Second to No One

by Palmer, Natalie

  I crossed my arms on the window seal and rested my chin on top. “Feisty, huh?”

  “It’s my favorite part.”

  Stay calm, Gemma. Stay. Calm.

  “So are you going to come down here? Or am I going to have to scale this wall to get to you?”

  “That’s something I’d like to see.”

  “I’m dying here.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  The distance between my bedroom window and my front door felt like it went on for miles, and I was moving in slow motion. But by the time I stepped out onto the front porch and saw Jess leaning casually against the railing, time had completely stopped, and somehow the past three months didn’t matter. They were nothing. He was here now, standing in front of me, all sun-struck and beautiful. But he was here, and that was the only thing that mattered.

  “Hey, stranger.” He stepped toward me and wrapped a hand around my waist.

  “Hey.” I instinctively melted into his chest and drowned myself in his scent.

  “I missed you,” he said softly with his nose nearly touching mine.

  I could barely remember where I was, or who I was for that matter. Just being in his arms and hearing him say those words caused me to doubt whether or not anything else existed. “I missed you so much,” I said without hesitation. When he pulled me an inch closer, our lips met, and despite all my fears, despite all the confusion and doubt, we were finally together again, and without any effort at all, we were back to the exact place that we had left off.

  Chapter 2

  It still felt like a dream. But I really, really didn’t want to be dreaming. Jess was here. He was actually here. Sitting beside me on my front porch, talking and breathing and—the best part—touching. Me. My hands, my face, my waist, my hair. Wherever he could, whenever he could as we casually talked about our summers.

  “So anyway,” he finally shifted his eyes away from mine and rubbed at them with his free hand. “I really can’t blame my dad for being as screwed up as he is. It turns out his entire family has problems.”

  “Hadn’t you met any of them before?”

  Jess released my hair from his fingers and shifted until he could comfortably hold my hand that was resting in my lap. It felt so natural, and I had to remind myself that this was the first time we had ever sat beside each other holding hands—romantically. “Not really. I mean, his parents came out once when I was little, but all I remembered was my grandpa smelled like cigars and I caught my grandma in the bathroom with her wig off.” Jess scrunched his nose at the memory. “I’ve never met any of my uncles or aunts or cousins on his side until this summer.”

  I squeezed his fingers and studied the feel of them between my own. “What kind of problems do they have?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t even know where to begin. This family could be on Jerry Springer.” He chuckled softly, but his eyes were lost in the memory. “I’m glad I had a job. Working outside in the intense summer heat for ten hours a day was nothing compared to watching my uncle Stewart rot on his Lazy Boy recliner.”

  I cringed at the thought. “Your dad still lives with him?”

  “Mmm.” He said nodding. “I stayed away from there as much as I could. His apartment was disgusting, and I swear it smelled like a combination of dead cats and moldy leftovers.” He sniffed his shirt. “The smell is probably still in my clothes.”

  I pressed my cheek into his shoulder. He smelled a little like an airplane but mostly like soap and laundry detergent.

  “How about you?” he asked into my hair. “What have you been up to?”

  I pulled myself away from him and took in a breath. I wasn’t exactly sure what I should or shouldn’t tell him. I decided to stay away from the topic of Trace. “I’ve been hanging out with Drew a lot.”

  “What’s she like when she’s not throwing elaborate birthday parties in your house without your permission?”

  I smiled at the memory. The fake birthday party and all the drama that accompanied it felt like so long ago now. “She’s pretty great actually. We have fun together.” I looked up at the darkening sky, and a cool breeze made me wrap my arms around my torso. “She’s been talking all week about my real sixteenth birthday. It makes me a little nervous.”

  Jess swept a piece of my hair behind my ear, then whispered, “Sweet sixteen.” A million goose bumps covered me from head to toe as he leaned into to kiss me, but we were both distracted by a pair of headlights that flashed across the front lawn. We looked up just as a black Ford Explorer pulled into my driveway. Trace’s car. Crap.

  I couldn’t figure out why he was there. He was supposed to be at his cousin’s wedding. He was supposed to be getting ready for school the next day. He was supposed to be anywhere but here. I wasn’t ready for these two worlds to collide. But still, the driver side door opened and shut, and soon Trace was walking around his car jiggling something in his hand. He obviously hadn’t seen us yet, and I dreaded the moment when he finally would.

  “Hey, Trace,” I said before he had the chance to trip over us. “How was the wedding?” Or in other words, can’t you see Jess is here? Bye.

  As soon as I spoke, Trace came to a staggering stop. He was staring—no, glaring—at Jess and the object that he had been jiggling was immediately shoved in his pocket.

  I felt Jess tense up beside me as he slowly removed his hands from mine and placed them in his lap. “How’s it going?” Jess asked in a cool tone.

  Trace looked at me with dark eyes. “Fine. I’m fine. The wedding was fine.”

  “Whose wedding?” Jess asked as he stood up from the step and straightened his shirt.

  But Trace ignored the question. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you guys. You haven’t seen each other for a while, so I’ll just go.”

  “You don’t need to leave.” Or in other words, of course you need to leave. Jess was just going to kiss me, and then we were going to live happily ever after.

  “Well, if it’s okay.” Something about Trace’s stance changed slightly at my words. He obviously had no idea that I didn’t mean them. He took a step toward me as he reached into his pocket. “Mostly I just wanted to bring this by.” He reached out toward me, leaving a medium sized brown envelope in my lap. I felt the contents of the envelope. Something squishy was sealed inside it.

  I raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Please don’t tell me this is the bride’s pantyhose girdle. I’ll have to throw up if it is.”

  Trace laughed lightly at my joke, but Jess didn’t crack a smile. He just stood a ways off to the side, watching us, his arms folded, his eyes cautious.

  “No,” Trace answered. “It’s an early birthday present. I know you don’t turn sixteen for another week, but I figured,” he stole a disgruntled glance at Jess, “that this might be the last chance I have to give it to you.”

  I knew that wasn’t true. I knew I’d see Trace every day at school, but I also knew what he meant. That now that Jess was back things were inevitably going to be different between us. “Thanks,” I said as I slipped my finger under the sealed flap of the envelope. “You really didn’t have to though.” I looked at Jess from the corner of my eye and hoped with everything I had that the gift was a bag of tissues or a pack of gum, anything that could possibly feel squishy and yet remain one hundred percent platonic and without feeling. But what I pulled out of the envelope was a tiny plastic bag, the kind that my mom kept stray buttons and thread in. And the bag itself was filled with cotton balls.

  “The gift is inside the cotton.” Trace explained carefully. It was apparent from his quivering voice that he was anxious for me to see what was inside. I opened the bag and pulled out the stuffing. Hidden between the layers of fluff was a charm that matched the bracelet that Jess had given me the Christmas before, and inside the charm was a deep blue gemstone. The moment it dropped into m
y hand, I could feel my breath get stuck somewhere between my molars and my esophagus. I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even move. I wanted to beam into my superhuman powers and make myself invisible.

  “It’s a sapphire,” Trace said as he gently pulled the gem out of my fingers and rolled it around in his hand. “When you said your parents gave you that bracelet, I just figured that the gem was your birthstone. But when I looked it up on this website the other day, I realized that your birthstone is actually the sapphire.” He stood up straight again and looked at Jess innocently as though he too might be interested in his research. “Apparently sapphires are never red because a red sapphire is basically just a ruby.” He looked back down at me as I stared blankly at the grass in front of me. “So I knew what you had couldn’t be your birthstone.” He placed the sapphire back in my motionless hand. “You don’t think your parents will mind that I added to the bracelet, do you?”

  I found myself looking at Trace again, only I had barely heard any of what he said. My lips began moving before any words came out, but finally I found the courage to say, “Trace, my parents didn’t give me this bracelet.” The words came out hoarse and muffled, but I knew he understood them. Even through the darkness, I could see his face scrunch up in confusion. Just beside him, Jess, with his arms still folded and his head cocked to the side, was watching and waiting for some kind of an explanation.

  Trace shifted his weight to his left foot. “But you said…”

  “I know what I said, Trace.” I laid my head in both of my hands and spoke to the cement.

  “So who gave it to you then?” Trace’s voice was an octave higher. But he didn’t need to hear the answer because in the silence, with my head toward the ground and Jess’s eyes hurt and betrayed, Trace figured it out on his own. I knew the second that it clicked because he took a long, hard sigh before turning back down my front walk and mumbling a profane word under his breath. I was still looking at the porch steps beneath me when I heard Trace’s car engine roar and then disappear into the night.

  I was surprised to feel Jess sit back down on the porch step beside me. He kept his fingers intertwined on his lap, but he sat close enough to me that our arms were touching from our shoulders down to our elbows. I was even more surprised when I heard him start to laugh until I realized the laugh was sarcastic and laced with resentment. “What was that, Gemma?”

  I hadn’t moved my gaze from the cement, and I felt my face digging deeper into my hands with the weight of the question. I finally released my hands and sat up straight, searching for the words to explain myself. “Trace and I became pretty good friends this summer.”

  Jess didn’t say a word, so I continued, only this time the words poured like rain.

  “I mean you were gone and Drew was gone, and I really didn’t have anyone to hang out with. And Trace just sort of started calling all the time, wanting to hang out, and I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal. We just went on hikes and stuff. Lots of hikes, and sometimes we’d go out to eat but just at casual places like Willy’s, and I never let him pay for me or anything like that.” I took a breath. “And then suddenly you’re back, and he’s showing up at my house with this sapphire. This stupid, stupid sapphire. I don’t even want it.” I opened my hand and chucked the sapphire far into the grass.

  Jess took a breath as we both watched Trace’s gift disappear into my front lawn. “Does Trace know about us? What we are?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I didn’t know what to tell him. I don’t even know what we are.”

  Jess hoisted himself back to his feet.

  “Don’t go,” I pleaded. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “I’m tired,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m going to go get some sleep.”

  I pulled myself up to standing. “Jess, this really isn’t a big deal.”

  “Gemma.” Jess sounded frustrated, and for the first time in my life, I saw him getting close to losing his temper. “You told him the bracelet was from your parents.”

  “It’s not like it was planned. He just kept asking me over and over who it was from, and I just didn’t want to tell him. It’s personal to me. You’re personal to me. So I finally just let him believe that it was from them, and it never came up again.”

  “Gemma, he likes you.” He sounded exasperated. “He likes you, and you didn’t even tell him anything about us. You let him believe you were available for him to like.”

  “I wasn’t sure that I wasn’t available for him to like.” The words came out louder and with more force than I meant them to. “You stopped calling me half way into July.”

  “Every time I called you were asleep.”

  “You could have called earlier.”

  “I was working.”

  I backed away a step and took a deep breath to collect myself. I couldn’t believe that we were fighting like this. Things had been so perfect only moments before, and now we were yelling at each other on my front lawn. How had it gotten this bad this fast? In a slower and much lower tone I said, “Everything just happened so fast between us. One minute we were kissing, and the next minute you were gone. I didn’t know what to expect.”

  Jess stared at me in silence for a long time before turning toward his house. “I can tell you one thing,” I heard him mumble under his breath, “I never expected this.” He kept walking, and he didn’t turn around. He didn’t look at me one last time. He just disappeared into his house. I closed my eyes shut and prayed with everything I had that somehow I was still dreaming.

  Chapter 3

  Jess and I had never specifically planned on him driving me to school the next morning. I had always assumed he would, but after he left the night before, I called Drew and told her about our fight. We both decided it would be a good idea if she picked me up instead. I was running to Drew’s car the next morning that was parked in my driveway when Jess stepped out of his house and watched me with confused eyes. “You’re not coming with me?” He didn’t yell, but I could hear him clearly across the distance.

  I looked from Jess to Drew, who was applying the last of her mascara in her rear view mirror. “Um,” I stammered looking back across the street, “I wasn’t sure if …” I switched my footing, “Drew asked me to go with her today.”

  Jess only nodded before he double-stepped his porch steps and slipped into his car, alone.

  “Look at you, Little Miss Two-Timer,” Drew said as we approached the high school. We had spent the ride to school rehashing the details of the previous night and somehow she appeared to feel less sorry for me and more proud.

  I slunk into the driver side chair. “I’m not trying to be a two-timer. I like Jess. I want to be with Jess.”

  “Then tell him that.”

  “I did.” Or did I? The exact details of our argument were a bit fuzzy. But how could he not know that I wanted to be with him? He had to know how much I liked him.

  “Here it is,” Drew interrupted my thoughts with a daunting voice. “The dark, looming prison that’s going to have total control over our lives for the next three miserable years.”

  I stared ahead at the massive, aged building that was our high school. The parking lot was full of kids dressed to the hilt in their new school paraphernalia, laughing and talking and hugging friends they hadn’t seen in the past three months. I didn’t recognize a soul. “Who are these people?” I asked with self-doubt dripping from my words. “Are you sure we’re at the right place?”

  Drew pulled into a slot and put her car into park. She fell back against her head rest. “We’re in serious trouble.”

  We moved through the parking lot, weaving between cars and cliques of laughing teenagers, trying not to look as awkward and out of place as we felt. We approached the huge staircase that led from the parking lot to the main doors of the school. For years, I had dreamed about the m
oment I would ascend that very staircase for the first time, and now I was here. Though in my dreams, Jess was by my side, instead of getting out of his car fifty feet behind me all by himself.

  “Let’s go to my locker first.” Drew pulled out her scrunched-up class schedule and squinted at her locker number in the top left hand corner. “It’s in the B hall.”

  We moved through the big doors that were held open by the dozens of students entering the main hall. Everything about high school was a scale larger than junior high. The ceilings were higher, the doors were heavier, and the other students? Massive! Who knew that twelfth-grade boys could grow facial hair? Directly in front of us was a huge sculpture of a cheetah, the school’s mascot, and jetting out from it in three different directions were long, neon-lit halls lined with an infinite number of yellow lockers. “Which one’s the B hall?”

  We both looked at the signs pointing down each of the halls. How typical. We were those stupid sophomores holding their stupid class schedules, looking completely out of it. Even Drew, who had literally ruled junior high, looked naïve and slightly moronic. “I think it’s the middle one.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Together we headed down the middle hall scanning the numbers printed over the lockers for the one that matched Drew’s class schedule. It was apparent that this was the sophomore hall because we were suddenly surrounded by a hundred other kids looking just as overwhelmed as we felt. “Here it is,” Drew announced. But the locker she was looking at was already opened by a short kid with blue thick-rimmed glasses and partially graying hair clumsily dropping his books inside.

  I leaned over her shoulder to double check the number on the paper. “You sure?”

  But Drew shoved the schedule in her back pocket before I had a chance to see it. “Hi, Brian,” she said, leaning toward the boy at the locker. He turned at the sound of his name. Drew continued, “I think you’re at the wrong locker. This is actually mine.”