by Meg Cabot
I would die, that’s all. Just lie down and die.
No, I told myself. No one clutched someone else’s hand the way Jesse was clutching mine and told her that he didn’t love her. No way. It wasn’t possible. Jesse loved me. He had to. Only something—or someone—was keeping him from admitting it….
I tried to encourage him into making the confession I so longed to hear.
“You know, Jesse,” I said, not daring to look him in the eye but keeping my gaze on the fingers holding mine. “If there’s anything you want to tell me, you can. I mean, feel free.”
I swear he was about to say something. I swear it. I finally managed to lift my gaze to his, and I swear that when our eyes met, something passed between us. I don’t know what, but something. Jesse’s lips parted, and he was about to say who knows what, when the door to my room burst open. CeeCee, followed by Adam, came in, looking angry and carrying a whole lot of poster board.
“All right, Simon,” CeeCee snarled. “Enough slacking. We need to get down to business, and we need to get down to business now. Kelly and Paul are whupping our butts. We have got to come up with a campaign slogan, and we have to come up with it now. We have one day until the election.”
I blinked at CeeCee as astonishedly as Jesse was doing. He had dropped my hand as if it were on fire.
“Well, hi, CeeCee,” I said. “Hi, Adam. Nice of you two to drop by. Ever heard of knocking?”
“Oh, please,” CeeCee said. “Why? Because we might interrupt you and your precious Jesse?”
Jesse, upon hearing this, raised his eyebrows. Way up.
Blushing furiously—I mean, I didn’t want him to know I’d been talking about him to my friends—I said, “CeeCee, shut up.”
But CeeCee, who had dropped the poster board on the floor and was now scattering Magic Markers everywhere, went, “We knew he wasn’t here. There’s no car in the driveway. Besides, Brad said to go on up.”
Of course he had.
Adam, spying the roses, whistled. “Those from him?” he wanted to know. “Jesse, I mean? Guy’s got class, whoever he is.”
I have no idea how Jesse reacted upon hearing this, since I didn’t dare glance in his direction.
“Yes,” I said, just to skip the complicated explanations. “Listen, you guys, this really isn’t a very good—”
“Ew!” CeeCee, on the floor by the poster board, was finally in a position to get a good look at my feet for the first time. “That is disgusting! Your feet look just like the feet of those people they pulled down off Mount Everest….”
“That was frostbite,” Adam said, bending to scrutinize my soles. “Their feet were black. Suze’s got the opposite problem, I think. Those are burn blisters.”
“Yeah, they are,” I agreed. “And they really hurt. So if you don’t mind—”
“Oh, no,” CeeCee said. “You are not getting rid of us that easily, Simon. We need to come up with a campaign slogan. If I’m going to abuse my photocopying privileges in my capacity as editor of the school paper by running off hand flyers—don’t worry, I already got a bunch of my sister’s fifth grade classmates to agree to pass them out for us at lunch—I want to make sure they at least say something good. So. What should they say?”
I sat there like a lump, my mind completely filled with one thing and one thing only: Jesse.
“I’m telling you,” Adam said, uncapping a Sharpie and taking a deep, long sniff of its tip. “Our slogan should be Vote Suze: She Doesn’t Suck.”
“Kelly,” CeeCee said with some disdain, “would have a field day with that one. We’d be slapped with a defamation of character suit in no time for implying that Kelly sucks. Her dad’s a lawyer, you know.”
Adam, done sniffing the Sharpie, said, “How about Suze Rules?”
“That doesn’t exactly rhyme,” CeeCee pointed out. “Besides, then the implication is that the student government is a monarchy, which of course it is not.”
I risked a glance at Jesse, just to see how he was taking all of this. He did not appear, however, to be paying much attention. He was staring at Paul’s roses.
God, I thought. When I got back to school, I was so going to kill that guy.
“How about,” I said, hoping to hurry CeeCee and Adam along so that I could have some privacy with my would-be boyfriend again, “Simon Says Vote for Suze.”
CeeCee, kneeling beside the poster board, cocked her head at me, the sun, slanting into my west-facing windows, making her white-blond hair look bright yellow.
“‘Simon Says Vote for Suze,’ ” she repeated, slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Good one, Simon.”
And then she bent down to start writing the slogan on the pieces of poster board scattered across my floor. It was clear that neither she nor Adam was going to be leaving anytime soon.
I glanced in Jesse’s direction again, hoping to signal to him, as subtly as I could, how sorry I was for the interruption.
But Jesse, I saw, much to my dismay, had disappeared.
Wasn’t that just like a guy? I mean, you finally get him to a point where he’s apparently ready to make the big confession—whatever it was going to be—and then, bam. He disappears on you.
It’s even worse when the guy happens to be dead. Because it wasn’t even like I could have his license plate traced or whatever.
Not that I could blame him for leaving, I guess. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hang around in a room—that now smelled distinctly of Magic Marker—with a bunch of people who couldn’t see me.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering where he’d gone. I hoped to trail along after Neil Jankow, and keep me from having yet another ghost—Neil’s brother Craig—to deal with. And when he’d be back.
It wasn’t until I glanced at Paul’s roses again that the really horrible part of it all occurred to me. And that was that the question wasn’t when Jesse would be back. It was really if. Because of course, if you thought about it, why would the guy bother coming back at all?
I told CeeCee and Adam that I wasn’t crying. I told them my eyes were watering from all the marker fumes. And they seemed to believe me.
Too bad the only person I didn’t seem able to fool anymore was myself.
chapter
thirteen
It didn’t take me long to figure out where Jesse had disappeared to.
I mean, in the vast spectrum of things. Actually, it took me another day and a half. That’s how long it was before the swelling in my feet went down, and I was able to squeeze my feet into a pair of Steve Madden slides and go back to school.
Where I was promptly called to the principal’s office.
Seriously. It was part of Father Dom’s morning announcements. He went, into the PA, “And let’s all remember to remind our parents about the feast of Father Serra, which will take place here at the mission tomorrow starting at ten o’clock. There will be food and games and music and fun. Susannah Simon, after assembly, would you please come to the principal’s office?”
Just like that.
I assumed Father Dom wanted to see how I was doing. You know, I had been out of school for two whole days, thanks to my feet. A nice person would naturally wonder if I was all right. A nice person would be concerned about my well-being.
And it turned out, Father D. was totally concerned about my well-being. But more spiritually than physically.
“Susannah,” he said, when I walked through his office door—well, walk might be too strong a word for how I was getting around. I was still sort of hobbling. Fortunately, my slides were super cushioned, and the wide black band that held them to my feet completely covered most of the unsightly Band-Aids.
I still sort of felt like I was walking on mushrooms, though. Some of those blisters on the soles of my feet had gone hard as rocks.
“When,” Father Dominic asked, “were you going to tell me about you and Jesse?”
I blinked at him. I was sitting in the visitor’s chair across from his desk where I always sit wh
ile we have our little chats. As usual, I had fished a toy out from the good father’s bottom drawer, where he keeps the juvenile paraphernalia teachers confiscate from their pupils. Today I had hold of some Silly Putty.
“What about me and Jesse?” I asked blankly, because I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, why would I ever suspect that Father Dom knew about me and Jesse…the truth about me and Jesse? I mean, who would ever have told him?
“That you…that you two…” Father Dom seemed to be having some trouble choosing his words.
That’s how I got his meaning before he ever even got the whole sentence out.
“That you and Jesse are…I believe the term these days is an item,” he finally blurted.
I immediately turned as red as the robes of the archbishop, who’d be descending upon our school at any moment.
“We—we aren’t,” I stammered. “An item, I mean. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t know how—”
And then, in a burst of intuition, I knew. I knew exactly how Father Dom had found out. Or thought I did, anyway.
“Did Paul tell you that?” I demanded. “Because I am really surprised at you, Father, for listening to a guy like that. Did you know that he is at least partly responsible for my blisters? I mean, he totally came on to me—” I didn’t feel it was necessary, under the circumstances, to add that I hadn’t resisted. At all. “And then when I tried to leave, he sicced this Hell’s Angel after me—”
Father Dom interrupted me. Which is something Father Dominic does not do often.
“Jesse himself told me,” he said. “And what is this about you and Paul?”
I was too busy gaping at him to pay attention to his question.
“What?” I exclaimed. “Jesse told you?” I felt as if the world as I knew it had suddenly been turned upside down, topsy-turvy, and inside out. Jesse had told Father Dom that we were an item? That he had feelings for me? Before he’d even bothered to tell me? This could not be happening. Not to me. Because incredibly good things like this never happened to me. Never.
“What, exactly,” I asked carefully, because I wanted to make sure that, before I got my hopes up, I got the story straight, “did Jesse tell you, Father Dom?”
“That you kissed.” Father Dominic said the word so uncomfortably, you’d have thought there were tacks on the seat of his chair. “And I must say, Susannah, that I am disturbed that you said nothing of this to me the other day when we spoke. I have never been so disappointed in you. It makes me wonder what else you are keeping from me—”
“I didn’t tell you,” I said, “because it was just one lousy kiss. And it happened weeks ago. And since then, nothing. I mean it, Father D.” I wondered if he could hear the frustration in my voice, and found that I didn’t even care. “Not even nothing. A big fat nothing.”
“I thought you and I were close enough that you would share something of this magnitude with me,” Father Dominic said all glumly.
“Magnitude?” I echoed, smashing the Silly Putty in my fist. “Father D., what magnitude? Nothing happened, okay?” Much to my everlasting disappointment. “I mean, not what you’re thinking, anyway.”
“I realize that,” Father Dominic said gravely. “Jesse is far too honorable a young man to have taken advantage of the situation. However, you must know, Susannah, that I cannot in good conscience allow this to continue—”
“Allow what to continue, Father D.?” I could not believe I was even having this conversation. It was almost as if I had woken up in Bizarro World. “I told you, nothing—”
“I owe it to your parents,” Father Dominic went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, “to look out for your spiritual welfare as well as your physical well-being. And I have an obligation to Jesse, as well, as his confessor—”
“As his what?” I yelled, feeling as if I might fall out of my chair.
“There is no need to shout, Susannah. I believe that you heard me perfectly well.” Father Dom looked about as miserable as I was just beginning to feel. “The fact is, that in light of…well, the current situation, I have advised Jesse that he needs to move into the rectory.”
Now I did fall out of my chair. Well, I didn’t fall out of it, exactly. I tumbled out of it. I tried to leap, but my feet were too sore for leaping. I settled for lunging at Father Dom. Except that there was this huge desk separating us, so I couldn’t, as I wanted, grab big handfuls of his vestments and shriek Why? Why? in his face. Instead, I had to grip the edge of his desk very tightly and go, in the kind of shrill, girl voice I hate but couldn’t stop emitting at that point, “The rectory? The rec- tory?”
“Yes, the rectory,” Father Dominic said defensively. “He will be perfectly content there, Susannah. I know it will be difficult for him to adjust to spending his time somewhere other than—well, the place where he died. But we live very simply at the rectory. In many ways, it will be much like what Jesse was accustomed to when he was alive….”
I was really having a lot of trouble processing what I was hearing.
“And Jesse agreed to this?” I heard myself asking in that same shrill, girl’s voice. Whose voice was that, anyway? Surely not my own. “Jesse said he’d do it?”
Father Dominic looked at me in a manner I can only describe as pitying.
“He did,” he said. “And I am more sorry than I can say that you had to find out this way. But perhaps Jesse felt…and I must say, I agree with…that such a scene might…well, a girl of your temperament might…well, you might have made it difficult….”
And then, from out of nowhere, the tears came. My only warning was a sharp tingle in my nose. The next thing I knew, I was fighting back sobs.
Because I knew what Father Dom was trying to say. It was all there, in hideous black and white. Jesse didn’t love me. Jesse had never loved me. That kiss—that kiss had been an experiment after all. Worse than an experiment. A mistake, even. A horrible, miserable mistake.
And now Jesse knew that I’d lied to him about Paul—knew that I’d lied to him, and worse, probably guessed why I’d lied…that I love him, that I’d always loved him, and didn’t want to lose him—he was moving out, rather than telling me the truth, that he didn’t return my feelings. Moving out! He would rather have moved out than have spent another day with me! That’s the kind of pathetic loser I am!
I fell back into the chair in front of Father Dom’s desk, weeping. I didn’t even care what Father Dom thought—you know, about me crying over a guy. It wasn’t like I could just stop loving Jesse now that I knew—for absolute sure, once and for all—that he didn’t love me back.
“I d-don’t understand,” I said, into my hands. “What…what did I do wrong?”
Father Dominic’s voice sounded gently harassed. “Nothing, Susannah. You did nothing wrong. It’s just better this way. Surely you can see that.”
Father Dominic really isn’t very good at dealing with love affairs. Ghosts, yes. Girls who’ve had their hearts stomped on? Not so much.
Still, he did his best. He actually got up from behind the desk, came around it, and laid one of his hands over my shoulder and patted it kind of awkwardly.
I was surprised. Father D. wasn’t a real touchy-feely guy.
“There, there, Susannah,” he said. “There, there. It will be all right.”
Except that it wouldn’t. It would never be all right.
But Father Dom wasn’t finished.
“You two cannot go on as you have been. Jesse’s got to leave. It’s the only way.”
I couldn’t help letting out a humorless laugh at that one.
“The only way? To make him leave home?” I asked, angrily reaching up to wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my suede jacket. And you know what salt water does to suede. That’s how far gone I was. “I don’t think so.”
“It isn’t his home, Susannah,” Father D. said kindly. “It’s your home. It was never Jesse’s home. It was the boardinghouse where he was murdered.”
He
aring the word murdered, I am sorry to say, only made me cry harder. Father D. responded by patting my shoulder some more.
“Come now,” he said. “You’ve got to be adult about this, Susannah.”
I said something unintelligible. Even I didn’t know what it was.
“I have no doubt that you will handle this situation, Susannah,” Father Dom said, “as you’ve handled all the others in your life, with…well, if not grace, then aplomb. And now you had better go. First period is nearly over.”
But I didn’t go. I just sat there, occasionally letting out a pathetic sniffle as the tears continued to stream down my face. I was glad I’d worn waterproof mascara that morning.
But Father D., instead of taking pity on me, the way a man of the cloth is supposed to do, only looked at me a little suspiciously. “Susannah,” he said, “I hope…I don’t believe I have to…well, I feel obligated to warn you…. You are a very headstrong girl, and I do hope you will remember what I spoke to you about once before. You are not to use your, er, feminine wiles on Jesse. I meant it then, and I mean it now. If you must cry about this, get it over with here in my office. But do not cry to Jesse. Don’t make this harder on him than it already is. Do you understand?”
I stamped a foot, then, but as pain shot up my leg, instantly regretted the action.
“God,” I said not very graciously. “What do you take me for? You think I’m going to beg him to stay or something? If he wants to go, that’s fine by me. More than fine. I’m glad he’s going.” Then my voice caught on another traitorous sob. “But I just want you to know, it’s not fair.”
“Very little in life is fair, Susannah,” Father Dominic said sympathetically. “But I shouldn’t have to remind you that you have far, far more blessings in your life than many people. You are one very lucky girl.”
“Lucky,” I said with a bitter laugh. “Yeah, right.”
Father Dominic looked at me. “You seem better now, Susannah,” he said. “So perhaps you won’t mind running along now. I have a lot of work to do concerning the feast tomorrow….”