She took a deep breath. “Please, Gemma, enlighten us. Because your father and I are dying to hear what part of your brain has determined that our life is just so easy and so uncomplicated that you would feel it your responsibly to sneak out of your friends house in the wee hours of the morning, break into an old, abandoned, and not to mention dangerous house, get chased by the police, into a car accident, and into the hospital just so you can give us something to do?”
I made an attempt to apologize or at least explain, but the moment I opened my mouth, she held up her hand, “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what is going on in your head because I know I won’t understand it. I know I won’t understand how you can be so careless, so insensitive, and so selfish as to put your family through such an ordeal when we’re already going through so much. I will never understand it.” Her intense, even tone was beginning to quicken, and I knew she was about to burst. “I just can’t understand it. I never will. I just… you’re grounded. You’re grounded from every earthly thing that you enjoy. You’re friends, your phone, and your freedom.” She looked at my dad, who looked absolutely exhausted. “Is there anything that I’m missing?” But she didn’t let him respond because she turned back to me. “Oh yes, most importantly in fact. You’re grounded from Jess.”
“But Jess didn’t—”
“Don’t argue with me, Gemma. You’re grounded for three months. And that’s final.”
“Three months?” I gasped. “You have got to be kidding!”
She honestly kind of looked like the devil, with her pointed eyebrows and her quivering chin. “Three months! And if I hear a word of complaint, it will be three more.”
“But you didn’t let me explain!”
“Explain what?” she burst, and I thought the fine china in the other room might have cracked.
“That I’m sorry! That I didn’t mean to make your life so horrible! That I wish I would have died in the car accident, then maybe things wouldn’t be so hard for you!”
She laughed a loud, sarcastic laugh. “I don’t even know who you are anymore! But if you want to ruin your life, if you want to go off and get killed in a car accident, then do me a favor and wait until after you have your own insurance. Because I’m already drowning in hospital bills and frankly, I…can’t…afford…it!”
That was bad. Worse, actually, than I had anticipated. But even worse than that was the moment after the punishment. The moment when I was sentenced to my room, but I could still hear my parents talking downstairs. The agony, the mistrust, and the disappointment in their voices made me want to shrivel up into a ball on my bed and never come out. But after they had exhausted the subject of me, the conversation turned even worse. It turned to money problems and test results and hopelessness and my mom sobbing. It turned to my dad’s endless apologies and my mom slamming the front door and a thick silence that made it difficult to breath. I melted into my mattress and pulled the sheets way over my head. Then I let the heat of my own breath squelch my face as I waited for the world around me to swallow me whole.
Chapter 9
For the first time in my life, Monday morning was a welcomed distraction. The rest of the weekend had been long, torturous, and completely void of conversation. When I went downstairs for breakfast before school, I found a note on the counter addressed to me with my dad’s keys sitting on top. In the note were instructions that I was to drive my dad’s car to school (he was too sick to go to work these days anyway) and drive myself home directly after school. They didn’t even trust me to get rides from Drew anymore. They had already talked to her mom.
The drive to school was just as quiet and lonely as the past couple days had been, but I relished the freedom of driving my own car. I was amazed that after all that had happened, my parents trusted me to drive anything. But I knew there wasn’t a better alternative. My dad was too sick, and now that he was sleeping all day, my mom had gotten a job as a cashier at the grocery store. She was usually out of the house before six in the morning.
“Where have you been?” Drew barked with narrow eyes when I got to our lockers. “I’ve been calling you all weekend!”
“Grounded,” I snapped back. “You know, from ending up in the hospital. Where did you go Friday night? Why didn’t you wait for Trace and me?”
Drew’s anger turned to regret. “I told Bryce to go back. I begged him to. But he said there’d be no point, that we’d just get in trouble too. I was going to call that night, but,” she relaxed against her locker and took a breath, “I don’t know, I just didn’t.”
“Bryce was right,” I said calmly. “It was good you didn’t come back. Anyway, it’s not your fault. I’m the one who wanted to go to Drake’s Peak.”
“I’m so sorry, Gemma. If I would have known you got in an accident, that you were hurt,” she paused and stared for a moment at the bandage that was taped to my forehead, “I would have at least called.”
“I know.”
Trace and Lauren came up behind us. When he got to my side, Trace ran his fingers nervously through his hair. “Gemma, I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all weekend. I was worried that something had happened.”
Something about the way he swooned over me like a lost puppy got on my nerves, and I found myself becoming angry at him for the whole terrible situation I was in. He was the one who came to Lauren’s house in the first place with his stupid practical joke. He was the one that drove us to the peak and took me to that stupid chicken room. And he was the one that made us get in the accident.
“I’m fine,” I said coolly to the handle on my locker. “I’m grounded from my phone and all of you for the next three months.”
I could feel Trace staring at my back while Lauren and Drew rehashed the events from the weekend. “Gemma,” he said in an annoyingly sensitive voice, “we need to talk about Friday night.”
Gross. I felt my stomach roll over inside of me. The last thing I wanted right now was to discuss what had happened between Trace and me and our lips. “Now’s really not a good time. I’ve got to get to class.” I got my book out of my locker, closed it back up, side-stepped past Trace, nodded a good-bye to Lauren and Drew, and escaped down the hall.
Every ounce of solace I had felt that morning about being at school was shredded to pieces by the fact that Trace was out there, somewhere, in the classrooms, in the hallways, by the vending machine, waiting for me to explain my views on what happened between us. How did I explain to him that I was using him to get back at Jess? That the only reason I kissed him, the only reason I even gave him a second look on Friday night, was because I was angry that Jess had moved on without me? At the end of each class, I found myself watching the clock above the door like it was a ticking time bomb. Would I see Trace? And if I did, what would I say? By the time third period rolled around, I was physically exhausted from hurrying through the halls between classes like a fugitive hiding from the police. The only thing that kept my mind off of his endless pining was the attention I was getting from all the other students.
“What happened to your head?”
“I heard you were in an accident?”
“Did you really go to jail?”
These were questions I had answered way too many times to count by the time the lunch bell rang.
I carefully stepped into the cafeteria, scanning my surroundings for a looming Trace waiting to pounce all over me with questions about our love life. I found Drew and Lauren at our usual table next to the windows on the far side of the cafeteria. I tossed my slice of pizza on the table and plopped myself easily on the bench behind it. Drew was directly across the table from me, twisting the tab off her soda can, and Lauren was situating herself next to her. I reached for my pizza. All the running and hiding from Trace had made me hungry.
Drew looked up at me with interrogating eyes. “I can’t wait another second to know
what you’re thinking.”
I picked off a single pepperoni and stuck it in my mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Trace. You were all over each other Friday night. What’s going on?”
The gash on my head suddenly began to pulsate behind the gauze. “Nothing is going on. I mean we kissed…”
“You kissed?” Lauren and Drew shouted it simultaneously and so loud that heads turned three tables down.
“Shhhh,” I demanded.
Lauren snickered. “So that’s where you two snuck off to, I was wondering.”
“So do you like him?” Drew demanded.
“Can we not talk about this?” I dropped my head forward and pressed at the gauze.
They begrudgingly complied with my wishes, and after shifting in her seat, Drew turned to Lauren and said, “What about you and Kit? It looked like you two hit it off.”
I knew that both Drew and I were wishing with all we had that she had already moved on from Jess. But Lauren only shrugged her shoulders. “Kit’s nice.”
Drew and I shared a suspicious glance. “Kit’s not that nice,” Drew pointed out.
“I don’t know. He’s cute, but,” Lauren picked at the crust of her pizza, “I like someone else, remember?” Lauren looked at Drew and me with conscientious eyes, begging us to validate her crush on Jess.
“Oh right.” Drew forced a smile. “Have you talked to him since Friday?”
Lauren’s shoulders fell. “No. I saw him from a distance, but I don’t think he saw me. But he was totally flirting with me on Friday. Don’t you think? I mean, he asked me about my waffle seven times. That’s got to mean something.” She looked straight at me, and I knew she was seeking validation. But how could I give it to her? This was Jess. And what, she moved here from some famous little town in Iowa all tall and new and beautiful, and she expected to be able to just sweep him off his feet? Who did she think she was?
When neither one of us said anything, Lauren sighed heavily then pushed herself up from the table. “I’m going to get a drink. You girls want anything?”
Drew and I both declined, and the second she was gone Drew leaned forward and clenched my arm. “What are you doing?” she said forcefully.
“Ow.” I pulled my arm out of her tight grip.
“Why didn’t you tell Lauren about you and Jess on Friday night?” I was still rubbing my arm where Drew’s fingerprints were imbedded into my skin when she leaned even closer. “I saw the way you were watching her at the diner. You’re going to start hating her, you know. The more she talks about him, the worse it’s going to get.”
“So what do you want me to do?” I met Drew’s glare. “Don’t you think she’s going to hate me if I tell her that he’s my best friend and my ex-boyfriend, who I’m still in love with and that I forbid her from dating him? And anyway, what if I did say that and she was a good enough friend to just stay away from him. What then? What if he likes her back? What if they want to be together, but I’m standing in their way? I won’t be that girl, Drew.”
Drew shook her head. “I don’t get it. You’re not telling her about Jess because that will stop them from being together? And that’s a bad thing?”
“It is if they want to be together but they’re not because of me. Look, I know it doesn’t make sense, and I know that Jess doesn’t even like me anymore, but I can’t stand the idea of Lauren being that girl that he wishes he were with. It’s hard enough to get dumped by him. I can’t sit here and watch another love story unfold between him and Lauren.”
“But she likes him, and she’s perfect. What if they end up going out? What then?”
“I already talked to Jess about it. He said it would be weird to date her since she’s my friend. In time, she’ll see that it’s never going to happen. She’ll move on.”
Drew backed off and chewed at her pinky nail. “So you think if you try to stop Lauren from dating him, then she’ll just want him more, but if you push her into it, then it will happen so fast that Jess won’t want to be part of it and it will flop?”
I nodded quickly as I spotted Lauren coming toward us again from the other end of the cafeteria. “I know it’s weird, but I really think its better this way. Just go with it, okay?”
Drew reluctantly agreed just moments before Lauren returned and sat on the bench innocent and glowing. “You’re never going to guess what just happened.” Her voice was bouncy and an octave higher than usual.
I popped a french fry in my mouth. “So tell us, what just happened?”
“Jess just asked me out.”
Jess walked into fourth period a few seconds after the bell rang. I was already in my seat near the door, and it was impossible to look him in the eyes knowing that just minutes earlier he asked one of my closest friends out on a date. Ms. Delrose never started class on time, and she was still in the back sorting through old slides so Jess stopped at my desk.
“Hey.” He nudged my arm with his hand that was holding a textbook. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so good,” I said flatly while staring at the blank chalkboard in front of me.
“I hear bruised ribs can be really painful. You should probably ice them when—”
“Look, I’m grounded for the next three months, so we probably shouldn’t be talking.”
Jess shifted his weight. “You’re grounded at school?” He looked around him dramatically. “Did your mom set up cameras in the halls or something?”
“I just…I don’t feel like talking right now.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” I still couldn’t look at him. I felt like I didn’t know him anymore.
“Gemma,” he said more seriously. “What’s going on? I thought we were going to try to be friends. Things were so good Friday night, and now—”
“And now you’re going out with Lauren.”
Jess pursed his lips and pulled his textbook into a tighter grip. “You told me to.” He looked around the room self-consciously.
“You said you wouldn’t date her. That it would be weird.”
“And then you told me that I should.”
“So what, you suddenly do everything that I tell you to?”
“You didn’t care. You’re with Trace. That’s what you said.”
“No.” I shook my head. “This isn’t going to work. This whole ‘friends’ thing where we sit around and talk to each other about other people that we’re dating just isn’t going to work.”
“So what, we can’t be friends now? Because I’m going out with Lauren?”
“No.” I said curtly, “We can’t be friends because we kissed and we dated—sort of—and now we’re not, and it’s weird, and it’s not going to work.”
Jess took a step backward as if examining me and being disgusted with his findings. “You’re not like this, Gemma. You’re not the type of person who just throws a friendship away over something like this.”
Something like this? He said it like what happened wasn’t a big deal at all. Like the 5.8 earthquake that shattered my world on the first day of school hadn’t even moved his hair out of place. Ms. Delrose walked to the front of the class. When she cleared her throat and tapped her chalk on the table, Jess angrily stepped around me and made his way to his desk. How dare he be mad at me? He was the one that kissed me. He was the one that dumped me. He was the one who just asked out my best friend. If anyone should be disgusted, it should be me. And I was.
I kept my distance from Drew and Lauren in fifth period. I couldn’t bear Lauren’s annoying, high-pitched voice that was drenched in giddiness from being asked out by the boy of our dreams. When the last bell of the day rang, I headed straight out to my dad’s car without stopping at my locker. I had to get out of there. I had to escape. If only there was a way for my parent’s to gro
und me from school too. I was almost to my car and just searching for my keys in the side pocket of my bag when I heard footsteps racing toward me.
“Gemma, wait.” I turned toward the voice. Trace was walking swiftly toward me.
When he reached my side, he caught his breath and carefully took my keys out of my hand. “Please don’t go. We have to talk.”
My heart broke for Trace. Through all of this mess, he was the one person who was on my side. The one person who hadn’t hurt me, hadn’t betrayed me in one way or another. Yet he was the one person that I couldn’t force myself to have feelings for. The huge crush I once had, the feelings, the attraction—they were all gone. He was just a friend now. But how could I tell him that?
“Trace,” I began. “I know I owe you an explanation about what happened at Drake’s Peak.”
He shook his head bewildered. “You don’t owe me anything. But anyway, that’s not what I need to talk to you about.”
“Oh.” Now I was bewildered. “What is it?”
“Well, you were sort of unconscious through all of this, but I thought you’d want to know that there were no charges against us for what happened. I just got a ticket for reckless driving.”
I grimaced. “I’m sorry. Is it expensive?”
“Don’t worry about it. But here’s the thing. Since they let us off easy, they want us to do twenty hours of community service.”
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