by Jen Klein
I wait, my heart aching for this part of Itch he’s never shared with me.
“X didn’t die. He’s back at school, but…” Itch swallows. “He doesn’t play guitar anymore. He says it gives him a headache, but I think he doesn’t remember how. I think it’s gone.” Itch removes his hands from between mine and cracks his knuckles. “I’m sure your friends are different. Ainsley seems nice. So does Oliver. It’s just me. I don’t want to hang with the kids at the top of the ladder because last time I did, I liked it.” He sighs. “I liked it too much.”
I had no idea that there was something more to Itch’s scorn. Something more like fear. “I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry, too.” He lets me slide my arms around him, under his jacket so I can feel his rib cage. I squeeze, and after a few seconds, he reciprocates. “I’ll try, okay? I’ll try.”
“All right.” I listen to his heart beating beneath my ear. “I’ll try, too.”
• • •
Getting to North Hall sucks, because we have to walk down an outer corridor where the icy wind whips around us, but after we struggle to get the heavy double doors open, we’re greeted with a gush of warm radiator heat. I choose an empty section of wall to settle my back against, and slide down it until I’m sitting on the floor with my tray on my lap. Ainsley beams at me from nearby. “Lucky us, two days in a row!”
Oliver nudges me with his foot. “Hi, you guys.”
“Hey,” I say to him.
“Hey,” says Itch, sliding down the wall beside me.
We eat our lunches.
There’s a gift-wrapped cylinder on my seat when I open the passenger door. I start to hand it to Oliver, but he shakes his head. “Open it.”
I’m startled…and also inexplicably embarrassed. The week before winter break is the traditional time for kids at our school to exchange gifts, but it didn’t occur to me that Oliver would give me something. And it’s certainly not like I have anything for him.
“Really?” I ask. “Because I didn’t—”
Oliver grins at me. “Just open it.”
I run a finger down the taped seam between the two edges of green-and-red paper and get a flash image of Oliver hunched over the gift, trying to line up the wrapping. It opens to reveal…
“A water bottle?”
“Metal,” he says helpfully. “And it’s not actually for you.” I cock my head at him and he explains. “Lest you think otherwise, I am aware of your vast distaste for the plastic bottles all over my car.”
As always, I’m amused—and, oddly, flattered—by the way Oliver talks when he’s with me. I know he doesn’t use those words with Theo. And maybe not Ainsley, either.
“The bottle is for me,” he continues. “But the peace of mind is for you.”
“It’s a symbol.”
He bats his eyelashes at me. “A symbol of my desire both to A: contribute to environmental salvation, and B: lessen the number of times that you give me the stink-eye in the mornings.”
Naturally, I give him the stink-eye.
But then I smile.
• • •
It’s way too cold and snowy for the bleachers, so Itch and I are at a corner table in the cafeteria. We’ve slung our jackets over two chairs for Darbs and Lily and piled backpacks on a third just in case Shaun joins us today.
Itch picks at his lasagna. “Gross.”
I hold up my cloth sack. “If you packed your own lunch, you wouldn’t be subjected to the vile whims of the cafeteria demons.”
“If I packed my own lunch, I’d lose approximately fifteen minutes of sleep.” He starts chopping at the lasagna with his spork. “Since I’m leaving on Saturday, do you want to hang on—”
“Wait, what?” I freeze in the act of unwrapping my sandwich. “Where are you going?”
“Florida. Remember, my grandparents? Christmas and Serbian New Year?” he says with exaggerated patience, like he’s explaining to a toddler. “I told you this.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No he didn’t what?” asks Lily, plopping into the chair beside mine.
“Tell me he’s going to be gone for winter break.”
“I told her,” Itch says, and goes back to the sporking.
Lily makes a face at his lasagna. “PMGO.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask her.
“Puke my guts out,” she says. “Darbs wants it to take off.”
“Where is she?”
“In prayer.”
“Oh, right.” I always forget the God Squad kids have lunchtime prayer circle on Tuesdays.
“So are you a rainbow now or what?” Lily asks me. When I give her a blank stare, she elaborates. “It’s like you have dual citizenship these days.”
I still don’t understand until Itch nudges me. “Because sometimes we eat lunch elsewhere, June.”
Oh.
I have an urge to defend myself to Lily, even though what she said wasn’t at all an attack. “Is that weird?” I ask her.
“For sure,” she says. “I mean, it’s fine. But it’s weird.” She shakes her head. “And now you go to football games.”
“Some football games,” I say, correcting her.
“Yeah, my girlfriend has school spirit now,” Itch says. I know he’s trying to be funny, but it irritates me.
“There are worse things,” I inform him.
“Nope,” says Lily. “That’s the worst.” Itch clinks his soda can against hers. I roll my eyes at both of them.
Itch turns to me. “Do you want to hang tonight? I can come to your house.”
“I think Cash is going to be over, too.”
I see Itch search his memory. “Cash the contractor guy?”
“Yeah.” Another flash of irritation. Itch has met Cash half a dozen times, at least.
“What, is he dating your mom or something?”
“I think so.”
“Ooh, juicy!” says Lily. “Is he hot?”
“Gross!” I swat at her. “He’s with my mom.”
“I’m just wondering,” Lily says. “It would be nice to have adult eye candy in the house.” I swat her again.
Itch—of course—doesn’t say anything about Cash. “Cool. I’ll come over after dinner. Maybe we can go for a drive.”
Lily and I make eye contact. “Ah, euphemisms,” she says.
• • •
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I am finding every excuse in the world not to be alone with my boyfriend. Mom and Cash have taken over the family room to watch a documentary about organic farming, so Itch and I are sipping hot apple cider in the kitchen. “How about the basement?” he suggests.
“It just got painted. There are fumes. Besides, the drop cloths are still all over. Nowhere to sit.”
“We could drive to the park.”
“I don’t think Mom will let me go out late—”
“It’s eight-thirty, June.”
“—when it’s this cold. She’s worried about ice on the roads. In fact, do you think you should head home before it freezes even more?”
Itch shakes his head. “I’m fine. I just thought we would do something before I left.”
“We’re doing something right now. We’re talking.” Neither of us mentions that it’s not exactly our strong suit as a couple.
We sip our ciders.
Later, after Mom and Cash finish the documentary, they go downstairs to look at the basement walls. “They don’t mind the fumes,” Itch says, getting up to stand behind the stool I’m sitting on. He places his hands on my shoulders and moves his thumbs in circles against the base of my neck. I know—I know—it’s supposed to feel good. It has felt good a hundred times before, but tonight…it doesn’t. Tonight, I hate it.
I suddenly spring up, nearly knocking my empty mug off the counter. “Let’s go out on the porch.”
“It’s really cold.”
“I know, but at least we’ll be alone.”
The word “alone” mot
ivates him, because five minutes later, we’re zipped and bundled and Itch has me pressed up against one of the wooden supports. My eyes are closed and my head is tilted back so his mouth can reach mine. I know his hands are roaming up and down my sides, but I can barely sense them. Everything is clumsy and muffled, wrapped as we are in all this winter wear.
And there’s no more ignoring the truth: I hate this. I hate everything about it. I don’t hate Itch, but I hate the way I’m feeling. Or rather, the way I’m not feeling what I’m supposed to be feeling.
In fact—and somewhat ironically—kissing Itch is making me feel itchy. Itchy in my soul. Like I’m a little kid waiting for my mother to try on clothing at the mall and I just can’t stand being there anymore. Like breaking out of Itch’s arms and running screaming into the darkness, and then maybe hiding behind a tree or something, like that would be a totally reasonable thing to do.
This is not good.
It seems endless—the kissing—but I don’t know a way to stop it without telling him the truth, without embarking on an interminable discussion that is going to be way more painful than his tongue in my mouth.
So I endure.
I go through the motions until finally—finally—Itch is driving away and I’m waving from the porch with a massive sense of relief washing over me. I know I need to savor it, live in this reprieve, because it’s going to go away and only awful, tremendous, crushing guilt will remain.
But right now, right this second, I couldn’t be happier that my boyfriend is gone.
Mom is on campus, finishing up some paperwork. I have already showered, eaten breakfast (who am I kidding—brunch), and unloaded the dishwasher. I throw a load of laundry into the washing machine and look around for something else to do, but the house is clean, I have no schoolwork, and there’s nothing I want to watch.
I text Lily to see if she wants to go to the mall, but she’s rehearsing for her studio’s winter recital. I try Shaun, but of course he doesn’t text back. I call Darbs, but her mom is making her watch the twins while she goes Christmas shopping. She invites me over, and I politely decline. The last time I helped Darbs with the twins, we took our eyes off them for ten minutes and they pulled all the sheets off her parents’ bed. By the time we realized what was going on, they had tied the bedding into a long rope and one twin was being lowered out the upstairs bedroom window. Those kids stress me out. And it’s not like I have a way to get to their house, anyway.
Crap. The first day of break and I’m already bored.
I know I should take some time to figure out what I’m going to do about Itch, but I have a full two weeks until he’s back. Maybe I’ll feel differently when we’ve been apart for a little while. Maybe I’ll miss him.
My phone buzzes, and I’m basically a ninja, I grab it so fast. My brain reflexes, however, are a little slower. It takes me a moment of staring at it to realize who the text is from.
Oliver.
Apparently he was telling Marley—his mom—about our shared playlist, and there was something he didn’t know how to explain.
what’s the diff between punk & alt?
I flop down across my bed to message him back, but I’m not even halfway through when I realize it’s complicated enough to warrant a phone call. Oliver picks up immediately. “You must miss me.”
“Not even close,” I tell him. “But I’m hardly going to type the history of music to you on a phone. It would devalue the importance of the lesson you so sorely require.”
“You’re impossible,” he says, but his voice sounds like he’s smiling. “What are you doing?”
“Not much,” I admit, and the phone shivers in my hand.
“Click on the link.” He hangs up.
“Wait,” I say into empty air. “I still haven’t educated you.”
And he calls me impossible.
I pull up the new message from Oliver. It’s a link to…
A game?
Oliver has sent me an invite to play a game—a really geeky one—through our phones. When I accept the invitation, I find that it’s a strategy game that is (loosely) based on Greek mythology. It’s peopled by little animated figures who wear winged sandals or carry lyres or wield thunderbolts. They stand around on a battlefield and make moves that the players assign them. Oliver’s opening gambit involves a long-haired demigoddess eating a “Pomegranate of Power” before leaping astride a Pegasus and galloping in the direction of my little huddle of figures.
Despite this possibly being the actual dorkiest thing I’ve ever done, I touch the screen to deploy an “Army of Angry Muses” toward Oliver’s Pegasus. He responds with a “Whirlwind Gorgon Attack” followed by a “Trident to the Face”…
And the battle is on.
• • •
“Yes!” I shout with a fist pump. It startles my mother, who drops the scissors she’s using to snip mint leaves. She leans down to pick them up off the floor.
“June,” she says. “I could have taken off a toe.”
“Sorry.”
“What are you doing, anyway?”
“It’s just this stupid game Oliver sent me. I finally beat him.”
My mother shakes her head. “It can’t be that stupid if you’ve been playing it since yesterday.”
“Oh, you know,” I tell her. “It’s something to do.”
• • •
It’s a day after Christmas, a week before we go back to school. Our tree is still up in the family room and small white lights still outline the front windows. The ripped dark-dyed jeans my dad sent me from New York (all the rage among the stage actresses, he says) are folded carefully in a drawer, waiting for the perfect time to be worn. The array of books and sweaters and earrings my mother gave me are heaped on my dresser. The funky upcycled case Itch gave me is already wrapped around my phone.
Mom and I shoveled the driveway this morning. I thought it was pointless, since there’s a snowstorm coming, but Mom said we should at least start with a clean slate. She’s had the Weather Channel on the television since she woke up, and she keeps checking the generator in her studio.
The first fat snowflakes are falling when Cash’s truck pulls up in front of the house. “Dammit, I told him not to come,” Mom says before she bolts outside. I look out the front window and watch her run down the porch steps toward Cash’s pickup. Despite her words, the minute he opens his door, she flies into his arms and kisses him on the mouth.
A minute later, they’re stamping their feet on the rug in the entryway, setting bags of groceries on the floor. “You don’t listen,” Mom says to Cash.
“I listen to your wishes, not your words.” He grins at me. “Hey, want to give us a hand with these?”
“Sure.” I carry one of the bags to the kitchen.
“Stay here,” I hear Mom tell Cash, and then she’s in the kitchen with me. “I have to talk to you. Cash and I have known each other for a long time. We have several mutual friends and…He’ll sleep downstairs.”
“He doesn’t have to do that.”
“Thanks, but that’s the best place for him to…” Mom wraps her arms around me. “Even though we have an evolved and enlightened mother-daughter relationship, it doesn’t mean you want my sex life in your face.”
“You are really making it weird,” I tell her.
“Sorry.”
“Can I have a boy spend the night, too?”
“No way.”
“It was worth a shot.”
Mom pulls back and gazes at me. She pushes a strand of hair away from my face. “You are still the most important person in the whole world,” she says. “He’s just a guy with a bag of groceries.”
“I’m not calling him Dad,” I say, and she flicks me in the head.
“Now who’s making it weird?”
• • •
It snowed hard—big, fluffy flakes—for hours. It was still coming down when I went to bed last night after an evening of games with Mom and Cash. If they get married, I wonder if Dad w
ill be invited to their wedding.
Now that it’s Wednesday afternoon and it stopped snowing hours ago, I’m well into the realm of stir-crazy. It’s not only that I’m stuck in our house; it’s that I’m stuck with a pair of lovebirds. They’re not all over each other or anything—in fact, I feel like they’re going out of their way not to touch each other—but I can tell. There’s an energy in the air.
My mom wants to be alone with her new boyfriend, and I’m the cock blocker.
Gross.
I’m on the couch, huddled under a blanket with my phone, and have just sent a “Fiery Chariot of Doom” at Oliver when a tiny star pops up in the corner of my screen: a notice of an in-game message. I click on it.
snowed in?
Oliver’s obviously in the same boat as me…well, minus the thing where the two adults in his house are dying to get in each other’s pants.
Or maybe they are; what do I know about the Flagg family?
I send Oliver a message in return:
y. sux.
A nanosecond later, my phone rings. I pick it up. “I think you’re the one who misses me,” I tell Oliver.
“All I’m saying is you’ve played a lot of Mythteries.”
“Which you only know because you’ve been playing. Hold on.” I squiggle out of the blanket and off the couch. “Going upstairs!” I call to Mom and Cash.
I get a muffled “Okay” in return and opt not to go see what they’re doing. Once in my room, I leap onto my bed and set the phone against my ear again. “You still there?”
“I’m housebound. Where else would I be?”
“This snowstorm is killing me,” I confide. “Cash stayed over last night—”
“What?”
“—and now he’s stuck here. I’m the world’s most awkward third wheel.”
Oliver’s amusement comes through the phone and makes me smile. “Are they actively doing it?” he asks through laughter.
