by Julie Wright
“They left you in a tree?” Jake asked. He’d pulled off his clip-on fangs and pocketed them. The way his eyes flashed angrily made it appear he didn’t approve. You never knew with guys. Some guys believed beautiful girls did nothing wrong. It was good to know Jake wasn’t one of those kind, especially when he had every reason to be. He ate lunch with the Snoddy crowd at school. He’d taken Lisa to several dances. It stood to reason that he’d be enough like her to be amused by my situation. But he looked like he felt sorry for me. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
Kristin worked at the rope, but couldn’t figure it out. Jake finally said, “Wait a minute, let me get some of the weight off the knots.” He jumped up and grabbed the rope, using his own weight to counterbalance mine, allowing Kristin to untie the bonds around the tree. Leave these things to the engineer. “We’ll have you down in no time.” He used the same tone he’d used with his kid sister when getting a sliver out of her hand. I knew this because I’d once been present when she’d had a sliver. My little brother and Jake’s little sister were friends. Sad that my ten-year-old brother traveled in cooler circles than I did. Kristin was able to get the rope unknotted and Jake used it to slowly lower me.
Kristin professed all kinds of apologies and loyalty during my descent. “Seriously, I had no idea they were going to pull this on you. I swear I’d never let them get away with it if I’d had any clue.”
My toes touched ground, and Kristin attempted to untie the ropes from around my chest and neck, but Jake edged her out of the way. “Let me get that.” His fingers grazed my neck as he loosened the knots. I tried not to shiver, tried not to die knowing how utterly absurd my situation must have seemed to him—how utterly absurd the situation really was.
My hands ached with stinging needles as blood rushed back into them.
Kristin kindly pulled silly string out of my hair and off my clothing while offering up more apologies.
I grabbed her hands. “Stop apologizing, Kris. I know it isn’t your fault.”
“But your birthday’s totally ruined! Oh! And your hands are like ice cubes. I’m so sorry.”
Jake stopped untying and moved to look over my shoulder, interrupting further apologizing. “It’s your birthday?”
I sighed. My birthday. And no matter what happened, the day was pretty much ruined because Lisa would make certain the silly string video would be all over the world of social media. They’d likely already texted a play-by-play of my humiliation to half the school. “Yeah. My birthday. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a day.” I kept my voice even and uncaring. It was a big deal, and it was just an important day. Sixteen was supposed to be something magical—something amazing, and it wasn’t anything but humiliating.
Kristin’s face reflected my true feelings, and even though Jake had gone back to loosening knots, I felt the pity oozing off of him.
“So . . . I’m guessing you don’t want to go to the party?” Kristin asked.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Going to the student council’s costume party after getting hanged was out of the question. I picked my phone off the ground and dialed Kristin’s phone to see if it worked.
Nothing. So my phone was broken too—on top of everything else. Yay.
“I’ll make this up to you. We don’t have to go to the party. We can go to a movie or whatever you want.” Kristin seemed desperate to make something work out, but a movie? Sweet sixteen at the movie theater? I pictured myself crying in a dark theater. No. That wouldn’t be a good idea at all.
“No. Really. Don’t worry about it. It’s just a birthday. If I don’t die this year, I’ll have another one next year.” The words were huge glaring lies. Today was just a really, really super important birthday that Kristin had promised would be fun because the whole school would be at the party—all of my friends, and I wouldn’t have to spend a dime.
“I think I just want to go home,” I said.
Kristin fumbled for words as I grunted at the ground. “They could’ve at least picked up their trash.” I set off to Kristin’s car, sifting my fingers through my hair, hoping to catch the last remnants of the string.
When a tug came at my arm, pulling me back, I expected it to be Kristin, coming up with another idea of how to make things good for me again. “Kris, really just let me—” I started, but Jake had my arm, not Kristin.
“Why don’t we go back to my house?” His suggestion took several seconds to process through my brain.
“What?” Jake invited me to his house? I’d never been invited to Jake’s house.
Oh sure, I’d been to Jake’s house, but only because my mom sent me on errands for her all the time. Picking up my brother was the typical errand even though Jake’s house was only two streets away, and my brother was old enough to walk by himself. How lame to make me walk there to pick him up. I was as likely to get kidnapped as he was. Of course, her errands were bound to improve now that I could get my license.
“Yeah, you can come to my house.” He repeated his offer.
I blinked. Nope. No way. This was too good to be true. He was only being nice, not offering because he actually wanted me at his house. I’d already seen the pity in his eyes. Nothing was worse than pity-kindness. “It’s okay, really. I know you want to go to the party, and I’m fine—really.” Being invited to his house as his guest would be awesome, but who wanted to be a charity case on their birthday?
“Parties happen all the time. I actually wasn’t planning on going, but Lisa insisted she’d have Melissa come and get me. Melissa never showed, and I was totally cool not going. My mom made cinnamon caramel apples for dessert. My dad can only get her to make those once a year. If we go back to my house, we can have some before he eats them all.” He smiled. I locked my knees to keep my legs from trembling.
“But if Melissa was supposed to—”
“Oh yeah,” Kristin interjected. “Melissa called and asked me to get him for her. That’s why he’s with me—and why I was late getting back.”
“They’ll be expecting you though . . . at the party.” I gave him one last chance to change his mind. If he didn’t change it after that, then it was entirely his own fault.
“Cinnamon caramel apples? Hello? You guys are saving me. Seriously, let’s go.” And this time, he was the one heading to the car with both Kristin and I blinking in wide-eyed astonishment after him.
“Is he serious?” I asked Kristin who’d come up behind Jake.
She shrugged. “He says he is.”
“But won’t Lisa be mad?” It wasn’t that I was afraid of Lisa, but that it seemed smarter to just stay out of her way. Regardless of my crush on Jake, hanging out with him would certainly earn her ire—not just towards me, but towards Kristin too. Definitely not worth it.
Kristin folded her arms across her chest. “Do you really care if Lisa gets mad or not? Look what she did to you!” She uncrossed her arms and pulled a pink straggler-string off my shoulder. She nodded, turned, and followed Jake to the car. The fact existed that in many ways Kristin did care how Lisa felt, and I cared about whatever Kristin cared about. My making waves with Lisa would only guarantee that Kristin would be the one getting soaked.
It took several seconds to make my feet follow Kristin and Jake, confused over how he miraculously ended up with Kristin at a time when he was already scheduled to be with Lisa, baffled over his decision to stay with us even though he had no real reason. I looked up at the starry sky and shrugged. Maybe my wish of Jake realizing that Lisa was a hag came true. My mom said karma always won in the end. Maybe she was more right than she knew.
He took the backseat, leaving the front for me. I wished he’d have taken the front to allow me to stare at him, instead of worrying over whether or not he was looking at me. The bags of dry ice were still on the ground where Kristin had dropped them. With a grunt, I picked up the bags, emptied one into the other, and put it on the floor in the back with Jake. Then I tromped back to the tree with the newly empty bag and filled it wi
th the rope, empty cans, and lids Lisa and her clingers left.
When I got back to the car and got in, Jake was grinning at me.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head, his bangs brushing over his eye. My hand twitched at my side, wanting to touch that bit of hair. He grinned wider as if knowing the effect he had on me. “You picked up after them.”
I shrugged, not trusting myself with a verbal response.
“That’s just cool.” He looked at me then as if he was interested in what he saw.
I shifted nervously under his scrutiny, and finally blurted, “It’s against the law to litter.” The response was lame, but it would have to do. I didn’t want to explain that it was against my nature to leave garbage on the ground. My parents had spent my entire childhood indoctrinating me with the notion that you should always leave a place better than you found it. No family outing took place where we weren’t filling trash bags with other people’s garbage. The habit was not easily kicked, not even when I despised the people who’d done the littering.
I spent the car ride feeling self-conscious and lame. The conversation consisted of continued apologies and professions of loyalty from Kristin, and mumbled pleadings from me for her to just forget about it. Jake stayed relatively silent in the back.
I thought about striking up a conversation with Jake so he felt included and so Kristin would shut up and quit reminding him that I’d been hanging in a tree just moments before, but nothing witty or smart came to mind. His very presence made me nearly sick with nervousness. I almost suggested that Kristin just take me home, but couldn’t get the words out without feeling like I’d throw up on her.
Once we’d pulled up to Jake’s house, I’d determined the entire idea of going home with him was bad—as bad as letting Lisa tie me up in a tree.
But against my better judgment, I exited the car and followed them up his front walk and to the door. He pushed it open and took off his shoes. He motioned for us to do the same. “My mom has a no-shoes-in-the-house policy. She says it keeps people more open-minded when they have comfortable feet, but we all know she does it to keep the floors cleaner.”
“My grandma from Sweden does that too—” I started to say as I pulled off my left shoe. I cut off my sentence and cringed, but there wasn’t anything to do about the blue-painted toe nail sticking out of the black sock. It was too late to try to fold my sock over to hide it.
Holey socks! I’d worn holey socks to Jake’s house!
Idiot!
Kristin shot me a pained look, but Jake pretended not to notice. Of course he did notice. A person would have to be blind not to notice the bright blue nail polish wriggling outside the confines of the sock.
I stripped them off my feet and stuffed them into my black shoes, vowing to throw them away as soon as I got home.
A big basket sat in the corner of the entryway where several pairs of shoes had already accumulated. We added ours to the collection and moved to the living room. The house was organized as if Jake’s parents were expecting photographers from a design magazine any moment. It was organization even my OCD mom would admire. The books sat neatly in the bookcase, not stacked sideways and stuffed in wherever they might fit—like they were at my dad’s house. Even the throw blanket was draped over the arm of the chair in a way to let you know the person who put it there absolutely meant for it to look like that. I’d been in the Warren house before but had never ventured beyond the doorway.
Jake’s kid sister, Heather, bounded into the room. “I thought you were going to a costume party?”
“I was, but I had to come back so you didn’t eat all the caramel apples.” He undid his cape and swung it over her shoulders. “Hang onto that for me, okay?”
She smiled at the attention he gave in handing over control of his cape.
I sighed. So cute. I wasn’t always so cute with my brother. Seeing Jake with his sister reminded me to be a little better in that area.
Heather fixed me with a confused stare. “Did you bring Robison with you?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Nope, sorry, not this time.”
“Then why are you here?” she asked, sounding entirely baffled to find me at her house without my brother in tow.
I sighed again. Even a ten-year-old knew I didn’t belong at Jake’s house.
“She’s our guest, Heather. She’s going to hang out with us tonight,” Jake said.
“Oh.” She rolled her shoulders as if to say “whatever” and smiled at her brother. “There are eight apples left. Dad’s already had four. Mom says he’s going to be sick.”
“How many have you had?”
“Almost two, and don’t go acting like that’s a lot. I know you had two before you left. So was the party dumb or something?” She started walking away. Jake followed her. We followed Jake.
“Something like that.”
“Is Lisa coming over then?” She tossed a hopeful glance over her shoulder at him as we went through the living room to the kitchen.
“Not this time.”
Was that disappointment in his voice? It was definitely disappointment on Heather’s face. I sketched a look at Kristin, who wasn’t paying attention. We all looked semi-ridiculous: me dressed as a witch, Jake as a vampire, and Kristin as a Puritan. What would a good little Puritan be doing with a witch and a vampire?
Fitting in.
That’s what she’d be doing. Kristin looked perfectly at ease being in Jake’s home. How my best friend managed to blend and feel comfortable in every situation on the planet totally baffled me.
Jake’s mom stood at the kitchen sink, her hands sunk deep in soapy water. “You’re home early.” She didn’t turn around. “Would you and Lisa like an apple?”
I wanted to scream. Why did they all assume she’d be with him? Because she always is with him, dummy. I barely suppressed the sigh, feeling rather asthmatic with all the sighing I’d been doing that night, but could do nothing about the blush that heated all the way to my ears.
“Actually, Mom, I brought home a couple of other friends if that’s okay?”
She turned and seemed startled to find two girls who were definitely not Lisa standing in her kitchen. She recovered well. “Oh . . . of course that’s fine. That’s great. Hi, Ally. How’s Robison?”
“Fine. He’s doing fine.” I nodded and wished I had something more intelligent to say. Jake introduced his mom to Kristin.
“Would you guys like an apple?” she asked. “They won’t keep forever.”
“They don’t have to,” Jake said. “They’ll be gone by tomorrow.” He handed off the bag of dwindling dry ice to his mom then waved toward a half-empty platter with elaborately decorated caramel apples.
I hesitated at the platter and finally took an apple after Kristin did. “Thank you, Mrs. Warren.”
She smiled, but shot a look at Jake that seemed questioning. I imagined the look to mean, “What in the world are you doing here with girls who aren’t Lisa?”
“It’s Ally’s birthday today,” Jake announced.
“Well, happy birthday!” she said. “You’re turning sixteen then?”
“Thank you,” I said to the birthday wishes. And, “Yes, ma’am,” to her guess on my age.
“So do you have any big birthday plans?” His mom was one of those genuinely sweet moms—the kind who made lemonade and bothered getting to know the friends of her children. Robison loved playing at Heather’s.
I shook my head. “Nothing too big. We were going to the party . . .” I trailed off. What could be said about why I’d rather walk ten miles barefoot on broken glass than go to that party?
She waited for me to finish.
I didn’t finish, so Jake stepped in. “The cheerleaders pulled a prank on Ally and left her hanging in a tree. I don’t think she wants to spend any more time with them for the night.”
I hated that he had an open enough relationship with his mom that he felt just fine and dandy spilling my embarrassing moments to
her. I mean, it was totally cool that he had a good relationship with his mom, but did he really have to tell her in front of me?
“Oh. Oh, I see.” Her tone said she really did see, and she shot me a look of deepest sympathy. I cringed under her inspection. She snapped out of it fast and turned her smile all the way up to positive attitude.
“Why don’t you guys break out some board games?” She wiped her hands on a towel and scampered off to find the board games as Jake said, “Good idea, Mom.”
She really was a lemonade mom—figuratively and literally. Life handed that woman lemons and she went to work. The dry ice ended up in a punch bowl filled with a red liquid that turned out to be strawberry lemonade, of which we were all invited to partake.
I had noticed a chess board set up in the corner of their living room and wondered what Jake would do if I challenged him to a match. Would he be surprised to know I was a pretty good player too? How would he handle it if I won? Some guys were weird about stuff like that. Besides, Kristin didn’t get to go to the party; a two-player game in the face of her sacrifice would make me a creep. I decided not to mention the chess board.
A few moments later, his mom called us all in to the family room where she’d stacked several board games for us to choose from. After she’d retreated back to the kitchen, the rest of us agreed on Clue and settled in to play.
It was an old board—classic styled. The whitened creases of the bends and the gouges in the board left little doubt that the game had seen a lot of use in its time. Jake’s sister joined us at the board. Her presence didn’t seem to bother Jake in the slightest. He was an awesome big brother.
Heather chose to be Mrs. Peacock because she loved the color blue and before I knew it, all the female characters were taken, leaving me with Miss Scarlet. My face turned the color of my game piece, and I wondered if it seemed fitting for me to be Miss Scarlet when I was in this house, with Lisa Snoddy’s boyfriend. I considered taking Colonel Mustard, but didn’t want Jake relating me to a guy named after a condiment.
We trailed each other in and out of the conservatory, ballroom, and kitchen as we scribbled on our little pads of paper with our half-sized pencils. Jake won when he announced that the murderer was Miss Scarlet, in the ballroom, with the knife. So not only was I the tramp, I was also the murderer. His parents came in as we finished up. Everyone made jibes about how innocent I looked, and how no one would have picked me for a girl with a knife in her handbag. I smiled and laughed with them but felt slightly embarrassed, knowing that they all felt sorry for the girl who’d been hanged by the cheerleaders.