Behind the Bars

by Brittainy Cherry

  “I’m sorry. I think I’m actually gonna head out,” I told him, my nerves building. I was out of my element. I loved high school, but these were not my people.

  “You legit just got here. How about we play a game of spin the bottle?” he offered. “A few already have a game going in the kitchen.”

  “No, sorry. I’m just tired.”

  “That’s too bad,” he replied with a frown. “I just hope Boney Bones doesn’t have too rough of a Monday.”

  I stood up straighter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not stupid, Jasmine. I know you only agreed to come because you felt bad for that loser. I’ll admit, it’s sexy as fuck that you care about those in need, but I don’t know how much I can leave him alone if you’re only gonna hang out for five minutes.”

  I was taken aback by his comment. “Is that a threat?”

  “What? No way.” He laughed, moving in closer to whisper near my ear. “It’s a promise. A few rounds of spin the bottle, and Boney Bones will make it to see Tuesday.”

  “And if I don’t play?”

  “Well, let’s just say things could get a whole lot worse for Elliott Adams.”

  I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to slug Todd right in his privates. I hated him more than words could express. I wanted nothing to do with him and his stupid games, but if kissing a few boys meant Elliott wouldn’t be pushed around as much, I’d spin a freaking bottle.

  On Monday, my heart dropped when I saw Todd and his followers shoving Elliott around. I rushed over and pushed Todd. “What the heck are you doing?” I barked. I’d stayed at his stupid party on Saturday. I’d done things I didn’t want to do just so this wouldn’t happen to Elliott.

  “You said you would leave him alone,” I scowled at Todd.

  He licked his lips and combed his hands through his hair. “Did I? I don’t remember. Maybe you should’ve stayed longer, or perhaps next Saturday you’ll use tongue.”

  I wanted to vomit as I watched him and his goons walk off. I hurried over to Elliott and helped him up.

  “Are you okay?”

  He wiped his forehead and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m sorry,” he said, leaving me bewildered.

  “What? You did nothing wrong. Those guys are jerks.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m u-used to it.”

  “Just because you’re used to it, that doesn’t make it right.”

  He nodded once, and his embarrassment was clear in his stare. “I be-better get to class.” With that, he walked off.

  Poor guy.

  As I went to my locker to get the books for my next class, a girl snapped at me. “What’s your angle, huh?” she barked, barging up to my locker.

  I raised an eyebrow, at how forward she was being as she crossed her arms and glared my way.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said what’s your angle? Is it some kind of mean prank where the pretty girl pretends to like the quiet boy and then the popular kids break his heart?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about my brother, Elliott.”

  Oh…

  “I didn’t know he had a sister.”

  “Yeah, well, now you do. I’m Katie, and you’re the girl who’s using my brother,” she replied.

  “What? No. Elliott is my—”

  “Don’t say friend, you don’t know him,” she sneered, cutting me off. “People like you don’t befriend people like my brother.”

  “People like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She nodded to my purse. “You have a Chanel handbag on your arm. You obviously have money and you can have any guy you want looking your way.”

  I held my bag close to my side and twitched a little. It had been a gift that Ray found at a secondhand shop last Christmas. “You don’t know me, and the fact that you’re judging me based on a purse shows exactly how much you don’t know.”

  She sighed and chewed on her bottom lip as she narrowed her stare. “Come here.”

  “Where?”

  “Jesus, will you just follow me?” She marched off toward the courtyard. We stepped outside into the hot New Orleans air and she pointed to the flag pole. “Last year, some kids handcuffed Elliott to the flagpole, sprayed silly string at him, and cracked eggs on his head. Two months before you got here, they cornered him in the locker room and attacked him with water balloons.”

  “That’s awful.”

  She grimaced. “You have no clue. Some of the balloons were filled with piss.”

  I gasped, disgusted and shocked by how low some of my classmates could go. “What fucking assholes!” I hissed, my hand clasped to my chest.

  Katie arched an eyebrow. “Why are you talking to him?”

  My lips parted and I paused, trying to figure out the best way to answer. How could I express to her what I hadn’t even realized yet? How could I make her understand the feelings racing through my gut? How could words sum up what Elliott did to my heart and mind?

  “Well?” she asked, her foot twitching against the cement.

  “Because I heard his music. I heard his music last weekend, and then when I listened to him play…I don’t know…” I swallowed hard. “It’s like, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel alone.”

  Katie’s hard glare softened. “My mom was right—you’re more than the Chanel bag.”

  “Wait, you’ve talked to your mom about me?” Because that’s not weird at all.

  “Not the point. The point is…” Her voice was low and faded away. Everything about her softened. She was the complete opposite of who she’d been when she first approached me. “I don’t mean to judge, but I’ve seen my brother go through more wars than anyone ever deserves to go through. I’m just very protective of him.”

  “No, I get it. I hate that he’s going through so many of his own wars.”

  “His wars? No. It all started years ago when he went to war for my mom and me. After that, he never really had a chance to stop.”

  “You love him.”

  “He’s the best little brother in the history of little brothers.”

  “He’s not like most people. He’s…innocent.”

  “I know. It’s strange, isn’t it? How someone who has been through so much shit can still be so far from jaded. Can you just do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Keep listening to his music.”

  “Of course.” She started to walk away, and I called after her. “Thank you—for going to war for him.”

  “We’re family,” she whispered. “We take care of one another.”

  Family. We take care of one another.

  I loved that.

  That afternoon as I walked to my science class I found Elliott standing at his locker. The moment I saw him, my heart began pounding against my ribcage. I couldn’t get the images out of my head—the water balloons, the silly string, or the handcuffs.

  Why would anyone treat someone as kind as him in such an ugly way? It made no sense.

  “Elliott!” I hollered, hurrying over to him.

  “Hey,” he said timidly.

  I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and hold him close to me. I wanted nothing more than to pull him close and let him know that all the jerks that picked on him were nothing more than trash themselves. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and apologize for a world that didn’t treat him right for stupid reasons.

  But, his space was his, and so, I waited.

  “I have a question,” I said softly, butterflies swarming in my gut.

  “I have an answer?” he replied, but in the form of a question—because he was Elliott, and he answered things with question marks.

  “Can I hug you?”

  He stood up tall, and cleared his throat. Sweat formed on his forehead. “What?”

  “I said, can I hug you?”

  He grimaced and stepped backward. “My sister was r-r-right,” he murmured.

  “What?�
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  “She said you were mo-mocking me, and she was right.”

  “No, Elliott, that’s not it. I just…”

  “Just what?”

  My hands started shaking, and I couldn’t find the words for what I needed to express. “Because…” I twitched, feeling more nervous. “Well, because…because…” My eyes glassed over, looking at the skinny boy who seemed so fragile. “Because…” My voice trembled, and Elliott narrowed his eyes.

  “Jasmine?” he asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Breathe.”

  “I-I am.”

  “You’re not. Trust me, I know what it’s like not to br-breathe.”

  I took a deep breath, and Elliott’s eyes stayed locked with mine. “I saw your sister, and she told me what the kids did to you before, and I just hate them, you know? And I hate that… I mean, you’re just so nice! And you keep to yourself and…and…and—”

  “Jasmine?”

  “Yes, Elliott?” I asked, my eyes filling up as I became shakier.

  “Can I hug you?”

  I laughed shyly and wiped away the few tears that fell from my eyes. “But why?”

  He gave me a smile that felt so huge, so warm, like a home I’d never known existed. “Because I don’t want you to cry.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and held on tight. It was funny how it had worked out. When I’d approached him, I’d been determined to comfort him for his past pain, but somehow the situation had been reversed. As Elliott held me, he was healing the parts of me I always pretended weren’t broken. When his skin touched mine, we melted together and all my cracks were covered with temporary bandages.

  And then he whispered, “You’ll be okay.”

  How had he known?

  How had he known my biggest fear was that I wouldn’t be okay?

  “You know what?” he whispered, his mouth close to my ear as he held me tight.

  “What?”

  “You never have to ask me for a hug, okay?”

  I sighed and fell a little more into him. “Okay.”

  “Jasmine?” he whispered one more time.

  “Yes, Elliott?”

  “Does this mean we’re friends?”

  I laughed and nodded against his shoulder. “This means we’re friends.”

  Chapter Five

  Elliott

  Every Saturday night, Jasmine showed up to listen to my performance. Knowing she was there made me want to be better, to put on the best show I could, and every time I finished, she’d tell me it was the best show I’d ever had.

  She didn’t know how much that meant to me.

  Afterward, she always hurried off and she never really said where she was heading, which was fine. I already knew, since every Monday morning I’d overhear the popular kids talking about the party at Todd’s house.

  I didn’t care, though, because at least she showed up to hear me.

  “Hey, Jasmine,” I called out at the end of my performance one night. My adrenaline was still racing through my body from my best show to date, and I felt more confident than I ever had in my entire life. If I was ever going to ask her the question I’d wanted to ask for weeks, this was the time. It was now or never.

  She turned around with a big smile on her face. “Yes, Elliott?”

  “Do you…” I cleared my throat. “I mean, maybe next week, be-before my show…do you want to like, meet at my house and come down here together?” I asked, one hundred percent prepared for rejection. “We can get food?”

  She kept smiling. “Is that a question?”

  I snickered. “Maybe?”

  She walked over to me and held her hand out. “Give me your cell phone.”

  I complied, and she typed in her phone number then handed it back to me. “I’ve always wanted to go to Dat Dog.”

  “Okay. Cool. So, it’s a date.” I panicked at my own words. “I mean, like, a friends date—like, friends. Just two friends eating wieners.” Nope. Just stop talking. “Okay, well…bye.”

  She laughed. “I’ll see you at school, Elliott.”

  And she did see me at school. She didn’t only see me, she talked to me in the hallways, almost as if she wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with me. She laughed with me too, which was nice, because laughing alone at things kind of took away the fun. The closer the weekend got, the more the nerves built up in my gut, and I was regretting asking her to hang out with me before my show. What would we talk about? How would I control my sweating? Was I supposed to buy her friendship flowers?

  Were friendship flowers a thing?

  “You’re telling me you have a girlfriend?” my friend Jason said into his headset as we played video games on Saturday afternoon. We’d been best friends since elementary school, and I missed him pretty much every day. His mom had moved to Nebraska after Jason’s dad cheated on her and he’d gone with her because he always chose his mom over his dad. He hated his dad more than words could say—we had that in common. Jason and I always played games over the weekend, since Mom didn’t let me play too many games during the school week, and it was a good way to catch up.

  “No, a girl friend. She’s a girl who’s a friend.”

  “Oh God,” he groaned. “I left you alone for a minute and you went and became cooler than me.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Is she hot?”

  “Like, real hot.”

  He groaned again. “That makes no sense, because you’re so ugly,” he joked.

  I laughed. “So ugly, which is why she’s just a girl friend, not a girlfriend.”

  “Well, it sounds like you like her. So, here’s what you do: when you see her tonight, tell her she looks hot. Chicks love being told they look hot. Oh, and order her a salad—chicks love lettuce.”

  That was exactly what I wouldn’t do.

  Jason knew less about girls than I did, which wasn’t much to begin with anyway. Everything I knew about girls, I’d learned from Katie, the biggest feminist in the world. She told me I had to respect women, because they deserved respect. She always told me Dad had never respected Mom, and that was why Mom had left him.

  “Just be better than him, Eli. You don’t have to be the best man in the world, you just gotta do better than Dad.”

  That wasn’t asking for too much.

  “Does she have a chubby best friend for your chubby best friend?” Jason asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not even gonna answer that.”

  “I’d like you to know that since I moved away, I’m down two pounds and four ounces. I’m getting slim as hell. I think hanging out with you and your mom’s cooking was making me fat.”

  That was a possibility—Mom certainly liked butter.

  “Anyway,” Jason said, changing the subject, because his mind was floaty. “after you tell her she’s hot, make sure you have condoms. You’ll need condoms.”

  “What? No, I won’t. Anyway, I wouldn’t even know where to get condoms.”

  “Just check your sister’s tampon box. That’s where my sister keeps hers,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Why were you in your sister’s tampon box?”

  “Safe sex first, questions later,” Jason told me, as if he were a sex professional. If there was anything I knew for certain, it was that Jason and I were both the last two virgins in the history of virgins. Him moving to Nebraska hadn’t changed that fact.

  “We aren’t having sex!” I told him again. “She d-doesn’t like me like that.”

  “Fine, but if you do want her to like you like that, you gotta smooth your way into her life. Oh! You know what you should do? Take her to your spot!”

  “My spot?”

  “You know, your spot, behind the bars, where you listen to the music.”

  “What? No way. It’s dirty back there.”

  “Or romantic, if you do it the right way. I’m just saying, buddy, it’s not every day a hot girl talks to guys like us. You gotta carpee damum the moment.”

 
“You mean carpe diem?”

  “God, Elliott, I’m glad to see you stopped being such a nerd since I left.”

  I heard Jason’s mom call him and he hurried away, saying he had to get dinner. I shut off my game and went to shower to get ready for my show and non-date.

  When I finished my shower and got dressed, Mom smiled my way. “If I’d known you’d up your hygiene for a girl, I would’ve had you dating a long time ago.”

  “We aren’t dating,” I groaned. “She’s just a friend. And I always showered before.”

  “Always is a stretch,” she joked. “Soon enough you’ll be wanting cologne to impress her.”

  Cologne…

  Interesting.

  I hurried to my neighbor’s house and started pounding on the door. When it opened, I looked at Uncle TJ, who was cleaning a trumpet. “Hey, Elliott, what’s up? Ready for your show tonight?”

  “Cologne!” I barked at him, glancing at my watch, realizing I was running behind. Jasmine was probably getting on the bus any time now to head over to my house, and I wasn’t ready—physically or mentally.

  “What?”

  “I need cologne for tonight.”

  Uncle TJ gave me a sheepish grin. “What’s her name?”

  “What?”

  “The girl?”

  “There’s no girl,” I lied.

  He just kept grinning.

  “I’m seventy-five years old, son. I have lived many lifetimes, so trust me when I say, there’s always a girl.”

  I shifted my feet around, not wanting to miss Jasmine arriving at my house. “So…?”

  Uncle TJ laughed and stepped aside, letting me rush into his house. “First floor bathroom, second shelf. Take your pick.”

  I sprayed a few different ones into the air to see what smelled best, but they all grossed me out, so I just picked one. If girls were into that stuff, I’d suffer the pain of the bad smells.

  When I walked out, Uncle TJ fanned his hand in front of his nose. “You weren’t supposed to spray that much. Jesus! Come here, we gotta air you out.” He stood me in front of a fan and had me flap my arms up and down to try to take off some of the scent. “What’s her name?”