“I’m out of here.” Jill mopes her way up the back stairs to her bedroom.
“Hey.” I take the opportunity to sock him in the arm just hard enough to let him know I’m serious. “You should hang out with her sometime. I think she needs you. God knows she’s sick of me.” I try to play it off like it wasn’t some big deal, but sometimes I want to shake the shit out of my father. Yes, he’s successful. Yes, he’s lined his bank account with millions of dollars, but when it comes to people, to his own family, he doesn’t seem to put any real value on us.
“She needs to learn how to deal with her own issues.” He leans over the counter as if contemplating my sister, juxtaposing her to all of the females he’s ever met before. “Women like to cling. They like to get attached. It’s their nature. She’s just got her feathers ruffled because she didn’t get her way.”
I’m not going there. I know he’s wrong, but I’m not up for saving the world this afternoon. My muscles ache, and I can’t stand my own stink. I need to throw myself into the shower, then fall into a coma until dinnertime.
I head out of the room just to pivot and step back inside. “Hey, Dad? What do you think of monogamy?”
His head spikes up for a moment, and I watch as my much older features melt to a smooth finish. “Is this concerning some class project?”
A part of me wants to laugh. “Yeah, Dad, it is.” I’ll go with it. Life is a class project according to my father.
“I wouldn’t write this down, but, for the most part, monogamy is a game often played badly and for too many years. It’s a real steamroller. You don’t need that heartache, son. Trust me, I’ve been there. You want to keep your options open at any given time. The women I’m with feel the same way. The key is finding likeminded people. Open relationships are the most honest, in my opinion.”
“What if you meet someone and all you want to do is be with them? What if the thought of that person with someone else made you insane?” I’m pretty sure Joel and Russell wouldn’t want their girlfriends dating twelve different guys. They want to stay together. Something about that safe and peaceable structure appeals to me. It seems nice, like a damn good idea, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
“Son, if that’s how you’re feeling, I suggest you run fast and hard in the other direction.” He chuckles as he shakes out the morning paper. “Fight your way out of that paper box. You’re in the prime of your youth. Enjoy the hell out of it. The only thing you should be concerned about is getting through school and building your own empire. Relationships like that are nothing but a minefield of heartache. A broken heart is never worth what you think you had.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not feeling that way.”
“Thank God.” He wipes his brow for effect. “The last thing I want to do is talk you off that ledge. A monogamous relationship is dangerous terrain. Once you get overly involved with someone, it becomes impossible to protect your money.”
And there it is, the financial consequence. At the end of the day, every road leads back to the almighty dollar.
“Got it.” I head on out. I’ve got an empire to build, money that I’ve not yet earned to protect. According to my father, I should sleep with every beautiful thing that moves for as long as I have breath in my lungs.
And I have been.
Then why do I feel so damn empty all the time?
Chapter Two
I Know What Boys Like
Jennifer
Dear Katie,
School starts tomorrow, and I’m scared shitless. Heather and Melissa have camped out in my bedroom for the last few days trying to cheer me up. None of us seem to understand where my bout of hysterical insanity came from. Teaches me for trying to take a walk on the wild side. I should have stayed mild. The road to scholastic hell is paved with wild intentions.
Oh, and to make things worse, Heather told me the brutal truth. It’s official. The guys from the basketball team now refer to me as Tits. And by use of deductive reasoning, that includes Jessie.
Holy crap. How did this become my life?
XOXO ~Jen
Book I’m currently reading: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough—It’s a copy out of my mother’s personal library. Sometimes, you just have to pull a classic out of the vault.
Song I’m currently angry with: “Hungry Like the Wolf.” ( I’m afraid it unleashed a tad too much wild on this unsuspecting world and my boobs. It’s clear I have vastly underestimated Duran Duran’s superpowers. Perhaps their next album should come with a warning label and a bra that would take Houdini to get out of.)
* * *
Glen Heights High is not immune to a dark side. A year ago exactly, there was a huge class divide between the San Ramos kids and those originally from Glen Heights. But Joel Miller pretty much set everyone straight, for about all of five minutes. Summer came and went, so did Joel and the senior class of 1985. Fall arrived, and the snobs went right back to being themselves, and some of the San Ramos kids went back to acting like hostile imbeciles. But, today, on this first day back from Christmas vacation, I can honestly say that it’s me that has somehow managed to bring both parties to form a unified front. No sooner do I get out of my car than the finger pointing begins. The girls break out into snickers, and the guys all suddenly appear just a little too interested in my “tits” and me.
“God, oh God, oh God! I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can.” Melissa wraps an arm around my shoulder and walks me steadily to homeroom. “I’ll even come in and sit with you if you’d like.”
“No, that’s okay. Amy is in there.” I give her a brief wave, and her cheeks actually darken a shade. “God, even Amy doesn’t want to know me.” This does not bode well for me or my popular by default boobs.
“Okay, forget about everyone.” Melissa yanks me into another firm hug. Her Love’s Baby Soft perfume cradles me in its powdery scent for a brief comforting moment. “I’ll see you at nutrition.”
Homeroom, thankfully, goes off without incident. Amy fills me in on how she heard there was a maniac chasing me with a butcher knife, and the only way for me to escape his clutches was to take my clothes off in an effort to blind him. I’m hoping they meant blind him with fabric and not my body, but at this point who really cares?
First period, English, in what would otherwise be a snooze-fest, turns out to be a harrowing hour-long ride in which the geeks sitting across from me silently beg for a shirtless reprisal. I’m probably going to strangle everyone with my bra once I retrieve it from Coach Thomas—not that I’m not actually wearing another one. It’s just that I’m not about to shed any more brassieres on school campus.
Second period is journalism, and I have both Tess and Rachel in it—neither of which seems to be interested in my boobs or me, so for that I’m thankful. Mrs. Robins drones on about some new article she’s test marketing for next year called “The Glen Confidential,” where students write in à la Dear Abby, and some anonymous, highly under qualified high school hack, selected randomly from the student body, will dole out uncredentialed advice. It’s obvious to me this is a bad idea for several reasons, one of them being students are prone to making up any number of false, yet highly salacious problems. But the longer I think on it, the better I think it is that the problems our amateur psychiatrist handles are fake to begin with. Perhaps that should be the caveat at the bottom of the page. No actual students were harmed in the making of this bogus bullshit.
“‘The Glen Confidential’ will be completely anonymous from the queries to the responses. I’m pulling my student rep from the pool right here in this room.” Mrs. Robins gives a smug smile at the lot of us. “I’ll tap one of you on the shoulder in private to become our very own Dear Ginny—named from my grandmother.” She beams, and the girls in the room rile up with a nervous excitement. On a normal day, I would have loved a shot at listening to other people’s problems and setting them straight with some good advisement and encouragement, but after that stunt I pulled, i
t’s clear I can’t offer anyone sane advice, let alone myself.
Once the bell rings, Mrs. Robins curls her finger in my direction and gives a sly wink.
It’s me! She’s chosen me. Of course, she has, Jennifer—Ginny? It practically sounds like Jenny, and I’ve been nicknamed that all of my life. I could see right through that grandmother ruse. I wait until the room clears out before heading her way. Mrs. Robins has always been one of my favorite teachers. She’s younger than the rest of the faculty and dresses like she’s actually a part of this decade with her neon clothes and scrunchies. I had her last year for drama, and once she got me through the nightmare that was The Importance of Being Ernest, I knew she could see me through anything.
She leans her dark unruly curls my way, her features quickly crumbling. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. I heard what happened. Is this something you’d like to talk about?”
My cheeks slap with heat. It’s not bad enough I’m a laughing stock among the students. The faculty is now in on the joke I’ve become.
“I’m fine.” I give a tight-lipped smile that says anything but. “I’ve always wanted to be a nudist. It was just my way of testing out the waters so to speak.” Testing out the waters so to speak? Do I have any idea what the borders of sanity are anymore? And here I thought my brother was the troubled one. Boy, did I get that backward.
Her forehead wrinkles in a million wavy lines. Her rose-colored lipstick has feathered into her skin, and she doesn’t look so young and hip anymore—more like someone who’s trying too hard to be something she’s not. Like me. I wasn’t wild. I definitely tried too hard, and now, I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole. I’d forever be known as Sinkhole Girl. Now there’s a nickname I can live with. “Okay. But if you need to talk about it, know my door is open to you.”
“Got it.” I tilt my shoulder her way as the class begins to fill up for the next hour. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask me?”
“No, that’s it.” She takes a careful sip of her coffee and makes a sour face. “Stale. Better get a fresh cup before the bell rings.”
She starts to walk away, and I block her path. “What about ‘The Confidential’? Don’t you have a Dear Ginny slot to fill?” I bat my lashes at her, hopeful.
“Oh, that?” Her eyes get squirrelly as if I’m the last person she’d want to discuss something like that with. “No, honey. I have someone else in mind for that role. I think you have enough on your plate right now.”
The bell rings, and I watch as she heads out the door.
Enough on my plate. I wince at the thought that my plate could actually get any fuller. My life is major suckage right now.
Nutrition is filled with more sneers and all-around baffled looks. Heather assures me that this too shall pass as evidenced by her own error in bad judgment she demonstrated last fall when she posed for Motor Grinder. Amanda Prescott made sure the entire school knew about it and distributed hundreds of pictures of poor Heather in not much more than a skimpy robe. It’s true. The school seems to have long forgotten all about that one. One long school holiday plus one far more crazier stunt pulled off by yours truly has aided in the effort.
I decide to spend lunch lost in the stacks in the library. Heather tried to insist on coming with me, but I told her it was fine and to spend it with her boyfriend. Melissa came and split her cheeseburger with me, raw onions and all.
By the time the next period comes around, I’m spent. Thankfully, Heather herself is in my fifth period class, speech. I already know for a fact that the first two speeches are a group effort, so we head inside with the game plan of sitting near those we think we’ll mesh well with in a group setting.
Heather steps in first and effectively bars me from setting foot into the classroom. The panicked look on her face says it all. She doesn’t need words.
“He’s in there, isn’t he?” I peer over her shoulder to find Jessie already flanked by Rachel and a wannabe from his hickey harem, Jojo. I’ve seen her hanging around, but she’s never been properly indoctrinated by way of the lusty necklace he used to dole out so easily. Just their luck they would get a class with their favorite boy toy. It’s probably for the best. As long as he has two sets of his girlfriends’ boobs to distract him, he can forget all about the bouncing balls I waved in front of him.
“I don’t care.” I make a face as if his presence didn’t mean anything, but the idea of getting up and giving a speech in front of Jessie Fox countless times is enough to make me want to vomit. “Look, there’s Connie.” Connie Ferraro is surrounded by a couple of girls from her clique dubbed the Journey Girls, as per their obsession with all things Steve Perry. “She’ll make a great partner in crime.” And most likely will not give a crap about my boobs or me.
We make a beeline over to Connie’s side of the room just as the bell rings.
Mr. Murphy—an unfortunate name for a pretty nice guy—steps forward and conducts a rudimentary introduction of both himself and the class. Both Heather and I had him for choir back in the tenth grade, so we’re more than familiar with all of his quirks and foibles. He’s short and stalky with a snarky personality, but pretty much happy-go-lucky for the most part.
“We all know that there is absolutely nothing more humiliating on this planet than public speaking,” he says it so emphatically a silly part of me wants to believe him. No, I want to say, running around topless in front of the basketball team would take that prize, but if you insist, I’ll give you second. Heck, as long as I get to give these speeches with my clothes on, I’d do them twenty-four hours a day if I could somehow take back my own personal regret.
“What?” He tosses his palms out, seemingly thrown for a loop. “What is everyone staring at?”
I glance around, and to my horror, all eyes are pasted on me.
“Nothing to look at here,” Heather snipes.
“That’s like right, dude.” Connie Ferraro gives a majority of the class the stink eye. I’m liking Connie more by the minute. “If a girl wants to run track with like her top off, then who the hell are we to like stop her?”
“Shit,” I mutter as I sink into my seat.
“I mean”—Connie stands in an effort to express her budding rage—“why is it okay when a guy runs shirtless all over the field, and yet, like when Jennifer Barkly decides to whip out the girls, people like have a fucking conniption?”
“Okay.” Mr. Murphy closes his eyes. His glasses reflect the lights above like mirrors. “We’re going to spend the rest of the hour getting to know one another. You have two point five minutes to speak with each of your classmates. And go!”
The room brims with voices as bodies stir in what has inevitably turned into a loud rumbling social mixer.
I clutch on to Heather’s shoulder for a moment. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be the one hiding in the corner.”
“Oh no, you don’t.” My blonde best friend is quick to take me by the hand. “I’m not leaving your side for a minute.”
“Can I talk to you?” a deep familiar voice booms from over my shoulder, and I freeze.
Here he is. Slowly, I turn to find Jessie Fox standing right next to me in a fit of incomprehensible glory. Tied to his right is his forever skank, Rachel, with her hair ballooned ten times higher and fuller than I could ever hope to achieve.
Heather takes a step toward him. “Jessie, this is Jennifer—Jennifer, this is Jessie.” She tilts a devious grin at me, and I have the sudden urge to shake her.
Rachel snaps her bubble gum so fast it sounds as if a mini machine gun is trapped in her mouth. “Like shouldn’t you use her proper name? Tits McGee?”
“Shut up,” Heather snipes, and Rachel backs up so far she’s actually pulled into a conversation by a fellow student who mistakenly would like to get to know her better. Probably a transfer student. Anyone who knows Rachel realizes she’s a pariah. And just as quick as she left, she springs right back.
Rachel purrs into Jessie’s ear, her bo
dy curling around him like a snake about to crush the life right out of his lungs. “I think her name’s like The Barker or something. Get it? She’s a dog!” She cackles into his neck, and Heather snaps her off into the crowd once again. I don’t even bother to look to see what’s happening. I know for a fact Heather can take care of herself. Me, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. Any minute now, I might be liable to pull down my pants. I can practically feel the seams of my sanity snipping away as I’m pulled deeper into Jessie Fox’s glowing caramel eyes.
“Anyway, I should probably meet some people.” I try to turn, but he steps in front of me with that demanding gaze.
“Are you okay?” His brows peak with worry. “Look, I’m sorry about that. She’s rude. She literally has no conscience. She didn’t really mean it. She’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“I’m pretty sure she meant it.” I try to sidestep him again. My entire body explodes with heat at the thought of being this close to him.
“Okay, she probably meant it.” A sad smile bleeds from him as his cologne attaches to my senses, warm, expensive, and just the right amount of spice.
We share a tiny laugh on Rachel’s twisted behalf as he carefully navigates us to the corner. “I want you to know that I’m stomping out that fire. I don’t want anyone calling you any names.” His lips press white a moment. “Danny says he didn’t think it was a big deal if that helps.”
Hold Me Now (A Totally '80s Romance Book 3) Page 5