Chapter 10 Jessa #2
“Daaaaaade,” she sings out. “One more time, bun, it’s so romantic!”
“It’s cold,” he says, looking down into the pool in front of him, “and dirty.”
“Who cares?”
“I do,” he says.
“Same,” Bird murmurs as she steps up next to me.
But still, she dips in carefully. Somehow she hasn’t managed to get a drop on her clothes yet, though I feel bad that her leather sandals are definitely ruined. I’m stepping in when I hit a patch of slime and slide sideways, taking her down too. God, I am a disaster.
I come up sputtering and see her thrashing, grab her hand and pull her up and she gasps, water flying off her in all directions. “Jesus, Jessa!”
“I’m so, so—”
“Insane?” she says, cutting me off. And for a second that old fear curdles up to the surface. What if I am repeating Mack? What if I’m actually enjoying this and the way it makes me feel? What if when I get home tonight everything will crash down and I’ll be just the same as my sister?
Bird is getting out and I try to help her. “I’ve got this,” she snaps. But then I remember she thinks I’m insane and I turn away.
“Fine, help yourself,” I say, and move back toward the car. Security here apparently doesn’t give a crap, and Kayla is trying to get Dade to sit in the fountain and hold her, and Dade is getting out of the fountain. Maybe the spell is broken.
But then I see her lean in and whisper something and they’re back in, holding each other, and Bird is almost to the car, so I unlock the doors and sit in the driver’s seat.
She flops into the passenger seat and for a bit no one says anything.
I grab my Altoids tin, decorated in nail polish and a Breeders sticker, from the center console, pull out a joint, and prepare to light it when she pipes up.
“Can we just commit one crime today, Jessa?”
“Come on, McGruff, I need some relaxation.”
“There’s a whole fountain out there to relax in. Dade and Kayla seem to be very relaxed.”
I look out, and Dade and Kayla look more stimulated than relaxed. Grody.
“I’m sorry, Bird, this was a dumb idea,” I say, and slide the joint back into the case, then tuck it into the console.
She’s sifting in her purse and pulls out a black cigarette box with a red triangle.
Cloves. She places one between her lips, a pretty sight.
“You know, they were almost irritated there for a second,” she says, flicking her lighter, which is definitely empty.
I pull out my Zippo and light her smoke, and she inhales deep, then breathes out a sweet-smelling cloud.
Betty the Buick decides it’s okay because according to Six Roots, cloves don’t count.
“Yeah,” I say, taking the olive branch. “A whole second.”
“What made you think of this, anyway?” she asks, and offers me the pack. I shake my head. Nicotine kills. But if she’d offered me a puff of hers, I might have taken it, touching something that had touched her lips…. Fuck, I need to focus.
I look down, but that’s even worse because I notice that though she followed the clothing guidelines, she did wear a white shirt. The cold water has her showing through, and past the lines of her bra I can see the firm bumps of her nipples, and for a second that fire deep in me burns.
“My sister, she, uh, did this once.” I look out the window, the damp and heat in the car starting to fog it up. I start to draw a fancy S in the window ’cause I can’t think of anything else to distract me from the very damp and somewhat revealed Bird.
“You have a sister?” she asks. I nod in return. “My condolences.”
“I take it you have one too?”
“You don’t know who my sister is?” she asks.
“No, should I?”
Bird shakes her head, a small smile brightening her eyes. In this light, her cheeks pinked from the excitement, the contours of her face illuminated by the overhead car light, she’s downright kissable… and maybe I am just a letch.
“Is yours younger or older?” she asks, seeming genuinely interested in the one topic I really don’t want to be talking about right now.
“She’s older,” I answer anyway. “Do you mind if we don’t talk about sisters right now?” She takes another puff, cranking the window down to let the smoke out and ash.
“I’d love to not talk about sisters right now,” she says, then shifts toward me, her smile turning slightly wicked as she opens her mouth to say, “Wanna leave them here?”
“Dade would kiiiill me.”
“Kayla would banish me from existence,” she says, laughing a little.
“There you go with your big poet words.” I like her big poet words.
“Well, I know how much you enjoy my big poet words, so… sorry, I’ll try to keep them to a minimum,” she says, exhaling a cloud of smoke. She looks miffed. I don’t really understand why. Weren’t we on the verge of having fun a second ago?
“I was just teasing, Bird, you gotta get a thicker skin.” Somehow ticking her off has become less fun over the past week.
“Or you could be a bit kinder,” she says, squeezing the cherry off her cigarette. “Got an ashtray?”
“Betty the Buick doesn’t usually do smokes,” I say, and pull open the flip-out ashtray, which is kinda packed with old roaches.
“But I think we can make an exception, Captain Planet.” I smile at her to let her know it’s a joke.
It’s cute she cares, unlike most smokers, who toss their butts out like confetti.
She reaches into the glove box and starts sifting through my jewel cases, then finds the zippered CD case and flips through them. “Is this all you have?”
“No, but my CD collection would likely fill the car,” I say, a bit horrified that nothing from my heavy rotation is catching her eye.
“Must be nice,” she says, then digs into her purse and pulls out a somewhat beat-up jewel case with a seventies-looking woman’s face on it. “I have a few, oldies but goodies.”
If this is some seventies disco garbage, I swear to god I’m gonna find a way to drown her in the next fountain. The Bee Gees and their contemporaries are still a dark mark on music history.
“Let’s expand your palate,” she says, and reaches for my Discman.
“Um, I have amazing taste in music, didn’t you even see…”
I don’t have a chance to point out the Lauryn Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, and the more eclectic artists like Bikini Kill…. Instead she is actually removing my Jump, Little Children CD to put in her dubious disc.
“Look,” she says, peering out the window at the soaking-wet couple—dear god, where is security? “It’s safe to say we have another few minutes. Give me a chance to guest deejay.”
She snaps my Discman closed, then inserts the cassette-to-CD-player adapter.
Soft guitar starts off with simple, sweet chords and then the voice comes in, clarion and light like Joni Mitchell, the kind of song that would be perfect on a spring day, easing through a light breeze, back directly against grass.
Or almost a waltz, the back-and-forth of a slow dance that’s romantic but not quite sexy, more classy than that.
I hear hints of Joan Baez there as well, the woman definitely taking on attributes of the best of her contemporaries.
I can see the song speaks to her in some significant way.
She’s swaying almost imperceptibly, mouthing the words, barely a sound escaping her lips until I listen hard and hear a low, soft voice singing along.
She’s closing her eyes for a second and she looks so…
adorable. I find myself swaying too, under some kind of spell that I don’t usually fall for.
Soft music isn’t my forte, I like angry, forceful music usually.
I can see the allure of the crooners, but recently I’ve needed something a bit more edgy.
Then I listen and I understand why I like this song:
“To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came”
I see Bird smile as she sings the lines, and I can feel myself smiling too, even with the sticky, wet clothes and the obscene public display of affection, and the strange smell coming off the fountain water that soaked everything.
The lyrics are edgy, they call out the crap of high school I face now, even though it couldn’t have been written in the last decade.
It’s a beautiful, charming examination of the worst of what we’re going through.
It’s anger tempered into beauty. It’s incredible.
The song ends and I hit the pause button.
“Bird, who is this?”
“Janis Ian,” she says, looking nervous. I wonder if I should mock it to keep my badass image, but I can’t shit on good music just because she and I are currently frenemies.
I settle on, “She’s pretty good.”
Bird smiles a little more and it lights her up. “Oh, I’m glad you like it. I know it’s a bit older, but my dad and I used to listen to it a lot when I was younger. I’ve always loved the way she writes.”
“Her lyrics are kinda rad,” I say, pulling my hand through my damp hair, suddenly a touch self-conscious as she stares at me, searching my face to see if I’m playing on sarcasm or being genuine. I try to look genuine.
“Lyrics are poetry, after all,” she says, drawing an invisible line connecting us. “You know, she actually wrote this song when she was our age?”
“That’s cool,” I say, because it is. And I think about Bird’s poem again for a second.
“W-well,” she says. The slight stutter, which is actually pretty adorable, pushes her on to the next sentence: “If you wanna borrow it, you can. But I’d like it back before we break them up, ’cause we’ll probably never see each other after that.”
She’s right, but it’s kinda sad. Maybe in another incarnation Bird and I could have gotten along or something. “I’ll rip a copy on Dad’s CD burner and have it back to you next time we meet up.”
She nods and pulls it out gently, placing it in the jewel case like it’s a Fabergé egg. It must mean something more than fun times with her dad. She hands it to me and I put it in the center console, the safest place in the car.
“I’m about done with tonight,” she says. “Wanna get out of here?”
“Yeah, but Dade and…”
She leans over me, arm brushing my chest, pulling a gasp of excitement from me as she reaches to slam on the horn. I’m more shocked by the touch than the sudden sound.
The blaring noise brings Dade and Kayla running toward us, and I’ll be damned if they don’t look happy too. Right before they hop in, I turn to Bird and say, “Mission failed, your turn.”
Later, warm and dry in my room, dead tired and beat by my own design, I pull out the jewel case Bird left behind, plug my headphones into my boom box, and secretly listen to Janis Ian, my new favorite seventies songstress.