“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.”