Chapter 10 Jessa
JESSA
I was tasked with the first group outing and spent the past week trying to think up something that both of them would despise. After coming to the conclusion that I am in no way creative, I thought WWMD—What Would Mack Do?
Hence we are all standing near the Cotsland Theater this balmy Friday night, in the midst of the bougie Cotsland Mall, where adults go to drink expensive wine at expensive restaurants and peruse some high-end hardware store that has a restaurant in it.
(Good god, where is the world going?) Those of us who followed directions are wearing grungy clothes.
Me in my torn jeans and Loreena McKennitt tee, Bird in a T-shirt and some cutoff shorts that are just short enough to see a swath of gorgeous creamy thigh…
Shut up, brain, and focus! Dade is in his least nice suit pants and a vest and that goddamned trench, and I can tell he’s about to get super grumpy.
Kayla… Jesus, Kayla looks ready to attend a rave, hold the glow sticks.
Everyone looks nervous, and I gotta say this isn’t my bag of tea either, but when desperate…
“What movie are we seeing?” Dade asks again, even though I told him no movies on the ride over, but he seems to think I’m gonna force him to go see another special showing of Silkwood. He hasn’t let me choose a movie since.
“Tonight,” I say, pausing for anticipation, “we will have the inaugural Fountain-Hopping Expedition of 1999.” I look to Bird, and she looks…
displeased. I don’t think she knows how much Dade hates being wet in clothing, and how much like a wet dog Kayla will look once all that water hits her face paint.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dade hisses.
“Hey, I’m trying to branch out and be spontaneous here. Kayla seems excited.”
Kayla does not seem excited. Kayla seems confused.
“Look, it’s simple. We hop in a fountain, splash around, have some fun, and when security arrives, we bust ass back to my car and drive to the next fountain. Rinse, dry, repeat. Except no drying. Or rinsing.”
“I don’t know…” Bird starts.
“It’s gonna be a blast,” I assure her, and wink, trying to let her know this will definitely free us of our friends’ significant others.
“Plus, it’s the last real weekend of heat, so we might as well enjoy cooling off a bit.”
Kayla’s face brightens up. “Sounds fun! Let’s do it!”
Dade sighs behind me, but he won’t argue with her.
“Do you think there will really be security?” Bird asks, as usual the very boring voice of reason. I roll my eyes.
“Maybe, but I think most of us can outrun a mall cop,” I say, knowing that out of the quartet, Dade is the most likely to get left behind, and an arrest might separate him from Kayla a bit. Lots of birds, lots of stones in that outcome.
“Okay, folks, let’s do this!” I yell, and Kayla rushes alongside me to the fountain planted in the middle of the mall plaza in front of the theater, both of us hitting the water at the same time.
Some adults headed into the theater watch us, then continue on, like it’s not their problem we’re being dumbass kids.
Meanwhile I suck in a breath, ’cause even though we’re only in mid-September, the water is cold as an Arctic witch’s left tit.
Dade and Bird are still holding back, looking about as happy as owls in the rain.
I’m still trying to figure out how to get Dade to participate when Kayla launches a wave of water at him.
“Come on, you chickens! Get in! The water is fine!” The sorceress has her spell on him, and he obeys.
Bird shrugs and moves forward too, both stepping gently in, as if the water will bite.
Depending on what’s in this slime, perhaps something will.
“This is so rad!” Kayla is currently the only person actually enjoying this. Dade grumbles and she kisses him, and I look away to find a very nervous and uncomfortable Bird.
“What the hell, Jessa?” she hisses at me.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time?” I shrug.
“Really, fountains? You didn’t see the romantic potential in that?”
“Excuse me for not being the poetess,” I snap back. “But cold, wet, hungry Dade is grumpy, see?”
“Well, he seems pretty happy to me,” she says, pointing to them making out under the fountain, Dade’s spiked hair flattened from the water, his trench wicking up moisture. Damn, those clothes gotta be heavy.
I’m trying to think of a comeback when I hear, “Hey!” and see a security guard headed our way.
“Time to split!” I yell, and grab Bird’s hand mostly to keep from slipping.
I slide into my flip-flops and notice her sandals are soaked but still runnable, and we tear ass to the parking lot.
I figured Officer Doughnuts would drop off as soon as we left the plaza, but he is some kind of packhorse and keeps chasing us.
I look back and see him narrowly miss grabbing Dade’s trench coat… . That fucking coat.
I pull harder on Bird’s hand, guiding us down a ramp off the plaza toward the lower levels of parking.
I duck us to the right and into an old maintenance elevator I found back in my preteens while waiting for my mom to pick me up.
Bird follows, a terrified look in her eyes that Officer Doughnuts might actually catch us.
I slide the steel horizontal doors up and drag us in, then close them behind us.
I hear the familiar thunk, thunk of Dade’s Docs and the slapping of what must be Kayla’s bare feet, but the mall cop boots don’t resound, and I let my heavy breath get a bit louder.
Reaching past what I think is Bird’s shoulder in the dark, I flip on the emergency light, and red illuminates the big boxy room.
“Shiiiit,” I say, and let out a laugh, slicking my hair back out of my face with one hand.
Bird hisses at me to shush.
“No worries, he’s not following. I bet Dade and Kayla are already at the car.”
“Crap, Jessa, they’re gonna leave us!” She looks panicked, and she’d be correct except I have the keys. I dangle them in front of her face.
“They won’t get far.”
She smiles in relief and looks around. “Um, Jessa, where the hell are we?”
“Since you mentioned hell,” I joke, “this is actually the elevator to the first circle.”
Her eyes widen and then narrow as she gets the sarcasm.
I grin a little, finding her irritation kind of cute.
“It’s an old maintenance elevator. Doesn’t work except for the light, but I dig the vibe in here and it’s a decent escape spot if Dade gets a little too…
well, Dade at the movies.” I don’t tell her it’s where I go when people he knows show up and I have to pretend I’m there alone.
“Cool,” she says, and I’m not sure if she’s serious or not.
“Well, it should be safe to leave,” I say, and accidentally bump her as I’m reaching for the door pull.
Clumsy as hell, as always. She shrinks back, and I can’t help but think for a second that it’s ’cause I am…
who I am. I mean, at least half the population thinks I’m dirty or that my queerness is somehow contagious or something.
Too many girls have uninvited me to stuff because “God, what if she hits on me ?” Olivia Fucking Rubens warned a whole bathroom during class change not to use the stall I had or they “might get toilet AIDS from the lesbo.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, hitting on some random straight girl is the last—the very last—thing on my mind.
But if I’m being honest, I have thought a bit about Bird…
. Jesus, I need to be more careful or she’ll be talking just like everyone else.
I try to shrink myself into a smaller space, allowing her a wide berth to get out, following only once she’s a couple of steps ahead.
The excitement and chills of our recent adrenaline rush give way to the heaviness of who I am, the disgust I accept even from myself.
We walk back to the car in silence, and I wish I was brave enough to ask Bird if she has those god, what if she hits on me fears, but I guess I’m too afraid to hear the answer.
Dade and Kayla are leaning against the trunk as we approach, attempting some extreme frottage.
I hit the car alarm and they jump. Dade flips me off, but Kayla jumps up and down.
“That. Was. Amazing!” Kayla is wayyyy too stoked. Dade is looking like a very unhappy wet cat. Perhaps some breakage? One can only hope.
“Then you’ll enjoy the next six on my list!” I crow.
Bird lets out a small groan and rolls her eyes. I shrug again, unsure how I can make this better for either of us. We’d be suffering one way or the other, but at least Dade is suffering too.
When Mack fountain-hopped four years ago, she was manic and she didn’t look out for security.
It was one of the earlier incidents, so she didn’t actually resist arrest, and Mom and Dad wrote it off as a teenage indiscretion.
They ignored her babbling the whole ride home from the police station and paid the fine and pretended everything was cool.
When she bottomed out and hid in her room, well, that was just moping over being grounded.
Still, I knew something had been changing.
The happiness seemed as artificial as the sadness seemed real.
Even at that point, I was disturbed, but if I’d only known where we would go from there… we were still on the kiddie coasters.
Bird touches my hand that’s on the gear shift, and I jump a bit at the sensation. “Light’s green,” she says, and looks away from me. I have definitely succeeded in pissing her off. I nod and drive forward, headed uptown, where there are two fountains back-to-back.
It isn’t until the last fountain that we finally see a little glimmer of argument between our besties. Kayla is trying to drag Dade into the fountain, a multilevel thing with pools you can practically wade in, and he starts balking.
“Come on,” he grumps. “Can’t we go and get some food or something? We’ve already done this in six other places….”