Waiting on Justin

by Lucy H. Delaney

  When Justin showed me the JAG room, he told me he was supposed to have the class, too, but hardly ever showed up. They kept putting him in it every year anyway. He didn't like it because the teacher was too nice and he figured there was a catch. I thought it was a stupid reason to skip class—not that he had to give me one in the first place.

  The first day of JAG I knew what Justin meant, though.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Those of you who have been in here before already know me, but for the rest of you, my name is Mr. Reyes, and this is JAG. Miss Newton, you want to tell the newbies what JAG stands for?”

  “Ummm,” the sheepish girl with light blue eyes said, “I think it's like Jobs And Graduates? Right?”

  “Nice try ... not quite. Melissa, wanna help her?”

  “It's Jobs for America's Graduates.”

  “Bingo! What's your poison?”

  “You got any Anne Rice?” Melissa asked.

  “I knew you'd ask for her! But of course!” He moved to a stack of books piled on top of an overflowing bookshelf, scanned them with his finger, pulled one out, and shouted, “Heads up!” before throwing it across the room into her waiting hands.

  “Justin, I found some for you, too. You gonna be here to earn them this year?”

  Justin shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “If I have to come, so do you,” I mumbled to him.

  “I like you!” Mr. Reyes said walking over to me. He extended his hand to me. I shook his hand back and looked at the books on the shelf. I always wondered where Justin got his books; the mystery of some of them was solved.

  Mr. Reyes proceeded to tell us who he was and why he did his job—something about it being his duty to help make the world a better place, and this was how he was paying it forward. It was cheesy, seriously, but the kids who knew him seemed to really like him, and he was cool with them. Some of Justin's friends, also known as high-risk kids, were in the class, too, and told Lizzie and me that Mr. Reyes was chill. My first thought was that it was a decent class, but like Justin, I kept waiting for the catch.

  I wanted to know why Mr. Reyes cared, why he didn't seem to change his opinion of us the way other teachers did when we were bad. He challenged us to be better, but he never saw the bad in me, always the good. He made me feel good about who I was, and no grown-up had ever done that before. He also taught me how to make a résumé and how to handle myself when I got mad. He said it was better to be bold and speak up in a kind and respectful manner than clam up and run away from a situation. I said he didn't know Clayton.

  I liked him, and I couldn't find the catch. I told Justin to show up for the class and he did most days, and Mr. Reyes let him in without a lecture about the days he skipped. For once in school Justin and I weren't bad kids—and the best part was we were there together. Mr. Reyes made us all stand at the front of the room and tell everyone what we wanted to do when we grew up. Justin said he liked planes and wanted to fly, and if he could make anything it would be a teleporter like on Star Trek.

  Mr. Reyes kept him after class that day. I stayed behind to hear why. He told Justin he needed to talk to an Air Force ranger about getting into the military. I remembered the veteran at the plane museum had said the same exact thing. Mr. Reyes said Justin could fly planes, fix planes, study space, and—he could even be in NASA if he wanted.

  “Yeah, OK, that sounds cool.”

  “Do you know where to find an Air Force ranger?”

  “Nah.”

  “You can call up a recruiter, or there's a recruiting office on Bridge Street.”

  “OK, I'll check it out,” Justin said. I knew he was lying.

  We knew we were losers then, and planning for our future outside of school was not high on the priority list, but Mr. Reyes didn't drop it. I swear, every day for the next two weeks he asked Justin if he had called yet. Justin always said he'd get to it but never did. Finally, Mr. Reyes held him back after class again.

  “It's time for you to man up, Mr. Parker.”

  Justin looked at him. Maybe Mr. Reyes didn't know the look, but I did—Justin was ready to fight. He stood there waiting for the catch. Mr. Reyes didn't say anything, but after a minute, he turned the phone on his desk around and gave Justin a card.

  “The recruiter's name is Sgt. Stallings. He's expecting your call. Go ahead, give him a call right now.”

  “Uh...,” Justin stammered, taking the phone in his hands and looking at the card like it was a crypted number. I giggled, and Justin looked at me defensively.

  “Here, you wanna make the call?” he asked me.

  “No way, I don't know what to say.”

  “Thank you, Miss Howell. You can wait outside now.”

  “Wait, why?!”

  “Because Justin is capable of doing this without you in the room.”

  “I won't say anything ... ”

  “Outside, Haylee. He'll be done in a minute.”

  I left and waited impatiently outside the door. I did peek in the window and saw them practicing the call, making fake phones with their hands, Justin nodding his head when Mr. Reyes talked. Then Justin picked up the phone and dialed. He looked afraid but proud and serious all at the same time. It must have been a short conversation because the next time I looked he had already hung up the phone and was smiling and talking with Mr. Reyes, who clapped him on the back.

  By the time he came out of the classroom and put his arm around my shoulders, it seemed like Justin had grown an inch. He told me the recruiter would be coming to talk to the class the next week, and he did. From then on, Justin's dream was the Air Force—all he had to do was wait a couple more weeks, until he was eighteen, and he could sign on.

  Justin worked harder to get better grades after that. He had more than a year's worth of classes to make up, and suddenly it mattered to him to pass them before the end of the year. It wasn't that hard for him—all he had to do was try a little, and it showed a lot—he even got extra work to make up for past failed classes.

  Justin finally had a plan. He was going to fly. Up until then, we didn't know what we were going to do or how we were going to do it. We were unwanted by our parents and teachers alike; all we had was each other and dreams of a better life but no idea how to get it. Mr. Reyes gave Justin a plan, and I went where Justin led me. For a while, life was about as good as it had ever been for us: we got to be together at school and at home, and we had a dream to plan our life around. But it only lasted a little while. Our world turned upside down forever the second semester of my freshman year—and it changed everything.

  Justin never graduated from school. He almost made it ... almost, but not quite. He got himself expelled. It was a stupid reason, too. I think the principal just wanted him gone once and for all—really I think everyone wanted him gone except me. He got into yet another fight, this time with a guy named Drew.

  Drew had it coming if you ask me (not that anyone did). He was a jock with a grudge and a death wish, and he had been Lizzie’s boyfriend of the day. She changed them almost as often as she changed her clothes, and just like the others, when she was done with Drew, she dumped him and moved on. She didn't sleep around, I don't think. She never said anything about having sex with any of them, so if she did she didn't tell me, and I don't see why she wouldn't. She was just picky: she knew what she wanted, and if a guy wasn't it, she moved on—and fast.

  Drew wasn’t having it though. He was kind of a possessive, sore loser, or—I don't know—thick-headed idiot, and he started to follow her around school. He turned into her personal stalker before long and wouldn't take the hint to leave her alone.

  When Lizzie told Justin and me about it, we didn't take it too seriously at first. I hate to admit it, but the three of us were growing apart. She was better than us, and I guess we didn't want to corrupt her—or maybe she wanted to fit in with people who wouldn't like our kind of people hanging around. That's why we didn't notice Drew’s behavior when she first broke up with him. But after a couple weeks
it was too obvious for anyone to miss. Drew would follow Lizzie to and from JAG, and Justin and I would try to get him to back off in all the right ways. We would tell him to give her space and tease him about being insecure. We weren't the only ones, either. Her other friends were noticing too and trying to get him to leave her alone, but he was stubborn and wasn't listening to any of us.

  One Friday he followed her to her bus and insisted that they get back together, yet again. I was there and so was Lizzie's friend ShamRae. We were all walking together, ShamRae on one side and me on the other. I was trying not to roll my eyes as they talked about a school project they were working on. I didn't understand how people could want to talk about a school assignment for fun. Then Lizzie sucked in her breath like she had seen a ghost.

  “Oh no, there he is.” ShamRae and I followed her eyes to the side of the bus. Drew, with all his five feet ten inches of brawn, was waiting for her. “Why can't he just leave me alone?”

  “I can give you a ride home,” ShamRae offered.

  Before the words came out of her mouth, I already knew Lizzie would say no. As bad as my house was, it was a palace compared to Brenda and Lizzie's dive. Brenda was not the kind of mom to keep a clean house. That's a nice way to say their apartment was a one-bedroom dump, a nasty mess in a bad part of town, and Lizzie was always embarrassed by it.

  That's part of the reason Lizzie preferred our house: at least we could see our floor. Being the mother, Brenda got the bedroom, of course, and it was the worst part of the apartment, but the rest wasn't much better. Lizzie had a bed and dresser in the living room, and her clothes were piled high everywhere, clean and dirty all mixed into heaps of mystery. Lizzie would sniff them and if they smelled clean, she wore them; if not, she threw them into another pile. I can't really judge her for her cleaning habits; Brenda never taught her anything different.

  Even though Lizzie didn't know how to clean her house, she knew enough to be mortified to ever have one of her “popular” friends take her home.

  “Leave me alone, Drew,” she said as he approached.

  “Yeah, stalker, she doesn't want anything to do with you,” ShamRae threw in.

  “Not until we talk,” Drew answered as Lizzie tried to move around him to her bus.

  “We don't have anything to talk about. We're done. Leave me alone.”

  “No, you need to listen to me.” He reached right between me and ShamRae as we were trying to block the two of them and grabbed Lizzie's arm. I could tell it hurt because she winced and tried to pull back but couldn't.

  “Let me go!”

  “I said I want to talk to you. I just want to talk, and you keep shutting me down. Just listen to me.”

  “No! Leave me alone.”

  “Mr. Risher, do we have a problem?” It was Mrs. Huerta, our vice principal.

  “Yes,” Lizzie answered, “he won't let me get on my bus.”

  “I was just trying to talk to her,” Drew lied, holding his hands up in surrender. “She can go if she wants to.”

  “Come take a walk with me, Drew,” Mrs. Huerta said and escorted Drew away from the bus.

  I don't know what she said to him; I wish I’d had a bit of stalker in me and had followed them instead of staying with ShamRae to calm Lizzie down. Maybe Mrs. Huerta was onto Drew and was telling him to knock it off, or maybe she was telling him to give Lizzie time, giving him a pep talk to help him feel better about getting dumped but still making it clear that he needed to leave Lizzie alone. To this day I wonder what they talked about—it's one of the little things that eats away at me on days when it's rainy and I get nostalgic.

  Lizzie looked at both me and ShamRae desperately.

  “I can't take it anymore.” She leaned into ShamRae for a hug and started to cry. I felt out of place, unnecessary.

  “I could have Martin tell him to give you space. Maybe he'll listen to him,” ShamRae said. Martin was her older brother and was on the wrestling team with Drew.

  “Yeah? Maybe ... I don't care anymore; I just want him to leave me alone.”

  Neither Mrs. Huerta’s nor Martin's talks worked. Drew was back at it on Monday.

  “You're such a douche, Drew; leave her alone,” I yelled at him when I saw him outside the JAG classroom. I was being bold like Mr. Reyes said to be, but he wasn't scared of me at all.

  That's when Lizzie and I told Justin to do something about him—and he did. Even though we weren't as close, we both still loved Lizzie and Justin wasn't about to let her be bullied anymore. She was our prize possession, and neither of us wanted her to have her shot at life squashed like ours was. Somehow we both believed it didn’t matter how bad our lives got if we could keep her safe from pain. We tried to help make her life perfect. In a lot of ways, we felt responsible for her like parents should. Justin, like an angry father, was now responsible for taking care of Drew.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE NEXT DAY was a Tuesday. Funny how I remember the day of the fight that got Justin expelled but can’t remember the day my mom died.

  Justin skipped his second period class to catch Drew before he could creep on Lizzie again. I know he skipped because we were together at Smoker's Corner—that was what everyone called our hide-out in the woods. It was a couple minutes’ walk from the school, close enough to get there in time for the next class after smoking, but far enough to stay unnoticed.

  We were waiting together, buying time the best way we knew how–by making out, of course. We never did any more than that, even though I wished for more all the time. Just as we waited for our first kiss, Justin said we had to wait to have sex. Age ain't nothing but a number, I would say, trying to tempt him. He countered, insisting that the number could get him kicked out of the house or worse, depending on Clayton and my mom's mood. So instead, we just stole kisses where they wouldn't find out.

  We weren't saints; Justin was just a gentleman like that. It was one of the things I loved most about him. I would have given up my virginity to him the day we first kissed if he asked, probably before. I knew he knew it too—he knew I was his body, mind and soul—but he didn't push me. He didn't even ask. It was always him who kept us from getting carried away.

  I knew everyone assumed we were already doing it, and it didn't bother me at all. I liked people knowing I was his. Since I had no plans to be with anyone else, it didn't matter to me if they thought we were having sex. Justin wasn't going to let them think otherwise either. It was no one’s business what we did or didn't do, but it wasn't exactly cool for a guy not to have sex with his girl. I guess we didn't think anyone needed to know we were being old-fashioned. It seemed like no one our age waited, but we did, and probably there were others like us who hid it too.

  Clayton, my mom, and my age all mattered to Justin, but aside from all that, he wanted it to be right, like our first kiss. For as stubborn and mean and quick-tempered as he appeared to be, he was incredibly patient. I think he thought it would ruin me to have sex too early—that I wasn’t old enough to handle it or appreciate it. He was wiser than his years.

  The last time I argued with him about it had been a few weeks before the fight with Drew. We were in the car making out, and as usual, I wanted more. I wanted to know what it was like. He said pretty much the same thing to me about having sex as he did about our first kiss, only I think it was harder for him to stick to his guns about it.

  “I want to make love to a woman, not a girl.”

  “I'm woman enough now; trust me,” I teased, straddling myself over him on his seat. I kissed him good and long and pressed into him, onto him, running my hands up under his shirt, enticing him.

  He grabbed my hands and pushed me back gently, breathing hard. I felt the proof that he wanted me too, and I smiled. I liked making him want me. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back on the head rest, and thought about it. But then, once again, he denied me: “Not yet.”

  “Why not?” I pouted, flopping myself back onto my own seat. “Don't you want me?”

  “C'
mon, Haylee, you think I really don't want you?” he said, turning to look at me again. “It's not the right time yet. Sex is so much more than our bodies coming together,” he said as he reached over to kiss me. “You're not ready... I'm probably not ready. It's going to be a metaphysical bond that traverses time and space; we'll be one forever. Everything that is you is going to become part of me, and ... ”

  “Blah, blah, blah...” I said and shut his mouth with mine and reached between his legs. I had heard all his supernatural, mumbo jumbo excuses before. He was convinced that sex was a soul collision and it would change everything. He had all these theories about how it would connect us forever. I had my own theory, it was that sex with him would be the best thing that would ever happen to me. “I want you now.” I pouted, “I'm ready now. Let’s traverse time and space right now ... please?”

  “Not yet,” he repeated kissing me softly. He pulled my hand up, put both of mine together and kissed them, then looked at me while he stroked them with his thumbs. Though his decision was final, he held me like that, with his eyes and hands, for seconds that felt like hours.

  “When?” I conceded the loss.

  “In time ... Haylee, I love you, and I want you more than anything.” His stare penetrated deep into my soul; it was so strong I had to look away. “And I'll have you. Just wait.” He let go of my hands and traced my nose with his finger, then finished the moment with a peck on my forehead while he held my head in his hands.

  “Wow! You can totally reject me and still make it romantic; how do you do that?”

  “It's a gift,” he shrugged and smiled a devious crooked smile.

  “Um hmm,” I said, and kissing him again asked, “But seriously, when? I feel like I can't wait.”

  “Of course you can. Wait, Haylee; just wait.”

  I didn't push him after that for a long time. In my heart I wanted it to be as perfect as he seemed to think it could be. I knew it couldn't be this amazingly, unforgettably wonderful first-time experience if I lost it in an awkward moment in a car, or when we were trying to do it and worrying about whether Clayton or my mom would catch us at the same time. I didn't want to wait, but I would.