Chapter 19 Bird
BIRD
I get dressed in yesterday’s clothes and try not to read too much into the way Jessa is being extra weird with me.
Because, Kayla. As I replay the events that led us to the wonder of Jessa’s bed last night, I’m flooded with worry.
We left her there. The last time I saw her she was up onstage dancing, random band boy hands on her body, Emmanuel looking at her like she was dessert or something…
and her, not even noticing that I was being pushed around in the stupid mosh pit, not caring that she left me first.
I bring the folded Xena shirt to my face before I stow it in my bag.
Jessa is the only person our age I know who has a cell phone.
Mom and Daniel just got one last winter after that terrible snowstorm left everyone stranded and no one knew where Mom was for ten and a half hours.
For emergencies only, but Olivia has been begging for one ever since. She’s had to settle for a pager.
It’s amazing that I’m remembering all of this, yet also worrying about Kayla, while also replaying Jessa’s anatomy in my mind, all while waiting for an answer at Kayla’s house.
It rings once—Jessa’s mouth and hands and the curve of her back.
Twice—Jessa’s smile and the way she says my name.
A third time—and Kayla’s mom is saying, “Hello?”
I clear my throat, stand up, try to focus. “Hi, is Kayla up?”
“Bird? What—what do you mean? I thought she was sleeping at your house.”
And my focus comes crashing in with sharp precision now. “Oh…”
“Did she not sleep at your house?”
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“No, she did. She definitely did. I was just checking because she… um, ran out to get some coffee and breakfast sandwiches, um, while I was in the shower and…”
“Then why would she be here?”
“Oh, wait a second, I—I think she’s pulling up now. Yep. Yes, that’s her. Sorry, I guess I just got impatient. Okay, thanks. Bye—”
“Wait a second, Bird. I want to talk to Kayla.”
“Oh, sure, sure. I’ll let her know to call you.”
“No, put her on the—”
I hang up. Oh my god, I just hung up on Kayla’s mom.
I immediately dial Kayla’s pager with 911 and Jessa’s cell phone number.
I call back right away with 911 again, because this is an emergency on so many levels now.
First emergency is, where the fuck is Kayla?
Second emergency is, Kayla is fine but now her mom knows she didn’t spend the night at my house.
I start scrolling through Jessa’s outgoing calls—one of these is Dade’s number.
Maybe she hooked up with Dade after we left.
Even that would be preferable to the rapidly accumulating number of horrific scenarios that are piling up in my head right now.
I’m about to call Dade when the phone rings in my hand.
“Kayla?” I answer.
“Bird?” she says. It’s her. Everything is okay. For a moment, anyway.
“Kayla, are you okay?”
“I’m… yeah, I’m—I’m okay,” she mutters as if I’ve just woken her up. “Where are you, where are you calling from?”
“Jessa’s. Jessa’s cell phone. Where are you?”
“I’m at… I’m—wait, why 911?”
“Oh my god, don’t kill me. I called your house.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’m standing outside Jessa’s house, the taste of warm syrup still in my mouth, and my stomach full of what truly were the most delicious waffles I’ve ever had.
If I didn’t know that there was a sister hidden in a bedroom just down the hall, sleeping off her hangover and pain and illness, I would’ve thought I was having breakfast with the damn Brady Bunch.
Jessa’s maintaining a three-foot radius from me while we wait for Kayla to pick me up.
“I’m sorry I’ve got to run—Kayla’s having an emergency I have to help her out with.”
Finally making eye contact with me, she says, “She’s okay, though, right? Like, she made it home all right?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s okay.” I let my arm swing forward to catch her fingers with mine. “Are you okay? I mean, with everything that happened with us last night?”
“Of course. It’s cool,” she says, shrugging. So very cool. “You?”
Could she be using fewer words? Fine. I can use fewer words too. I take her hand and pull her around the side of her garage where no one will see us.
“What are you… Bird, what are you doing?”
I pull her close to me, back us up against the side of the garage, my hands on her waist, fingers threading through the belt loops on her jeans.
She turns her head to look toward the street, but I place my hands on her face so she’s looking at me.
I kiss her, and as she slowly kisses me back I can taste her coffee and that same sweet syrup that’s on my tongue too.
She moves her hands from my hair to the collar of my jacket, then pulls me closer for just a second before she presses her hand against my chest, gently pushing herself away.
I bring my fingers to my mouth—my lips feel stung from all the kissing last night. “Sorry, I just wanted to tell you how beautiful you look this morning.”
She stares at the ground, puts her hands in her pockets, and drags the toe of her boot through the frost on the grass beneath us. But I can see the tiniest smile peeking through. “You don’t have to say that.”
Before I can say anything else, Kayla’s car horn blasts through the morning quiet, putting an end to this conversation. I step forward and kiss her quick, just one more time. “Talk later?”
As she looks up at me and nods, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so shy and delicate, making me I wish I could freeze this moment and stretch it out, and give her my whole day—give her all my days.
We arrive at Kayla’s house nearly forty-five minutes after my ill-fated phone call.
We walk in with smiles on our faces, a bag full of Burger King breakfast sandwiches, and each with a coffee in hand, mid-conversation, as if nothing out of the ordinary happened this morning and we both woke up at my house and I didn’t hang up on her mom.
Her dad closes his newspaper and sets it down with force—for her dad, this is the equivalent of slamming it on the counter. He stands. Her mom starts walking toward us.
“Kayla,” she begins.
Her dad finishes, “Where the heck were you last night?” Again, “heck” might as well be “fuck” in his vocabulary.
“Chill,” Kayla says, rolling her eyes in that way she’s gotten so good at ever since she met Dade. “We were at Bird’s house.”
“You’re lying.” Her mom is standing so close to us, and when her eyes shift to me, I can barely keep it together. “I just got off the phone with Bird’s dad, and he said you girls were not there last night.”
He’s not my dad. But that won’t help matters.
So, I think fast, faster than I was thinking this morning.
“I’m sorry,” I say, looking back and forth between her mom and dad.
“It’s my fault. We were going to stay at my house, but Liv is—we’re in the middle of this huge fight right now and I didn’t want to be around her, so we went to our friend Jessa’s house instead and we didn’t tell anyone because—well, we didn’t expect to stay the night and, and… ”
Kayla jumps in. “And I knew you guys wouldn’t let me stay over without knowing Jessa, so there.”
“You’re right, we wouldn’t have,” her dad says.
“See?” Kayla waves her hand in convincingly righteous frustration, as if this is really, truly what happened. I don’t know when she got to be such a good actress.
“Were you drinking?” her mom asks.
I shake my head vehemently. “No, we weren’t.”
Kayla sets the greasy bag down, digs around inside, and pulls out one of the sandwiches.
She starts unwrapping it, tearing at the paper.
“Bird wasn’t drinking, Mom. But yeah, I was.
And haven’t you guys told me ten million times that I should never drink and drive?
Huh? No matter what?” she says, getting angry—like, angry for real.
“Of course,” her dad says.
“So we stayed the night at our friend’s house and didn’t drive home and stayed alive, okay?” She takes a giant bite of the sandwich and talks with her mouth full, inching closer and closer to her mom’s face. “Now, can you let me eat this fucking disgusting sandwich in peace?”
“Kayla!” her dad yells.
“Just go to your room,” her mom shouts, backing away from her. “Right now!”
“Happy to!” she growls, showing us all her half-chewed food. “C’mon, Bird.”
“You are grounded, young lady!” her dad yells after us.
I follow her up the stairs to her bedroom and wait until she closes the door before I speak.
“Kayla, holy shit. Why did you just do that?”
She swings around, and for a second I think she might start yelling at me, too, but she just smiles and says, “It’s fine. I can handle them. That was good improvising, by the way.”
I release the breath I was holding. “Yeah, you too. I really thought you were losing it there for a second.”
“Who says I wasn’t?” She wiggles her eyebrows and laughs. “Birdie. Stop looking at me like that. I’m fine. All right?”
I nod and take my sandwich out of the bag because I’m still starving, even after the waffles.
“Here, want mine?” She holds her sandwich out to me, minus one giant bite mark.
“No, you eat it.”
She shrugs and wraps it back up, squishing it into a ball that she tosses in the garbage can under her desk.
“So where were you really?” I whisper. When she picked me up, all we had time for was the plan of showing up at her house as if we’d been together all night save for Kayla running out for breakfast and coffee.
“I went out with the band to this party at Emmanuel’s. I ended up sleeping there.”
“So you really were drinking?”
“Yeah, and you were smoking weed with Jessa.” I must look shocked because she continues, “Please, I can smell it on you.”
I pull my hair in front of my face and sniff. “Oh, god.”
“Thank you for ditching me last night, by the way.”
“I know, I’m really sorry. Something happened at the club. I had to help Jessa out. It was kind of a mess.”
“Ugh, did someone try to kick her ass?”
“Wh-what do you mean?”