she really think they meant, “I love you and want to kiss you.”?

  “Holly, I—”

  “Please, Mitch, don’t say it out loud.” She stepped forward and hugged me hard. “I kissed you because I wanted to. Because sometime when I was dating Greg, I realized I didn’t like him and I did like you. Then you started dating Jade, and that sucked.” She pulled back. We loo
ked at each other, and neither of us seemed to want to speak first.

  “I want us to be friends again,” I finally said.

  “I want us—” She shook her head. “You should go, Mitch.”

  “Phones?” I asked, though I’d already left mine on her desk. I’d typed out all my anger and confusion, and I hoped she’d be able to make sense of it.

  She rummaged in her backpack and withdrew hers. “There’s nothing on it.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Where’s yours?”

  “On your desk.” I stepped toward her like I might hug her again—I wanted to—but the look on her face told me I shouldn’t. So I turned the step forward into a side-step and went downstairs.

  26

  Omar met me in the kitchen. “Dude,” he said. “Your mom was so mad. Drew said you were running home after school, but your mom is under the impression that you skipped school.”

  “I did,” I said, taking a glass out of Holly’s cupboard and filling it with water.

  “You never skip,” he said. “And you should’ve told me. I had freaking creative writing today. I would’ve loved to have missed that.” He slid me a sly smile, and I gulped my water so I could stuff the rising emotion back down inside myself.

  “Mitch,” Omar said, and the emotion in his voice caught my attention. He studied me, his gaze heavy and penetrating. “You okay? For real?”

  I shook my head, unable to vocalize what was wrong with me, only knowing something was. I saw the life Jade had captured in Omar’s eyes, and she’d nailed it. Even though he wasn’t laughing now, the spark was present.

  “Did you break up with Jade?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve been sneaking out every night to see her.”

  Omar’s mouth dropped open. “Wow, that’s…so not you. Sneaking out, skipping classes.” He looked away from me. “You’re hardly the guy I know.”