by Lydia Sharp
She’s received texts from Blair during our tutoring sessions before, but this is the first time she hasn’t sent him a reply. Something happened. Something bad. Something that’s none of your business, a voice says in the back of my head. Don’t get involved.
But a louder voice in front says, This is your chance. Take it. You won’t get another one.
Her phone buzzes again. She glances down at it and sighs.
“What’s the problem?” I say.
Well. That was brilliant.
She lifts her blue gaze from her math paper to me. “I’m still working on it. Sorry, I’m a little distracted today.”
“No, I didn’t mean the algebra problem. I meant with you and Blair Bedford.” I say his name with the best British accent I can muster, which is even worse than my Italian, but she smiles. Okay. Good recovery. “I’m serious, though, are you all right? We can take a break from this for a minute if you need to vent.”
I try to not sound too eager, but also like it’s not a bother, and I come off sounding bored.
Why am I so terrible at this? It’s no wonder I never get past a first date. I spend so much time getting to know a person before feeling anything in the realm of wanting to ask them out—and then my awkwardness kills any chance of continuing.
Either Jenna didn’t notice or she doesn’t care. She sets her pencil down and straightens, then turns to face me, keeping her knees together so the phone doesn’t fall off her lap. It’s buzzing again. “Go away,” she hisses at it, and then to me she says, “So Blair and I were supposed to go out to the movies last night. That new one that just came out with that guy who was in the one from last year with the girl who used to be in that one Disney show? You know the one.”
“I know the one. All the ones.”
“And I was really looking forward to seeing it at the midnight showing,” she goes on, “be one of the first so I could write a review for it in time for our final edition of the paper before school lets out. And why not make a date of it, right? So I told Blair about it, weeks ago, and we planned to go together. But then …” Her mouth twists. “I swear this isn’t me being petty.”
I flash my palms. “No judgment here. Just listening.”
“Okay.” Sigh. “He’s been, I don’t know, acting weird lately? I thought it was me overreacting, because I’m all stressed out about graduation and getting ready for college and trying not to fail a math class that I’m in with a bunch of freshmen—and prom. We’ve got everything planned, and I’ve been looking forward to it, you know, just this one night where I can relax and have fun and not worry about all the things I’ve been worrying about.”
“Yes. Exactly. I get that.” What I don’t get is how this connects back to the movie?
“See. Even you understand.”
Even me?
“But Blair’s all whatever about it.” She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms with a huff. “And I broke up with him last night.”
Wait—what? This is way worse than I thought. Or better? They’re not together anymore. I thought I’d be listing reasons why she should break up with him, or at least consider it, but she’s already done the deed, without so much as a watery eye the day after. The spine on this girl is amazing. She dumped the guy everyone in this school pines after, two days before prom. But … why?
Still in shock, I give her a minute to finish the story, but she says nothing. “Uh … okay,” I start. “Can we back up a few steps? I think I missed something. What happened at the movie?”
“Nothing. That was the problem. And it’s a problem we’ve had before. I’m tired of it.”
“Mr. Johnson, Miss Davenport,” the teacher says, eyes never leaving her romance novel, “work quietly.”
“I’m not following,” I tell Jenna, keeping my voice low.
With a slide of her thumb, she opens something on her phone, scrolls a bit, and then shows it to me. It’s a text conversation between her and Blair, with yesterday’s date.
Jenna, 4:06 p.m.: Do you want to do dinner before the movie tonight?
Blair, 5:12 p.m.: I just ate. What movie?
Jenna, 5:14 p.m.: The movie we’ve been planning to see since forever ago. You’re still going right?
Blair, 7:47 p.m.: Not sure if I’m free
Jenna, 7:48 p.m.: We just talked about this yesterday! What changed?
Jenna, 8:03 p.m.: It’s at midnight. Will you be done with your whatever by then?
Jenna, 11:32 p.m.: I guess we can meet there?
Blair, 12:01 a.m.: Something came up
That’s the end of it. I hand her the phone, not sure how to respond without using gestures and language that would get me suspended.
“Something always comes up,” Jenna says. “According to Savvy Teen, that’s one of the top three signs your guy is cheating on you. So I dumped him before he could dump me. And you know what? I’m not even sad about it. I feel free. I should have done it a long time ago. Sometimes, I guess, the only solution to your problem? Is to take yourself out of the equation.”
“Nice analogy. Very math-y.”
“Thank you.” She holds her chin up and grins, but it quickly fades. “Now I have a different problem, though … I don’t have a date for prom. I’m in charge of the prom committee. I worked hard, for months, doing fund-raisers and making sure it will be the best senior prom Beaver Creek has ever had. After all that, I can’t just not go! And he’s been sending me texts all day about how it only took him five seconds to replace me—”
Of course it did. He already had someone on standby.
“—and how ridiculous I’m going to look showing up alone,” she finishes.
“He’s garbage, Jenna.”
“A steaming six-foot-three pile of rubbish,” she agrees, with a spot-on British accent at the end. Even better than Blair’s. “But he’s also right. If I show up to prom alone, and he shows up with Farah freaking Justice on his arm, everyone’s going to assume he dumped me.”
“Then don’t show up alone,” I say without thinking. “I can take you.”
Her eyes go wide and her mouth drops open a little. So much for not sounding eager.
“Are you—” She glances around nervously. “Are you asking me out?”
“No, uh. Not like that. We could go as friends? Acquaintances. Whatever you want to call us. No pressure. Just a stress-free night of fun.” Because I’m already Lucy’s prom partner, and I’m not going to pull a Blair and leave her stranded. So Jenna and I can’t make this a date, or a “going out,” or anything else that wouldn’t be considered platonic. No matter how much I want to try a new kind of relationship with her.
Her shoulders drop as she smiles, releasing a breathy laugh. “Okay. Sure! Why not?”
Yes. YES. Okay. Act casual. “What color is your dress?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “White and sparkly. Spaghetti straps and a crisscross front. Long hem with a vertical ruffle all the way down one leg. It’s a 1978— Actually, here, I have a picture of it on my phone, do you want to see?”
“No, that’s all right.” I’m sure it looks better in person. When her face falls, I add, “I was just … wondering.” Wondering if she’d tell me what Lucy refused to, and she did. So I’m still wondering why it’s such a big deal to Lucy that I not know anything. It’s just a dress. If she wanted to see my tux, I’d show her. “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty … ish,” I tell Jenna. “I gotta get Lucy, too.”
“Who’s— Oh, Lucy your friend Lucy. Bellini, right? The one with the big, um … nose …”
Lucy does have a larger-than-average nose. Definitely bigger than Jenna’s, which is slim, pointed, and petite, Hollywood pretty like everything else about her. But I like Lucy’s nose. It fits her. It’s different. “Something wrong with that?”
“No, of course not!” Jenna backpedals. “It’s great. I mean she’s great. The more the merrier.” Flashy smile. “We’ll all have fun!”
“That’s the idea. Nothing serious.”
>
We exchange numbers, and she rattles off her address. I tap it into my phone, trying not to let a goofy grin take over my face. Remind myself we’re going as friends, like me and Lucy—except this is nothing like me and Lucy, because Lucy is my best friend and Jenna could be my girlfriend. Potentially. We’re just going to have fun tomorrow, though. I don’t want Lucy to feel like a third wheel. But maybe, hopefully, after prom night Jenna and I will keep having fun. As a couple. It could happen, right? Anything could happen.
Jenna’s phone buzzes with another text message. She rolls her eyes but reads the text anyway, then starts gathering her things. “That’s not him this time, thank God, it’s just my ride. I have to go. Thanks for helping me, JJ.”
“You’re gonna ace that test on Monday.”
“Right, yeah. That, too. But I meant with prom.” She stands, slinging her backpack over one shoulder. “I’m not going to let Blair ruin everything. He can kiss my sax.” She picks up her saxophone case from the floor and grins. “Call me cheesy, but that never gets old.”
I’m dead. She’s too adorable. “Okay, cheesy. See you tomorrow.”
“Seven thirty. Ish.” Another smile and she walks out into the hall, her high-heeled Mary Janes echoing loudly in the after-school quiet.
Now I let the goofy grin take over my face, and fire off a text to Lucy.
Me: You’re not going to believe what just happened
“I can’t believe it,” Mom says. “The meteor shower peaks the same night as prom? What are you gonna do, sneak out to watch it in between dances?” She tilts the can of Reddi-wip so the nozzle is pointed downward and adds an illegal amount of whipped cream to each of our sundaes, then I top them with the cherries, and they’re done.
“No,” I say through a sigh. I haven’t missed a meteor shower since I was nine. Each of them is different and beautiful in its own way, like snowflakes, or sunsets. “It’ll be too light by the building to see anything, anyway, even if I can sneak out and take a look.”
This year, the Eta Aquarids—the fallen crumbs of Halley’s Comet—are expected to be especially bright and active. You can see them anytime after sunset, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to miss them just because I’ll be having the night of my life inside when it all starts. While most people have made plans to attend an after-prom party of some sort, Lucy and I are going to the bluffs to watch the meteors at their peak visibility. Mom doesn’t know that, though. Because when she was my age, Whip’s Ledge was where people went to make out. So if I told her, she’d accuse me of trying to seduce my best friend.
It’s just not like that with Lucy and me. Never has been.
And I’m glad. Because all of Lucy’s exes are no longer in her life, but guess who still is—me. Being her best friend instead of her boyfriend is the better side of the deal.
Going to the bluffs was Lucy’s idea, anyway, not mine. There are other places we could watch the meteor shower, but she insisted Whip’s Ledge is the best, and we deserve the best on prom night. I couldn’t argue with that. Her plans are always better than anything I could think up.
“Well.” Mom shrugs. “There will be other meteors. You only get one senior prom.”
Shayla, my runt of a little sister, skips into the kitchen, grabs her sundae, and exits back to the living room, where Mama, our other mother, is already setting up a movie for Shayla to watch with her middle school friends. Mom starts to follow her, while I grab the last two sundaes and then kill the lights in the kitchen.
“Keep the lights on,” Mom says, pausing at the archway to the living room.
“We need the lights off to see the stars.”
“Not with you and a girl out there alone. Keep the lights on.”
“Why? It’s Lucy.” We’ve been over this before. “Nothing like what you’re thinking will happen is going to happen.”
“She likes you, James.”
“I like her, too. That’s kind of a requirement for being friends.”
She eyes me up and down, the glow of the TV from the living room at her back giving her pale face an eerie, shadowy visage. “Are you still sure you aren’t gay? Or ace? Aro? It’s a whole spectrum, you know, and it’s normal to not have it all figured out at your age. Has anything changed since the last time we talked?”
“Nothing’s changed.” We’ve been over this before, too, and Mom gets carried away with the labels sometimes. If there’s a particular label for me, I don’t know yet what it is, but I’ve been going with “straight” so far, and that seems okay. I very much want to be in a romantic relationship with someone, and eventually, with the right person at the right time, I want the physical things, too. With a girl. I’m sure. I just don’t fall head over heels for someone as hard and fast as other people seem to. What does that make me? No clue. And I don’t feel like hashing it out with Mom right now; it’ll go all night. So I settle on, “I can’t be queer just because you want me to be.”
She nods. “You’re right. I blame your father.”
Now she’s just messing with me. My father was an anonymous sperm donor. She knows nothing about him besides what was on a medical chart. “You also can’t blame someone for something just because they aren’t here to defend themselves.”
“True,” she says, “but your straightness had to come from somewhere and it certainly wasn’t me. And since Lucy also isn’t gay—”
“She’s not straight, either, though, she’s bi,” I remind her. Not that that’s relevant here.
“There is potential there. Keep the lights on,” she says in her Mom Voice. That’s it. Argument over. “Don’t make me pull the Do It Because I Said So card.”
I flip the switch up with my elbow, and with a victorious grin, Mom makes her exit.
So do I, in the other direction, through the sliding patio door to join Lucy on the back deck. It’s too chilly tonight for outdoor ice cream, and everything is still damp from the rain earlier today, but once we have a plan for something, we don’t deviate. Mostly because that’s what makes Lucy happy, and when Lucy’s happy, I’m happy.
But now she’s kind of miffed at me for asking Jenna to prom with us. It has nothing to do with Jenna and everything to do with me. Lucy and Jenna aren’t friends, but they also aren’t not-friends. I’m the one who messed it all up. I changed our plans at the last minute, and Lucy doesn’t deal well with change. One thing out of place might as well be all of them out of place. I know I should know better than to make plans without her input. She’s the planner, not me. When I make plans, this is what happens. So now I’m getting the too-calm-to-really-be-calm version of Lucy that’s unnerving. I’d rather she snap at me. Nitpick me. Tell me off for being impulsive. Something.
I hand her a sundae, and she silently accepts it, her gaze focused on the pink-orange horizon. The sun is sinking. It’ll be dark soon—it’ll be tomorrow soon. But as much as I’m looking forward to that, I’m not ready for today to be over yet. The time I have left to spend with Lucy keeps getting shorter and shorter.
The only bad thing about prom is that it’s at the end of senior year. The end of senior year means the end of high school. And the end of high school means things are going to change in a way I don’t want them to.
But for now, I’m here. She’s here. We’re together.
“Talk to me.” I settle onto the patio swing next to her and start pushing us gently.
Lucy focuses too intently on eating her sundae, wrapped in a fleece blanket with different phases of the moon depicted on it. She gave it to me as a gift a few months ago, but I think she’s gotten more use out of it than I have. After a couple of bites, she says, “Talk to you about what?”
“Ah. Okay.” I pop the cherry into my mouth and pull away the stem. Swallow. Flick the stem so it sails across the deck and into the grass. A lingering tartness tingles my cheeks. “We haven’t played this one in a while. Remind me of the rules? Am I supposed to pretend to believe you really don’t know what I’m referring to, and then explain it al
l, and then get blamed for bringing it up and starting an argument? Or is that a different game?”
“JJ …” She sighs.
“Lucy …” I mimic her sigh dramatically.
“I just need time to process and then readjust the plan in my head, okay? After that I’ll be fine. There’s nothing else to say.”
I take a bite of ice cream, making sure to get the chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry all in one scoop. The chill makes me shudder, and I move all the way up against Lucy and the blanket. Warm. Soft. Cozy. Perfection. “Will you be fine by tomorrow night at, say, seven thirty?”
She laughs, then her tongue darts out to catch a rogue blob of whipped cream on her lip. “That’s oddly specific,” she says after swallowing. “Any particular reason you chose that day and time?”
“Nah.” I shake my head and take another bite of ice cream. “Totally random.”
“Liar.”
“Blanket thief.”
Another laugh and I know we’re good now. That’s the magic of ice cream. And our friendship.
“Scooch,” she says, and I slide all the way to the other end of the swing’s bench. She shifts so she’s lying across the length of it and leans her head against my ribs, staring across the expanse of my backyard to watch the sun finally go to bed. One by one the stars timidly start to twinkle all around us.
It’s mostly quiet out here, with eleven acres between my house and our closest neighbors, but every so often one of the horses in our barn putters a sigh through its flappy lips or knocks against a bucket or something. We finish our sundaes and set the empty cups on the deck. With my hands free now, I drape one arm along the top edge of the bench and Lucy lets her head drop back onto my legs, staring straight up at the sky.
Her nose is strikingly beautiful, like the rest of her, the perfect complement to her big brown eyes and her pillowy plump lips. Jenna may be pretty and smart and fun—a trifecta, for sure—but she has no clue about what makes a good nose on a person.