Second to No One (3 page)

“It’s a sapphire,” Trace said as he gently pulled the gem out of my fingers and rolled it around in his hand. “When you said your parents gave you that bracelet, I just figured that the gem was your birthstone. But when I looked it up on this website the other day, I realized that your birthstone is actually the sapphire.” He stood up straight again and looked at Jess innocently as though he too might be interested in his research. “Apparently sapphires are never red because a red sapphire is basically just a ruby.” He looked back down at me as I stared blankly at the grass in front of me. “So I knew what you had couldn’t be your birthstone.” He placed the sapphire back in my motionless hand. “You don’t think your parents will mind that I added to the bracelet, do you?”

I found myself looking at Trace again, only I had barely heard any of what he said. My lips began moving before any words came out, but finally I found the courage to say, “Trace, my parents didn’t give me this bracelet.” The words came out hoarse and muffled, but I knew he understood them. Even through the darkness, I could see his face scrunch up in confusion. Just beside him, Jess, with his arms still folded and his head cocked to the side, was watching and waiting for some kind of an explanation.

Trace shifted his weight to his left foot. “But you said…”

“I know what I said, Trace.” I laid my head in both of my hands and spoke to the cement.

“So who gave it to you then?” Trace’s voice was an octave higher. But he didn’t need to hear the answer because in the silence, with my head toward the ground and Jess’s eyes hurt and betrayed, Trace figured it out on his own. I knew the second that it clicked because he took a long, hard sigh before turning back down my front walk and mumbling a profane word under his breath. I was still looking at the porch steps beneath me when I heard Trace’s car engine roar and then disappear into the night.

I was surprised to feel Jess sit back down on the porch step beside me. He kept his fingers intertwined on his lap, but he sat close enough to me that our arms were touching from our shoulders down to our elbows. I was even more surprised when I heard him start to laugh until I realized the laugh was sarcastic and laced with resentment. “What was that, Gemma?”

I hadn’t moved my gaze from the cement, and I felt my face digging deeper into my hands with the weight of the question. I finally released my hands and sat up straight, searching for the words to explain myself. “Trace and I became pretty good friends this summer.”

Jess didn’t say a word, so I continued, only this time the words poured like rain.

“I mean you were gone and Drew was gone, and I really didn’t have anyone to hang out with. And Trace just sort of started calling all the time, wanting to hang out, and I mean, it wasn’t that big of a deal. We just went on hikes and stuff. Lots of hikes, and sometimes we’d go out to eat but just at casual places like Willy’s, and I never let him pay for me or anything like that.” I took a breath. “And then suddenly you’re back, and he’s showing up at my house with this sapphire. This stupid, stupid sapphire. I don’t even want it.” I opened my hand and chucked the sapphire far into the grass.

Jess took a breath as we both watched Trace’s gift disappear into my front lawn. “Does Trace know about us? What we are?”

I shook my head slowly. “I didn’t know what to tell him. I don’t even know what we are.”

Jess hoisted himself back to his feet.

“Don’t go,” I pleaded. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I’m tired,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m going to go get some sleep.”

I pulled myself up to standing. “Jess, this really isn’t a big deal.”

“Gemma.” Jess sounded frustrated, and for the first time in my life, I saw him getting close to losing his temper. “You told him the bracelet was from your
parents.
”

“It’s not like it was planned. He just kept asking me over and over who it was from, and I just didn’t want to tell him. It’s personal to me.
You’re
personal to me. So I finally just let him believe that it was from them, and it never came up again.”

“Gemma, he likes you.” He sounded exasperated. “He likes you, and you didn’t even tell him anything about us. You let him believe you were available for him to like.”

“I wasn’t sure that I
wasn’t
available for him to like.” The words came out louder and with more force than I meant them to. “You stopped calling me half way into July.”

“Every time I called you were asleep.”

“You could have called earlier.”

“I was
working
.”

I backed away a step and took a deep breath to collect myself. I couldn’t believe that we were fighting like this. Things had been so perfect only moments before, and now we were yelling at each other on my front lawn. How had it gotten this bad this fast? In a slower and much lower tone I said, “Everything just happened so fast between us. One minute we were kissing, and the next minute you were gone. I didn’t know what to expect.”

Jess stared at me in silence for a long time before turning toward his house. “I can tell you one thing,” I heard him mumble under his breath, “I never expected this.” He kept walking, and he didn’t turn around. He didn’t look at me one last time. He just disappeared into his house. I closed my eyes shut and prayed with everything I had that somehow I was still dreaming.

Chapter 3

J
ess and I had never
specifically planned on him driving me to school the next morning. I had always assumed he would, but after he left the night before, I called Drew and told her about our fight. We both decided it would be a good idea if she picked me up instead. I was running to Drew’s car the next morning that was parked in my driveway when Jess stepped out of his house and watched me with confused eyes. “You’re not coming with me?” He didn’t yell, but I could hear him clearly across the distance.

I looked from Jess to Drew, who was applying the last of her mascara in her rear view mirror. “Um,” I stammered looking back across the street, “I wasn’t sure if …” I switched my footing, “Drew asked me to go with her today.”

Jess only nodded before he double-stepped his porch steps and slipped into his car, alone.

“Look at you, Little Miss Two-Timer,” Drew said as we approached the high school. We had spent the ride to school rehashing the details of the previous night and somehow she appeared to feel less sorry for me and more proud.

I slunk into the driver side chair. “I’m not trying to be a two-timer. I like Jess. I want to be with Jess.”

“Then tell him that.”

“I did.” Or did I? The exact details of our argument were a bit fuzzy. But how could he not know that I wanted to be with him? He had to know how much I liked him.

“Here it is,” Drew interrupted my thoughts with a daunting voice. “The dark, looming prison that’s going to have total control over our lives for the next three miserable years.”

I stared ahead at the massive, aged building that was our high school. The parking lot was full of kids dressed to the hilt in their new school paraphernalia, laughing and talking and hugging friends they hadn’t seen in the past three months. I didn’t recognize a soul. “Who are these people?” I asked with self-doubt dripping from my words. “Are you sure we’re at the right place?”

Drew pulled into a slot and put her car into park. She fell back against her head rest. “We’re in serious trouble.”

We moved through the parking lot, weaving between cars and cliques of laughing teenagers, trying not to look as awkward and out of place as we felt. We approached the huge staircase that led from the parking lot to the main doors of the school. For years, I had dreamed about the moment I would ascend that very staircase for the first time, and now I was here. Though in my dreams, Jess was by my side, instead of getting out of his car fifty feet behind me all by himself.

“Let’s go to my locker first.” Drew pulled out her scrunched-up class schedule and squinted at her locker number in the top left hand corner. “It’s in the B hall.”

We moved through the big doors that were held open by the dozens of students entering the main hall. Everything about high school was a scale larger than junior high. The ceilings were higher, the doors were heavier, and the other students? Massive! Who knew that twelfth-grade boys could grow facial hair? Directly in front of us was a huge sculpture of a cheetah, the school’s mascot, and jetting out from it in three different directions were long, neon-lit halls lined with an infinite number of yellow lockers. “Which one’s the B hall?”

We both looked at the signs pointing down each of the halls. How typical. We were those stupid sophomores holding their stupid class schedules, looking completely out of it. Even Drew, who had literally ruled junior high, looked naïve and slightly moronic. “I think it’s the middle one.”

I nodded. “That makes sense.”

Together we headed down the middle hall scanning the numbers printed over the lockers for the one that matched Drew’s class schedule. It was apparent that this was the sophomore hall because we were suddenly surrounded by a hundred other kids looking just as overwhelmed as we felt. “Here it is,” Drew announced. But the locker she was looking at was already opened by a short kid with blue thick-rimmed glasses and partially graying hair clumsily dropping his books inside.

I leaned over her shoulder to double check the number on the paper. “You sure?”

But Drew shoved the schedule in her back pocket before I had a chance to see it. “Hi, Brian,” she said, leaning toward the boy at the locker. He turned at the sound of his name. Drew continued, “I think you’re at the wrong locker. This is actually mine.”

Brian looked flustered as he began rummaging through his things to find his class schedule. His face turned a bright shade of red, and beads of sweat began forming on the back of his neck. He was obviously thrown off by the fact that a person like Drew Markoviak was talking to him.

“Don’t worry about it, Brian,” Drew said with a calming voice. “It’s an easy mistake, and maybe it’s not even your fault. I bet the office ladies double-booked this locker on accident. They’re idiots like that.”

Brian looked up at Drew with a hesitant smile, though he couldn’t quite succeed at making eye contact with her.

“Tell you what.” Drew set down her backpack and yanked my class schedule out of my hand.

“What are you doing?” I whispered frantically.

Drew ignored me as she unfolded my schedule and began tearing at the top right corner. “Gemma’s locker is at the other end of the hall. It’s in a really good location, across from the girl’s bathroom and right next to a vending machine.”

I wondered how in the world she knew where my locker was or where the vending machines were for that matter. Then it hit me: she didn’t.

She continued, “But since I think you’re a great guy, Brian, I’ll let you have Gemma’s locker, and she will just share mine. That way we don’t have to go to the office and confront the grouchy office ladies. Deal?”

Brian looked at me for reassurance. But before I could respond Drew had Brian’s schedule in her hands and was tearing off the top right corner of his schedule as well.

“Here.” She shoved the torn piece of my schedule in Brian’s face. “This has the locker number and combination on it.” She handed him back his schedule, slipping me the torn-off corner with his locker number and combination. “And really, Brian, don’t worry about a thing. It was an honest mistake.”

Brian stumbled away from the locker, clearly not knowing what had just happened. But just like everyone had last year at Franklin Junior High, Brian obeyed her orders and disappeared down the hall.

I started loading a notebook into the locker—not because it was heavy, but because I wanted to look like I belonged in high school—when Drew began opening the locker next to it. “What are you doing?” I was more confused now than ever.

“You didn’t really want a share a locker, did you? We’re in high school now.”

“I’m not following.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just know that you are now going to have your own locker next to your best friend.”

I looked back and forth between Drew and Brian’s open locker. “This really
was
Brian’s locker?” I was piecing it all together. “You lied to him.”

Drew leaned against her open locker and took a bite out of a pear. “White lies don’t count.”

“Not to the person telling them anyway.” It was Trace’s voice, and when I turned back to my locker, he was leaning against it with his arms folded and a skeptical expression.

I was, of course, surprised to see him. I didn’t think he was going to ever talk to me again after what happened the night before. “Oh, hey, Trace.” I stepped around him and grabbed the notebook back out of my locker. “How’s it going?”
Keep it casual. Act
like nothing happen
ed.

“I wanted to apologize about last night.”

I took in a deep breath. “Apologize for what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I could feel Drew watching us from the corner of her eye, though she was pretending to be watching the football players chatting at their lockers.

“I shouldn’t have taken off like that. I mean, you shouldn’t have done some things that you did either, and I guess I was just mad. But I still acted like a jerk. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

I knew he was waiting for more. Maybe an explanation. Probably an apology. But I wasn’t ready to give either of those. It just didn’t seem right somehow to apologize to Trace when things with Jess and me were still so off. “What’s your schedule like?” I looked up at Trace for an answer but soon realized that both he and Drew were still as statues, both staring in the same direction. I turned to see what they were looking at when I saw Jess coming down the hall. Half of the big, burley jocks at the lockers across from us shouted their greetings at him as he approached. Blond, brunette, and red-headed girls alike swarmed him with smiles and flirtatious squeezes and batted eyes. It was so weird to see him like this, and strange to realize that Jess,
my
Jess, was the Buddy Holly of Franklin High. But he was oblivious to it all because as he approached our lockers, he had a sad, distant gaze that was locked on my own. As he passed, he lightly lifted the corners of his lips as if to tell me that despite it all—the fighting, the weirdness, and uncertainty—he was still happy that I was there.