Second to No One (6 page)

“Trace loves Gemma.”

“Gemma loves Trace.”

“Gemma and Trace forever.”

“Gemma and Trace are the new Angelina and Brad.”

I looked back to Drew, who was flinging her backpack over her shoulder. “You can thank me later, birthday girl.” Then she took off down the hall, leaving me alone in the middle of the pink chaos.

Periods one through three were nothing special. Now and again, people would wish me a happy birthday or ask me if I was really dating Trace Weston, and in third period, when the teacher called my name on the roll, Randy Castleton stood up and announced that my name was now Gemma Weston. It was all stupid really, but even I had to admit that it was a nice distraction. Lunch passed without much fuss except for the fact that Trace bought my pizza and insisted on sitting so close to me at our table that I swear he was partially on my lap. But again, it felt good to have other things to think about—another
guy
to think about—and I found myself slowly starting to enjoy the fact that it was my sixteenth birthday.

And then it was fourth-period photography. I got there early because if I had sat at our lunch table any longer, my leg (that Trace had taken residency on) would have fallen asleep, and I would have had to hobble to class. So I was just sitting there, in my seat next to the door, looking at some photos of my front door that I had taken for our group project, when Jess entered the classroom. I always knew when it was him walking through the door. Maybe every girl who has been in love and then dumped has the same sense when the guy that broke their hearts walks into the room.

It had been a week since he had so much as acknowledged my existence. But today, he stopped. Today he stepped close to me and placed one of the millions of heart shaped notes on my desk. The wording was up so I read it easily:

Roses are red

And I must confess

I’m in love with Trace

And so over Jess.

I stared at the words, mulling over their meaning, when without saying a word, Jess stepped past me and around to his desk. But just before he was out of earshot, I heard him whisper, “Happy birthday, Gemma.”

“I swear I didn’t write that, Gem,” Drew said that night on the phone. “You know I wouldn’t stoop that low.” Drew’s voice was low and pleading.

“It doesn’t matter who wrote it,” I said, crossing my legs on my bed. “But the thing is,” I hesitated to say it out loud, “the thing is, he seemed really upset about it. Like he was sad I was over him even though he’s the one that ended it.”

“That’s because he’s a guy,” Drew didn’t sound amused. “He wants to be able to dump you and still have you pining for him for the next century. Don’t give him that satisfaction, Gemma. Don’t give him any cake.”

“But maybe it was a mistake. Maybe he’s changed his mind.”

“If he changed his mind, he would have told you that. I’m not going to let you sit around all pathetic, hoping that he’ll take you back. You’re moving on. Remember?”

“Yes. Trace. I remember.”

“Seriously, did you see how close he was sitting to you at lunch? He’s going to ask you out for this weekend, you know? He told me.”

“Hang on,” I said matter of factly, “I have another call coming through.” I pulled my phone away from here to see who was calling. Jess’s name was spelled out across the screen. “It’s Jess!” I whispered into the phone. “He’s calling me right now, he’s on the other line!”

“Gemma, you listen to me.” Drew’s voice was stern on the other side of the line. “You make that boy suffer, you hear me? Don’t go running back to him. He’ll just break your heart all over again.”

“Okay, okay, okay. I gotta go.”

“Call me as soon as you’re done talking to him.”

“Okay, bye.”

“I’m serious, Gemma! Don’t give him his cake! Don’t give him his
cake
!”

I disconnected Drew and accepted Jess’s incoming call. Before saying anything I took a deep breath, “Hello?”

“Hey, Gem. It’s me.”

“Hey.”
Crap, I sounded too ex
cited.
“What’s up?”

“Can we talk?”

I knew I was supposed to act all hard-to-get, but the way he asked it, so sweetly and almost humble, made it impossible to say no. “Um, yeah. I’ll meet you out front.” I tried on three different jackets—two old and the new one my parents had just given me for my birthday. The new one was definitely the cutest, but the old blue one was the one I was wearing the first time Jess kissed me. Maybe it would bring back old feelings. No, I wasn’t this girl. I grabbed the new jacket and threw it over my shoulders as I ran down the stairs. I met Jess on the front porch, but he wasn’t sitting down. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said nodding toward the street.

“Okay.” I followed him over my lawn, wondering with every step what this meant. He wanted to talk. Surely he didn’t want to re-breakup with me. So talking could only be a good thing. Or maybe this was about the note. Maybe he thought that I wrote it. Maybe he was jealous. Either way, Drew was right. I couldn’t get back together with him. Even if he begged me to.

We turned right down the street in the direction of the cement jungle. For a while over the summer, I went there every night and thought about Jess. But as the phone calls got scarcer and Trace became more regular, my visits to the jungle tapered off, and it had been a good couple of months since I’d been there. We walked in silence, and I was relieved that we still could. That we could still be together, without saying anything, and feel completely comfortable — well, almost completely comfortable. Jess helped me up the first block, and I waited for him to get up while I daydreamed of a million things I wished he’d do once he was situated—hold my hand, kiss my lips, kneel down on one knee and ask me for forgiveness. But as the minutes rolled on, none of those things happened, and when we finally sat down, Jess stuffed his hands back in his pant pockets. We sat a good foot apart, as far apart as two people that are just friends would.

Jess bit his bottom lip and slowly kicked the block beneath us with the back of his shoe. One and then the other. “So,” he finally said, “you’re in my photography class.”

“Yeah.” I looked up at him, but he didn’t look back. “I had to transfer classes, and that was one of the only ones with space.”

He nodded. “I like Ms. Delrose.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Jess shifted uncomfortably. “How has your birthday been?”

I shrugged. “It’s been fine. Drew did everything she could to make it very
exciting
.”

“What do you mean?”

“She put balloons in my locker. And those notes.”

“Drew did all that?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t write the one about you. Someone else must have…” His eyes were distant, and he seemed to barely be listening to my explanation, so I stopped.

“You can, you know,” Jess said.

“I can what?”

“Be with Trace. I don’t want you to think that just because I’m around and will hear about stuff that…I’m just saying you can date him if you want to.”

I looked away from Jess and down our long dark street. This wasn’t exactly the talk I was hoping we would be having. It was impossible to stand firm in my resolution to not get back together with him when he didn’t even want me back.

Jess continued despite my silent prayers that he wouldn’t. “I really want us to be friends again. I know that it usually doesn’t work, you know, when two people date for a while, they say they can’t be friends…that it can’t ever be the same. But I think we’re different. What we had, our friendship I mean, it’s so much stronger than most.”

I nodded in slow motion. The friend talk. Again. How was it possible that my heart was breaking all over again?

“Here.” He leaned forward and grabbed a roll of newspaper out of his back pocket. “My mom didn’t have any wrapping paper. Sorry that it looks so bad.”

I took the roll of paper in my hand and turned it over once to examine the wrapping job.

“Go ahead, open it,” he urged before tearing at one of the corners to start me off.

I smiled despite myself and nudged him away before peeling back the rest of the wrapping. Inside was a white T-shirt, the kind you’d see at a tourist shop. I turned it over in my hand until I saw pink and green letters sprawled across the front. It read, “Someone in California who loves me bought me this shirt.”

“I got that like three months ago,” Jess explained. “I was going to send it to you as a joke, I mean, I know you’d never actually wear it. But I don’t know, I just never sent it.” He folded his arms when a cool breeze brushed over our shoulders. “But I’m giving it to you now because I really want you to know that despite everything that has gone on between us lately, I still love you. I’ll always love you—as my best friend.”

I stared at the cold white and fluorescent T-shirt in my hands. The word
love
popped out as the only green word in a mess of pink.
As a friend
. He loved me as a friend. The reality of those words pressed against my eyeballs, and I felt my cheeks quivering with emotion. “Thank you,” I whispered but mostly I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell him that I wished we’d never kissed, that I wished I could take it all back. I wanted to tell him he could take his love and his friendship and his stupid five-dollar T-shirt and go back to California. But I didn’t, and I didn’t cry because the last thing I wanted him to see was that he’d broken me. I took in a deep breath and smiled. I thanked him and told him that I was glad we’d always be friends and then I went home. I went up to my room. I shoved the shirt into the back corner of my closet where I put my socks that didn’t have a match. Then I climbed into bed and cried myself to sleep with my clothes on.

Chapter 6

“L
auren, would you come to
the front of the class please?”

Drew and I stopped talking across the aisle when we heard our teacher, Mrs. Pence speak. It was fifth period, World History, and the only class we had together all day. We couldn’t help but whisper and pass notes to each other throughout the entire class. But at that moment, we watched and waited, along with the other thirty curious students in the classroom, to find out who this Lauren girl was and what she was doing in Franklin, North Carolina.

Lauren was tall and thin with long, dark, red hair and the proportions of a super model. Mrs. Pence announced, “Class, this is Lauren James. She is our newest student here at Franklin, and I want you to all welcome her and be helpful to her as she is trying to figure things out in a new school.” Mrs. Pence then turned to Lauren with an oversized smile. “Lauren, tell us a little about yourself. Where did you come from? And why did you come to Franklin?”

The Lauren girl smiled shyly, and I could tell from her innocent eyes and the way she shuffled her feet beneath her that she was a genuinely nice person. “Oh, um,” she stammered, “I grew up in Iowa. Uh, it’s a little town called Pella. It’s kind of a famous town in Iowa, but no one else has ever heard of it.”

Drew leaned across the aisle and wrote something on my homework. When she moved her hand I saw the words, “A famous town in Iowa? I’m really impressed.”

I smirked at her from the corner of my mouth; then we both sat straight when our teacher eyed us from the front of the class. “And what brought you to Franklin?” she asked when we finally gave her our full attention.

“My parents, um,” she folded her arms, then unfolded them, then tried putting them in her pant pockets that weren’t there because she was wearing a skirt. “Well my parents got a, um…you know. And my mom was born and raised here in Franklin, so she and I came back here to kind of start over, I guess.”

A million hushed voices began talking about the new girl while the teacher interrogated Lauren on who her mom was and what was her maiden name and how they must have gone to grade school together.

I was still watching her, how she laughed politely at the teacher’s stupid stories about growing up in Franklin, when Drew leaned over to me and whispered, “Has Trace talked to you yet?”

“No, about what?”

“He’s going to ask you out for tomorrow night. We were talking about doubling. I met a guy at the gas station yesterday, and he asked me out.” She scrunched her face. “He’s cute but possible creepy. I don’t really want to go alone.”