Lovely Vicious

Kayla invites me over to consume cookies and interpret the giant stack of World History homework she can’t quite seem to grasp, which is understandable – grasping the true glory of Genghis Khan is a little difficult to do when he’s not here himself, shooting fletched arrows into your ass.

“Hello, spawn!” I coo at Kayla’s baby brother as he waddles into her room. He burps at me.

“It looks like you guys speak the same language,” Kayla quips.

“Where was that sass when Jack was making you cry at Avery’s party?”

“Uh, hello? He’s my crush? I’m not going to sass him.”

“Flash ‘em the sass before you flash ‘em the ass.”

“What kind of saying is that?” She laughs.

“Grandma-saying. She’s the head of the motorcycle gang at her nursing home.”

I amuse myself for a few minutes by showing her brother how to blow spit bubbles. Kayla’s still a little beat up over the fact Jack kissed me, for real this time, and I’ve spent the past hour assuring her it was nothing, but she still won’t believe me.

“Everybody’s saying you looked shocked. Like, a good shocked. And what the hell is that?” She points at my hand. I hold up the snakeskin-patterned wallet.

“Oh this? I just, uh, picked it up.”

“It looks like something from a corny cowboy movie.”

Her brother squeals and pulls my hair. I blacklist him.

“Hey, don’t call my wallet corny. Do you have a snakeskin wallet? No. Even if you did, yours would be uncool, whereas mine was both free and satisfying, by which I mean I stole it from my nemesis’ butt pocket while he was macking on me.”

“You stole Jack Hunter’s wallet?” Kayla’s eyes bug out. I wave it in front of her with a smirk.

“What, you think I’d go down without a fight? Wa

Her curiosity wars visibly with her crush, but curiosity kills all types of cats, including people. She scoots next to me. I peel it open and expect some sort of unholy glow to come from within like in cartoons, but all that comes out is a piece of lint and the smell of pine. Inside is Jack’s ID – him glaring at the camera intensely.

“He’s so hot,” Kayla sighs. “He even takes good ID photos.”

“That’s a sure sign of being an alien. Or plastic surgery. Possibly both.”

“Look at the age!”

I peer at the age stamped on the ID and frown. March 20th, 1989. There’s no way he’s that old.

“That’s not his birthday,” Kayla insists. “It’s January 9th, 1994.”

I give her a long, meaningful look and she flushes. Fake ID – fine. We all gotta buy booze and get into clubs somehow. It’s pretty standard. I rifle through the rest of the wallet – five bucks cash, some change, a library card because he’s a nerd, some receipts for chicken and milk and measuring tape. Pretty basic high school kid stuff, but surprisingly tame coming from the wallet of a guy who talks like an Einstein clone and looks like an underwear ad. I was expecting loads of condoms and maybe a line of molly.

Kayla’s brother screams in my ear for candy. I tell him the plants in the yard need watering and he immediately trundles towards the kitchen spewing spit bubbles.

“Look!” Kayla grabs something from the wallet. It’s a stack of business cards. Or, at least I think they’re business cards. But they don’t actually have any business addresses on them, so they can’t be business cards. They’re a deep black with a single red stripe on the bottom, with the same name and same phone number in dangerously svelte red text;

Jaden 894-354-3310

“Jaden must’ve really liked Jack to give him this many cards,” Kayla muses. She’s so dense sometimes.

“They’re his, Kayla. He’s passing them out. That’s why he has so many.”

Her mouth makes a little ‘o’. “But…but his name isn’t Jaden.”

“It’s a pseudonym.”

“Why would he need one?”

“It’s probably for a job.”

She nods. I bite my lip and torture my brain into thinking more clearly. I take a single business card and put the rest back, handing the wallet to her.

“Here. You can do the honors of returning that. He’s probably stressing its gone – this is your chance to tip the scales in your favor. Even if the scales are made of misogynism and the bones of small infants.”

She takes it, beaming. “Thanks!”

“Is Avery still mad at you for leaving the party?” I ask.

“Oh, no. I mean, Avery never really gets mad mad, you know? She sort of just, doesn’t talk to you. Or look at you. Or acknowledge you exist.”

“Ah, yes. Perfectly reasonable.”

“I was supposed to, um, talk to Wren. You know, student council president guy.”

“Your student council prez goes to boozers? Consider me impressed.”

“He’s cool like that, but at the same time he’s also intimidating. Like, really intimidating. He’s going to MIT and he doesn’t look anywhere at you except your eyes. No lips, no boobs, not even your eyelashes. Just. Your. Eyes.”

She stares at me as if demonstrating, wide-eyed and unrelenting, and I shudder.

“Alright, alright. I get the picture. Mega creep.”

“Yeah, but like, a socially accepted mega creep. It’s weird. He’s friends with everybody. And I mean everybody. He watched an entire season of Naruto just so he could talk to the anime club kids.”

I whistle. “He’s certainly impressive. Hellbent. Also possibly from actual hell.”

“Anyway, Avery wanted me to, um, talk to him.”

“Just talk?”

Kayla nods a little too hard for my liking. “She wants more funds for the French club. She’s president of that. She’s trying to set up a trip to France for them or something.”

“So you talking to him would get you funds? Are you that good at talking?”

“Just, you know. I’m nice. I can get things from people.”

“You’re pretty.”

“But I’m also nice! And I’m smart! Okay, maybe not in World History, but who even cares about stupid plagues anyway? We have vaccines now! I’m really good at home ec and Mrs. Gregory said I have a natural talent for geometry, okay? I’m a lot of things besides pretty so don’t just say that like everyone else!”

Her chest is heaving, and her face is a little red. I put my hands up in surrender.

“Okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re a lot of things besides pretty. I just meant…I just meant –”

“You just meant what? I know I’m pretty, okay? I know that! That’s all anyone talks about! But I’m not pretty enough, I guess, because you’re the one Jack Hunter kissed and not me!”

She shouts the last sentence. It hangs in the air like icicles, cold and jagged.

“I didn’t - I’m sorry –”

“I don’t wa

I feel all the air punch out of me at once.

“Oh. R-Right. Sure.”

I grab my backpack and books, shuffling them away. Kayla gets up and goes into the kitchen, wiping dirt off her brother’s face and scolding him for trying to eat daisies. I want to say bye, or apologize again, but there’s a thick curtain of awkward closing on the stage that is our tenuous friendship. I want to say a lot of things to her. I want to thank her for being the first person to really invite me over to their house, to talk to me, to eat lunch with me. But those words get stuck in my throat, the gratitude I have for her dammed up by shame.

As I leave and start my car, I mentally kick myself. Of course she gets told she’s pretty. She gets it all the time. Pretty girls like her are sick of hearing it. I was insensitive to even say it – but how could someone like me understand what pretty girls experience?

Ugly girl.

Jack kissing me – was it really such a huge deal for her? Maybe I underestimated her feelings for him. She must really like him if she’s that upset. Hell, if I still believed in love and had someone I liked and they kissed my sort-of-friend, I’d be mad at that friend too.