“Jenny!” Chance’s voice broke through her thoughts. He had finally spotted her by the muddy truck. “Have you been waiting long?”
“Nope,” she told him, trying to act like she hadn’t been hiding. “I just got here.”
She settled into his car and flipped the visor down, pretending to check her hair, but really checking to see if the lip print was there—it was. She still couldn’t believe she had been brazen enough to leave it. There was something so relaxing about Chance’s car. It felt safe and familiar, a rarity for her. She could easily envision helping Chance pick it out. It was exactly the kind of car she would’ve gotten herself: something with character. This car obviously had a history. Jenny could make it up as easily as she did hers with Chance.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he started the engine.
“It’s a secret,” he said cryptically.
“Like a ‘fun surprise party’ secret or an ‘I’m going to murder you in the middle of the woods and dump your body at a truck stop’ secret?”
Chance burst out laughing. “The first one,” he assured her.
She eyed him skeptically. “That’s exactly what someone who was going to murder me would say.”
“I’m not going to murder you, Little Miss Really-Likes-Having-As.”
They pulled out of the parking lot, and she looked longingly at the park across the street. She wished they could just go there and play pretend again. She wondered how different things would’ve been if she had just caught Chance playing Neverland once when they were younger. He had looked so genuine when he told her about that. The sun had lit up his features, making his hair look almost like a halo around his head. He had this look on his face; she couldn’t quite make out what it was. She wished that she had something like that to share with him, but she didn’t. She had almost made something up, but she felt that right then was the time for truth. Only, she had no truth to share.
“Can we take a detour first?” she asked, remembering her mother’s text. She felt odd asking a favor, but it was better to get it over with.
“Where to?”
“My mother wants me to pick up paper towels. I figured we should do it before I forget.”
“That’s fine,” he said, turning toward town. “We can hit Dollar General. There’s one kind of on the way.”
Jenny found the silence oppressive. Her fingers itched to touch the radio dial and to fill the car with Top 40, but she resisted. It was Chance’s car; if he wanted music on, then he’d play it. So they rode in silence. I bet he’s thinking about Samantha. He probably hasn’t even noticed the silence. I know I’m overanalyzing the situation, but I can’t stop.
Finally, they pulled up to the familiar Dollar General building, its big yellow sign glowing even in the daylight. Chance followed her out of the car without a word. Is he still thinking about Samantha? Jenny wondered, unsure of why she even cared.
The air in the store was cold and stale, like always. The lady working behind the counter eyed them suspiciously as they came in. No one in a bright yellow polyester vest had the right to look that judgmental.
“I think they’re back here,” Jenny said to fill the silence, pointing toward the back of the store.
Chance nodded, following her.
Does he think I’m lame? Jenny thought desperately. Why do I even leave my house? This is why I don’t hang out with people outside of school!
“Do you need anything while we’re here?” she asked.
“Nah.” Chance shook his head.
Jenny pulled a random roll of paper towels off the shelf. She didn’t know what to say. She had to do something—anything!
“Oh my God,” Chance said. He reached past her, pulling a camouflage print flashlight off the shelf behind her. “Isn’t the point of camo to not be seen?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jenny said jokingly, relieved to have the silence finally broken. “I can’t even see what you’re holding. It just blends into the background perfectly.”
“Oh sure.” Chance put the flashlight back on the shelf.
Jenny spotted a package of baby-pink-camo-printed batteries on another shelf and picked them up. “This is the worst idea ever! How will I ever find my batteries when they’re camouflaged so perfectly?”
“You’re missing the point,” Chance told her, taking the package from her hands. He put on a southern accent. “These are camouflaged so those city slickers can’t find and take all your batteries.”
“Ooh, of course,” she said, slapping her hand to her forehead. “How could I have been so dumb?”
They both laughed, and Jenny finally felt at ease. There’s no reason to freak out, she told herself. We’re going to be fine. Chance put the batteries back as Jenny rounded the corner, looking for more horrendous camouflaged products.
That’s when she saw it. She was looking around for something even dumber than camo batteries—like camo wrapping paper—when her eyes landed on the bargain bin. Not just that, though, but a small black object sitting in it. She reached in, drawing the object out. It was a pirate hat, clearly left over from the Pirates of the Caribbean merchandise boom years prior. It was a triangle-shaped thing, and the white skull and crossbones that had once decorated it had faded long ago, leaving only a ghost of the original design.
She thought back to the park, to the swing set, to Neverland. It was perfect. “What do you think?” Jenny turned to face him, placing the thing on her head. “Does it suit me? Tell me, hads’t thou ever wanted to be a pirate?”
“I was never the Captain Hook type. I was a Lost Boy, remember?”
“Whatever,” Jenny sighed, pulling the hat from her head and tossing it back in the bin. “I guess you’re right. Let’s go.”
They were halfway out the door when Chance stopped her.
“I changed my mind,” he said, handing her his keys. “I need to get something after all. I’ll be out to the car in a moment.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. She sat in his car for a few minutes. Maybe he was inside calling that Samantha girl to come get him right now, and Jenny would have to drive his car home.
It was five minutes before Chance reappeared, a small yellow bag in hand.
“What did you get?” Jenny asked curiously.
Chance wordlessly took the object out of the bag and tossed it into her lap. Jenny stared down at it for a moment, then smiled, lifting the pirate hat and placing it on her head.
CHAPTER 6
Chance
Chance didn’t intend to buy that stupid pirate hat, he really didn’t. It was old and had that weird Dollar General smell to it. But Jenny had looked so adorable staring up at him with it on her head, her expression hopeful. He couldn’t shake that image. So he bought her the damn hat.
She wore it the whole drive to the old barn.
The first time Chance had ever seen the barn was permanently etched into his mind. He had been ten, and Levi had just gotten his license. Their parents were having one of their worst fights to date—Chance couldn’t even remember what it had been about—and he’d locked himself in his room, afraid. Levi had come home from hanging out with his friends, had taken one look at the situation, and had taken Chance for a drive.
Levi was so much older and so much cooler than Chance. He remembered how excited he had felt just to be included in anything his brother did. Levi had found the barn while dicking around with his friends, he said. It was his secret but he wanted to share it with Chance. Soon Levi took him there every time their parents fought. They logged more time at the barn than they did at home.
Then they stopped. Their parents still fought, but Levi had quit coming home altogether. Then he’d left. The first thing Chance did after he got his license was drive straight to the old barn. That’s when he discovered that Levi had still used it—for dates, parties, and sleepovers. He hadn’t stopped going, he’d just stopped taking Chance.
Chance hadn’t been there since. It seemed tainted—all he
could think about was how many nights he’d spent wishing for his brother to come home. But the moment he thought of hanging out with Jenny, he could only picture them in that stupid barn.
It had been his safe place once before. Maybe it could be again.
Only, he wanted to keep it a surprise. Jenny didn’t seem like the type who would willingly go hang out at an old barn.
She didn’t talk much. He wanted to turn on the radio, but he felt like she would prefer silent drives. She seemed to stare thoughtfully out of the window the whole time. That was all right, though. He could endure silence if it was what she liked.
“We’re almost there,” he told her as he took a right.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she told him. “I thought you said you weren’t going to murder me.”
“I’m not going to murder you, Scout’s Honor.” He held up his right hand.
“I doubt you were ever a Boy Scout.”
“True, but it still counts.” He could see the barn now, looming on the horizon. He parked, killing the car. “This place is a secret,” he told her. “I’m letting you in on it.”
She looked out the windshield, less than thrilled. “Thank you for sharing your run-down barn with me.”
“It’s better up close, I promise.”
It was tall, with two doors and a broken wood beam once used as a latch. It had two large windows on the front, and through them Chance could see sunlight streaming in through the holes in the roof.
Jenny got out of the car, slowly approaching the place. “It has … charm,” she said hesitantly. She pushed the door open, struggling under its weight. “What’s its story?”
He followed her inside. “My brother and I found it as kids. I haven’t been here in forever, but he used it to have parties and stuff.”
She made a face, obviously displeased. “We can do better than that.”
It was big. It was open, with a tiny wooden table sitting toward the back, and scattered hay all along the floor. There was a black trunk behind the ladder that led up to the loft. A few of the rafters looked rather shifty, and Chance could hear birds cooing somewhere in the ceiling. The light spilled in in random patches, some of it leaking in through gaps between the wall panels.
Chance watched Jenny wander around, inspecting every inch of the barn. She looked under the small wooden table. She tested her weight on the loft ladder. She looked over everything in her methodical Jenny way. Finally, when she was finished, she ran to the middle of the floor and spread her arms wide, spinning in a circle. “I love it!” she cried. “What do we do here?”
Chance wished more than anything that he could see this place through Jenny’s eyes. All he saw were visions of his brother and his friends smoking around the table, playing Cards Against Humanity.
“Hang out, I guess? We go here whenever we need to get away.”
He walked up, taking the pirate hat from her. The material was surprisingly rough in his hands. This thing must’ve sat in that bin for years. “I think we should leave this here,” he told her. He placed it on his head because he knew it’d make her smile. “It’ll be our thing when we’re here.”
“Like a tradition.” She smiled. “But where will we keep it? We can’t just hang it on a loose wall panel.”
She had a point. Chance looked around until he spotted the trunk under the loft. “There.” He pointed.
It was a black leather thing, with big clunky silver hinges. Chance had no idea where his brother had gotten it. It looked too nice for anything their parents ever bought them. He opened it, surprised to find it wasn’t empty. There were a few T-shirts—all Levi’s—and about three pairs of lacy underwear—definitely not Levi’s. There was also a half-empty bottle of Absolut. “Looks like Levi left us a present,” Chance said, lifting the bottle. The clear liquid sloshed around noisily.
Jenny eyed the bottle warily. “I’ve never drank before,” she admitted.
“Wait, really?” Chance asked. “You’re like, what, seventeen?”
She nodded. “Just turned in July.”
“And you’ve never drank.” Chance had had his first drink at twelve. His father had tricked him into drinking some of his beer because his work friends thought it was hilarious. It had been disgusting.
“It never held much interest for me,” Jenny explained sheepishly. “It’s not like I can knock back shots of tequila while studying for the ACTs.” She thought about it for a moment. “Well, I guess I could, but it wouldn’t be very productive.”
“Do you want to drink sometime?”
She considered it. “Sure. I mean, it always looks so fun on TV. Besides, my high school career would be a waste if I didn’t get wasted at least once.”
“I wouldn’t say it’d be a complete waste,” Chance said. He started to add, “You met me,” but stopped himself. That’s dumb. Don’t be dumb. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. It’s okay not to drink. But we can drink sometime if you do want to. How about Saturday?”
She paused. “I guess that works,” she said. She lowered herself to the ground, sitting in the hay. “So this is your spot, huh?” she asked suddenly, fixing him with a serious look.
He sat cross-legged in front of her, absentmindedly putting the pirate hat back on. “What?”
“This place, this barn, it’s your spot, right?”
He looked around, taking in the way the light trickled in, casting half the barn into intricate shadows. “I guess it’s all right,” he said honestly. “It smells like hay.”
“Oh wow, how insightful of you, Masters.”
“It reminds me of my brother. I don’t know how I feel about my brother right now. It’s complicated.” The words spilled out and he couldn’t stop them. “He would use this place whenever he didn’t want to be home. I don’t want to see it that way.”
Jenny cocked her head to the side curiously, almost like a bird. “How do you want to see it?”
“The way you do.” He wanted this place to be their fun getaway spot. He wanted to have found it with her—to have discovered its secrets with her. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who needed a getaway. He wanted to have that sense of wonder he saw in her eyes sometimes. Jenny was the type of person who looked at this dump and saw potential. Chance wanted that.
She laughed nervously, averting her gaze. “There’s nothing special about how I see this place.”
“You see it the way Levi did,” he told her.
Her eyes snapped back to him. “I remind you of your brother?”
Oh crap. “No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he hastened to assure her. “He, er, sees everything like it’s a story. He sees the wonder in things somehow.” Why was he being so candid? I have to change the subject. He reached up to run a frustrated hand through his hair, only to end up knocking the hat off instead. The pirate hat, he thought, looking down at the thing. He had forgotten all about it. He picked it up suddenly, thrusting it toward Jenny. “Your turn.”
“Wh-what?” she stuttered, startled.
He pushed the hat into her hands. “I wore it, and I shared something. Now it’s your turn.”
She took it, reluctantly putting it on. “My turn?”
“Share Time,” he explained, making something up on the spot. “It’s what we do here at Our Spot. We take turns wearing the pirate hat and sharing things about ourselves. It’s our tradition.”
“Our Spot?”
He gestured at the room around them. “We discovered it. It’s ours, so it’s Our Spot.”
“And we come here to share our … feelings?”
“Yes.” He nodded impatiently. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Um, well.” She chewed her lip uncertainly. Chance couldn’t help but notice that she looked kind of hot when she did that. “I have really bad breath in the morning?”
He just looked at her. “Even I know that’s from Mean Girls.”
She folded her hands in her lap, looking down at them. “I’ve never had a bo
yfriend,” she told him, not looking up. “I’ve never even been on a date.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” She wrung her hands together. “It’s never interested me much. It’s like a thing that, abstractly, I realize people are doing, but it doesn’t seem real to me. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Do you feel like you’re missing out?”
“Not really?” she answered. She wasn’t blushing, though she still couldn’t meet his eyes. “Like I said, it seems like an abstract concept to me.” She paused, seeming to choose her next words carefully. “How are we going to drink Saturday when you told that Samantha girl you’d hang out that day?”
That was the last thing he expected. “What?” he asked, trying to figure out what she was talking about. What did Samantha have to do with anything? He had forgotten all about that. “How do you know about that?”
She finally looked at him then, her green eyes unreadable. “I was walking up when she asked you. I decided to wait until she was gone to say anything.”
Chance felt guilty, and he wasn’t sure why. He was single. He was allowed to talk to other girls. But he didn’t even want to go out with Samantha, especially if it would cause Jenny to make that disappointed face. “I’d forgotten that I’d already made plans with my best friend.”
“You’d give up your date for me?” He nodded, leaning even closer.
Her phone went off then, and they both jumped back. She pulled it out, making a face as she checked the screen. “It’s my alarm,” she told him. “It’s getting close to dinnertime.”
“Do you need to go back?” He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted her to look at him again and maybe bite her lip some more.
“Yeah, my mom always wants us together for dinner. It’s family time.”
That must be nice, he thought bitterly. “Let’s get going, then.”
He kept looking back at Their Spot as he left, stealing glances in his rearview mirror. He watched it grow smaller and smaller, the peace he had felt there rapidly fading away. He wanted to capture that feeling—to bottle it up. It could be their place of refuge in a town full of dead ends.
Just Friends Page 5