Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1) (10 page)

“Stop it!” Emma yelled deafeningly in the small confines of the Mayfields’ old Ford Taurus. “Just stop, Karen. What your father said was out of line, period. Brian is a good guy. Jamie, Karen’s father might be a bigot, but he was just looking out for his daughter’s welfare. Can we please go now?” Her breathing was quick and shallow; her brunette curls had started to fall haphazardly from the twist. As Jamie started the car, she reached up and pulled her hair down, allowing it to fall in waves over her tensed shoulders. Karen sat back against the seat, clearly stunned by her wallflower friend’s outburst.

The rest of the evening was relatively uneventful after its tumultuous beginning. Following a few mumbled comments of “I don’t care” or “Whatever you want to see” at the theater, we decided on a comedy. After the debacle the night had become, we needed a few laughs. The girls sat in the middle, popcorn ready, flanked by Jamie and me on either side.

By the time the evening was over, I was exhausted just from keeping up the pretense. I was sick of pretending I wanted to be with these girls; I was sick of pretending Karen wasn’t obnoxious; and mostly, I was sick of having to stop myself from showing affection for the boy I cared so much about. Thankfully, Jamie and Emma started laughing and talking halfway through the movie, making things marginally less awkward. It seemed they had a lot in common. Karen and I didn’t feel the need to speak. It was easier to avoid talking in the theater, but the car ride home was just uncomfortable.

After walking the girls up to the door and saying a quick goodnight, we couldn’t get to the car fast enough. We had close to an hour left before we had to be home, and we planned to spend it alone.

6

O
VER
the course of the next few weeks, Jamie and I talked at length about Emma. Together we decided that Jamie should keep up the pretense of dating her. It was nauseating to watch them together, and there was certainly ample opportunity to do so, because it seemed, to me at least, that they were always together. They sat together at lunch amidst our group of friends; she came over after school so they could work on their history project; he even walked her to school because she lived right up the street. As Jamie was a constant in my day, she became a constant in his.

I hated to sound so petty about it, but it bothered me that the time he spent with her cut into the time he and I got to spend together. Thankfully, this week was the last week of school. Maybe once we were on summer vacation, Jamie and I could spend some quality time together. Again, I thought about afternoons at the beach or walking through the woods where no one could see. With only one more year of high school, I wanted us to start making decisions about what we were going to do the next year. I had already started writing essays for college scholarships, praying I could get into whatever colleges to which Jamie planned to apply.

Much to my annoyance, it seemed Emma had been thinking about it as well. She and her friends talked at lunch like Emma and Jamie were already engaged or something.

“Have you started thinking about colleges, Em?” Karen asked from Emma’s other side. This had been a subject I’d heard from many of our classmates frequently over the past few weeks. We were now racing toward our senior year, and it was time to start making plans for the future. If my childhood hadn’t been so goddamned awful, I’d lament becoming an adult.

“I have been, but Jamie and I haven’t really talked about it yet,” Emma said with a shrug, and Jamie nearly spewed his milk over my lunch tray. She gave him a raised-eyebrow look, the one Carolyn used with Richard if he contradicted her. Only while Carolyn’s look was generally amused, Emma’s look was anything but.

I had no doubt Jamie would hear about that later.

While it was the last week of school, it was probably the one that tried my patience the most. On Monday, Emma helped Jamie on the facial structure of his drawing, smoothing out the rough edges and softening the lines. Had I not been so preoccupied with the way her hands lingered on his shoulders, I’d have seen that the drawing looked remarkably like me. On Tuesday, I had to watch Jamie’s hands holding Emma’s as she steadied her piece of plywood on the shop house saw. He was showing her how to make the cuts perfectly even in order to finish her project.

On Thursday, he got to be her counselor.

“Hey, are you okay, Emma?” Jamie asked in a low voice while the others were still in line for their mystery meat. Since Jamie, Emma, and I all had geography together, we were just down the hall and usually arrived first. I pretended to be really interested in the grayish lump on my tray as Emma looked up at Jamie. She did look rather upset, I saw from my quick sideways glance.

“My brother’s girlfriend broke up with him after practice last night, and he’s really upset about it,” she said with a sigh. Emma’s fraternal twin, Brad Mosely, was one of our school’s best pitchers. “She said she was dumping him for Tim Deans, that new kid from Ohio. He wasted a whole year on her. I think he really thought it was going somewhere, and that’s what bothers him most.” Emma pushed her tray away, just keeping her apple juice.

“It just makes me so angry that she would treat him that way,” she continued. “I’d love nothing more than to walk up to her in gym later and smack her senseless.” At that, I had to look up. I’d never heard meek little Emma talk about hitting anyone.

“You and Brad must be very close,” I commented, not sure if I was supposed to even be part of this conversation. She seemed to tolerate me because I was Jamie’s best friend, but I got the feeling she was jealous of our closeness. He said once, she’d even said that maybe I should be his girlfriend. That sent him into a little bit of a panic until I assured him I didn’t think she meant it quite that way.

“He’s my twin brother, technically my big brother by two and a half minutes. He means the world to me, and it just makes me so mad that he’s hurting.”

The constant interaction between Emma and Jamie continued throughout the day, until I sat conspicuously alone in study hall.

I checked around to make sure I hadn’t missed him when I came in, but he wasn’t there. Neither was Emma.
Did they get sick? Is Jamie hurt and she’s helping him?
Jamie never ditched, and hard as it was for me to admit, Emma wasn’t that kind of girl. No one else in the class seemed to have noticed their absence. Even Karen was just leafing through some teenage magazine, passing the time until the period was over. I left the dingy paperback I had been reading on my chair as I walked up to the teacher’s desk.

“Mrs. Barachek, I had to stay late in my last class and didn’t get a chance to use the restroom on my way here. May I please have the pass?” I asked in an angelic voice. Mrs. Barachek, the matronly lady who also ran the lunch line, knew I was a good student. The faint smell of cabbage accompanied the pass she handed to me without a word. I left the classroom and turned right, toward the bathroom, just in case she was watching.

Looking up and down each hallway, I started to panic when I couldn’t find him.
Has he been beaten up? Where the hell is he?
Frantically, I ran down the south hallway and skidded to a stop when I heard his voice. He was talking, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and then everything went quiet. I sprinted down the hall and quietly opened the band room’s double doors at the end. If he was talking to a teacher, I didn’t want to get either of us into trouble. I just needed to know he was okay.

The sight of Jamie kissing Emma as she sat on the teacher’s desk and he stood in front of her nearly brought me to my knees. My eyes caught every detail, from her hands on the outsides of his thighs to his fingers in her hair. It seemed like time stood still for just an instant before they realized I was there. My chest ached, and I heard a faint ringing in my ears as finally, mercifully, they broke apart. Jamie’s eyes met mine, and he looked like someone who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The door banged on the wall with the force of my anger, and the panic that replaced the guilt in Jamie’s face went unnoticed by Emma, who was still smiling dreamily. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open, just waiting for her prince to continue the kiss. Backing out of the room, I heard Jamie call out after me, but I didn’t stop. I turned and ran. It was something I had started to become very good at, because I had learned all my life to avoid conflict.

T
HANKFUL
that Carolyn wasn’t home when I got there, I kept running until I reached my bedroom. Then, with as much force as I could muster, I slammed my bedroom door. Before I could even reach my bed, the tears had started. I hadn’t cried in a long time. When you’re in the state home for boys, crying only makes you look weak. Weak kids are easier to pick off.

Lying down with my face buried in the pillow, I let it all out. I let out the frustration of not being able to openly love whomever I wanted, of the pretenses and the lies, of the hiding and the shame, and finally of it not being me Jamie was kissing in that room.

I must have fallen asleep, because sometime later, as the light was dimming in my room, I heard a distant pounding. Not caring at all what the source of the noise was, I rolled back over and slept. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have any dreams. It seemed my body and my mind were too exhausted to come up with anything to reveal to me or even torture me with through a dream. For the uninterrupted rest, I was grateful.

When my alarm went off the next morning, I had absolutely no intention of getting out of bed. It was Friday, and the last day of the school year. Turning it off, I rolled over and stared out the window. After about half an hour, Carolyn came up to my room to check on me.

“You’re going to be late, darlin’,” she said from the doorway, only halfheartedly. Since I hadn’t been out of my room since I’d gotten home from school the day before, I’m sure she had figured out something was wrong. I remembered at some point during the evening hearing my bedroom door open and close. Obviously, she’d come to call me for dinner, but since I had been sleeping, she decided to let me rest.

“Carolyn, I haven’t missed a day of school all year, and I’m not feeling all that well. I’d really like to stay home,” I said, rolling back over to face her. She came into the room and sat down on my bed. Her touch was gentle and caring as she put her hand on my forehead.

“Boy, you are burnin’ up,” she said with a small wink. “I’m going to have to call the school and let them know that you won’t be in. Do you have anything you need to do today at school, any tests or papers due?”

“No, ma’am, nothing, and I cleaned out my locker the other day. There’s just some books in it. I can stop by on Monday and pick them up.” She nodded and brushed my curls out of my eyes.

“Then you just stay up here and rest. I’ll bring some sandwiches up later.” She stood up and walked to the door.

“Thank you, Carolyn,” I told her. The gratitude in my voice was unmistakable. The last place I wanted to be was at school. Even though I knew I’d have to at some point, I didn’t want to face Jamie and Emma. I just wanted to lie in bed and imagine a world where Jamie and I could be together.

As promised, around noon Carolyn brought up a couple of sandwiches for me, and I devoured them. Having missed supper the night before, I was ravenous when she set them in front of me. Two creamy peanut butter and apple jelly sandwiches and a huge glass of milk improved my outlook on the day. Grabbing a paperback book from my shelf, I spent the rest of the afternoon reading on my bed. By the time I had finished the first quarter of the book, I was dozing lightly in the midafternoon sun.

When I woke, Jamie was sitting on the end of my bed.

Sitting up, I quickly set the book on my bedside table and then adjusted my blankets, not looking at him. It was an effort to contain the hurt and the sense of loss I felt because he was in the room with me. The whole incident had become fairly abstract overnight, but with him sitting there, the realization and the memory came forcefully home. When I finally met his eyes, I noticed they were shadowed and a little bloodshot.

“You know why I have to do this,” he said, and the twinge of condescension in his voice made the bile rise in my throat. Of course I knew why he had to do it, why he needed to make out with little Suzy Geek in the band room: because I was a guy. That didn’t make it any easier, and that was exactly what I told him.

“Maybe you’ll just decide it’s easier to be with her,” I commented, tracing the geometric pattern on my sheets with my index finger. “She’s the right gender, has the right family, goes to the right church, and apparently has the right lips.”

“You’re right; it would be easier to be with her. There’s one major flaw in that plan, however,” he said, pausing for just a second as he grabbed my hand. My heart nearly stopped as I waited for him to tell me the argument that would cause it to start beating again. “She’s not the one I’m in love with.” My eyes met his as I realized the full impact of his admission.
He’s in love with me.
Jamie had just told me he loved me. For a long moment, I looked into his face, too shocked to speak, not even daring to breathe. But I found my voice.