Читать книгу Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend - Louise Rozett - Страница 11

IT’S A STRANGE FEELING TO BE STANDING IN A DRIVEWAY at a keg party, fully clothed but soaking wet and wrapped in an oversize towel, talking—or not talking, as the case may be—to the guy who may or may not like you and who you haven’t seen in months, who is standing next to your worst enemy, who may or may not be his ex-girlfriend. Throw in the pacing, wet victim of a Union High hazing and a few onlookers, and you’ve officially got a three-ring circus.

I’m shivering as I wait for Tracy to get our stuff so she can drive me home. Jamie Forta is two feet away and he looks totally different. He’s tan, his arms are super cut and his hair is sort of dark gold—he looks like he spent the entire summer at the beach. He looks…beautiful.

I imagined a bunch of scenarios for when I finally saw Jamie again, but I didn’t think he would ignore me, which is what he’s been doing for the past few minutes. But why would I think that he’d do anything else, when that’s exactly what he did all summer?

He didn’t return my calls after the night he spent in jail, and he wasn’t allowed to come back to school to finish the year. After a few weeks, I started to think that I’d imagined him. I could almost convince myself I had, until I thought about the kiss. That kiss was the most real thing ever—there’s no way I could have made that up.

Which takes me back to wondering why he didn’t call. It’s infuriating.

But no matter how hurt or mad or whatever I’m feeling, Jamie looks amazing and I can’t stop staring at him.

Neither can Regina, which Anthony Parrina has just noticed as he heads up the driveway on his way back to the party from a beer run.

He doesn’t look too happy about what he sees.

Anthony puts down the case of beer he was balancing on one massive shoulder and wraps a possessive arm around Regina. “What, no chain gang for you tonight, jailbird?” he says to Jamie. “Oh, right, they only let the juvie kids work road crew during the day. I honked at you once on the highway in your little orange vest, but you didn’t wave to me,” Anthony says, making a fake sad face.

I can’t tell if there’s any truth to what Anthony is saying because Jamie’s face is a mask. Jamie’s dad is a cop—a cop who left his son in jail overnight to teach him a lesson—and I wouldn’t be surprised if he arranged for Jamie’s community service to involve spending his whole summer in the blazing hot sun fixing the town’s potholes.

I look at Regina. She is staring hard at Jamie, as if she’s trying to tell him something, but Jamie keeps his eyes on Anthony. I have no idea if Jamie and Regina have talked about what she did to him. But they do live next door to each other, so that probably answers my question.

“What, you got nothin’ to say, Forta?” Anthony challenges.

Jamie and Anthony have unfinished business. Jamie used to play hockey for Union with Peter until he got kicked off the team during the big Union vs. West Union game for high-sticking Anthony in the neck. I saw it happen, and I always figured it was some stupid trash-talking thing. But now I’m starting to think it was something bigger.

And Anthony is dating Regina, who Jamie grew up with and has…what? Liked? Gone out with?

Been in love with?

Jamie slowly turns to Regina, not taking his eyes off Anthony until the last second. When his gaze meets hers, concern fills his face. How can he possibly look so worried about her after what she did to him? What is going on?

“You okay?” Jamie asks Regina in a low voice, as if they’re the only two people in the driveway. That weird, blank look comes across Regina’s face again as Anthony tightens his grip on her and smiles like he won a prize.

“She’s fine,” Anthony answers for her. “It’s Conrad who don’t look so good.” He sort of chuckles.

Anthony is a total meathead.

Jamie turns to watch Conrad pace back and forth on the same spot, water still dripping off his rolled-up jeans.

“Conrad,” Jamie calls out.

Conrad stops. “Don’t you fucking talk to me.”

“Don’t swear at Jamie,” Regina warns. It’s the first time I’ve heard her speak all night.

“Oh, that’s great, ’Gina, stick up for the guy who treats you like shit. Should I start calling you ‘Mom’?”

Conrad is shivering in his wet red shirt, which is bleeding pink streaks on his white jeans. His eyes land on Anthony, and I’m hoping Conrad will just keep his mouth shut, for his own sake. I can’t tell whether he has tears or pool water on his face, but the overall effect is the same—with the bleeding shirt and the streaked face, he looks like he’s slightly out of his mind.

“Take him home,” Jamie says to Regina.

“You know what, Forta?” Anthony interrupts. “You don’t get to tell her what to do anymore.”

Jamie takes a step toward Anthony. “And you do?”

“Stop acting like you actually give a shit about us, Jamie,” Conrad snaps.

“I said watch your mouth,” Regina says.

“All right, kids, don’t make me send you to your rooms.” Anthony suddenly sounds annoyed and bored. “I’ll drive you home. Just don’t get my interior wet.”

“Why would I get in a car with you? You’re even more of an asshole than Jamie.”

“Conrad, if you don’t stop talking shit about Jamie—”

“Why you gotta defend Forta, Regina?” Anthony asks.

I can answer that. Because she loves him.

But of course she’s not going to admit that to Anthony.

Regina goes mute again. Anthony grabs her arm hard enough to change the color of her skin, forcing her to turn toward him. For one weird moment, I actually want to pry his hand off her.

“Let go of her,” Jamie warns.

“Fuck off, Forta,” Anthony says. He takes a step toward Jamie, his chest puffed out, fire in his eyes.

Jamie doesn’t budge. It occurs to me that someone who has just finished community service probably can’t afford to get into trouble again. I should get between them, like Jamie did for me last year with Regina. But based on the way Anthony just grabbed her, I’d say the presence of a girl between him and the person he wants to punch isn’t much of a deterrent. So instead I just blurt out the first thing I can think of.

“Conrad, your shirt is staining your pants.”

Everyone turns to look at me as Conrad looks down at his pants. The red is now more of a general pink wash than individual streaks. “How symbolic,” he says.

“Tracy and I can drive you home if you want to get those in the wash before they’re ruined.”

The wash? I’m talking about washing pants right now? What is wrong with me?

He snorts. “You are the reason this all got so fucked up in the first place,” he says, waving in disgust at Regina, Jamie and Anthony. “I’d rather walk.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Anthony says, looking at Conrad. “What are you talkin’ about? Who’s the reason everything got so fucked up?”

Conrad gestures to me with his chin. “Her.”

Anthony points at me, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. “This is Forta’s little freshman? The girl who went screamin’ to the principal?”

He looks like he can’t figure out whether to laugh or punch me. In my head, I’m telling him that I’m actually a sophomore now, which, if you pass your classes, is what happens after you’ve been a freshman, generally speaking. But in reality, I’m totally embarrassed and freaked out. It never occurred to me that someday I’d be face-to-face with West Union’s hell-on-ice star hockey player and would have to answer for getting him thrown out of the prom after he went to all the trouble of taking off his skates and putting on a tuxedo.

I wonder if Jamie will come to my defense if Anthony decides to kill me here and now.

“Matt just passed out,” Tracy says as she comes around the corner of the house with our bags. She takes one look at Conrad’s now-pink pants and visibly cringes. “Were those Marc Jacobs?” Then she looks up at his face. “Are you okay?”

I don’t realize I’m expecting Conrad to smile at Tracy gratefully and thank her for asking until he glares at her like she’s an idiot. “Do I look like I’m okay?” he asks.

I want to tell him that I know how it feels to be targeted. But I know it’s not the same thing. I kissed someone I shouldn’t have kissed. Conrad, on the other hand, was just being himself at a team party—a team that he’s supposedly a member of.

“Is somebody going to drive you home?” Tracy asks.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” he snaps.

“Probably because no one wants to fish you out of the pool again,” she says.

“Well, I’m not getting in a car with either one of them,” he replies, referring to Jamie and Anthony, who are still standing face-to-face with about an inch of space between them.

It is simultaneously totally hot to see Jamie like this—is that weird?—totally depressing to know that it’s not me he’s defending and totally awful to think that the school year hasn’t even started and already Jamie is in a situation that could land him in serious trouble.

“Fine. I’ll drive you home,” Tracy says. No one moves. Tracy looks around at our cozy little group and then back at Jamie. She raises her eyebrows in surprise and possibly approval of the new-and-improved version—Jamie 2.0, I bet she’s going to say later—that she didn’t notice by the pool because she was too busy yelling. Without taking her eyes off him, she asks, “You coming with me, Rose, or…?”

Jamie turns away from Anthony and makes eye contact with me for the second time tonight—or rather, for the second time since June. I can’t read anything in his expression to give me a single clue about where I stand with him.

What else is new.

“Uh…” I eloquently begin.

Jamie looks at Regina and says, “You call me if you need me.” He gives Anthony another long, hard stare, and Anthony bares his teeth in what’s supposed to be a grin. Jamie heads down the driveway. Regina watches Jamie go, a flicker of desperation in her eyes as if she wants nothing more than to go with him. Anthony grabs the case of beer at his feet, slings his arm over her shoulders and drags both the beer and Regina back to the party.

Jamie gets in his car, slams the door hard enough to set off the alarm on the SUV he’s parked in front of, and takes off down the street.

I watch his taillights get smaller and smaller.

The first time I rode in Jamie’s old, green car was when he drove me home on the third day of school last year. He did it only because Peter had asked him to look out for me, but I didn’t know that at the time and I thought maybe, just maybe, Jamie Forta might think I was cute or something. It was kind of a terrifying prospect. I babbled like an idiot the whole time.

When I realized Jamie knew where I lived without me having to tell him, my stomach dropped out like I was on a roller coaster. Sitting close to him made me so nervous I couldn’t put a sentence together, but I still managed to memorize every detail I could about that ride. The car smelled like rain. The hood had been polished with something shiny and when the sun hit it, the glare was so bright it hurt my eyes. The seats and the floor were clean enough to eat off. It was clear that Jamie loved his car.

Now that I think about it, I bet Jamie cares more about that car than most of the people in his life.

Possibly more than all of the people in his life.

But definitely more than me.

“I already said I’m not getting in a car with her.”

Conrad, standing next to the red Prius that Tracy’s dad got her for her sixteenth birthday in July, points at me. Tracy rolls her eyes and leans into the backseat, clearing away some junk. Tracy wouldn’t appreciate my calling her magazines junk, but they’ve been stomped on and sat on, and pages have been torn out and folded over and marked up, so they’re junk in my book. Last year was all about Teen Vogue and Lucky, but this year Trace is reading Vogue and Elle, with the occasional InStyle thrown in, “because not everyone gets couture.”

Thanks to my trusty PSAT app, I surreptitiously learned that couture means custom-made, high-fashion clothes. I have to admit that there are some occasional topic-specific gaps in my vocabulary. My dad—Mr. Vocabulary himself—would not have been pleased. But the fact that I have a PSAT app on my phone would have gone a long way toward redeeming me in his eyes, I’m sure.

“Conrad,” Tracy says as she extricates herself from the backseat to move her magazines into the trunk, “Rose ended up in the pool for you. So maybe try a little gratitude. Sit,” she commands, pointing to the mostly clean backseat and dropping several torn-up GQs in the process. “Love your shoes, by the way. Stuff paper towels in them when you get home so they dry in the right shape. They’re Gucci, right? And those pants are Marc Jacobs, aren’t they?”

Conrad doesn’t miss a beat. “Stop talking about my clothes. You’re making me self-conscious.”

Tracy looks shocked, like she can’t conceive of a world in which Conrad wouldn’t want to talk about fashion. I think this is actually less about stereotyping and more about Tracy forgetting that not everyone cares as deeply and passionately about fashion as she does. Whatever she’s into takes over her entire worldview. She was like that with cheerleading last year. And Matt, unfortunately.

Getting dumped by Matt after she lost her virginity to him was the best thing that ever happened to Tracy. Well, okay, not the best thing. Actually, it was terrible. But as soon as she was forced to accept what a loser Matt had become, she realized she was spending too much time worrying about what he—and everyone else—thought of her. She vowed never to do that again, and she hasn’t looked back since. Her obsession with fashion isn’t just about magazines and being pretty. Tracy wants to be a designer someday, or an editor at a fashion magazine, or a…something. According to her, her education has already started. She reads every fashion magazine she can get her hands on, follows about twenty different blogs, and spends more hours on Lookbook than most gamers spend playing Call of Duty 17, or whatever number they’re up to.

I envy her. She found her thing and is already figuring out how to do it.

Actually, if I think about it, I’m not that far behind her—at least not in terms of knowing what my thing is. I just have to…start doing it.

When I was thinking of auditioning for Damn Yankees, I sang in front of the mirror and discovered that I look like a giant freak. When my mom’s shrink, Caron, asked why I hadn’t auditioned after I’d said I was going to, I just shrugged. Then she declared that I’m depressed.

Brilliant, right? But Ms. Shrinky-Dink had a point. I was excited about auditioning. And I was disappointed—in myself—when I chickened out. So I’m going to that Anything Goes audition, even if I look like the world’s weirdest weirdo when I sing.

“What are you doing with all this shit?” Conrad says, looking down at the issues of GQ that Tracy dropped.

“I like fashion,” Tracy answers, sounding a little peeved as she grabs the magazines and puts them on top of her pile. She dumps the magazines in her trunk and takes out the blanket from the monstrous roadside emergency kit that her dad bought for the car—there are enough supplies in there to survive simultaneous natural disasters. “Here,” she says, handing it to him.

Conrad wraps the blanket around himself and with one more nasty look at me, slides into the backseat. Tracy slams the trunk shut and gets into the driver’s seat. I barely have my seat belt on over my wet towel when Conrad starts in.

“So was it guilt that made you pull me off the bottom of the pool?”

Tracy eyes Conrad in her rearview mirror. “If anyone should feel guilty, it’s your sister. She was the psychotic maniac last year.”

“That’s not what I heard,” he mutters.

“Two sides to every story,” I reply.

“All right, let’s hear your side. How did someone like you manage to steal my sister’s boyfriend?”

Conrad’s question rings in my ears as I turn off the air-conditioning that came on full blast when Tracy pushed the car’s power button. My teeth are chattering because my skin is still wet. I hope my mother isn’t waiting up for me when I get home. If I have to explain to her how I ended up fully clothed in a pool at the party, she’ll probably call Caron to schedule an emergency midnight session. That’s Kathleen for ya.

I’ve been calling my mom by her first name—Kathleen—in my head. It makes me feel better for some reason. Less “depressed,” you might say.

“Hello?” Conrad says, still waiting for an answer.

If I were a different person, I would see this as an opportunity, as Caron likes to call complicated situations. An opportunity to tell my side of the story, or something like that.

But really, it just sucks to hear Conrad ask a variation on the very question I spent most of the summer asking myself: What would a hot guy like Jamie Forta ever see in someone like me?

“I think the real question is how did you end up in a pool with the swim team trying to drown you?” Tracy asks.

“Oh, please. I saw the YouTube video of your initiation last year, pretending to be Beyoncé in your bra in the freezing cold after homecoming. You don’t need me to explain a damn thing to you.”

Tracy didn’t see that coming. Conrad is giving her a real run for her money, and she’s not used to it.

“Dancing in a parking lot and practically being killed by your teammates are kind of different, don’t you think?” I ask.

“Being straight in Union and being me in Union are kind of different, don’t you think?” he mocks in a high, girly voice that sounds nothing like me. Then he sighs, more annoyed than defeated. “Your ex went the extra mile with me because the thought of me looking at him naked in the locker room scares the panties off him. God, what a fucking cliché.”

Tracy doesn’t respond. Neither do I. Ms. Maso would not be pleased with our inability to be supportive of someone who just came out to us. Even if he did do it in a way that was carefully crafted to make us feel as stupid as possible.

Conrad misinterprets our silence. “I’m gay,” he says with exasperation.

“We know,” Tracy responds with ice in her voice.

“You mean someone in Union actually has gaydar? Shocking,” Conrad grumbles. “Although if anyone would have it, it would be the girl with back issues of GQ and Vogue in the trunk of her Prius. Everything about Union is so typical.” Conrad slouches down, jabbing his knees into the back of my seat. “So, Rose—that’s your name, right?—are you and Jamie together or is he just doing his usual dark-and-brooding, now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t thing where he shows up at your door every once in a while and does something sexy just to make sure you’re still dangling on the line, waiting for him?”

Tracy and I are both stunned into silence, for different reasons. I’m sure she’s not surprised by my inability to keep up with Conrad, but it’s pretty rare for Tracy to be without a good comeback. I’m also marveling at Conrad’s ability to go right for the sweet spot and stick a knife in it. It’s a gift. Must run in the family.

Suddenly, I’m angry. Sure, it’s true that Conrad was just humiliated in front of half of Union High, but that’s no reason for him to take it out on me, especially after I just dove, fully clothed, into a pool for him. Well, okay, I was pushed. But the whole reason I was close enough to get pushed was because I was going to dive in.

Snark doesn’t come naturally to me, but I just happen to have some deep inside. I take a breath and let it fly. “I have no clue what’s going on with Jamie because we haven’t talked since your batshit-crazy sister had him arrested for committing the apparently horrific felony of attempting to take someone like me to the prom.”

Tracy takes her eyes off the road to look at me. She stops just short of giving me a thumbs-up. I feel Conrad’s knees in my back again.

“So, Jamie didn’t call you once this whole summer? After standing you up for the prom?” He lets out that angry laugh again that sounds like it should come from someone a lot older. “Wow, that is cold. Well, he was busy chasing after ’Gina in summer school.” Conrad pauses, knowing full well that this is information I didn’t have. “Of course, she was busy throwing herself at that puck-head Anthony, just to drive Jamie crazy. And it worked. He totally wants her back. ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave.’ Is that Shakespeare? I think that’s Shakespeare.”

“Sir Walter Scott,” I correct, trying to sound unfazed although my brain is reeling.

So Jamie was avoiding me all summer and hanging out with Regina. That’s fantastic. Well, at least now I know why he doesn’t want anything to do with me. Apparently, the way to Jamie’s heart is to have him arrested. I’ll have to remember that.

But what about Anthony Parrina? If Regina just wanted Jamie back and now Jamie wants Regina back, what is Regina still doing with Anthony?

This is all so far over my head it’s not even funny.

“Where am I going?” Tracy asks Conrad impatiently.

“Take Hill to Barry and turn left. My house is halfway down the block. Next to the Fortas,” Conrad says pointedly.

All three of us fall silent, which is kind of a relief. We leave the fancy part of Union, where all the houses are huge with perfectly edged bright green lawns, and we drive into the next neighborhood, where the houses are smaller—some nice, some not so nice. We pass one with dark metal siding and an American flag hanging over the front door, with a “Support Our Troops” banner tacked up beneath the windows, practically glowing in the dark because of all the floodlights trained on it. If Conrad weren’t here, I’d ask Tracy to stop so I could take a picture for Vicky, who likes to post photos of troop-support banners from all over the country on her son’s memorial site.

Kathleen hates it when I say it, but Vicky is my friend. Her son, Sergeant Travis Ramos, was one of the people who died with my dad when the convoy they were traveling in blew up. I discovered Travis’s memorial site last fall, and it inspired me—eventually—to start designing the one for my dad. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I posted a comment on Travis’s site, explaining who I was and asking for advice about how to—and whether I should—launch my site. And that’s how I met Vicky.

She emailed back right away, full of reasons why a memorial site is a great way to honor someone. It was Vicky who suggested I launch the site on the first anniversary of the explosion, and Vicky who later contacted everyone on her mailing list to let them know that there was finally a site up for Alfonso Zarelli, which is how I ended up getting tons of posts on the anniversary. And how I learned that my dad had decided to stay in Iraq for a year, when he’d promised me that he was coming home after six months.

I kind of got a little obsessed with the posts for a few days, but Vicky and I emailed a lot, and she helped me. She understood what I was going through.

The day after the anniversary, my mother came to my room and flipped out about Vicky, claiming that I didn’t need to expend my “emotional resources” on a grown woman who was grieving. I knew right away my mother had been reading my emails, which wasn’t hard for her to do—she’d set up my account for me in middle school, and I’d never changed the password. I’d never thought I needed to.

She doubled our therapy sessions that day.

To be honest, I think my mother was jealous that I’d said more to Vicky about missing my dad than I’d said to her. That’s probably why I didn’t change my password right away after I found out she was reading my email. In a way, I sort of liked that she was jealous.

Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to people you don’t really know.

When we pull up in front of the Deladdos’ place, it takes exactly one second to figure out which house is Jamie’s. The house to the left of the Deladdos’ is perfectly maintained and lit up like the Fourth of July. I can see a TV on the wall and a dog bouncing up and down on the couch, barking and wriggling furiously as we idle on the street in front of his territory.

The house to the right of the Deladdos’ is small and rundown. The lawn is scraggly with bald spots where grass refuses to grow. Brown shutters droop on their hinges and white paint has peeled off the house and landed in half-dead shrubs, creating a dirty-snow effect. The gutters are bursting with dead leaves and branches that look like they’re sprouting from the house itself. There are no lights on and no one seems to be home.

This is where Jamie lives with his dad.

Jamie turned eighteen this summer. Technically, he doesn’t have to live here anymore. And considering what his father did to him when he got arrested, it’s hard to believe that he’d want to. But I’d be willing to bet that Jamie won’t leave his dad alone unless he has to.

Jamie can be loyal to a fault.

I wonder what Jamie’s mother would say about his father leaving him in jail overnight.

I saw Jamie’s father from a distance last Thanksgiving at a restaurant, and he seemed way more interested in the football game that was on than in talking to Jamie. I don’t know a lot about him—I know that he’s a cop, and that he went a little crazy for a while and Jamie actually had to live with the Deladdoses for a few months, which I try not to think about because it drives me crazy.

But I know even less about Jamie’s mother. Only that she didn’t live with Jamie and his dad because she was in some kind of institution near Boston. I also know that it was soon after she died that Jamie got kicked off the hockey team.

Which is when he became one of my mom’s patients.

Yes, I am the very lucky daughter of an adolescent psychologist who is in therapy herself. No wonder I avoid conversation with her at all costs.

It drives me nuts that my mother knows more about Jamie than I do. Although, at this point, that would be true of anyone who actually had a conversation with Jamie this summer—the cashier at the grocery store, the guys he worked with on the road crew, his probation officer.

Regina.

“What do you want me to do with this blanket?” Conrad asks, unbuckling his seat belt. Before Tracy can answer, the Deladdos’ front door opens. A woman looks out at us, her hand hovering over the screen-door handle as if she’s unsure what to do. She shields her eyes against the glare of the light above her front steps in order to see us better.

“Shit,” Conrad mutters. He runs his hands through his hair and looks down at his ruined pants and his red shirt, which now looks vaguely tie-dyed.

“Just leave it there,” Tracy answers.

Without another word, Conrad gets out of the car, slams the door too hard and starts up his front walk. As I watch him, he seems to physically transform, like he’s trying to become invisible. He ducks his head and looks at the ground, pulling his shirt down as far over his pants as he possibly can and then giving up and jamming his hands into his pockets. The woman holds open the screen door for him and he slides in sideways so as not to touch her or let her touch him. She asks him something and he shakes his head while moving past her as if his life depends on it. She watches him take the stairs two at a time and then, after he has disappeared from her sight, turns back to us. She lifts one hand to shield her eyes again, and then gives us a hesitant wave before slowly closing the door.