by Megan Hart
Tristan seemed to realize it, too. He shielded her from sight with his body. “Sorry, el roomo es occupado.”
“Dude, it’s my room!”
“Can you come back in about ten minutes?” Tristan asked.
Rebecca heard soft, gruff laughter from Ilya. “Sure, if that’s only how long you can last.”
“C’mon,” Jennilynn said. “Let’s get out of here.”
When they’d gone, turning the light off too, Tristan sat up. “Oops.”
Her stomach was churning, only this time not with lustful anticipation. Richie didn’t hang around with Ilya, but he and Jennilynn had a bunch of classes together, and Rebecca didn’t trust the other girl not to spill the beans. She was known for being a little bitchy, a side of her Rebecca had witnessed but never experienced personally, since she had the same sort of reputation.
“Hey. You okay?”
Rebecca hadn’t realized she was shaking until Tristan touched her shoulder. She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. If she opened her mouth, she would cry. Or puke.
“They couldn’t see you,” he said as though he knew exactly her reasons for being scared.
She shook her head and gulped down a sour runnel of spit. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Anyway, they were both pretty wasted.” Tristan shifted so they could both sit up next to each other.
“I should go.”
He made a small noise and put a hand on her knee. “Wait.”
“Really, I shouldn’t have come up here with you,” she began, but he squeezed her knee and she fell silent.
“You said you wanted me to kiss you.”
“I did.”
Tristan looked serious. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I mean, Richie or anything. I won’t tell him.”
“Thanks. Still, I shouldn’t have come up here with you, or kissed you…or anything else.”
“You must’ve had a reason,” he said.
Rebecca closed her eyes for a second. She drew in a slow breath. The floor felt slanted under her toes, even though she knew it wasn’t.
“I just…wanted something different,” she told him, trying to explain something she wasn’t quite sure she understood herself.
“I’m something different?”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes. “You’re something very different, Tristan.”
Chapter 8
Jenni
Then
On Monday, school was abuzz with stories of the blowout party that had happened over the weekend. Rumors were growing, spread by kids who hadn’t been invited or who’d stupidly passed up the chance to attend, some of them confirmed and exaggerated by kids who’d been there to make themselves look cooler. Jenni herself had been asked point-blank if it was true that the undercover cop at the party had been convinced not to bust anyone because he’d been given a blowie by an unnamed freshman. She’d said yes.
Jenni had already been a princess at school. Popular, although she knew it wasn’t because she was well-liked. Other girls tried to be like her. Guys wanted to get with her. She knew about her bitchy reputation, and it had never bothered her because it was at least a little true. Now, though, the stories of the epic party spread and grew, launching Jenni into the realm of superstar.
Only one thing had happened that she was a little worried about, and she was going to confront Rebecca Segal about it right away. Jenni found her in study hall, sixth period. Miss Delaney was notorious for taking a very long bathroom break at the beginning of this period, leaving her study hall unattended. So long as everyone kept the noise down none of the other teachers seemed to notice, and most of the kids used the time to gossip and chat rather than study.
“Hey.” Jenni slid into the desk next to Rebecca.
Rebecca had been reading a book and making notes on the pulpy gray notepad the school provided at the start of every month. She looked up, eyes narrowed, her smile insincere. “Hi.”
“I want to talk to you about the party.” Jenni leaned forward so nobody could overhear them. “You better not tell anyone about me.”
The other girl blinked and furrowed her brow. “About…you?”
“Don’t play stupid,” Jenni hissed. “I know you were in Ilya’s room with Tristan. I know you saw us going up there. You’d better not spread any rumors about me and him. That’s all.”
“Why would I?” Rebecca looked pissed off. She also leaned forward, dropping her voice. “You’d better not say anything about me being there, either.”
“Mutually assured destruction,” Jenni told her with a grimace.
Rebecca nodded and sat back. “Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I wouldn’t say anything about it. It was a party. People do dumb things at parties like that.”
“I just don’t want anyone thinking me and Ilya are more than friends.” Jenni hated the way her throat had closed up and the burning of tears behind her eyelids.
Why did she care so damned much? So what if Rebecca told the whole school that she and Ilya had been going to his bedroom, which she wouldn’t, because doing so would give up her own secrets, and Jenni ought to have known that. Why did she care so much about any of it?
“I won’t say anything to anyone.” Rebecca looked concerned. “Are you all right?”
Jenni was not all right. The party had ended days ago, but Jenni still felt hungover. Colors too harsh, lights too bright. She’d fidgeted her way through the first five periods today. Couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t wait to get out of school. She had to work the evening shift at the diner tonight, already had some deliveries scheduled. Cash money.
Maybe she’d see Steve.
The thought of that quieted her. “I’m fine. Just know that if you do say anything, I will end you.”
“Jeeze, fine, okay.” Rebecca frowned and shook her head. “I get it.”
For a fleeting second, Jenni felt bad. She and Rebecca had never been friends, but they hadn’t been enemies, either. Until Jenni had recognized her under Tristan in Ilya’s bed, she’d never have given the other girl even a passing thought. Now, though, they seemed inextricably linked by the fact that both of them had witnessed the other doing something neither one wanted anyone else to know.
Without another word, Jenni got up from the desk and went back to her own just as Ms. Delaney came into the room. “Okay, class, settle. Settle. Who needs library passes?”
Hands went up, including Rebecca’s. Jenni had no reason to visit the library. She looked out the window instead. As a half dozen kids filed up for passes, she put her head in one hand and pretended she was busy taking notes. Truth was, she might try to grab a nap. There was only half an hour left in the period.
She slept.
She dreamed.
* * *
Last Summer
"She says they're going to get married!"
Ilya paced in Jenni's den. Her parents were still at work, and Allie was upstairs in her room with the radio playing loud. Summer vacation had just started, but already they were bored, wanting to get into trouble. He and Jenni had planned to smoke a little weed and watch some shitty scary movies, the kind with a lot of bare bouncing boobs and blood.
Jenni hadn’t been expecting Ilya to drop this bomb. "She's going to marry that guy? The one from the hospital?"
"Barry Malone. Yeah. That's what she says. Next month. Talk about short notice." Ilya threw himself onto the couch beside her.
"Maybe she's knocked up," Jenni said and ducked away from the cushion he used to hit her. "Stop it, jerk!"
Ilya didn’t laugh. "You wouldn't be laughing if it was your mother."
"Awww. Poor puppy."
Jenni had some problems with her folks, but nothing like Ilya and Niko had to handle with their mom, Galina. She was crazy. Like, literally. But Jenni couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t have to tell him, Ilya knew it. But she couldn’t say it to him, because he was so clearly upset.
They’d been friends for so long, all their lives, it felt like. When she gestured f
or him to come closer, he gave in to her embrace. She petted his hair. The kiss happened almost by accident, although later Jenni would have to admit to herself that she’d been thinking about trying that out for a long time.
Somehow she was on his lap, his face in her hands and her mouth on his. They kissed and kissed and kissed, and she ground herself against him. Ilya pushed up against her, turned them both until they were on the couch with him between her legs, they moved and rocked together, and it was better than anything she’d ever felt before, with anyone. Ever.
She went still at the sound he made. Heat flooded between them and when he pulled away, a small dark spot had bloomed on the front of his jeans. Jenni didn’t know what to do about that. She knew what it meant, obviously, but not how they’d gone so far, so fast. What did this mean for them now?
Ilya wasn’t looking at her. He shifted, tugging at the crotch of his jeans. Jenni didn’t want him to regret this. She didn’t, did she? She couldn’t even be sure of her own feelings about this, only that everything had changed between them, and it was suddenly weird. Too weird.
"Hey, let's go to the fireman's carnival," she said abruptly. "My mom left me some money to order a pizza for dinner, but if we let Allie come with us, we can use it there. Call Niko. Babulya will drive us, won't she?"
“She wouldn’t have to, if you got your license already,” he told her.
Jenni made a face. Ilya didn’t have his license yet, either. “Jerk.”
“Bitch,” he said, but fondly.
Maybe it would be okay.
At the carnival, the four of them gorged on junk food and rode a few of the rickety rides. Allie and Niko broke off to go find funnel cakes, but Jenni stopped in front of the game booth decorated with gigantic grinning goldfish.
"You want one?" It was just about the first thing Ilya had said to her since they’d gotten off the couch.
It took him a couple tries, but at last he sunk a pingpong ball into one of the small fish bowls. Jenni held up the plastic baggie, the water swirling with fish poop. Inside, a gold and black fish gaped at her.
"I'm going to name him Chester," she said and kissed Ilya on the cheek.
Some time after that, she tossed poor old Chester into the quarry, and not long after that, she went over to the Sterns’ house one day when Galina’s car was not in the driveway. Allie had gone to the library. Jenni had been looking for Ilya, but she’d found Galina’s new husband, instead.
* * *
Jenni startled herself awake just before the bell signaling the end of class rang. Embarrassed, she looked around to see if anyone had noticed her sleeping. Nobody seemed to.
Dreaming about that first time with Ilya left her with an unsettled feeling in her gut. He’d won her that goldfish, and she’d tossed it in the quarry. Galina and Barry had married shortly after that in a no-frills ceremony that seemed to have taken everyone by surprise except the two of them. Jenni had gone on to finally get her driver’s license. Then the job at the diner. She’d started working for Barry, exchanging the pills for money.
She and Ilya...well. What the hell were they, anyway? She hadn’t known that first time at the beginning of the summer. She still didn’t know.
Pagers had been forbidden at school, but hers was in her purse, wrapped up in a pair of thick socks to keep the buzz muffled. She checked it now, surreptitiously. At the sight of a message, her heart leaped. She couldn’t stop herself from grinning even as she tucked it back into her bag.
Steve was back in town. He wanted to see her. Jenni trembled at the thought of it, and that made it easier to stop thinking about Ilya altogether.
Chapter 9
Rebecca
Then
The note in Rebecca’s locker wasn’t signed, but she knew immediately who’d left it there. Scrawled in a loose, looping hand, the note contained only a phone number. She tucked it into the pocket of her jeans just as Richie came up behind her to put an arm around her shoulders.
“Cut it out.” She shrugged out of his grasp with a frown.
“Why?”
“You can’t just come up to me and grab me like that,” Rebecca told him. “It’s gross.”
Richie looked offended. “Sorry. I just thought, being that you’re my girlfriend and all….”
“That doesn’t give you the right to just grab me whenever you feel like it.” This was the first time she’d seen him since Saturday evening, when they’d parted ways. Usually they met in the mornings to walk the school halls before homeroom, but today she’d “overslept.”
He couldn’t see it on her, the fact she’d made out with Tristan. He couldn’t know she’d fallen asleep in the back seat of Tristan’s car, or that he’d driven her home in the first blush of dawn, before her parents woke up. The only person who might have a clue was Jennilynn, and she wasn’t going to say anything to anyone.
He couldn’t see her guilt, either, because she wasn’t feeling any.
She was going to break up with him. Right now. No explanation, or maybe she’d use the fact he grabbed her as an excuse. Rebecca’s mouth opened, ready with the words.
“I’m going over to Benji’s house after school today, but Mom wanted me to ask you if you wanted to come to Friday night dinner this week.” Richie paused to look apologetic. “She’s doing the whole candles and challah thing.”
While Rebecca’s parents made a point of celebrating all the Jewish holidays, they rarely did the Friday night shabbat dinner. Mrs. Goldman, on the other hand, had decided a few years before that at least once a month, the family would do “the candles and challah thing,” a Friday night dinner with all the traditional blessings and fanfare. Sometimes she invited Rebecca’s parents, too.
Sure enough, the next words out of Richie’s mouth were “she says to ask your mom and dad if they want to come.”
She was trapped. A rising misery throttled her as easily as a fist squeezing her throat. She and Richie were a couple. Her parents liked him. His liked her.
Her mother would not approve of Tristan Weatherfield. Not Jewish, but worse than that, poor. His parents were even rumored not to be divorced, but to have never been married in the first place.
“Sure. Friday night,” she said. “I’ll ask them.”
* * *
“Am I a terrible person?” She posed this question to Tristan later that night, after she’d dialed the number on the note.
She’d thought it would reach a pager, but it rang to his house. He’d answered on the second ring. She’d almost hung up without even saying hello.
“For kissing me?”
“Yes. For not breaking up with him. For saying I would go to his house for dinner but now, calling you.” Rebecca blew out a breath into the darkness. She had her own phone line in her room, so there were no worries that one of her parents would pick up the line and overhear anything she was saying.
“I don’t think you calling me makes you a terrible person, Rebecca.”
She didn’t say anything for a second or so. “What about the rest of it? What if you were Richie? What would you think?”
“I could never be Richie,” Tristan said in a tone of such disdain that it took her aback.
“What’s the supposed to mean?”
“Whatever you want it to mean.”
That wasn’t an answer. She waited another few seconds, listening to the sound of his breathing through line. She thought he’d hang up on her. He didn’t.
“No,” she whispered. “You could never be Richie.”
Chapter 10
Jenni
Last Summer
Nobody was supposed to swim in the quarry, of course. Kids had drowned in it, at least that was the story, although Jenni couldn’t honestly remember ever hearing about any real kids who’d died there. The cops patrolled the beach side of it regularly, mostly to catch the kids who were parking along the dead-end road that led to it. They didn’t pay much attention to this side, the cliff side, which could be reached through the woods t
hat began at the end of Quarry Street.
The group, Ilya, Niko, Allie, and Jenni, and now their new comrade in crime, Barry’s daughter Theresa, never told their parents they were going swimming. Parents would tell them it wasn’t safe. Parents would say they should go to the local pool instead. Parents, though, worked during the day, and what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.
"So...whattya think about Barry?" In her tube, Jenni paddled through the cold water toward her sister. She nudged Alicia until she opened her eyes. "He's pretty creepy, huh?"
Alicia gripped the sides of her raft and glared. What a wimp. "Hey, watch out."
"He is, right?" Jenni nudged her sister again with a red-painted toe, rocking Allie’s raft. She grinned. "What are you afraid of, you'll melt or something?"
Alicia gripped the raft so hard it dented the soft rubber. "Stop it. I just don't want to get my hair wet."
Jenni let herself bend in half to dunk herself down through her tube, then resurfaced to end up with her butt in the center with her legs dangling over the sides. She didn’t give a damn about her hair getting wet. The sun was bleaching it whiter every day, and she liked it that way. When the roots grew in darker, more like a honey gold color, she wouldn’t even try to color them. She was still thinking about dying it some weird color. Or black. There was always going black.
"I know, you're afraid of Chester. You think he's gonna chomp you." She laughed as she said it.
Chester was the carnival goldfish Jenni had tossed in the water a couple weeks ago. Since then, they’d all been joking that he was out there, growing and growing like the sunfish in that movie they watched a few months ago about a mountain where all the animals had mutated because of mercury poisoning or something from a mine.
Allie snorted. “Sure, that’s it.”
