“Jamie,” I say.
Her bike clatters to the sidewalk.
“Oh, good. You’re here.” JP skips down the steps, lighter than cotton candy, and slings an arm around her shoulder. “How was school?”
THIRTY-THREE
Jamie’s eyes are as big as mine.
We stand opposite one another in shock, my crutches shaking inside my hands. It’s her. I’m happy, I’m panicked, I want to hug her, I want to hide, but it’s too late now. We’re locked in the same square concrete grid on the sidewalk. She inches backward, wavering on her toes to run. The only thing that stops her is JP clamping her in place.
His arm around her, her camera with a new purple strap. For Christmas? A present? I want to punch him into next week. “Are you two together now? What is this?”
“Seriously? That’s the first thing you say?” she asks.
I swallow a blob in my throat. “Hi, Jamie.”
“We’re not going out.” JP releases her and they take a step apart. “We found each other.”
“He found me,” Jamie clarifies.
The weather changes and mist starts to fall. I want to wrap her up and breathe inside the crook of her neck, but I can’t. Those days are gone. Seeing her kick-starts every ache I’ve been pretending doesn’t exist and they explode all at once. My fists spasm and I have to squeeze them together like I’m clutching two Ping-Pong balls to my stomach. There’s so much I want to say to her, but all that fades like winter sunshine. I can’t bring back what’s gone. Jamie stands next to him, beautiful as ever. She catches my eye. We stare at each other a good, long minute.
“JP and I are friends,” Jamie says.
“I call bullshit. He wants something.”
“Huh?” he says, all innocent.
I ignore him and talk directly to Jamie because if I so much as see him in my peripheral vision, I might just go to prison after all. “JP never does anything without trying to get something in return. It’s the only thing he knows.”
“Not anymore,” he says. “Like I told you in the weight room. New Year’s. I made resolutions.”
A thousand pounds of shit in a JP-shaped bag. “Jamie, can I talk to you? In private?”
“Not without JP,” she says.
“What?”
“Don’t you ‘what’ me, Dylan, because I swear to god, you’re lucky you have one person willing to fight for you, because I’m done.”
“That’s not what you said,” JP whispers to her.
“Yes. It is,” she shoots back at him under her breath.
“But you’re here,” I say, stumbling with shock.
“Yeah, she is because she’s fucking awesome as shit,” JP butts in. “Look, dude, you can be mad at me forever, but what you’re doing to her is frigging stupid. And like seriously, when you’re all straight up miserable like this, you’re a black hole of suck. You’re bringing down the whole school. One giant, kinda literally, downer fest. It’s obvious you like her, you’d do anything for her. Everyone knows it; we can all see it. Just get the hell over it and apologize for treating her so shitty so we can be all good again.”
Fuck JP. She’s here, and I talk to her and her alone. “Jamie, you and I—”
“There is no you and I!” she yells. “Did you know I couldn’t speak for days? How I fell to my knees in the shower and cried so long, my mom came in because she thought I drowned?” Jamie bites down so hard, dark purple dents dot her lower lip. “You have no idea how much I tortured myself over that stupid pretzel. Who eats half a pretzel? What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I should’ve never gotten that stupid thing. All it did was make me cry all over again.”
“I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“So you split it in half to mess with me? I didn’t know if you would call or not, if you wanted to see me, talk to me. Why did you only take half?”
“I needed some time.”
“If you need some time, then you sack up and tell a bitch.”
“It’s just that—”
“You’re all rambling on and on about the genesis of evil in cancer, like it’s some Nazi plague with its very own Hitler or something, and then you turn around and pretend we never happened?”
I want to tell her about my dad. “I didn’t—”
“Oh yes you did.” She hugs herself. “I thought there was more in you. I trusted you. But it turns out you’re ugly, inside and out.” Jamie tilts her eyes toward the precipitation and tucks her camera safe and dry into her bag. “This is a nightmare. I’m going.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” JP jumps in front of her, stopping Jamie from picking up her bike. “You said you’d give me ten minutes and we have six more to go.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I bark at him.
Jamie walks a wide circle around JP and stands toe to toe with me. She reaches inside her bag and hands me a postcard, a black-and-white photograph of her lighting a piece of paper with Russian and Chinese and French and Spanish words scrawled all over it. The only one I recognize is amor, a smoky haze all around her head in a fog. I flip it over and read:
Jamie McCutchen
A One-Girl Show
February 12–20 at Café Crossroads