I have these crazy thoughts where I reach my hands into my own chest, through the skin and muscle and past the sternum, and grip my feelings for her. It’s like dipping my hands into a barrel full of warm rice, pressing from all sides. Soothing and awesome. I take it, gather up all these scattered grains, each one a different atom of her, and pull them from my heart and hold them. Her wit, her laughter, her jokes. How she surprises me, how I want to hear what she has to say. How I want to tell her things.
They’re too wonderful to throw away in the Dumpster, but I’m terrified to put them back.
I can’t stop thinking about Jamie. In an aching, need-to-be-with-her way. But if I’ve learned anything from missing my dad, it’s that I’m really good at cramming all this stuff away in a drawer for later.
Or never.
There’s a knock at my door, and I slam that drawer shut. Mom hasn’t come here to talk to me forever. If there’s ever a time for one of her cheesy “You’re superduper” pep talks, it’s now. I’ve been missing them, but I’ll never tell her that. “Hi, Mom,” I call out.
The door opens and I sink. It’s JP. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I tear over to him, ready to rip him in half like a phone book before he gets the chance to say it’s taco night. Because he’s always here for taco night. “Get the hell out, JP, or I’m going to finally do to you what I couldn’t in the cafeteria.”
He grabs on to the doorjamb, as if that will stop me. “Go ahead, you frigging animal, I’m not here for you anyway. I’m here for me.”
I snort and it’s bitter.
“What does that mean?”
“Of course you’re here for you,” I say. “Since when isn’t it all about The Amazing JP?”
“Oh my god, you’re so up your own ass.”
“Are you kidding? You lit me on fire and told the whole school to pour gasoline. You think I’m going to let that slide? I should tear you apart right now, starting with your face.”
“Okay, hold up for two reasons. One, I’m helping you guys. You two need my approval so everyone else gets the deal. And two, you’re like the biggest fucking baby I’ve ever met.”
“Your approval? I’m the baby? What the shit, JP,” I say. He’s too busy with his perfect body and his perfect hair and his perfect girlfriend parade to even guess what it’s like being me. “Why are you here?” To torture me? To rub it in?
“Because I can’t take it anymore and I need to know why you never give a shit about my mom.”
My stomach loosens. “I…”
Because it makes me terribly, horribly uncomfortable.
“You act like it’s this nothing forever, always leaving, always changing the subject, and then when I’m all trying to be like, ‘Yay, Dylan,’ you shove my mom in my face? Who does that?”
I stand there.
Hop once to check my balance.
“Do you know how cold the tree house is? Don’t you know I’d give anything to be able to sleep in my own bed and know everything’s going to be okay when I wake up? That maybe she’ll be downstairs making breakfast for once? And not because she feels guilty and orders takeout, but like real food because she wants to feed me. Because I’m her kid and that’s what moms do,” he says, shaking his head when I say nothing. “Why’d you have to go there?”
“I thought you were here for taco night.”
JP nearly slams his forehead on the door. “Are you serious? You and your mom are the only two people in the world I trust with this, and you turn into, like, a pile of bricks whenever I bring it up.”
“What do you want from me?” I say. “You’re coming over and making me feel like shit and digging up all this business with your mom and whatever, and never not once did you say sorry for embarrassing me at lunch.”
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed for liking Jamie. She’s cool.”
“Get off it. You know what you did.”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
We both fold our arms at the same time and that’s weird, so we both throw them down and then that’s weird, so I hunch into Minotaur mode and he head-kicks his perfect hair out of his eyes.
“I dumped Bailey,” he says.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just saying. We used to talk about this kind of stuff.”
“You talked. I never had anything to contribute.”
“Well, now you have Jamie.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You can get her back. You guys were mad happy together,” he says. “I could tell.”
“Would you shut up already?”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says.
“Super fuck your deal.”
“We need each other. You and I. How about I make it the best thing—the official best thing ever—for you and Jamie to be together, so no one at school gives you grief. I’m talking social media hashtag campaigns and shit. Hashtag DylanLuvsJamie4evs. Like, getting the entire student body cheering when the five o’clock news team comes and films you two all dressed up at the dance.”
I ponder the notion.
“You know I can.”
I can’t disagree. He has that intangible thing that makes people get in line.
“And all you have to do, like seriously the only thing, is get Adam Michaels for me.”
“That’s what this is about? You didn’t get your frigging money?” I blow, honest to god ready to throw him into next week. “It was never about your mom, was it? You’ve always used it to get me to get the money because you know I can’t deal. Get the fuck out of my house.”