Second to No One (17 page)

“Oh.” My voice sounded higher than usual. Kind of squeaky and fake. “You were talking about the dance?”

“At first, but then he asked me if I wanted to go out this weekend.” Lauren’s eyes didn’t show the same giddy excitement that they used to whenever she talked about Jess. She now carried an air of confidence or maybe entitlement. “So what’s up?”

“I actually need to talk to you about Jess.”

“Oh. Okay.” She glanced at her cell phone.

I shifted and bit my lip and tucked back my hair, trying to find the right words to say. “Do you remember back when you first told us that you liked Jess?”

Lauren shifted her eyes toward the memory of our first sleepover in her great room. “Yeah.”

“And I told you that he’s my neighbor but we don’t really talk very much.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, um…” I shifted again and then again. “That’s not exactly the whole story.” I bit my lip waiting for her to respond.

“You two went out, didn’t you?”

I winced at the truth. “Did Jess tell you?”

“No.” She looked down at the keys that she was twisting in her hands. “But I’ve noticed the way you look at him when he’s talking to me. I can tell that you’re jealous.”

I blinked a million times and stammered over my words. “What? No, I’m not jealous. I don’t look at him when you’re talking. I don’t even—no. Seriously, I’m not jealous.”

But her eyes stared straight through my lies. “So when did you go out?”

I pointed behind me. “Last summer.”

“He was in California last summer. With his dad.”

“Yeah, I know.” I said curtly. “But we kissed before he left, and we talked on the phone all the time.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her or myself.

“So you didn’t really go out then. You just kissed.”

I glared at her insinuation. “Well, no. We—”

“I mean, did he even take you on a date?”

“Um…” I thought about it, and my stomach cramped. “No. Not officially.” Or even unofficially for that matter. We didn’t spend more than an hour together as a couple now that I thought about it. I suddenly felt stupid for always referring to him as my ex. He was hardly ever my boyfriend.

Lauren lifted the handle of her brown Honda. “It doesn’t sound like it was a big deal.”

I was stunned silent. Nothing she said was particularly rude, yet the whole encounter with her had left a horrible taste in my mouth. “Uh, no. I guess it wasn’t,” I answered. “I just didn’t want things to be weird between us. You know.”

Lauren opened the car door and shrugged. “Not weird for me at all.” Then as an afterthought, she turned to me with an exaggerated grimace. “Oh no. Is it weird for you? I mean, you must hate me seeing how I moved here from Iowa and suddenly I’m dating Jess and hanging out with Drew.”

Not at all, why don’
t you just move into
my house and sleep
in my bed and refer
to my parents as Mom
my and Daddy?
“It’s fine. Really. I’m fine.”

“Okay, well.” She looked me up and down as though wondering if I had any more to say. “I got to go.”

I stepped away from her car, baffled at the interchange that we had just had. This wasn’t the same Lauren that I had gotten to know over the past couple of months. This was a new Lauren. This was a territorial Lauren. But I wasn’t exactly one to talk. The second she told me she liked Jess, I had turned into a drooling, gnarling, rabid dog.

Lauren ducked into her car, and I turned toward mine. But as I walked away, she stuck her head out her window and said, “Gemma?”

I turned back around, “Yeah?”

“Who ended it? You know, between you and Jess.”

I dropped a shoulder and grabbed hold of my backpack strap. “Jess did,” I said. “He broke up with me.”

She ducked back into her car, nodded slowly, shifted into drive, and said, “That’s what I thought.”

I watched her drive away, her last words lingering in the air, still stinging my ears. They say all is fair in love and war, but I was beginning to realize that instead of being two separate entities, love and war went hand in hand.

Chapter 13

T
he last day of school
before the Christmas break came without warning. I had two projects and a five-page paper due and a final exam all in one day. It was torture. By the time I sat down in fourth period, I was exhausted. I flipped my PowerPoint disc in my hand, wondering if my photography project would make Ms. Delrose take back what she said about my work. My heart just wasn’t in it. How was I supposed to capture photographs about an important event in my life when Jess wasn’t a part of it anymore? I decided to do the project on my family. The important event being my mom and dad getting married. I tried to capture photos of their hands intertwined, their wedding rings, and an old wedding invitation that my mom kept in an album. I even drove thirty minutes to the church where they were married and to a nearby community center that used to be the hall where they had their reception. The time I spent doing it all made me feel closer to my parents in a way, and I appreciated that aspect of it, I really did. But having a project centered around love, marriage, and happily ever after only made me feel more alone and dejected.

It was hard not to fall asleep as Ms. Delrose called everyone up one by one to show their presentations to the class. I was almost completely asleep on the side of my arm with drool teasing the corner of my mouth when Ms. Delrose called Jess to the front of the room. My body found a pocket of energy as I watched Jess hand his disc to Ms. Delrose and make his way to the front. It was rare that I had the opportunity to just sit and watch Jess, and I reveled in every second of it.

When his project appeared on the screen, Jess stuck his hands in his jean’s pockets and hunched forward. I had never seen him so shy and unsure of himself. He cleared his throat as the first picture came on the screen. It was a photograph of our elementary school. It was clear and easy to recognize, but no sign of special lighting, angles, or technique were being demonstrated. “Uh,” he finally said while pointing to the screen, “this is Franklin Elementary.”

I looked at the students around me who were staring blank-faced at the screen. An awkward silence filled the room, and I silently urged Jess to hurry up and put himself out of his misery. Ms. Delrose leaned forward in her chair in the back of the room. “What is the significant event that you are trying to capture here Jess?”

Jess clasped his hands together and rubbed them in a slow, nervous motion. “The event? Um, it’s the first day of first grade.”

Ms. Delrose nodded slowly with a pen pressed against her chin and her brows furrowed closely together. “Should I move to the next frame?”

“Yeah, that would be good,” Jess said hesitantly. I had never seen him like this. So timid, almost coward-like. I couldn’t decide what was wrong with him. Ms. Delrose pulled up the next image, which was a photograph of a broken vase. Jess pointed to it. “This was a gift given to my mom.” He stepped back and shrugged both his shoulders. “My great grandma gave it to her on her thirtieth birthday right before she died.” He cleared his throat. “My great grandma, I mean. She’s the one that died. Not my mom.”

I was completely lost, and from the looks of things, so was everyone else in the room. I felt overwhelmingly responsible for everything that was going on. If I had just helped Jess with the project, none of this would be happening. But then Jess kicked his heel against the ground and said, “My dad broke it one night when he came home from work. He was mad at my mom for making tuna fish casserole when she knows that he doesn’t like tuna fish. So he threw the vase across the kitchen, and it shattered. My mom kept the vase thinking that she’d glue it back together someday, but it’s just been sitting in the garage all this time.” The class and Ms. Delrose were perfectly silent, so he continued, “That happened, the whole vase-breaking thing, I mean, the night before my first day of first grade.” He turned to Ms. Delrose. “You can go to the next picture.”

I couldn’t have been prepared for what I would see, nor could I be prepared for the small gasps that escaped every person in the room when they saw the next picture.

It was me.

“You all know this person,” Jess said with one corner of his mouth curved into an awkward smile. “Uh, this is Gemma.” He pointed to me, and the entire class turned to look at my stunned face. “I actually took this picture a couple years ago when we were hanging out at a lake by our houses.” He glanced at Ms. Delrose in the back of the room. “I don’t think my photography skills have exactly improved since then, so I thought it would be okay to include it in my project. Next slide please.”

The next picture was of a telephone. I recognized it as the one in Jess’s kitchen. “See, Gemma lives across the street from me, and on the first day of first grade, her mom called my mom and asked if she could walk to school with me.” Jess turned and looked straight at me. “The thing she doesn’t know is that I wasn’t even going to go to school that day because back then I had all sorts of anxiety problems. I used to fake sick so I could stay home with my mom because I was scared to leave her alone in case my dad came home in the middle of the day. But when Gemma’s mom called, it gave me a reason to go, and I never missed school again. At least not because of my dad. Next frame.”

The next frame was of the old soccer field that lay between our houses and the elementary school that we used to play in every day on our way home from school. “Gemma and I walked to and from school together for the next five years, and then again when we were both in junior high. This was the soccer field that we would play in after school on our way home. To Gemma, it’s probably just an old soccer field.” He turned to me once again. “But to me, it was a safe haven away from home. Last frame.”

Ms. Delrose pressed the button and a photograph of Jess and me came up on the screen. We were both young, and we were arm in arm. I remembered his mom took it of us when she came to our school on Jess’s birthday in first grade. “That first day of first grade,” Jess said, “is one of the most important days of my life because on that day everything changed for me. For the first time, I had someone I could talk to, someone I could laugh with, someone who I could look forward to.” He paused, and I waited breathlessly for his final words. “She’s my best friend. And she’s by far, one of the most important events in my life.”

No one in the room breathed until Ms. Delrose quietly thanked Jess and turned on the lights. She took a deep breath and announced that Jess’s was the last project of the day. Then the bell rang, and we were dismissed. I packed my bag slowly, hoping to catch Jess on his way out. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him, but I knew I had to say something. But before I had the chance Ms. Delrose called me to her desk. When I approached her, she kept flipping through a packet of papers that was in her hand. She didn’t look up until every student from the classroom had cleared out. “I had no idea,” she said, still looking at the papers in her hands. When she looked up, her expression was warm and full of concern. “You and Jess have quite the past.”

I hugged my books to my chest. “Yeah, we do.”

“But things now…” She shook her head. “Not so good?”

I shrugged my shoulders and gazed blankly in front of me. “I don’t know.”

Ms. Delrose cast her eyes to the side and gnawed at her pen. “You know, Gemma,” she finally said in a low voice, “love is messy, but friendship…well, friendship is simple. If I could give you any advice, it would be to stick to the latter and don’t let it go. Good friends are
much
too hard to find.”

I was late getting to my locker before fifth period, but Lauren and Drew were still there, and standing next to Lauren holding one of her books was Jess. “Hey, guys,” I said when I approached. I avoided eye contact with everyone as I focused in on my combination lock.

“So, Jess,” Lauren said, and I could have sworn she was talking extra loud on purpose, “how did your super secret photography project go?”

Jess and I glanced at each other for one awkward nanosecond. “It was okay,” he said reluctantly.

“It was more than okay,” I said. And maybe I was talking extra soft on purpose. “It was amazing.”

“Okay, now I have to know what it was about,” Lauren whined, “Jess, come on. Why won’t you show it to me?”

Jess shook his head bashfully. “Because I’m terrible at taking pictures. I’m barely passing the class.”

“Hey,” I said to Jess and to Jess only. “I’m going to take pictures at an assisted living center tomorrow. I know that’s kind of random, but you’re welcome to come along. I can show you a few things.”

“Yeah, that would be good,” Jess said, and he watched me for an extra amount of time to make sure I was serious.

Lauren, whose lips looked like they were super glued together, stepped closer to Jess and linked her arm through his. “Walk me to class?” she said.

“Sure.” Then turning back to me, he said, “I’ll call you tomorrow morning, then?”

I agreed, and the two of them turned down the hall toward fifth period.