Second to No One (11 page)

As instructed, Jess woke me up every hour to make sure I was still conscious. But I was glad. It would have been tragic to have slept straight through an entire night of Jess time, especially since it was so scarce these days. Morning came too quickly, and before I knew it, we were both shifting and blinking our eyes open. Jess awoke slowly, taking some time to rub at his eyes and shuffle his cute bed hair. But the moment I tasted the sleepy grossness in my mouth, I bolted from the couch and slipped into the kitchen. My body was stiff, and my head pounded under the gauze, but if there was ever going to be a chance of Jess liking me again, I couldn’t possibly let him smell my morning breath.

“You want something to eat for breakfast?” I yelled from the kitchen. “We have Cheerios or…” I searched our empty cupboards for more options, but with my dad sick and the hospital bills piling up, Mom hadn’t made it to the grocery store much lately. “Or Cheerios?”

Jess appeared in the doorway, his eyes half open and a cute, tired grin spread across his face. How was it possible for him to look absolutely perfect first thing in the morning? I bet even his morning breath tasted like peppermint and cold raspberries. “I’m okay,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “I’ll just grab something when I go home.” He looked at the clock over the stove. “Not to abandon you in your time of need, but I really don’t want to be here when your parents get back.”

Oh no
.
I had been so wrapped up in the excitement of having Jess around that I had forgotten all about the reality of my parents. They would most likely be calling or coming home at any second, and it was going to be frightening. I didn’t blame Jess for not wanting to be a witness.

Despite his eagerness to leave, Jess groggily straddled a bar stool and put his head on one fist. “I still can’t believe Drew and Lauren left you stranded last night. I can’t believe they didn’t turn around.”

I poured some Cheerios into a bowl and thought about the night before. I may have felt a little more upset about them leaving us had Trace and I been with them when the cops showed up. But the fact that Kit had to come looking for us, the fact that we were kissing in the chicken room on the second floor, the fact that we were so absorbed in what we were doing that we didn’t react to the sirens ourselves made it hard for me to be too upset with them. “They didn’t want to get caught. It’s okay.”

“I mean I can see Kit feeling proud of himself for getting off scotch free and that Bryce kid too,” Jess continued. “Even Drew leaving you in the lurch doesn’t surprise me too much. But Lauren?”

My attention was pulled from my Cheerios with the way he said her name. It was obvious that he held her on a pedestal and that aggravated me more than I wanted it to. “What about Lauren?”

“I’m just surprised that she left, that’s all. But she wasn’t driving. She probably tried to get Bryce to turn around, and he wouldn’t. That’s probably what happened.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, a little perturbed. “Why are you defending her?”

Jess shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just think she’s a good person.”

I felt the molars in the back of my mouth starting to grind together. “Do you like her or something?”

Jess didn’t look flustered or caught off guard by my question, but I definitely didn’t get the resolute, “Heck, no!” that I was looking for. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “I mean, I think that would be weird. She’s your good friend.”

What was that supposed to mean? That he would like her if she and I
weren’t
good friends? In that moment, I saw it all laid out before me. Because of me, they wouldn’t date, but secretly, they’d be obsessing endlessly for each other. Every single day, the romantic tension between them would grow thicker and thicker. Meanwhile, Lauren would become Jess’s main focus in life, the heroin of his personal love story, and I would become, well, nothing but the ex-girlfriend coming between them and their perfect ending. “You should date her.” I found myself saying, not because I really wanted them to date—in fact, I’d rather have my toenails plucked out one by one—but I said it because it was better than the alternative.

“Really?” Jess acted like it was a novel idea, but I could tell the thought had definitely crossed his mind.

“Sure,” I feigned innocence. “I mean, what happened between you and me is in the past. I’ve moved on to Trace. You should move on too.”

Jess watched me carefully. “So you and Trace are official?”

I wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad about that. (I neglected to think about the fact that it wasn’t true anyway.) I studied his expression and tried to figure out a way to respond. “Yeah, I mean. As official as you can get in high school.”

“Huh.” Jess stared at the counter in front of him.

“I know Lauren likes you,” I heard myself say. “She told me last night.” I watched his reaction carefully, willing him to turn green and nauseous at the idea of dating Lauren. But that didn’t happen. Not even close.

“I don’t know.” Jess finally said. “I guess I’ll have to think about it.”

I hate that I was too consumed in our conversation to hear the garage door open. It would have given me some time to prepare, a moment to switch gears from being the world’s worst matchmaker to a meek, repentant daughter. But I didn’t hear the garage door open, and so I was digging into my next bite of Cheerios and entertaining nightmarish thoughts of Jess and Lauren walking through school hand-in-hand when my parents were suddenly standing in the middle of the kitchen, my dad, weak-looking and pale, and my mom, red faced, fangs bared. “What is Jess doing here?” she growled as I slowly set my bowl of cereal on the counter in front of me.

I looked at Jess with apologetic eyes. “He was just leaving.”

But my mom wasn’t ready to release him yet. “Why is he here? Did he
sleep
here last night?”

Steam was practically rising from her head. I had never seen her breathing so fast. “He had to Mom. The doctor told him to check on me every couple—”

“Please tell me that you slept upstairs in your bed and that Jess slept way down here on the sofa.”

I thought about Jess and I cuddled close on the couch all night. “He had to check on me, Mom. But nothing happened, I swear.”

Jess finally stood to face my parents. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mitchell. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

My dad took an exhausted step forward, then sat on a chair at the kitchen table. Exuding all the strength that was in him, he whispered, “Thanks for helping, Jess. Why don’t you go on home?”

Without saying another word, Jess slipped out the front door and left me alone to be tried and punished. My Cheerios were soggy by now, but my appetite was long gone anyway. Mom set her purse on the counter, then balled up her fists for the fight. “Last night,” she started in an even and terrifying tone, “was the longest night of my life. At approximately eleven forty-five, I woke up next to your father having a breathing attack that for all I knew could have been the last breaths he would ever take. I drove him—in my nightgown, bathrobe, and slippers—forty minutes to the hospital where I watched him undergo extensive and painful tests. I sat on a cold, hard bench for nearly four hours, waiting for it all to be over. I watched your father fall asleep, then I set up my tiny cot next to his stale, white hospital bed so that I could try to have a moment of peace. But just before I lay down, I decided to check the messages on my cell phone. Just. In. Case.” Mom took a deep breath and brushed her hair straight back with her fingers. “I had four messages. Four. Since the time I shut off my phone on the way into the hospital at one o’clock in the morning, I had received
four
new messages. There was one from the police saying my daughter had been caught breaking into an abandoned house and had been in a car accident. There was one from the hospital telling me my daughter was there but was unconscious. There was one from Caris Tyler frantically trying to find out where I was because for all she knew my daughter was in a coma. And just when I was about to highjack an ambulance and race back to Franklin, I heard the final message. It was also from Caris. Telling me that you were fine. That you had a bruised rib and a few stitches and that you were home.”

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

F
or 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.”