“What?What did you say to him?” I spat. A sudden burning sensation surged across my chest.She said “no” to him, right?
“Um, I said ‘yes.’ Girls like to get asked out to dances, you idiots. And I need the both of you to come to the mall with me on Saturday to help me find a dress,” The girl was actually bouncing on the balls of her feet.She was excited about this?
“The hell I am,” I snapped back, that burning feeling traveled down into my stomach and twisted in my gut.
“Yes. You. Are.” She held her hands on her hips and smiled that beautiful smile at me, the one that raked at my insides. “You’re both guys and know what guys think, so I’d like your opinion on a dress, okay.Please,Jase.” Her long eyelashes batted at me. “This is my first real dance, guys. I don’t want to mess it up.”
Damn, she was going to kill me if she went with another guy. “Charlotte Stone, you could go to that dance with mud from head to toe, and you’d still be the prettiest girl there.”
Her smile got even wider. “Thanks, Jase. But I wish you guys were coming with me too. Too bad you both can’t dance.”
Joey and I looked at each other, “Oh, hell girl. We can dance,” Joey went all drag queen on us, pulling his shirt up over his head like it was long hair. Laughing loudly, we both started dancing around her, Joey busting out with the Charlie Brown dance and me doing the Airplane and dry humping her leg. She covered her mouth, giggling.
Mason was squinting his eyes in our direction, grimacing.
I stopped dancing and hunched down in front of Charlie, like I always did when we were messing around, and winked at her, “Come on, Charlie, hop on. I’ll give you a ride back into school.” I flipped Mason the finger as he watched us.
She jumped on my back and wrapped her legs around my waist as I carried her past the field and track, back into the building. I even tried carrying her right through the doors to the girls’ locker room, but Ms. Hart, the girl’s PE coach, stopped me.
Mason walked in behind us, smoke coming out of his ears, nostrils flaring.Ha-ha, loser.
The day dragged on after that. Seventh period literature was the last class of the day where Joey and Charlie usually sat on either side of me.
As soon as he walked in the classroom, Joey had this pissed off look on his face. Joey was always smaller than the rest of the kids we went to school with, and I guess that’s probably why he was teased so damn much by the bigger dudes. Lately though, he was getting huge. He walked in the damn classroom and looked like some kind of menacing maniac, eyes all serious, demanding my attention. He had to be about 5’ 11” now, almost up to my 6’, and all the swimming and lifting weights we’d both been doing was transforming him into a monster. I was damn proud of him.
“Dude, you look allSilence of the Lambs,Hannibal Lecter; what the hell? You look like you’re going to disembowel someone,” I said, trying to ease his visible anger.
He gave me a hard glare and collapsed into the seat next to me. Leaning forward, he poked me hard in the arm, “I wouldn’t have to feel like I wanted to make a skin suit out of somebody, if it weren’t for your chicken shittedness.”
Slapping his finger away from my arm, I deadpanned, “One, screw off. Two, Buffalo Bill was the sick freak who did that—NOT Hannibal. Three, shittedness is not a word and four, screw off again. Now, tell me what the hell is going on.”
Joey threw his pen at me. “That Mason dude has been walking Charlie to every one of her classes today. Plus, he asked her to hang out with him tonight at the weeds to watch him race his bike.” He threw another pen at me, smacking me right in the head with it. “She said ‘yes’They’re going out.”
“Are you kidding me?”The weedswas an area that cut off our neighborhood from the waters of the Jamaica Bay. It was an expanse of land about a mile long, with dirt tracks that the neighborhood kids rode their dirt bikes on, without getting in any trouble from the cops. It was also filled with giant ragweed, taller than me, and at the farthest end of it was a rocky beach that we sometimes built campfires on at night.
I watched his gaze move toward the door. Nudging his head to make me look in the same direction, “Check it out for yourself.”
There stood Charlie, clutching a handful of books to her chest, laughing at something Mason was dribbling on about. The whole scene cut me. My stomach churned and I jumped up out of my seat like a fool, making the whole desk tip over and crash to the floor.Damn it.
Charlie’s full, pink lips smiled at me, and I wanted to immediately rip Mason’s head off his body, thinking he might have touched them.
She gave Mason a wave goodbye and placed her books on the desk next to my fallen one. “Are you okay? Desk attack?”
Joey chuckled next to me. “More like a heart attack.”
“Shut up, Joey,” I hissed and looked at her. Damn, she was so pretty that it hurt. “I heard you’re going to the weeds tonight? With MasonLa Douche.”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “Yeah,MasonLeDouxasked me to. He said you guys should come, too. Didn’t you say you were going racing tonight?” she asked, sitting down in the seat, her fingertips touching the edge of her books like they were some kind of shield for her.
“Well, I’m glad I gotMason’spermission to go. And what the hell? He’s walking you to every class now?”
She looked up at me with those deep green eyes, and I wanted to die. “Yeah, he just did it all day today. Why? What am I missing?” Her eyes assessed mine, looking for answers I didn’t even understand the questions for. “Are you okay, Jase?”
“Yeah, Charlie. I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just that he should be holding your books for you when he walks you to class,” I mumbled, grabbing my books off the floor. “I gotta get out of here…I’m going home. I feel like crap. See you later.”
So, like a coward, I left. I didn’t even take the bus; I walked and walked, and then after two hours, I went home. Like an even bigger coward, I walked through my front door with tears in my eyes. I was fifteen and my heart was crushed; it just never occurred to me that Charlie might likesomeone else. I just kind of thought she’d always bemine.
My mother was sitting in her chair in the living room watching soap operas; she was the biggest cliché of all mothers, I swear. She didn’t say anything to me, just pulled her brows together, questioningly.
