Nearly Gone (16 page)

Jeremy’s parents weren’t home on Saturday morning. His white Civic was the only car in the driveway, so I found the hidden house key under the rock in the flowerbed and let myself in. I could have knocked, but I wasn’t entirely sure he would answer, and after two days of not speaking, I missed him.

I found Jeremy in his bedroom, bent over a thick binder at his desk. I waited as he applied adhesive to a newspaper clipping and smoothed it against the page.

“Wow, that’s quite a project.” I craned my head over his shoulder. “What is it?”

He didn’t look up. He knew it was me, and I didn’t need to see his face to know how he felt about that. The minute he heard my voice, he sagged. He always slouched in school, as if his shoulders bore the weight of the social tiers above him, but something inside me broke to see him bend at the sound of my voice.

He didn’t turn around. “It’s my portfolio.”
“Can I see it?”
He pushed it toward me. I picked up the book and turned 
the pages, pausing to admire the articles, ordered chronologically, beginning with the first day of school. Each school event had been photographed and memorialized. The name Jeremy Fowler appeared beneath each one.

“It’s fantastic. How many are there?”
“One for every school event this year.”
“What’s it for?”
“My application to the journalism program at Syracuse.” He looked up at me, deep creases in his brow. For a 
moment, neither of us spoke. I set the portfolio on his desk. “Syracuse? What happened to University of Maryland?” “Changed my mind.” He stroked the binder and closed the 
cover.

“Your mom must be happy.”
He fingered the edge of a blue-and-orange admissions 
folder, and didn’t look up.

“Why are you leaving?”

He choked out a harsh laugh. “Are you going to give me a reason to stay?”
There was a dare in his eyes. They asked questions he was too afraid to voice out loud because he already knew the answer. He wanted more than what we had. More than I could give him. I didn’t know what to say. I set my backpack on his floor and dropped onto the bed. My own selfish desires collided with what was best for him. If he went to Maryland, Jeremy and I would stay close, but not the way he wanted.
I reached into my backpack and held out an unopened pouch of Twinkies. He stared at them, puzzled. “What’s this for?” he asked.
“For standing you up on Friday.” The plastic sleeve crinkled, a small sound that felt louder in the silence while I waited for him to accept both the gift and the apology.
He turned back to his work. “I know you’ve got a boyfriend. I get that you don’t need me to drive you anymore.”
“He’s not . . . Reece isn’t . . .” I stammered, shook my head, too afraid of losing him to pile on one more lie. But I’d made a deal with Reece. “It’s not like that, Jeremy.”
“Did he break up with you or something?” There was a glimmer of hope beneath the sarcasm, and I hated myself for disappointing him again.
“No, I just told him I needed some space.”
Jeremy’s lips moved, started to form words and then paused as if he’d changed his mind.
“Forget it. It’s none of my business.” He turned back to his desk, opened his iPad, and began scrolling through photos. I was about to answer him, to tell him he was being ridiculous, when one photo made me pause.
“Wait, flip back,” I said, reaching over him to brush a finger across the screen. I scrolled backward through a few shots of a soccer game and the pep rally at school and stopped at a photo of two people, locked in an embrace. “Is that Emily Reinnert?” Her long blond ponytail gave her away, but who was she kissing? I couldn’t make out his face, but he was too tall to be TJ. And he wasn’t wearing a leg brace. I parted the curtain over Jeremy’s bedroom window and held the iPad up against the house across the street—Vince’s house. It was a match to the front porch in the photo. “When was this taken?”
Jeremy shrugged. “About three months ago, I think.”
“Does TJ know?”
“Of course he does. Why do you think I took it?” He snatched the tablet from my hands. “What better way is there to express my appreciation for all those years of humiliation and public beat-downs? I gave a copy of the picture to TJ. He was pissed! Completely lost it. You should have seen him.”
“What happened?”
“I kept waiting for him to pick a fight with Vince and break up with Emily. But nothing happened. Instead, Vince and Emily started fighting, and TJ and Emily made up and got over it. Nobody’s mentioned it since.”
“Weird.”
“Maybe not, if you think about it. Vince and TJ have been best friends as long as we have. It’s not like they’re going to let one stupid kiss come between them. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just a one-time thing. A mistake.” He looked at me for a long time, trying to convey more than he was saying. I wondered if this was his way of telling me we were cool. That he was over it, and I was forgiven. Or if he was asking me to say it was all a mistake. That I shouldn’t have kissed Reece and it wouldn’t happen again. His stare was heavy with expectation. I changed the subject and looked away.
“So TJ thwarted your wicked retribution plan by not going ballistic on Vince, and not dumping his girlfriend. Why didn’t you just print the photo in the school paper, or blast it out to everyone by e-mail? Why let him off easy?”
“We came to a gentlemen’s agreement.” Jeremy rolled his eyes and grinned sheepishly. It was the first smile I’d seen him wear in days. “I agree not to broadcast the photo of his girlfriend kissing the hot rich guy whose legs are still working, and he agrees not to break both of mine.”
I laughed. “Gentlemen, huh?” Feeling like the pall had lifted, I reached over his shoulder and playfully started flipping through his photos. “What other crazy incriminating shots are you hiding in this thing?”
A gap-tooth smile caught my attention. I reached slowly, turning the screen toward me.
A group of students posed in front of a building with tall glass sections. Teddy’s face smiled back at me and my gut clenched.
“You were at the museum yesterday?” I clicked through a short slide show, scanning the handful of pictures, looking past the smiling faces, searching the figures in the background for my own. Finding no sign of either myself or Reece, I let out a shaky breath and scooted it back to him.
Jeremy’s face was paler than usual and he looked tired. “I had permission to leave school to cover it for the paper. I guess you heard about Teddy,” he said, closing the picture and looking awkward and uncomfortable. “I’m sorry for that stuff I said about him at the amusement park. I didn’t mean it like it sounded.”
I nodded. I doubted anyone knew about Posie yet, but it was only a matter of time. Monday morning, the entire school would be buzzing over it. As if reading my thoughts, Jeremy said, “You should get to school early on Monday. The police are auditing attendance records and I heard teachers are giving detention if you’re late without a pass. There’s supposed to be some big announcement and a lecture on personal safety in every first period class. And I’m pretty sure all after-school activities are canceled until further notice. Counselors from all six high schools have been called in and they’re supposed to be making the rounds. You know  .  .  . grief counseling for anyone who needs it.” He massaged his eyes under his glasses, then pulled them off and dropped them on the desk. “I’m not a big fan of shrinks, but I thought you should know about it. Just in case . . . you know . . . you needed to talk to someone.”
“How’d you know about all this?”
Jeremy opened the Twinkies and lay down beside me on the bed. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m actually not a shitty reporter.” He smirked it off. He knew he was a great reporter. I was just lucky he hadn’t seen me at the museum.
“So what was it like?” he asked around a mouthful of sponge cake.
I bit into my own. “What was what like?”
“You know . . .” he mumbled, “your first kiss?”
I stopped chewing. Jeremy stopped too. We lay staring at the ceiling instead of at each other. I searched for tiny imperfections in the surface—imperfections I knew weren’t there—while I thought about what to say.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to answer that.” I felt him reach for his glasses, to push them up the bridge of his nose, even though he wasn’t wearing them. It was something he always did when he was uncomfortable—like some people chew their nails or pace or twirl their hair. I hated that I was the one making him feel that way.
“That wasn’t my first kiss.” My first kiss had been with Jeremy, when he’d gotten drunk at a party and made an unexpected pass at me six months ago.
Jeremy frowned as if the memory stung. “That one doesn’t count.”
“Just because you were too shitfaced to remember it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.”
“For the record, I remember very clearly. My face hurt for two days.”
“That’s called a hangover.”
“No, it’s called an upper cut. It doesn’t count because you didn’t kiss me back.”
Of everything that went wrong that night, this is what bothered Jeremy most. Not the fight with his father that’d made him want to get drunk in the first place. Not that he’d been too inebriated to listen when he tried to kiss me and I said no. Not that I’d hit him, or the fight we’d had before I took his car keys and walked myself home. No, what bothered him most was that I hadn’t returned that kiss. Not at all. It may have started out like my kiss with Reece, but it ended very differently. It never had any traction. Never turned me inside out like Reece’s kiss had. I hadn’t lost myself in Jeremy’s kiss for a single minute. Because I’d never wanted it to begin with. But I’d never told him that. Instead, I’d hidden behind Mona’s rules. To tell him that now, when we were so close to finding our way back to normal, felt unnecessarily cruel.
“Well, it counted to me. And I’m sure if you hadn’t been such a sloppy drunk, you would’ve proved yourself a much better kisser than Reece Whelan anyway.” I teased a sad smile from him. Jeremy’s kiss may have been a disaster, but it had been real for him. He’d wanted it. He’d wanted me. And I wasn’t sure I could say the same for Reece.
I fell back onto the mattress and stretched. Let my muscles melt into the thick down comforter. They ached, swollen and knotted with the tension of the past few weeks. With the door shut and the blinds closed, the house quiet and Jeremy lying beside me, I relaxed.
Jeremy cleared his throat softly. “So I heard Reece got expelled . . .”
“Suspended,” I corrected before he could finish.
“Right . . . suspended. I was thinking maybe you’d need a date for prom? We could go together . . . if you want to?”
For a moment, neither of us spoke, and the look on his face was two parts regret and one part hope. I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t find the right words. I hadn’t intended to lead him on when I told him he was probably a better kisser, but it was too late to take it back.
“I kind of assumed you’d be taking Anh to prom.”
Jeremy frowned. “I haven’t asked anybody yet. I was hoping maybe you’d want to go. I mean, I know you hate crowds. And I know there’s going to be like a thousand people there, but I just figured maybe . . .”
The thought of a crowd that size made me cringe, but throw alcohol, drugs, and touching into the mix and it made the prom seem like a tame alternative when I considered Friday night’s rave. The difference was the matter of choice. I didn’t have a choice about the rave—I had to be there, like a mandatory graduation requirement. Prom felt more like an elective.
“You should probably go ahead and ask Anh,” I suggested as gently as I could. “I hate those things. Wouldn’t be caught dead at a school dance.” I looked over at Jeremy. He stared at the ceiling, his chest motionless. I twined my fingers in his and felt the thin ray of hope slip out of him, making room for heavier emotions that tugged down the corners of his smile and pulled the color from his face. He was still angry with me, and it was a sour and metallic knot in my throat, but I made myself swallow it like medicine. I deserved it.
“It’s okay,” he said numbly. “I figured as much.”
We lay quietly, hand in hand until his disappointment started tasting more like bitter determination.
“There’s a rave on Friday night.” His fingers twitched with an eager thrill that covered me in goose bumps.
I sat up, letting go of his hand. “You’re not going, are you?”
“I thought it would make a really cool piece for my portfolio. It’s kind of edgy. I thought a little grit might make me look more  .  .  .” he paused, choosing his words carefully. “Might get more attention in a college application than something as lame as another canned food drive.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Translation:
This is the worst idea. Ever.
Jeremy had no idea what he was getting into. “I mean, you do know what goes on at a rave . . . don’t you?”
He looked insulted. “Jeez, Leigh. I may be a loser, but I’m not an idiot!”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you’re an idiot . . .”
“And I happen to
enjoy
doing Sudoku and watching the History Channel on Friday nights. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I laughed, kicking him gently with the tip of my shoe. “I didn’t say there was. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“I won’t.” He kicked me back. “I already talked to our sponsor. She said I can run the article as long as there aren’t any photos of ‘questionable content.’ Besides, I’m not going to print any recognizable photos of anyone’s face, and I’ll change the names to protect the innocent.”
My laughter evaporated as I considered the best way to tell him . . . tell him what? That I’d be posing as a narc’s girlfriend to facilitate a drug deal? That it might be my name he had to change?
“Fine, but if you snap any pictures of me, I might have to kill you.”
“You’re going?” He sat up, looking confused. “But I thought you just said you wouldn’t be caught dead . . .” He smiled, thin and brittle. “Oh  .  .  . I get it. You wouldn’t be caught dead at a dance
with me
.”
My heart hurt. I wanted to explain. To fix what I couldn’t stop breaking over and over.
“Jeremy,” I began, unsure how to say what needed to be said. “You know I love you. You’re my best friend . . .” I took a breath, and forced myself to speak the truth I’d never had the guts to tell him. Not part of it. Not half of it. All of it.  “But that’s all you are to me.”
He lay back down, eyes glued to the ceiling.
My voice trembled, but I needed him to hear this even though I wished he didn’t have to. “I need that to be enough for you too. I can’t make myself love you more than I do. And it’s not fair to either of us to try.”
He flinched, a movement so small I might have missed it if I hadn’t been looking so closely at his eyes, waiting for them to blink.
“Can you understand? Will you please just look at me?”
His silence was disorienting. I’d navigated my life by him. Had always counted on him swinging back to me, his true north. But he’d turned away, and wouldn’t look back.
Even as he said “I think you should leave.”