by Jack Parker
Standing up, Hannah moved back to her closet and flung the doors open. She'd discovered a tidy stash of Oreos and Chili Cheese-flavored Fritos on one of the shelves, oddly hidden behind a row of paperback books and a globe. Tearing open the package of cookies, Hannah removed a few Oreos and nibbled on one while she thought of other places that a person might hide a diary. For all she knew, Jake had lied about it, but what reason would he have to do that? So if it was true…the diary had to be around somewhere! Possibly, anyway.
Bzzzz…bzzzz…
Hannah jumped at the sudden noise and looked around her bedroom warily. She'd heard that faint buzzing before, and she remembered that her cell phone was set to vibrate whenever someone called. Now if only she could remember where she'd thrown that stupid phone when her friends wouldn't stop calling…
After a moment of following the sound, Hannah lied down on the floor and reached under her bed to feel around, finally grasping the slim, purple Motorola Razr phone, which had been replaced days ago since her old one had been demolished in the wreck. She glanced at the caller id and nearly threw the phone back under the bed, but since it was Morgan calling, rather than Tisha or Libby, Hannah decided that she might as well answer for the most normal friend she had.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Han, what's going on?"
Hannah blinked. She hadn't talked on the phone very much at all, so she wasn't sure how literally she should answer that. However, she hadn't found the diary she was looking for, so she calculated an answer from that. "Nothing. What are you doing?"
"Well, I was talking to Tish awhile ago," Morgan replied cheerfully, "and we remembered that we'd all planned to go shopping today. Christmas is really close, you know, and we needed to finish up some stuff."
Furrowing her brow, Hannah suddenly wondered if she'd done any Christmas shopping before. She hoped she had because if she hadn't…she had no idea what to buy her family members—or if she even had a source of cash to by any gifts with. "Oh. Um, if I'd bought anything, where might I have hidden it?"
Morgan laughed. "As far as I know, you hadn't bought anything yet. You were procrastinating to avoid spending, like a big Scrooge."
Disappointed by not learning of a hiding place, Hannah consoled herself with the fact that she'd found out something else that she wanted to know: that she hadn't bought anything yet and that she did indeed have savings to spend. Thoughtful, Hannah knew her friends could help her decide what items should be bought for each of her family members. Nevertheless, it was very tempting to blow off the shopping trip, since spending time with the girls was not ranked very high on Hannah's list, but she remembered what Jake had said. If she blew her friends off now, she might regret it later, and with that in mind, Hannah replied, "Then I guess I should go shopping too."
"Awesome." Hannah could hear paper rustling for just a second, and then Morgan continued. "I'm surprised you're awake, honestly, but anyway, we'll pick you up around one, okay? I'll see you then."
The call ended, and Hannah stared at the digital clock on her phone. 10:38, it read. She knew from lots of stories and some experience that Isaac couldn't be dragged from his bed before eleven o'clock, but apparently people expected her to be dead to the world for lengthy periods too. She shrugged and returned to her closet. Before she could return to searching for that missing diary, Hannah selected her shopping clothes—dark jeans and a white sweater—and headed for the shower.
"Have you ever noticed that, even as children, we're constantly looking for ways to get high?"
Isaac's question came as he and Hannah were watching home videos about ten minutes before one o'clock, which Isaac had carefully selected to make sure that no fights between Hannah and Jake would be shown. That had been a difficult task. He'd intercepted his sister when she was moving from the bathroom back to her bedroom, and Isaac had practically dragged her downstairs to the living room. His question was prompted by the images of little Hannah and even littler Isaac spinning around in circles in the backyard, trying to make themselves dizzy.
"I bet every stoner starts out like that," Isaac went on, reaching his arm to the coffee table to pick up his can of Mountain Dew, his necessity that accompanied waking up. "I'm shocked that both of us aren't on hardcore drugs."
"I'm not convinced that she's not. But if she isn't, she needs to be."
Both Hannah and Isaac looked up from where they were sitting on the couch and toward the doorway, where Jake had just entered from the foyer. Hannah took in his appearance—his windblown brown hair flecked with snow flakes, his black jacket lightly sprinkled with melting whiteness, his faded jeans, and his white sock-covered feet. As Hannah watched Jake shed his jacket to reveal a long-sleeved green Abercrombie t-shirt, she noted how remarkably handsome he was. She'd long ago learned to admire the brilliant greenness of his eyes, but his body wasn't a bit shabby, nor was his face.
"Agreed," Isaac spoke up, taking a drink from his Mountain Dew.
Just for kicks, Hannah made a face at Jake. "Don't even start with me," she warned, rolling her eyes. Jake plopped onto a chair and glanced at the television, but he didn't open his mouth to reply. "It's that easy to shut you up?"
Jake grinned flirtatiously. "It's even easier for some girls. They don't have to say a word."
"Jake, man…I don't want to hear about your sexual exploits," Isaac groaned, shutting the video off. Quickly, before a somewhat confused Hannah could add her piece, he asked, "What are your plans for the day?"
"I'm still trying to decide," Jake admitted pensively, rubbing his chin subconsciously. "You want to go bowling with me and the other guys?"
Isaac smiled. "Sure." He glanced at Hannah, and his smile widened. "Do you want to go too?"
Although bowling with the boys sounded like an amazing alternative to shopping with the girls, Hannah was determined to keep her plans with her best friends, though she would have made a hefty bet that she'd regret that. "Nope. I'm going shopping with the girls, and I'm going to get through it if it kills me."
Just barely, Isaac winced, but he disguised it by taking another drink of his Mountain Dew. "Sucks for you," he muttered lightly.
"How did the bossy bitches con you into that one?" Jake wanted to know as he stretched his legs out and rested his feet on the coffee table. "I thought you couldn't stand to be around them."
"Well, I have to have something to give at Christmas," Hannah replied, fidgeting on the couch into a more comfortable position.
Jake grinned. "What are you going to get me?"
Smirking, Hannah said, "A muzzle."
"Didn't she get that for you last year?" Isaac asked with a teasing note in his tone. He laughed when Jake flipped him off. "Hey, I'm just saying. I wouldn't want her to waste her money on something that didn't work before."
"Aww, thanks!" Hannah cried, overly ecstatic, in what she believed was a sarcastic way. She then sent a saucy grin at Jake. "Don't you wish you had someone that cared enough about you to advise you like that?"
Jake's familiar smirk appeared. "I do. It's you."
"What advice have I ever given you?" Hannah asked challengingly.
Pulling a face, Jake replied easily, "Beats me. I never listen to anything you have to say. But just because I can't remember what you've said…doesn't mean it didn't happen."
Hannah wrinkled her nose and took a glance at the clock, noting that her friends were running a few minutes behind. "That's the most illogical thing I think I've ever heard." Then she grinned. "But I can't remember everything you've ever said, so God only knows how many illogical lines you've fed me."
Laughing lightly, Isaac shook his head and rolled his blue eyes. "You guys are so weird."
"Shut up, or I'll kick you in the knee cap," Jake threatened, stifling a laugh.
Isaac turned serious quickly, and Hannah got the impression that it was some type of routine of theirs, although it was impossible for her to know for sure. "If you kick me in the knee cap, I'll punch you in the face."
"And then I'll punch you in the face."
Wrinkling his nose, Isaac shook his head stubbornly, oblivious to Hannah's amusement that sprung from the mirrored stern expressions between the two guys. "Yeah, but then I'll punch you in the face again," Isaac claimed, "and no matter what you do to me, I'll do it back to you, so I'll always have one more over on you than you have over on me."
Jake scoffed. "Quality over quantity. You may hit more, but I'll hit harder."
"Only because you're not picking on someone your own size."
"Enough, guys," Hannah giggled, interrupting as a car's honking came from the driveway. She stood, made a gap in the blinds with her fingers, and glanced out the window. "Um…maroon car. Is that one of my friends?"
A second later, Jake appeared at Hannah's side, smelling so good that Hannah's eyes nearly closed from the ecstasy. She pinched her wrist discreetly and glanced at Jake. "Yup, that would be Libby," he replied, patting her forearm sympathetically. "Good luck. She drives like a NASCAR driver."
Blinking, Hannah tipped her head. "What's NASCAR?"
"Professional racecar driving," Jake replied with a tender smile, returning to his chair. "The cars go around and around on a track for hours on end, while somebody explains the circles. I can't watch it for more than three minutes or I get really dizzy." He took out his phone and addressed Isaac, saying, "I'll call the guys and make sure they're up for bowling."
"All right." Isaac hopped from his seat and followed after Hannah, who was putting on her brown coat near the front door. "I'll walk you out, Han."
Hannah smiled. Isaac truly was a sweet kid. She knew that he'd done everything he could to make her memory loss easier for her, and now he was even accompanying her just to say goodbye. "Awww, okay."
A cold blast of air seemed to smack Hannah in the face when she opened the door, and she shivered, trying to snuggle into her coat as snow flurries whirled around. Behind her, Isaac gave her a gentle push, and then they were both outside, with Isaac closing the door behind him. He caught Hannah's arm and made her turn to him, and Hannah regarded him with a quizzical glance.
"You're such a freaking faker," Isaac accused, studying Hannah dubiously.
Taken aback and applying an expression of what could only be called exaggerated innocence, Hannah half-smiled. "What in the world are you talking about?"
Isaac tipped his head and ignored the brief honking from Libby's maroon Honda Civic. Uneasiness filled Hannah's stomach because she already knew what Isaac was referring to, and she wasn't sure what he was going to do about it. "You don't know what NASCAR is?" he asked, his eyebrows nudging his hairline incredulously. "Do you think I'm a total idiot, Hannah? Since when does having amnesia include having a selective vocabulary?"
Okay, so maybe Isaac wasn't just a sweet kid. He was also a too smart kid. A too smart kid that wasn't all that sweet, after all.
"Well…" Hannah's cheeks heated up, and she figured that the best way to deal with this was to confess and give an explanation. First, she signaled a finger to her friend's car, telling its occupants to wait for a minute; then she sighed. "I'm not lying, if that's what you're insinuating."
He smirked. "Then explain to me what you're doing."
"Jake…talks…when I ask stuff." Hannah shrugged and tossed her hair impatiently. "It's probably the male ego thing of enjoying being right," she added pointedly, nearly smirking herself when Isaac looked guilty. "Before, I had to pull words out of his mouth, but if he thinks I'm ignorant, Jake willingly opens his mouth to tell me what he thinks I don't know."
Isaac studied Hannah, and she kept her expression serious under his watchful gaze. That was the honest, blunt truth. She figured that Isaac probably believed that she was lying about her entire case of amnesia, but that wasn't true at all. Pretending to forget words, however, was just her way of making Jake open up. And…it was almost therapeutic. Call it black humor, but making fun of herself through 'forgetting' words made Hannah feel better. If she could laugh at herself over her predicament, it kept her from feeling sorry for her self. But she didn't exactly want to explain all of that to Isaac because then it'd look like a pity party.
"That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard you say," Isaac declared, "but…I know how difficult Jake can be, so…whatever. Just don't get carried away with it, Han, okay?"
She grinned appreciatively and bounded down the steps. If that was the dumbest thing she'd said, she was pretty smart in her own opinion. "Thanks, Isaac!" she called over her shoulder, moving to Libby's car and hopping into the backseat next to Morgan. Hannah now knew that she had to get her brother an awesome Christmas present to show her gratitude, but that was a small price to pay if it meant that she could make Jake talk.
"Mmm, this reminds me of summer." Tisha lowered the plastic spoon from her mouth to her paper bowl of white chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream. Hannah thought it looked like pink Crayola markers had leaked all over vanilla ice cream, but she kept that opinion to herself. "Häagen-Dazs freaking owns."
"No joke," Morgan answered, sipping from her mango smoothie, as the four girls sat at a square table on the upper story of the Fairfield Commons Mall.
"That stuff is so fattening," Libby said disapprovingly, tossing her dark hair grandly as her bright blue eyes scanned the area.
Hannah wanted to point out that Libby's strawberry frappuccino from Starbucks, since she had to be different and pick a random location when they stopped for a snack, couldn't possibly have been much healthier. Instead, Hannah sipped her strawberry banana smoothie and leaned back in her seat, savoring every sip. She was incredibly happy to learn that her source of income came from giving weekly piano lessons, and her profits had really added up. For fear of being unsuccessful, she hadn't even attempted to play the piano at her home, so Hannah tried to bear in mind that she should keep her spending to a minimum to avoid a sudden bankruptcy. Even as she thought that, she couldn't help but want another expensive smoothie from Häagen-Dazs.
Libby gasped softly suddenly and played with the ends of her hair coyly. "Tish, quick—look. But don't be obvious. See the guy in the green hoodie? Over by the escalator." She glanced up to glimpse Tisha's nod. "Is he checking me out?"
Hannah rolled her eyes and, in the process, caught Morgan's eye. Feeling ashamed, Hannah busied herself with her smoothie and listened to her argumentative whore of a friend obsessing over another guy. As if flirting with the clerk at American Eagle, the random guy buying shoes at JCPenney, and the cute blond guy browsing music at F.Y.E. hadn't been enough testosterone for Libby, she was striking yet again with some mysterious guy in a green hoodie.
"I don't think so…" Tisha's voice trailed off as she unzipped her tan and purple plaid Old Navy purse and dug around. "Maybe."
"You didn't even look!" Libby accused, a frown on her face. She sighed and shook her head. "I'm going to go throw my cup away. Look and see if he watches me."
Hannah's brow furrowed. "Your cup's not even half empty."
"But I need a date to Formal," Libby explained patiently. Really, her tone wasn't too patient at all, but Hannah believed it was probably meant to be. "Brent never asked me, and I'm tired of waiting for him to."
"I'm glad," Tisha said sulkily, apparently typing a text message onto her cell phone's keypad. "I would have killed you if he took you instead of me."
Libby's nose crinkled as she got to her feet. "Whatever."
"You'd go to a dance with some random guy that you don't even know?" Hannah asked in disbelief. "What if he's some kind of psycho?"
"There are still a few days before Formal." Libby plucked her Starbucks cup from the table and grinned sassily. "That's plenty of time."
'You're a freak' were the words that formed in Hannah's mind, but the words she nearly said—'You're a whore'—were cut off by Morgan's voice, saying, "Go throw it away. I'll watch Green Hoodie."
Libby smiled at Morgan favorably and then glanced at Hannah, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly but still enough to be notic
eable. "Besides, you're going with Ethan, right? You don't know anything about him."
"But I really don't know anything about anyone, do I?" Hannah retorted, narrowing her eyes as well. "As far as I can tell though, Ethan's not a mass murderer, and he's a friend of Jake's. He has far more credibility than some random guy at the mall, who, by the way, is not checking you out and is, in fact, talking to another girl."
Tisha hopped up quickly and grabbed Libby's forearm. "Let's go throw our stuff away. I'm finished eating too."
Without any hesitation, Tisha tugged Libby toward the trashcans, presumably to avoid a confrontation between her and Hannah, but there was obviously friction building, as Libby gave Hannah a dirty look over her shoulder and appeared to be complaining to Tisha, judging by the way her mouth was running. Scoffing, Hannah took a noisy drink from her smoothie and looked over to see Morgan looking at her solemnly.
Hannah set her cup down. "What?"
"Nothing," Morgan replied, sounding careful. She shrugged and tucked a strand of her straight blonde hair behind her ear. "You just seem…a little touchy today, I guess. Is something wrong?"
Mentally, Hannah cursed herself. She probably shouldn't have snapped at Libby that way, but the girl was just so darn irritating! "I didn't sleep very well," Hannah lied. "I'm just tired and cranky."
Morgan smiled. "Whatever you do, don't apologize. Libby's getting on my nerves too, and it would feed her ego way too much if you took what you said back. Let her sulk for awhile—she'll get over it within twenty minutes."
Curious, Hannah wrinkled her forehead. "Is that a regular thing for us?"