His face is average—brown eyes, regular nose, nice cheek-bones, lips a little on the thin side. In other words, he’s perfect. Not too good-looking, not totally hideous. He walks away, crossing the sidewalk toward the science building, completely unaware that I’m possibly his One True Love.
“His family just moved here from Phoenix.” Cody fills me in as we cut across a landscaping bed filled with yarrow plants, their white flattop flowers squashed by people like us using their home as a shortcut. “No girlfriend back home.”
Now this guy is three for five. Possibly four if there’s not an ex, either. And as for Rule #4, Don’t Need Him, that’s completely up to me. Practically a perfect score and I haven’t even met him yet.
“What’s his name?” I ask the one thing Cody hasn’t filled me in on.
“Brian. Brian Hart.”
And I think what a nice, ordinary name it is. He probably has a sister named Jennifer and a little brother named Mike. They live in a two-story house with a pool, and their parents are still married. In fact, their parents never fight.
“Just one thing.” Cody stops once we’re back on the sidewalk and makes me spin in a circle. “Uh-huh, I thought so. Give me those.” He holds out a hand.
“What?” I fidget with my earlobe self-consciously.
He tunnels fingers into my hair and emerges with the two clips I used to hold back my bangs. “What did I say about these? Only with the red tank, remember?”
“I need those!” I protest as the hair that really needs to be trimmed hits me right in the eyes.
“Red clips with that yellow T-shirt? Who do you think you are, Ronald McDonald?” He pockets my hair accessories. “You’ll thank me later.”
Cody jogs ahead of me. “Brian! Wait up!”
What? This isn’t right. I need to prepare, get my story straight, have some kind of cute-but-not-too-cute line ready. Instead, Brian turns around with a hesitant smile on his face while Cody points at me and says something I can’t hear since I’m walking very s-l-o-w-l-y in their direction. I stop to let a small lizard scamper across the pavement in front of me.
“Hey,” Brian says when I finally get to them. Up close, he is even more perfectly imperfect than I imagined. He actually has a zit on his chin.
“Hey,” I say, bobbing my head. “I’m Abby. How’s it going?”
“Good. How ’bout you?”
I nod. He smiles. Cody looks pleased. It is silent for an awkwardly long time. My eyes look everywhere except at Brian. The GO, COYOTES, GO ! banner hanging over the door to the science building, the flag outside the main office flapping in the light breeze, Audrey Renaldo picking the underwear out of her butt as she walks by. Note to self, adjusting your panties in public is not nearly as inconspicuous as you think, no matter how quickly you do it.
“So, uh, Cody,” Brian says, “what’re you working on for our first Speech project?”
Cody pushes me closer to Brian. “Not sure yet. You have anything planned?”
Brian pauses a moment then looks right at Cody. “I’m thinking about doing something on gay rights. You know, marriage, adoption, that kind of thing.”
Cody flushes. I can actually feel the increased body heat from where I stand. His teeth grind.
“Because most people don’t really think about it, you know?” Brian continues, clearly unaware that Cody is about to blow. “But the world is changing and we have to make adjustments. Being gay is hardly the taboo issue it used to be. The laws need to change.” He pauses for a breath. “Don’t you think so?”
“That’s not funny,” Cody snarls. “You don’t even know me. How dare you . . .” He trails off, shakes his head, and storms away.
Brian watches him go, and I am truly sad. Because he’d seemed to perfectly fit my rules, but as I watch him watch Cody, I see that he’s not perfect for me. He’s perfect for Cody.
“Don’t worry.” I pat Brian’s arm. Now that he’s no longer The One, I’m not nervous. “I’ll make it right with him.”
Brian’s smile is shy. “I was just trying to find out if, well, maybe he’s . . .”
“I know,” I say. “Cody’s a real catch.” How to say this delicately? “He just doesn’t know it yet? You know?” The look I give him is meaningful.
His face brightens. “Really? So he is gay?”
I can’t tell him something Cody’s never told me. “You’ll have to ask him. He’s never mentioned it.”
“But he said you were his best friend.”
“I am.”
Brian nods like he finally understands.
“Be patient,” I say. “He’s worth it.” Not to mention, it’s not like Brian’s got a lot of choices at Union. “In the meantime, why don’t you come to my house tomorrow night and watch a movie with us?”
“Really? That’s so nice.”
“It’s no trouble.” I dig around in my bag until I find a pen and jot down my address on a scrap of paper. “Here. Around seven?”
He takes the note and folds it carefully before putting it in his shirt pocket. “It’s hard to be the new guy. Thank you, Abby.”
“Wait until after you meet my family. Then we’ll see how thankful you are.”
Chapter 8
Gustavo shows up with, like, ten movies from the Blockbuster. Kait makes a big deal out of helping him choose which one to watch. Then she makes an even bigger deal about him sitting next to her on the sofa, and quicker than you can say, “Boy, are those Savage girls fast,” Kait’s cuddled up next to him, Stephanie-in-the-baby-sling wrangled to the side so Kait can rest her cheek against Gustavo’s arm. Poor Gustavo probably doesn’t realize this is most likely a show she’s hoping the Guitar Player will at least hear about if he doesn’t catch the premiere tonight.
“Stephanie looks so much like her dad from this angle,” Shelby says from where she sits with Hannah on her lap in the Barcalounger. She gazes at Jackson when she says, “Must be the nose.”
Kait smiles, missing Shelby’s meaning by a mile. “I think so, too! Amazing, isn’t it, how much she looks like Steve?”
“Something’s amazing.” Shelby shoots a smug look Jackson’s way that he completely misses. He and Cody sit on big pillows on the floor, flipping through the DVDs that Gustavo brought.
Mom’s nursing another headache in her bedroom, waiting for the Guitar Player to keep his word and finally come home. His long weekend gig has turned into an eight-day vacation, and Mom’s about had it. It’s up to me to play hostess, popping corn in the kitchen.
“Abby.” A hand lands on my shoulder and I jump like one of the kernels in the microwave.
“Jackson, you scared me!” I put some distance between us by going to the fridge and pulling out a couple bottles of soda. The overhead light is half burned out, making the kitchen seem too intimate.
“Sorry.” He leans a hip against the Formica countertop. “Already saw this movie so I thought I’d make myself useful in here.”
“What did they finally decide on?” I can hear opening credit-type music.
“Is this Brian guy your new boyfriend?” Jackson ignores my question, shoves an empty pitcher against the ice dispenser on the freezer door. He is as at home here as he is at his own house. Maybe more. Barbara likes her kitchen just so, with all the spices arranged alphabetically and the canned goods stored by size. The boys were never what you’d call welcome in her domain. “Cody said he’s your new friend.”
I want to deny it, but again, the whole situation is sensitive and I’m hoping he is a friend, although I wouldn’t say it in quite that tone. “Not exactly,” I say.
“Not exactly what?”
“Cody introduced us yesterday. He’s new here, no other friends. You know how it is. So I invited him over. It’s no big deal.” At least, I hope it’s no big deal. When I finally tracked down Cody after the Big Brian Blowup, he agreed that perhaps he’d overreacted and that he’d behave tonight.
I open white cupboard doors badly in need of some touch-up paint, s
earching for the popcorn bowls. Shelby never puts things back where they go. The water glasses are stashed over the sink instead of closest to the fridge, where I like them. And she’s put the metal strainer on top of the nonstick pans, which is just a crime.
“No. Big. Deal.” Jackson says after a really long silence punctuated only by me opening and slamming doors. He grabs plastic cups from the shelf and restacks them on the counter. “Cody says you have some crazy plan for getting your next boyfriend.”
Cody had no right to say anything about my Plan to his brother. “Next? How about first?”
Jackson swings around and slams his fist on the butcher-block island. “I am your first boyfriend.”
“One week hardly qualifies you as a boyfriend.”
“Are you saying I don’t count?” His knuckles turn white where he presses them against the wood.
I peel a stick of butter, because there’s no such thing as too much butter on your popcorn, and put it in the microwave. Push 30 SECONDS. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”
My back is to him so I don’t see his face when he makes that strange, strangled sound, but suddenly, he is behind me, his hands on my waist.
He leans down so his lips are so close to my neck I feel his breath when he speaks. “I count, Abby.”
The doorbell rings and although there are fifty other people in the house who could get it, I shove my way past Jackson. “Brian’s here. Relax, Jack-Off, and be nice to him.”
Jackson growls something low, but I hear him take the drinks into the living room.
“Brian! Everyone’s here. Come on back.” I lead the way, but not before noticing Brian has spiffed himself up for the occasion.
I hope Cody notices, too.
We are halfway through Raiders of the Lost Ark, which Gustavo claims is a classic, when the three glasses of Diet Coke I’ve downed hit me.
“Back in a sec,” I say, thinking no one is paying attention anyway, but when I come out of the bathroom, Jackson is waiting.
“We weren’t done talking.” He leans against the wall, angled so his body fills the hallway.
“I was.” I attempt to dart past him.
He blocks my way. “Abby, why won’t you spend five minutes alone with me? Don’t I deserve that much?”
My breathing goes all weird when I’m around him, like there’s only so much air in the world and he’s using it all up. I start to feel light-headed. “I don’t want to miss the end of the movie.” Although I’m pretty sure Indiana Jones will save the girl and find the ark.
“I was stupid,” he says, and that gets my attention. “I should’ve made you understand as soon as Shelby told you about me and Kait, but I thought you’d calm down. That I’d have the chance to convince you that what happened in November didn’t have anything to do with us. Only you wouldn’t talk to me, and by the time I realized how badly I’d handled everything, it was graduation. Then my trip to Nicaragua. Please don’t let it be too late, Abby.”
Jackson’s dark-blue eyes look almost black in the poorly lit hallway. The cream walls have darkened with age, and there’s a lighter square where a photo of my dad used to hang. I wonder who took it down? Probably the Guitar Player since I can’t imagine it bothering anyone else. I’d taken that picture in eighth grade when Dad and I went to the Tuzigoot National Monument. It was a great day, just the two of us. He was laughing when I snapped the photo, mouth open, sun glaring off his high forehead. He thought it was an awful picture of him, but I loved it.
My finger traces the blank space on the wall as I suck in an uneven breath. I don’t want Jackson to explain, I don’t want to understand. I just want to move on with my Plan.
Then he leans down and kisses me. Lightly, the softest touch against my lips, and I feel myself slipping away, slipping back in time. I push against his chest, breaking the kiss, and plaster myself against the opposite wall.
“Happy birthday,” I say, proud to think of something to distract him. “Wasn’t it last month?”
He looks confused for a second then nods. “Yeah.”
“You know what that makes me?”
We stare at each other. He takes a step toward me.
“Jailbait.”
He stops dead. “You’re almost sixteen.”
I wiggle my finger at him. “Jailbait. That’s what you turning eighteen makes me. And if you kiss me again, I’m calling the cops.”
On Moments of Our Lives, a woman never calls the cops for help unless the man in question is clearly a Bad Guy, like he kidnapped and raped her sister or works for a crime family in the area. Usually, the two characters will fight and dance around, pretending hostility when really everyone knows that they are perfect for each other. This is not one of those cases. Jackson really is all wrong for me.
I take a different approach. “Jackson, you’re going off to college in a few days. It doesn’t make sense for you to be hounding me like this.”
“I’m not,” he says.
“Cornering me outside the bathroom is definitely hounding.”
“I’m not going to college.” He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and brushes his palms against his jeans.
“You’re what?” Because all Barbara has talked about since Jackson was twelve was how he would go to college and become a doctor. Jackson talked about becoming a pro baseball player or maybe an astronaut. Although come to think of it, he hasn’t talked about the future much in the last year.
“Not going,” he clarifies. “Nicaragua, it changed me.” He thumps his chest. “In here. I don’t know how to explain it—I just know that college and football, it’s not what I want anymore.”
Jackson’s not winning any points with me. If there was a Rule #6 of the Plan, it would be that He Must Be Able to Hold Down a Job for More Than Three Months. College seems like a good way to assure you’re employable as more than a retail clerk. It was the one thing in his favor, as far as I was concerned, and now he’s throwing it away?
A hint of the disappointment I feel must show, because he says, “You don’t know what I saw down there, Abby. Children living in the streets, begging and starving and sick. Ten- and eleven-year-old-prostitutes selling themselves to middle-aged men? Kids disappear off the streets every day and no one looks for them. I can’t go on with my life like that stuff doesn’t exist. I have to do something.”
“What can you do?” This was a new Jackson to me. Not Jack-Off, Cody’s hot big brother, but some new person who had thoughts and opinions I’d never heard.
He shrugs and wipes his hands on his jeans again. “I don’t know yet. For now, I’m going to find a job, work, and save up money. I’ve got a little put away for college, but if I want to go down there for good, I’ll need a chunk of change.”
“You’re going back?”
“Well, yeah. How else can I help?”
Raising money? Petitions? But I don’t say it, because I can see he means it and really, it’s kind of noble. I suddenly feel bad for resenting my sisters, all the times I got mad when they ate the last Dove bar or wouldn’t drive me to the movies when I wanted them to. At least we have a home, food, and a safe place to sleep.
“Does Barbara know?” Because Barbara might think it’s all well and good for him to go down there in the summer, but to skip out on college and leave the country indefinitely? It’s not the kind of news I’d want to break to her.
Jackson clearly thinks the same. “I’m supposed to leave for A.U. next week. I don’t know how to tell her. I’m too late to get any of their deposits and stuff refunded. They’ll probably kill me.”
If we were on Passion’s Promise, he could tell her he was going to college but go to Nicaragua instead and have someone send her fake postcards from A.U. Everything would be fine, until another character vacationed in Central America, saw Jackson, and told his mom, and then she’d have the mother of all cows. She would cut him out of her will, and he would die of some unheard-of illness that usually only afflicts actors who ask for a pay raise.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Jackson swallows again. “She needs to hear it from me.”
“You’re not worried about your dad?”
“Naw, he’s the one who signed me up for the program. Builds character, he said. Dad might be upset at first, but how can he complain about something that was his idea in the first place?”
“So, you’re really not leaving. At least not yet.”
“Nope.” He grins. “You’re stuck with me.”
Stuck on you is more like it, but just because he’s not the total selfish jerk he used to be doesn’t mean the other Rules don’t apply. “I’d better get back,” I say. “Brian must be wondering where I am.”
Jackson’s face tightens but he nods. “Whatever you say, Abby. But I still think we deserve another chance.”
I wiggle my fingers at him in a bye-bye gesture. “Jailbait, Jack-Off. Jailbait.”
Chapter 9
When I get back to the living room, the movie is over. Shelby is doing that mom thing where she is oozing herself out of the chair with as little movement as possible so Hannah, asleep on her lap, won’t wake up. Everyone is silently watching her awkward gymnastics in a way that makes me think she’s threatened them with something horrible to keep them from making noise. Once she’s got Hannah out of the room, the chatter starts up.
“Good movie, right?” Gustavo asks, clearly only caring what Kait thinks.
She smiles at him in her slutty way, but I decide it’s okay. Gustavo has a lot of the Rules going for him, even #6, Must Be Able to Hold Down a Job for More Than Three Months, which is not officially a Rule. Stephanie is asleep in the sling Kait carries her around in. I hope that if Kait follows through on her slutty-smile promise, she will at least have the decency to leave Stephanie in the living room with me. I can’t imagine the hang-ups a person might get from watching Mom do her boss from the crib.
“Pretty good,” Kait agrees with Gustavo. “I’ve seen it before, though. Or maybe it was another movie. Is there more than one?”
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