MOM’S BAD MOOD FLARED RIGHT BACK UP when I got home on Friday afternoon and asked her if I could please go out with Janet and Reggie to get a pedicure, and she grounded me for the whole weekend, as promised. I got to send them one text saying I couldn’t make it, and then I had to surrender my phone as well. I would blame it on her finally clueing in to Dad’s affair, but she’s just as attentive as ever toward him. It doesn’t make sense.
When she returned my phone this morning on my way out the door, there were five messages. Three are from Jamie, who missed me and sent kisses on Friday, and hearted and kissed me on Saturday afternoon and hearted and thumbed-up me on Sunday. The sweet rush of “hearts from Jamie!” is sideswiped by the jittery question of how successfully she managed to control the damage I did with Christina. And that’s replaced by panic over the possibility of Mom having seen these incriminating texts, and I spend a nervous minute trying to recall the exact expression on Mom’s face when she handed me the phone. But nothing comes to mind, and I figure Jamie wouldn’t text me hearts and thumbs-up if things had gone badly, so I allow my panic to subside, and bask in the glow of Jamie’s virtual kisses.
There are also two texts from Reggie:
Hey, do you have ur phone back? Tmb asap
U there? Just checking. Tmb!
I send hearts and kisses back to Jamie and then shoot Reggie a text (Got my phone, finally! What’s up?) but this time she just says, Tell u at school, hurry!
I practically run the rest of the way to school.
“What? What is it?” I shout when I see Reggie and Hanh in our usual spot. “I ran all the way here, so it better be good.”
“Heeyyy!” says Reggie with an enormous smile. “How are you?” She opens her arms and gives me a big hug.
“Hey, girl!” says Hanh, who gives me a hug after Reggie releases me.
After a whole weekend without any communication, I’m so glad to see them—it really feels like I’ve been let out of jail—but this seems a little excessive. I look around.
“Where’s Elaine?”
Hanh nods in the direction of the opposite side of the quad. “With her boyfriend. Probably making out somewhere.”
“Shut. Up.”
“It’s true.” Hanh looks at Reggie, who nods her confirmation.
“Omigod!” I’m so excited, I make a noise that almost rivals a classic Elaine squeal.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me? Did it happen this weekend? When? Where?” Elaine pined over Jimmy much harder than I did over Jamie. And not just a few weeks, like me. Since sophomore year, I’ve heard. I’m so happy for her. I wish I’d been able to have a girl-talk session on the weekend. It would have made life so much more bearable.
The details are these: After the pedicure field trip that I should have been a part of, Janet and Reggie picked Elaine and Hanh up (having made up another elaborate story for Hanh’s parents) and the four of them drove all the way up to Stanford to meet Jimmy, who’s on the boys’ varsity team and ran in the invitational, so they could hang out in Palo Alto afterward. I feel a twinge of jealousy, which probably shows, because a flicker of guilt crosses Reggie’s face, and she breaks from her story to say, “I wish your mom would’ve let you come. We totally missed you.”
I shrug and say, “Just tell me the rest.”
The Palo Alto part was meh, Reggie says, and not worth talking about except that Elaine and Jimmy held hands the whole time. The good part was the end of the afternoon, when Elaine got in Jimmy’s car instead of Reggie’s and he took her home and kissed her good-bye.
“Look at what she texted me,” Reggie says, showing me her phone. She scrolls through the thread and stops where it says,
OMG! Jimmy kissed me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then there’s a whole other text that’s nothing but about a hundred exclamation marks. And another of a hundred faces with hearts for eyes. And another of a hundred super-happy faces.
“So I guess she’s kind of excited,” I say.
“Kinda.”
Good for Elaine. I’ll bet she won’t be afraid to kiss her boyfriend in public. This train of thought leads, of course, to my girlfriend. “So, um, did you see Jamie there?”
Reggie and Hanh exchange looks. “Yeah, so . . .” says Reggie, shifting on her feet.
“That’s kinda what we wanted to talk to you about,” finishes Hanh.
“Jamie?” I ask. “She was going to maybe hang out with Arturo and them afterward.”
“Oh, they were there,” says Hanh. She and Reggie look at each other again.
“So, what? Just tell me.”
“Yeah, so . . .” says Reggie again. “We were with Janet’s cousin Amy, you know, the one who goes to Palo Alto High School? And we saw Jamie right after the meet, and— Actually, forget it. It’s no big—”
“She was with this redheaded chick, and Amy says that’s the one who got together with Jamie at camp this summer,” interrupts Hanh.
I look at Reggie. “I’m sure it was nothing,” she says. “I’m sure they’re just friends.” For a very long moment, it’s like the data is buffering—everything just stops except for the spinning wheel of death, which turns . . . turns . . . turns . . .
“I have to say, though, she was pretty hot,” says Hanh helpfully.
“Hanh!” Reggie glares at her.
“And I was going to say,” says Hanh, glaring right back at Reggie, “but she looks like a total slut.”
Reggie rolls her eyes. “God, Hanh! That is so not appropriate! You can’t say that about girls just because they dress a certain way!” She turns to me and says, “It’s not like they were doing anything. Really, I don’t even know why we brought it up.”
“Reg! We brought it up because Amy says that the redheaded chick—Kelsey? Chelsea?—was talking about trying to get back together with her hot ex-girlfriend after the invitational, so, you know.” Hanh turns to me and shrugs. “Two plus two.”
“Wow,” I say. I nod slowly, hoping this makes me look thoughtful instead of suddenly cast off into deep space, which is how I really feel. No air, no anchor, nothing to keep me from hurtling off into the void. They’re watching me closely, so I have to work extra hard to keep it together.
“‘Wow’? That’s it? Aren’t you upset?” asks Hanh.
“There’s nothing to be upset about!” says Reggie.
“I’m— Reggie’s right. I’m sure it’s nothing. I’ll be okay.”