Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“I will never understand them,” Leah sighs, sinking into her high-back executive style chair. I put my feet on the edge of her desk, and pass the bowl of M&Ms to Denae. She sifts through, picking out the brown ones.
“They’re literally all the same, D,” I tell her.
“Logically I know that, but psychologically, the brown ones taste better,” she says, shrugging, sliding the bowl back to Leah.
“I know,” I reply to Leah, letting my head fall back against the wall. “They can be so mean.” I toss a few more M&Ms in my mouth. “I think they could go up against inmates in a scared straight program. Hell, they may even scare the inmates.”
“They scare me,” Denae says.
Leah leans forward, snagging a few tissues from the orange box on her desk, passing them my way. She points toward her ear. “You still have a little…” she motions again.
I bring the tissues to my ear, wiping away the shaving cream that lingers. “I love the smell of Barbasol,” I say, tossing the used tissues into her can.
“Oh, your top,” Leah adds, rooting around in her bottom drawer for a moment before her lips press together in a flat line. She winces. “All I have left is another PE shirt.”
I sigh. “I’ll take it.” As carefully as possible, I tug off my polo and slip into the stale, loaner t-shirt.
“So back in the polos and jeans, huh?” Denae asks, as Leah props her feet up on her desk. She’s already heard about the fancy clothes, why I wore them one day and how they didn’t work. But Denae hasn’t.
“I thought maybe the reason why the teachers didn’t like me was because I dressed too casually, but after a day of wearing uncomfortable high heels and pencil skirts that made me feel like I had a perpetual wedgie, I’m back to my normal clothes. Because as it turns out, what I wear doesn't matter. Cadence is still giving me eye daggers. If it wasn’t for you, D, I’d sit in the break room in silence, alone in a room full of people.” I try not to let that truth depress me, but feeling alone all day, coming home to an empty house, having no missed calls on my phone… it adds up. “But you guys are my friends, so fuck ‘em. ”
“Fuck them indeed,” Leah says, “unofficially and off the record, of course.” She tips her head to the side, blinking. “I gotta suspend a few of them, Ry. I know you don’t want that but… I can’t let them off.”
I wave my hand through the air. “Suspend them. It took me an hour to clean up all that shaving cream. And Bluebell is against hazing. They’re lucky we’re even calling it hazing and not straight up bullying.”
In my purse, at my feet, my phone rings. My pulse leaps, and deep down, I wonder if this is the call. The call where my parents say how sorry they were, recognize my hurt, and apologize for everything. But when I look down, I see Michael’s number floating across the screen, so I reach into my bag and silence it, flipping it over so I can’t even see the screen.
My face must give me away a little, because Leah leans forward, dropping her feet to the floor. “You okay?”
I nod. “Fine. But I should go talk to Jo Jo.”
“Lene,” Denae adds. “When I brought her up to the office, she seemed pretty irritated that I called her Jo Jo. She goes by Lene.”
Lene. Her changing her name breaks my heart a little, because I do not believe she wants to be called Lene. I think she’s looking for who she wants to be, and feeling more lost than ever. After today, all I want to do is make her feel better.
I get to my feet and move through the administration building until I come to the peer counseling office. This issue spans beyond what a peer counselor can handle, but it was the only private space we could stick Jo Jo until the other girls got picked up.
Practice today was a disaster.
The frosh squad started harassing Jo Jo about her getting upset at the sleepover and leaving. Teasing her about being a baby is how it started, then it turned into teasing her about not having her period, which rolled straight into “I bet you don’t even shave down there,” something they teased her about at the sleepover since she didn’t want to change in front of them. Cadence did not, not even once, say a word to Alexa about her bullying and taunting.
They teased her so much, and when I stopped JV practice to stomp over and tell Cadence to get control of her team, they took that opportunity to race back to their bags and collect all the shaving cream they brought. While I was arguing with Cadence, the freshman squad coated Jo Jo in shaving cream, taunting her about how they were helping her shave.
Thank god for my squad. They’ve accepted Jo Jo as one of them, and immediately went to bat for her. I love that they defended their teammate and team, but it ended in the gymnasium looking like the inside of a shaving cream can, and a handful of the freshman girls on the dock for suspension.
Pushing into the small office area, I find Jo Jo wearing a loaner PE shirt just like I am. I point, and smile. “Twins!”
She laughs a little, but it turns into tears. Before I get to any pep talk, I slide into the seat next to her, wrap my arms around her, and pull her into me. She cries, and my heart breaks, because she doesn’t deserve this at all.
“I’m sorry, Jo Jo,” I tell her quietly, then correct myself, saying, “Lene.”
She pulls off of my chest, looking up at me with wet eyes, traces of mascara pooling beneath them. “Why are they doing this to me?” Her bottom lip quivers, and my heart constricts.
“You got moved up to JV. She’s jealous. You don’t take her bait, and it makes her angry that she can’t get under your skin. When she upset you at the sleepover, you left. You didn’t stay and cry or fight. You’re more mature and she knows it.” I don’t need to name Alexa for Jolene to know who I’m talking about. “She’ll quit soon. And for now, she’ll be out for three days. She got suspended. Jasmine, Cara and Macy, too.”
“They’ll hate me more. They’ll blame me for getting in trouble,” Jo Jo says, panic bouncing around each word.
“You don’t make the rules. There are rules in school. They broke them. None of this is your fault. Nor is it in your control.”
She nods, but I can see in her face all the doubt lingering, all the stress laid out ahead of her. She’s wondering what it’s going to be like when the suspended girls get back, how cheerleading will be next year if they’re all on the same squad–she’s thinking about everything and I know I need to put a stop to it.
“Wanna do something? Today sucked. And my ex-boyfriend, who is a total asshole, just called me. So my day kinda sucks, too,” I tell her. “So let’s do something fun. Something to make us feel better. Ice cream? Coffee?”
Jo Jo rolls her lips together. “I can think of something, but it’s not food.”
The sadness is already partially lifting, and I’d do anything to finish the job. “What?”
“I’ve always wanted to get my belly button pierced.”
This is likely something a mother would take their daughter to do. First she’d probably try and talk her out of it then she would reluctantly drive her, and be the one to explain to her dad later that night that it wasn’t too serious.
Maybe she’s asking me because I’m the only woman in her life she trusts? Jake certainly gave me that impression when we briefly talked at the farmers market last weekend.
“Sure,” I tell her. “There’s a place in town that does piercings and tattoos. Let’s go check it out.”
Leaving Ink Time, Jo Jo is the happiest I’ve ever seen her. She’s smiling and laughing, and can’t stop peeking at her new piercing. After the day she had, it was the best sixty bucks I’ve ever spent. It does occur to me at some point, while Jo Jo is telling me about her science project testing the permanence of markers that claim to be permanent, that maybe this is something Jo Jo needed permission to do.
It’s fleeting, though, because her ears are double pierced, and she has a cartilage piercing too. Not to mention, belly button rings are harmless. You can take them out anytime and your belly button heals right up.
I got mine done, too because my mother would never let me. She always said I shouldn’t even be showing my midriff, so having one makes no sense, because no one would be able to see it anyway–as long as I wasn’t dressing like a hussy.
After telling me all about her hypothesis, the car falls silent for a few minutes, but not uncomfortably. We’re about five minutes from her place when she twists behind her seatbelt a little, facing me in the moonlight.
“Growing up, I missed my mom but I never really like, missed her so intensely until recently,” she says, her voice quiet, but her eyes locked onto my profile. She wants a good response from me, clearly seeking assurance and comfort. Handsy anticipation claws low in my belly. I hope I can deliver for her .
I glance between her and the road. “Why do you think recently you’ve missed her more?”
She looks down, lifting her shirt to twist the belly button ring a few times. “I don’t know. I guess when I was young I thought eventually my dad would date again and… I’d have a stepmom. And I’d get so used to her that eventually the step title would just fall off and I’d call her mom and finally feel like I had a family again.” She wipes at her eye discreetly, but I catch it. I also hear the wobble in her tone, too. “I don’t have a mom. I don’t have grandparents nearby. I don’t even have friends anymore.”
My heart internally shatters, and, while I didn’t go through this when I was her age, I feel like I’m going through it now. At least I have Leah, and now, Denae.
“The Brownstock sisters are your friends. I used to see you around campus with them all the time,” I attempt to reassure her, though after the sentiment is between us, I wonder if those girls are still friends with Jo Jo. I haven’t seen them together in a few months at least.
“I completely ditched them for cheer. They hate me and I don’t even blame them!” she shouts, correcting herself immediately, adding, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
I shrug. “You’re frustrated. You’re allowed to feel frustrated. But I bet if you called Peyton and Cassidy, they’d love to hear from you.” I glance at the speedometer, and let off the gas some, slowing down our last few minutes together tonight.
“Maybe,” she shrugs one shoulder. “I wish my mom was alive, or that my dad remarried, or that, I don’t know, we lived near my grandparents or something. I just… I want a family. I’m so jealous of people that have people, and the more I want family, the meaner I am to my only family, which ma kes absolutely no sense!” she huffs, shaking her head in utter frustration.
“Do your grandparents live far?” I check my rearview mirror as I approach the stop sign. We’re alone out here, a few hundred yards from her house, so I stay at that stop sign, and turn to face her. “Maybe you could talk to your dad about visiting them more.”
Despite the seriousness of the moment, I still see Jake Turner’s closet in my mind, and draw my legs together.
“I think I resent him a little. Like… he got good years with Mom and then she died and I had to go my whole life without her. And then he didn’t even give me a stepmom—or even any hope for one.” She drags the sides of her thumbs below her eyes, then pushes her hair off her face. “Okay, you can drop me. I’m not gonna like… spontaneously combust.”
I left off the brake. “It would be okay if you did, though. That’s just my point.” I pull into the driveway, staying close to the end. “Have you ever told your dad why you wanted to start doing cheerleading? You know, what you told me about finding that photo of your mom.”
She shakes her head. “No. He’d probably ask me where I got the photo and put it back into the locked box of her stuff.” She gives me a sad smile. “Anyway. Thanks for everything today and I’m sorry I ruined your night. You probably have way better things to do than hang out with one of your students.”
“This was great,” I tell her, making sure she knows I wanted to take her out tonight. “I hope you feel better.”
She smiles. “I do.”
After we exchange goodbyes, I watch her walk across the lawn, stepping over a large, coiled garden hose, and up the steps to her front door. She waves once the door is open, and I drive away hoping that I really did help cheer her up tonight .
My phone rings again, and I spot Michael’s name on my caller ID. I silence him, and I don’t think about him or my parents.
I only think of Jo Jo, and her sweet heart, and hope beyond hope that things turn around for her soon. I also can’t help but wonder why in the world Jake Turner hasn’t been swooped up by now.