Just Friends

by Tiffany Pitcock

  Chance, looking annoyed at the laughter, nodded vigorously. “That’s right. Jenny here is my oldest friend, not my girlfriend. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it.”

  “I’ve never seen Chance be friends with a girl before, not that I remember,” Leslie continued. She tucked her hair behind her ears, flashing her ring-adorned fingers. “Nothing against you, Jenny. I’m just saying that this is news to me.”

  Jenny knew what Leslie was delicately trying to say. Jenny wasn’t a loser, per se. She had the splash of notoriety that came with being top of the class, but that was about it. She didn’t really make time for anything outside of studying, which, honestly, suited her just fine. She got invited to the parties, but she never went. Everybody knew that.

  Chance, on the other hand, didn’t just go to the parties; he typically threw them as well. She and Chance were two stars that orbited around each other but were never supposed to intersect.

  “I don’t know, I think I’ve seen them walking at the park together a few times when I’ve taken my niece to the playground,” Emelia chimed in with a shrug. Her long blond hair was piled on her head in a messy bun, a few strands escaping and hanging in her eyes. “They like to hang on the swings and stuff.”

  Jenny and Chance looked at each other, wondering what the hell Emelia was talking about. It was true that Jenny liked to hang out at the park swings a lot after school, but she had never seen Chance there. It was clear from his expression that he’d never seen her there, either.

  Drake piped up, startling Jenny. He looked between her and Chance. “So, how did you guys first meet?”

  Everyone knew Drake Sellers: He was the tallest guy in school and was in a band called The Bleeding Axe Wounds. He played the guitar and sang and could cause a girl to melt with only a smile. His blue eyes caught Jenny’s green ones, and she couldn’t help but blush a bit as he smiled and said a quiet “Hey.”

  She also couldn’t stop her eyes from traveling down his throat to the sparrow tattoos that decorated his collarbone, peeking out from under his lavender V-neck.

  “Hey,” she replied. One conversation with Chance Masters and suddenly she was on Drake Sellers’s radar.

  Oh God. There was no getting out of this.

  “Ah, well…” Jenny trailed off, cursing her Robert Frost moment. Screw Robert Frost anyway, what did he know about the road less traveled? Because the road less traveled now led straight to public humiliation. The next time she had to make a choice that might affect her life forever, she was just going straight home. She looked at Chance, pleading for help. He was the one who had gotten them started back in class, after all.

  “It’s such a story.…” Chance passed it to her. It was obvious, to her at least, that he didn’t know what to say, either.

  “But Chance tells it better.…” She threw it back. There was no way she was doing this alone.

  “All right, all right, I’ll tell,” he began, flashing her the same smile he had during their presentation. “My family moved here when I was seven, and I got all depressed because I was new. But it turned out that I had this neighbor who had a kid around my age. I decided to journey out to meet her and, of course, she was a brat.”

  “Hey!” Jenny interrupted crossly. “She was a freaking genius; she was an adorably precocious child. We ended up becoming best friends.”

  “That’s it?” Leslie asked, sounding disappointed and a little disbelieving.

  “Well.” Jenny picked up the story then, feeling a little more confident than before. She finally had an idea forming in her head—a story taking shape. “Not at first. Like he said, I was better than him—”

  “Hey!”

  “But one day I happened to climb the tree in my backyard to get a Frisbee I’d thrown up there.”

  “She ended up getting stuck—”

  “And I started screaming for help—”

  “So I came running from my backyard—”

  “And he climbed up the tree, too—”

  “And I ended up getting stuck right along with her.” Chance sighed, laughing to himself.

  Making up this story was filling Jenny with adrenaline. Her nerves disappeared as she looked around at the enraptured faces of the people seated around her. They were listening to her—actually listening. Their hungry eyes flashed between her and Chance, trying to picture them as children stuck in a tree. Suddenly, Jenny wanted the story to be true.

  “He started screaming like a little girl,” Jenny told their audience, a smile on her face. She looked over to see that Chance was smiling, too.

  “I don’t like heights,” he admitted.

  “We were stuck for thirty minutes before anyone heard us.”

  “She still doesn’t like to go outside.”

  “Why would I go outside and get all hot and sweaty when I could just curl up inside with a good book?”

  “Ugh,” Chance groaned dramatically, rolling his eyes. “You and your books. Remember the summer the last Harry Potter novel came out? You dragged me to that midnight release party and forced me to drink that God-awful, lukewarm butterscotch-and-root-beer monstrosity that Barnes and Noble tried to pass off as butterbeer.”

  “I thought it tasted nice!” Jenny defended, her heart hammering with excitement. She could see the strands of their fake past weaving together right in front of her, forming a cohesive timeline now. “Besides, I wasn’t the only one who wanted to be there.”

  Chance held up his hands innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I wasn’t the one who begged my mother to draw a lightning-bolt scar on my forehead in eyeliner before we left.”

  “That totally did not happen, and if it did, it was a very manly eyeliner lightning-bolt scar.” Chance laughed, and Jenny found that she quite liked the sound of it. “Also, I wasn’t the one who won the last book for free by defeating everyone in the store at Harry Potter trivia.”

  “You say that like it’s something I should be ashamed of, but it’s not.”

  “Do you remember how mad all those people who preordered it were when you got to cut in front of them in line?”

  “Oh my God, I can still see their faces.” And she could, in her mind’s eye, imagine what those fictional people’s faces might’ve looked like. Kids in round Harry Potter glasses would’ve narrowed their eyes as she was led in front of them, clutching their cardboard-and-hot-glue wands in anger and jealousy. One or two Hermione cosplayers would’ve whispered, “That’s so not fair.” Most important, though, she could picture Chance, a little younger than he was now, watching her with pride as she won.

  “Wow,” Drake interrupted them. “You guys bicker like a married couple.” Just like that, the spell was broken.

  “We get that a lot.” Chance shrugged, leaning back. Jenny leaned back, too, realizing that they’d both been unconsciously leaning toward each other during their exchange.

  She wondered how Chance felt about this. He seemed comfortable next to her, his eyes bright and his smile easy. He seemed to instinctively turn toward her as he talked, even when he was addressing other people. Then again, so did Drake. Maybe it was a boy thing.

  * * *

  “THIS HAS BEEN an eventful day, huh?” Kelsey said as they climbed into her Toyota Camry.

  “Yes, it has.” The first day back from summer was always a superstressful one for Jenny, even without the sudden friendship with Chance. Kelsey knew that Jenny always stressed over where her new classes were and what the teachers would be like.

  Kelsey complained about it every year, too. Jenny loved the routine of it.

  Jenny had first met Kelsey in sixth grade. The town was so big that they had four elementary schools that ran from kindergarten to fifth grade. Sixth grade was the start of middle school, when all the students started going to the same school. Jenny had been alone and anxious, separated from her elementary friends. Luckily, she’d met Kelsey when they’d both joined the Future Problem Solvers of America team. After that they kept me
eting up in extracurricular activities—Quiz Bowl, Writing Circle, Art Club. Anything they could sign up for, they did. It wasn’t until halfway through the school year that they both realized they were only joining so many clubs as an excuse to be friends.

  “So…” Kelsey began, a more serious note in her tone. “Which clubs are you joining this year?”

  “I don’t know,” Jenny said, not wanting to shoot down her friend. She knew Kelsey was only trying to help her, but she didn’t feel like joining clubs anymore. The enjoyment was gone from it. She’d much rather stay at home. “I’m thinking about it.”

  “I suggest Writer’s Circle; it’s usually fun. There’s always an open spot for an alternate on the Quiz Bowl team, too,” she said, glancing back to the road. “I’m going for head of the Student Advisory Board this year. Can I keep you in mind when I’m eventually elected and have to assign people to fund-raisers?”

  There was no doubt in either of their minds that Kelsey would win. Kelsey was the most organized person that Jenny had ever met. “I promise to work at least one fund-raiser with you,” Jenny conceded. One event wouldn’t be too much, right? She hung out with Kelsey all the time at one club or another, but they’d never extended too much beyond that.

  Jenny always kept to herself, but she was trying to be better. That was why she’d sat at Chance’s table, after all. It was another Robert Frost moment, and agreeing to help was the road less traveled.

  Chance. She’d briefly forgotten about him and their newfound friendship. Would it continue? Was it real or was it just a fluke—a stunt pulled to pass a dumb assignment and nothing more? It had been so easy. Jenny had never clicked with someone with such ease. It’s the fake past, she decided. It’s easy to talk to someone when I don’t have to be myself.

  She had a feeling the magical evening was over and it was time for Cinderella to return from the ball.

  She knew what would be waiting for her when she walked through her front door: the same thing that had been waiting for her every day for the past four years. Her mother would be in the kitchen, on the phone with one of her work friends. Jack, Jenny’s twelve-year-old brother, would be in his room playing Xbox, and Jessa—only four years old—would be in the living room watching TV. That’s the way it always was. Her house had been unchanging since the divorce. Jenny suspected her mother was bending over backward to provide the kids with a stable routine.

  “All right,” Kelsey said as they pulled up in front of Jenny’s house. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

  * * *

  THE LIGHTS WERE on in the living room when Jenny let herself in the door. Sure enough, she could see her mother sitting at the island in the kitchen. The only thing out of place was the absence of a phone in her mom’s hand.

  The divorce had aged Jenny’s mom. Her long brown hair now looked a little thinner, and her green eyes were surrounded by crow’s feet that hadn’t been there before. She seemed ultimately smaller than she did in all of Jenny’s childhood memories, but maybe that was what happened when you grew up. Maybe your parents just deflated.

  “Mom?” Jenny called, dropping her backpack onto a maroon armchair by the door. Jenny’s mom turned around, startled, holding Jessa.

  “Oh, Jennifer, you scared me,” she said as she continued to rock Jessa. “Why don’t you come in here for a second?” Now Jenny could see her little brother, Jack, his brown hair messy as always, sitting across from their mother. “I have something I need to discuss with you and your brother.”

  Oh … oh no. Family discussions are never good.

  Jenny reluctantly trudged into the kitchen. She took a seat by her brother, who—thanks to his recent growth spurt—was almost as tall as she was.

  “So…” their mother began a little awkwardly. “I’m not sure how to explain this, so I’m just going to jump right in. I met someone. His name is Phillip and he’s a gym teacher. We met at Jack’s last parent-teacher conference and seemed to hit it off. He asked me out, actually, but I wanted to talk to you two before I made any decisions.”

  Wait, what?

  For the first time in years, time seemed to move forward in their house. Jenny could see the change that came over her mother as she said Phillip’s name. She seemed alive for the first time since the divorce.

  Did Jenny mind if her mother dated? Of course she didn’t. It had been years, and her mother deserved some happiness in her life. Was Jenny weirded out by the thought of her mom going on dates? Of course she was. Jenny herself didn’t even go on dates, and she was seventeen.

  It was Jack who spoke up first, however.

  “Of course it’s all right, Mom,” he said, sounding much older than he actually was. “You’re an adult. You can date whoever you want.”

  “Jackie’s right,” Jenny piped up, placing an arm around her brother’s slim shoulders. “As long as he’s nice, then it’s fine.”

  Jack bristled under her touch. “Don’t call me Jackie. I’m not a little kid.”

  “But Jackie’s such a cute name.” Jenny reached out, pinching his cheek. He’d lost the baby fat over the summer, playing baseball and jumping on the trampoline, making it harder to condescendingly pinch his cheeks than it used to be.

  “Mom, she’s patronizing me again,” Jack complained, but stopped short at the sight of their mom. Jenny turned to see what he was looking at and slowly let her arms drop from her brother.

  Their mom was sitting there, holding Jessa, with tears in her eyes as she watched her children. “Thank you” was all she said.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU really think about Mom dating again?” Jenny asked her brother thirty minutes later as they sat in her room. She sat on her bed, geometry homework in hand, as he lounged in her computer chair, absentmindedly browsing reddit on her PC.

  “I hate it, of course,” Jack said simply, not even turning around to face his sister. “I don’t want my parents seeing other people. And what if he hurts her like Dad did? There are too many variables here, and I hate it.”

  “You told her you were fine with it, though.”

  Jack shrugged. “We can’t hold her back from living her life.”

  “Are you sure you’re only twelve?”

  “I’ll be thirteen in a few months, you know that.”

  “I was being sarcastic, Jackie.”

  Her brother grimaced, stepping away from the computer dramatically. “Just for that, I’m going back to my room.”

  “Fine, go. See if I care.” But she was teasing and he knew it. He left, leaving her to her homework.

  Things were different now, definitely. Her mother was dating and time was moving forward and her life was changing and Chance—oh God, Chance. What the hell was Chance? She pushed her schoolbooks to the floor and sprawled out on her bed, looking up at the ceiling. What was she going to do about Chance—if anything? Would this all blow over tomorrow?

  She had felt so alive carving out a fake past with him at lunch. She had felt like a different, unpredictable person. She liked that feeling, and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to let it go yet.

  Things could be changing right now, she thought. This could be the start of something different—something good. Do I really want to give it up just yet?

  Lying there, in her same old room looking at the same old ceiling, she could easily imagine a different life, where Chance had always been there supporting her and arguing with her at the same time. She could imagine him sitting at the computer chair like her brother had done, talking out her problems with him for years on end. She could easily insert him into her entire life and not even blink. It was almost seamless.

  To her, at least. She had no idea how he felt. She figured she was probably a minor annoyance or a momentary source of entertainment that he’d toss aside come tomorrow morning.

  After all, it wasn’t like she even knew him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Chance

  Chance woke up to the smell of burned eggs. And to yelling. Lots of yelling.<
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  That was normal, though. The yelling, not the eggs. He was beginning to wonder if he could even sleep without the dulcet tones of his mother screaming at his father. It had become his regular lullaby lately. He could hear them, muffled through the walls, their voices straining.

  Chance couldn’t take it anymore. Not even wrapping his pillow around his head could drown them out. He had to get up. Their yelling had already given him a headache.

  He tried to think of a time when yelling wasn’t his alarm clock, but he honestly couldn’t remember that far back. They always yelled—it was their thing. Some parents did karaoke. Some parents played bridge. Some did drugs. Chance’s parents yelled. About everything.

  Buying groceries? They fought about it.

  What to have for dinner? They fought about it.

  Money? Religion? Politics? What to watch on TV? They fought about all those, too. The worst fight had been three years ago, when his brother, Levi, up and left for college without a word. It was no wonder that he hadn’t been back home since then.

  Chance finally pried the pillow away from his ears and sat up. He could always drown them out with a shower.

  When he slipped into the hallway he saw that his brother’s door was wide open. Levi had hardly ever been home when he had lived there, always trying to be out of the house as much as possible. Of course, when he was out, their parents would argue about where he was and how he was bringing them some type of shame. Levi couldn’t make a move without drawing their parents’ ire.

  Chance and Levi weren’t the closest of brothers. They never had been. Levi had always been so much older and taller and cooler. He didn’t have time for Chance once he got to high school. Chance still looked up to him, though. Levi always seemed, above all else, undeniably cool.

  Chance made sure to close the bathroom door loudly, interrupting his father mid-sentence. They quieted down a bit after that, not that it mattered. Chance couldn’t hear them over the roar of the hot shower anyway.

  Levi is the lucky one, he thought as he washed his hair. He got out—just left without a second thought. I would give anything to be able to do that.