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“He got somebody pregnant,” I said.
“Holy shit. Is it Chloe?” she asked.
I felt my face flush with color and tried not to cough. “What? No! Why would you think it was Chloe?”
The look she gave me clearly said, Don’t insult my intelligence. She knew they’d hung out a lot this summer. She was the first one to tell me, actually. But she hadn’t been sure if they were hooking up. Well. Now we were sure.
I drew the back of my hand across my dry and ci
“Omigod, this is huge!” A
“Shhhhh!” I whispered, glancing warily at the two other patrons and at the middle-aged dudes behind the counter. “Could you please take the glee-factor down a notch? This is my boyfriend we’re talking about, remember?”
Her face went slack and she released the table. I saw her glance once at her computer, and knew she was itching to log on to Twitter and spill the deets in 140 characters or less, but instead she laced her fingers together in her lap.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” she said. Her eyes focused on mine and she did look sympathetic, like it was just sinking in. “Wow. God. Are you okay?”
“Not exactly,” I replied. The rock-hard Munchkin slid slowly from the base of my throat down through my chest, and I felt it the whole way.
“What did he say? I mean, were they, like, together for a while or—?” A
“He says they only did it once,” I replied quietly.
A
My stomach turned. “Well, not really. We weren’t together, and I was with Cooper—”
“That’s such crap. You and Cooper didn’t have sex,” A
“So what if we had? Would we be, like, even, then?” I shot back. Why was I defending him?
“Uh, totally,” A
I knew where she was going with this and I didn’t like it. “Well, that wasn’t the only reason …,” I said, fiddling with an empty and torn sugar packet.
“But it was the main one,” A
“I am pissed!” I snapped. The pair of old men nursing coffees on the other side of the shop looked over, making me feel about two inches tall. I stared at the pink tabletop, my cheeks on fire. “But I don’t know. Does it matter how I feel? This has nothing to do with me.”
“Dude. Of course it matters how you feel,” A
We sat there for a long time in silence. For some reason I couldn’t make myself look her in the eye. It was like I was afraid she was ashamed of me or something.
“Well, if you want my advice,” she said finally, breaking the silence, forcing me to lift my head. “And I’m assuming you want my advice or you wouldn’t have offered to pay me back for my coffee and Munchkins.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t remember offering to pay you back for—”
She pushed the fresh receipt across the table. “It was implied. Anyway, what you need to do, like, yesterday, is figure out how much crap you want to deal with for this guy. ’Cause there’s go
She took another Munchkin and studied it for a moment before biting into it. Jelly oozed out onto her chin. She swiped it up with her fingertip.
“So the question is, do you really want to spend your senior year shoveling up this guy’s crap?” she asked matter-of-factly, pointing at me with the bright red finger. “That’s what you need to figure out.” She sucked the jelly off to punctuate her point.
“That is a disgusting image,” I said.
A
My body collapsed and my head hit the table. She and Hammond were basically asking me the same thing, and they were both right. Did I still love Jake, and if I did, did I love him enough to deal with the massive crap-storm that was about to engulf us?
Outside, the sky was finally black. In a few hours, school would start for the year. In a few hours, I’d either be walking through the front doors of Orchard Hill High alone, or holding hands with Jake. I needed to figure this out, and I needed to figure it out fast.
jake
I tripped over a sprinkler and took a header into the wet grass in Dr. Nathanson’s side yard. Fuck. Just what I needed. I shoved myself up off the ground. The whole front of my shirt was soaked and I looked like I’d peed in my shorts.
Fucking great. Ally was go
I made it to the backyard without breaking any bones and stood under Ally’s window. The light was on. I took out my phone and texted her.
SRY 4 BAILING. AM IN YARD. CAN I COME UP?
Her face appeared at the window. I lifted a hand. She held up one finger. Not the bad one, thank God. She was telling me to wait.
So I did. The crickets were so loud back here it was like they were assaulting my brain. I tried to wring some of the water out of my shorts, but all I managed to do was wrinkle them. When it was clear that I wasn’t making myself look better, I tipped my head back and stared up at the stars. There were thousands of them. Millions. I wondered if there were any other planets out there with alien people on them, looking up at me. If only I could be wherever they were instead of here.
I heard a door click and slide open, and I squinted. Ally stood at a side door I’d never noticed, waving me down. I jogged over and slipped past her, stepping inside a small room with dozens of shelves, a work desk, and boxes piled everywhere. Luckily it was pretty dark, so she didn’t notice my muddiness. Yet.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“It used to be Qui
Ally’s mom was getting remarried in the spring, to the guy they were living with, Gray Nathanson. Qui
She shook her head. “I watched Sixteen Candles with them last night, so I did my daughterly duty,” she whispered.
“Yeah, but you love that movie,” I said.
Ally’s eyes flicked over me, surprised. She’d told me once that her mom made her watch it with her every year on her birthday and that she secretly looked forward to it.
“I can’t believe you remember that,” she said.
I remembered everything she ever told me. Because I was in love with her. I just hoped she was still in love with me. Finally she broke eye contact.
“Come on.”
I followed her out the door. She held up a hand to stop me and listened for a second. I didn’t hear a thing. Then she turned, tiptoed through the kitchen, and raced up the back stairs. I followed her quickly, my heart pounding. She didn’t look at me again until we were finally inside her room.
“What happened to you?” she asked, her face scrunched.