Chapter 9
Chapter nine
A single choice
Becomes a story
Retold a thousand times
August 12, 2013: (PART 1)
The second Monday in August marked the day all kids either eagerly awaited or earnestly sought to avoid: freshman year.
Our grade was split into two groups: group one, comprised of those popular in middle school who eagerly counted down the days until freshman year, their moment to assume their rightful place among the other privileged souls and commence their reign of torment over the less fortunate; and group two: the freaks and geeks, the kids who trembled in fear as Monday approached.
Jamie and I found ourselves on opposing sides that fateful day.
Personally, I was thrilled. High school's arrival meant I was one step closer to executing my life's master plan: packing my belongings into a giant trash bag and making a swift exit from this small town. Of course, I had no clue where I was headed; I just knew it had to be anywhere but here. Jamie, however, was dreading the first day of school. To him, it marked the beginning of the end. It was the day we'd all be split into different classes: Lucas would try out for the football team, Kayla would run for student body president, despite being too young. And in Jamie’s anxiety-clouded eyes, this was the day I’d realize I was too good for him.
The first time he vocalized this fear, I had to grab the back of the doorframe I was leaning against to keep my body stable as knee-shaking laughter erupted from my lungs, reverberating through the room with a force that no stand-up comedian could replicate with a joke.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t laughing at Jamie, and I genuinely wasn’t attempting to downplay his emotions.
But the concept seemed comical to me; the notion that I could ever consider myself too good for him was ridiculous.
In reality, Jamie was the one who was too good for me, too good for anyone.
I wish I could have made him realize that.
I stood at the foot of my bed, hands on my hips, staring at the long-haired, tangled mass of overgrown limbs submerged under my comforters, which refused to roll off my mattress.
“Jamie!” I yelled. “Please get your lazy ass out of my bed before my mom walks up here and sees you wrapped in my sheets!”
Jamie gripped the sides of my flattened pillow and squeezed the edges over his ears. “Scared she’ll think we’re doing it?” he grumbled.
“Gross, dude!” I slapped his blanket-covered foot. “Besides, you’re fully clothed; it’s not like we could have been doing anything R-rated anyway.”
Jamie flung his body to the side, propping up his head with his elbow. “Wanna test the theory?” I didn’t know if his boyish grin made me want to throw myself on top of him or to slap him.
“Your hormones are rotting your brain, you know that.” I rolled my eyes at him, not entirely out of annoyance, but because since our kiss at the carnival, I couldn’t meet his gaze and maintain our flirtatious banter without my body feeling like my atoms were melting.
“Yup.” Jamie propped himself into a sitting position, my comforter bunching around his waist. “And you love it.” I thought his summer glow-up was going to his head. But damn, if he grew taller or his hair grew any longer, he was going to have to start sleeping on the floor.
“Get up, please.” I tried to reason with him.
Jamie crossed his newly defined arms over his way-too-sculpted chest. “Make me.”
I cocked my head at his smugness. “Fine.”
Just as Jamie was about to inch further into my sheets, I sprang into the bed, the mattress bouncing beneath me. If there was one thing in this world that Jamie hated the most, it was being tickled. It was his very own personal self-destruct button I could hit anytime.
As I landed, fingers ready for their mission, I ran them up the sides of his torso, causing him to screech, “Please! Please!” His limbs flailed about like fish out of water. “Okay! OKAY! I’ll get up! Please, no more.”
He skillfully caught my arms with one swift move.
I could feel the steam of his breath on my neck and the beat of his heart against my chest. He released my hands. His eyes didn’t meet mine as if he was scared to join my gaze.
His lips parted lightly. “Or maybe … we could just stay here. Like this.”
“Is that what you want?”
“It’s what I always want.”
I should have kissed him right there, right then. But I didn’t. Instead, I did what I always did: I ruined the moment.
“What about Meghan? Don’t you have a date with her this Friday?”
Jamie pulled his eyes away from me and shot them to the ceiling. “You told me to say yes.”
I didn’t. Not technically, anyway. The day after the party, Megan texted Jamie to ask if he wanted to see a movie.
And some dumb part of me thought that after Jamie kissed me for the second time, it meant he wouldn’t be going on dates with other girls.
I was wrong. “No, I told you to say yes if you wanted.”
Jamie propped his body up with his hand, his chest almost leaning on top of mine. “And how is that different?”
I pleaded for my mouth to stop moving. “I said if you wanted to. Not that you should.” My pleas went unheard.
The shriek of my bedroom door opening jolted me upright, the sudden intrusion sending my heart into a panicked rhythm. I met my mother’s eyes, which were wide and darting back and forth between Jamie, sprawled happily on my bed, and my guilt-ridden, ghost-white face.
Her lips pushed together as if a bee had stung her gums. “You know we do have a front door, Jamie.”
Jamie reclined deeper into the bed, his hands casually interlocking behind his head, his elbows dramatically stretched out as if this humiliating moment had been simply a lovely conversation in a coffee shop, instead of a nightmare plaguing his day at 6:30 a.m.
“Oops, my bad. I keep forgetting about that.” He grinned, revealing his overly white teeth, at my mom.
“We weren’t doing anything,” I stammered, my eyes darting nervously towards Jamie, who graced me with an eye roll and a smirk. “I swear! He just needed a place to sleep last night.”
My mother’s freckled arms folded over her yellow tank top. “And every other day this week?”
I stepped forward and lowered my head. “Come on, Mom, you know how his dad is right now.”
My mom sucked in a thick breath and her eyes pinched inward; I could tell she was contemplating which emotion would win: pity or discipline. “Yes, unfortunately, I do.” She released the breath she was holding. “Could you two maybe meet me halfway and have Jamie sleep in Lucas’s room from now on?”
I stomped my foot. “That’s not fair—”
“Yes, I can do that,” Jamie interrupted, standing up from the bed and moving to my side. “Thank you, Monica.” He elbowed me in the side, urging me to stay quiet and, for once, let this battle die.
My mom gave her signature nod and thin-lipped smile to both of us—a gesture I knew all too well, one which acknowledged her victory. “Now get ready and run downstairs before Lucas eats all the breakfast. I swear if that boy grows anymore, I’ll need to have the door frames heightened.”
Honestly, I was lucky that my mother didn’t lock me in a tower and behead Jamie with her hedging shears the second she caught him in my bed. Yet I found myself testing the strength of the line she drew, waiting for Jamie to stop fixing his messy black hair in the bathroom.
“If all the bacon is gone by the time we get downstairs because you’ve decided to care more about styling your hair than my need for over-salted pig fat, I’m going to kill you and bury your remains at school so your ghost will forever dwell in math class .
.. do you understand me!” I yelled as I confiscated Lucas’s hair gel from Jamie’s hands.
The clear gunk smothered on the bottle cap stuck to my palms like hair-covered playdough.
Jamie’s eyes lowered to mine. “Excuse me, Miss Time Warden, but if you’re gonna drag me to school, I might as well look half decent.” He smoothed the sides of his hair with his palms, his wavy strands held hostage by too much product.
“You do realize it’s 2013, and you’re not a greaser, right?
“First, you love John Travolta. Don’t deny it. And second, if you would stop yelling at me, I would already be done.”
Ten minutes later, the bathroom was still rumbling with our argument.
It wasn’t until I took Jamie’s comb that he finally stormed out of the room to chase me down the hall and stairs.
I raced forward, skipping three steps at a time, the heels of my boots slamming against the ground and leaving permanent imprints of my soles on the wood floor.
I dashed down the hallway to the kitchen and pivoted my body toward the stove like a racecar approaching the finish line. I could see the over-greased pan of happiness. As I reached my fingertips toward the lightly burnt bacon, an evil force snatched away my joy and shoved it into his big mouth.
“Sorry, sis, you snooze, you lose.” Lucas licked the remnants of shiny bacon grease off his fingertips.
My face scrunched towards my nose, and my jaw bit down on my back molars, causing my masseter muscle to make a concerning crack and then an ear-ringing pop. Faint footsteps clattered behind me. I turned, quick and sharp, toward the figure lingering at my back.
“Now I’m stuck with oatmeal. Are you happy?” I grumbled at Jamie as I stole a lightly chipped bowl from the counter and scooped in a heap of mushy oats into the porcelain.
Jamie tiptoed next to me and grabbed his own bowl, which he filled with Lucky Charms. “Can I be cremated instead of buried?”
“Nope, I plan on dismembering you and burying your pieces around the school in the shape of a pentagram so that not even a priest can set you free.”
In the dining room, Julian put his morning paper down with what had to be deliberate rustling. “Your knowledge of occultism is concerning. I don’t know if I should call a therapist or an exorcist.”