Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1) (9 page)

I
LOOKED
at him, stunned that he had beaten me to the tree house. He was never anywhere on time, ever. Not only was he on time that day, he was early. Jamie was always late—to school, to church, probably even to his own funeral when the time came.

“Jamie, I….”

He put a hand up to stop me, and I climbed all the way through the trapdoor and then sat on the blanket in front of him. He was wearing his typical jeans and screen-print T-shirt that he wore to school every day, but he looked defeated. His black canvas messenger bag was thrown into the corner, and from the way he was sweating, it looked like he’d been in here for a while.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, his face full of remorse, and it broke my heart. Every bit of anger and resentment I had felt over the last twenty-four hours dissipated. I had been an irrational, jealous child, and he needed to know that.

“No, Jamie, I’m sorry,” I told him, and his eyes went from the blanket to my face. “I had no right to be jealous. You and I have no kind of commitment.” As I spoke, I could feel the anger and resentment start to rise again. “To be honest, I think it was that you were flirting with a girl. It made me think that maybe you weren’t… that you weren’t being honest with me about… well, about the way you said you felt about me.” I felt a familiar burning in my throat, but this time I ignored it.

“That’s just it, Brian, I don’t like her,” he said, and it was my turn to be surprised. “Well, she’s nice and all, but I don’t like her like that.”

“But then why….”

“I heard a few of the girls, including Karen, talking about how much time we spent together, how close we are, how comfortable we are with each other. One of them was talking about how you ran out of gym when you saw me. Apparently her brother told her. I overheard Karen telling Emma that maybe I don’t like her because I was… well, because I didn’t like girls. It scared me, and I wanted to do something to prove them wrong before rumors started to spread. You know how girls are.”

I nodded, and guilt gnawed at my stomach. He had done it to protect us. He was pretending to like a girl, forcing himself into that mold for us, and I had run away like a child.

“I’m so sorry; I should have asked, given you a chance to tell me,” I started, but again he cut me off.

“No, I should have told you about the girls talking. I had planned to when you stayed over Saturday night, but we kind of got… distracted. Knowing I would see them in church on Sunday, I’d been planning to flirt a little with Emma to shut them up. I meant to tell you. It made me so upset to know that I hurt you.” Turning around quickly on the blanket, he sat beside me and held my hand. “There are so many ways this could go wrong, and I’m scared every day, but I don’t want you to ever think that I don’t think what we have is worth every bit of it.” Lifting his hand, he caressed my face. I would never get tired of feeling his skin against mine as he touched me.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, elated by his admission. Sitting there in the sweltering heat of the early morning sun filtering through the open window, we held each other. Everything in our relationship was uncertain, except how we felt about each other.

I promised myself that I would never doubt his feelings for me again.

We got to school just in time to make it to first period. Talking and kissing in the tree house, we had almost forgotten we were supposed to go to school. Sliding into our seats just as the bell rang, we grabbed our books from our bags and faced the front when the teacher entered.

That was when Jamie got the note.

The note was passed from teenager to teenager through the line behind him and tossed over his shoulder by an excited-looking Gina Trammel. A curly redhead from the same group of friends as Karen and Emma, she watched eagerly as Jamie opened the folded projectile under his desk. Following the obvious path the note had taken, my eyes landed on Karen. She was practically bouncing in her chair, her eyes lit with excitement. An embarrassed-looking Emma sat next to her, trying to make herself disappear as she scooted lower and lower behind her institutional desk.

Glancing over at Jamie, I saw that he had a small smirk, and his face was flushed from his neck to his ears to his forehead. The change in color was subtle, but having spent so much time looking at him, I could tell the difference. While the teacher wrote notes on literary irony, Jamie did some writing of his own and then sent the note back through the winding path of students to its originator.

Karen’s face lit up like she had just won the lottery, and she leaned over to relay whatever Jamie had written. At first Emma’s face went blank with shock, and then it blossomed into a tentative smile. Her face held a dreamy expression through the rest of the lecture. When I glanced at Jamie, all I could garner from his expression was self-satisfaction.

Finally, after an excruciating hour of discussing stuff we were never going to use again as long as we lived, the bell rang, and we were free. I packed up quickly and waited for Jamie. Before he threw his backpack over his shoulder, he looked back at Emma and winked. Her face went scarlet, and she made a beeline for the door. The rest of the students soon followed, but I grabbed Jamie’s arm before he could tag along with the group.

“Okay, spill,” I said, not in the mood to be coy.

“We have a double date Friday night,” he said without missing a beat. I raised my eyebrows incredulously. Karen was all right to hang out with, I guess, but to actively date her? I wasn’t sure I could keep up that kind of façade; I barely even knew her.

“What if, after spending time alone with us, they figure out that we’re more into each other than we are into them?” I whispered, and he turned to me, paling slightly.

“I hadn’t thought of that. I just thought it was the perfect cover,” he said, and I could see his mind going over all the different possibilities, the varied outcomes of the night. “I think we’ll be all right. I mean, it’s only going to be a movie or whatever. We can handle it, and it will help solidify our cover.”

“What if she wants you to kiss her at the end of the night?” I asked, maybe a little louder than I’d meant to. Our teacher looked up and shooed us off to our next class. After heading up the hall, we ducked into the boys’ bathroom to continue our conversation. Jamie checked the stalls to make sure we were alone.

“I’ll tell her that kissing is important to me, and not something I take lightly,” he shrugged. “That’s actually true, too, so it’s not like I’m lying to the girl. You’re the first person I’ve ever kissed, and that meant everything to me.” I nodded as the door opened and a senior I recognized faintly from the wrestling team entered. Jamie started to wash his hands, and I followed his example. Then we picked up our bags and headed for class.

The rest of the week was a blur of classes and assignments as we waited with sick fascination for Friday to arrive. I’d cleared the date with the Schreibers, Richard giving me a couple of twenties to pay for the evening’s activities. I think he and Carolyn were pleased that I was trying to be a normal teenager. They had been whispering lately about whether my “trauma” was affecting my social development, since I was almost seventeen and had never been on a date. The first time I’d heard them talking in hushed whispers from the living room, I’d nearly laughed out loud. I was glad they cared so much about how I was doing, but they were so far off base.

Jamie’s parents were delighted that he was taking Emma on a date. He could have done worse, could have chosen a girl with “loose morals,” but they knew their boy had a good head on his shoulders and would never pick a girl like that. I hoped neither Jamie nor I would ever have to find out what they would say if they knew it wasn’t the nice girl Jamie had chosen, but the poor throwaway boy from a few streets over.

E
VERY
boy must wonder what his first date will be like.
Will it be with a cheerleader or the cute girl in math? Will we go to dinner or a movie? Perhaps break with tradition and go on a picnic, or stick with the local mini-golf course?
A few times, even against my own internal, feeble protests, my mind strayed to Jamie and me at the beach, or on a walk through the woods near our houses. Never in my wildest imagination did I come up with the reality of Friday night.

What I wanted more than anything was to go to the movies alone with Jamie. I wanted for us to be free to hold hands or even make out like any other couple would. I wanted for us to go to the local pizza place and talk about our future together over a small pepperoni and a couple of drinks. Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be, not with the two silly, giggling girls who would soon be lodged between us.

Since Jamie was the only one with a license, it was up to him to drive us into the scenic town of Jackson Creek. Our parents would never let us go all the way to Mobile alone, so Jackson Creek was it. The town contained exactly one movie theater and three restaurants, which was more than our own tiny hometown of Crayford. Richard had once told me our town had gotten its name because a clerk in the early 1800s was transcribing documents and miscopied the W in Crawford as a Y. Now we have to explain, and spell slowly, the name of Crayford for eternity. We have no real place for a teenager to hang out on Friday night.

Jamie picked me up first for our little adventure, and my heart thudded in my chest as we held hands for the short drive. They lay clasped between us on the unused emergency brake, fitting together so naturally. Looking over at me as we pulled onto Oak Street, just a block from Karen Simmons’s pink flamingo-decorated house, he squeezed my hand and said, “I wish it were just us tonight.” Then he sighed, and I looked over to see that we were in front of the house.

To say the yard was infested with lawn ornaments was really not doing justice to the Simmons’s creative Mecca. Practically every square inch of the weathered ground was covered with lounging flamingos, dancing mice, and the occasional fountain. Outsiders might have mistaken it for a yard sale, except there was no such sign. The only reason I could think of for having such adornments was to detract from the rundown house. Maybe if your eyes were drawn to the giant inflatable Disney characters, you wouldn’t notice the missing shutters or the plastic sheeting covering the poorly insulated windows.

Glancing at Jamie again, I noticed his posture was stiff. He wasn’t looking forward to this any more than I was, but it was necessary. I had to keep him safe, and if that meant enduring a date with Karen Simmons, it was what I’d have to do. So I kept putting one foot in front of the other until we were at the door.

Mr. Simmons opened the door and, with a rather somber expression, invited us in. He greeted Jamie like a long-lost son, but my reception was much cooler. Chalking it up to the fact that I was the one taking his daughter out, I ignored him. When the girls finally came downstairs, Karen was wearing a brand-new sundress, probably purchased specifically for this occasion. She was decked out with a little of what I guessed was her mother’s makeup and a lot of perfume. It was everything I could do not to take a step back as she bounded over next to me.

Emma was altogether different. She wore a pink sweater and jeans, looking much more comfortable than I felt. She’d forgone makeup, and her hair was swept up off her face into a twist at her neck. It suited her. She looked sweet but almost stylish and had thankfully skipped the cologne.

As we started to walk out the door, we got the obligatory speech about taking care of the girls. Then her dad went on again about being a gentleman with his daughter. To be honest, I had tuned him out, because really, he had nothing to worry about. I glanced over at Jamie to see if he thought the speech was as amusing as I did and was startled to see that he was angry. More than angry, he was enraged. Emma and Karen must have noticed too, because they started pulling us outside. Karen tossed a quick comment, saying, “Daddy, we’re going to be late!” over her shoulder just before she hastily pushed Emma though the door, letting it slam shut behind her.

I noticed as we opened the passenger doors for the girls that Jamie’s hands were shaking. The girls climbed in quickly, and after we shut the doors, Jamie with a little more force than necessary, I followed him around to the other side of the car. Laying my hand on his shoulder, I asked him what had upset him. He sighed and opened the door, shaking his head. Taking that to mean “not now,” I followed his lead and climbed into the backseat next to Karen, who looked almost ashamed.

“Apparently, old man Simmons doesn’t think some common foster kid is good enough for his precious little girl,” Jamie said, his voice teeming with scathing disapproval. Karen sat forward and put her hands on the back of Emma’s seat. It looked as though she was going to apologize for her father, until Jamie punctuated his remarks with a few very choice words. Emma’s hand flew over her mouth, and Karen gasped.

“Jamie,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder again. “It’s not important. Let’s just go have a good time.”

Of course, it felt important. While we were in the house, I’d pretty much ignored the guy because I thought he was just going through the normal fatherly bullshit. Not until Jamie got so upset about it did I realize what the man didn’t like was me. It felt like someone had poured peroxide on the searing hole inside me caused by my parents’ deaths. The sting, the pain, brought with it a hard lump in my throat. Yes, I was an orphan, a burden on the Schreibers; no one knew that better than I did. To say I wasn’t good enough for his little Karen was ludicrous, but what stuck with me was the question of whether or not I was good enough for Jamie.

I sat back against the seat, contemplating. Jamie noticed, and I saw the physical effort he was making not to reach back and comfort me. His hands danced on the steering wheel, his shoulders were taut, and his eyes darted back to mine in the mirror every few seconds. However, before either of the girls could notice, Karen spoke up in her father’s defense, and then the shouting started. Watching it, dazed, felt like some kind of perverted tennis match. The shouting volleyed back and forth between Jamie and Karen as Emma held her hands over her ears and I watched in fascination. Then, to my astonishment, when Karen began to attack Jamie’s character, Emma pulled her hands down.