The five-minute bell rings and we head toward class. Reggie and Hanh begin bickering about whether or not Hanh should have told me that Kelsey looked hot. (“I also said that she looked like a slut!” Hanh keeps saying, as if somehow that makes things better—to which Reggie keeps replying with increasing impatience, “Stop. Saying that. It’s not okay.”)
As we reach the classroom, Elaine and Jimmy appear from the opposite direction, arms slung around each other. When she sees us, Elaine glances anxiously at Reggie and Hanh, and then at me. “Just calm down already,” I want to say. Though to whom, I’m not sure.
Meanwhile, the download meter in my brain is still inching toward a hundred percent. I have a little video playing in my head now: Jamie and hot Kelsey, walking down the streets of Palo Alto together. I try out a sentence in my head: Jamie was with Kelsey. It’s not too bad. Nothing tragic. So she was with her ex-girlfriend. So she didn’t tell me about it. That’s okay, right? She’s under no obligation to reveal her every move to me. No need to panic. If it hadn’t been for Mom and that awful argument on Friday with Christina, it would have been me walking down the streets of Palo Alto with Jamie.
Right?
As I make my way to my seat, my brain finally kicks in and I start generating a list of questions I want to ask Reggie and Hanh as soon as class is over: Did they see you? Did you say hi? Did they look friendly, or like, friendly? Why did Kelsey look “slutty”? What does that even mean? Did Jamie look guilty? Did she look happy? What were her friends doing?
Then I remember how much Christina supposedly hated Kelsey. If Jamie’s hanging out with her, does that mean Christina approves of Kelsey more than me? Did I screw up that badly? Have I been voted out and replaced by committee?
Under all of these questions is another one that keeps bubbling up: Why didn’t she tell me?
I’m staring out the window going over my questions when the bell rings and Caleb slides into his seat behind me.
“Hey, distracted much?”
“Huh?”
“Distract-ed much?” he repeats.
“Oh. Sorry. Hey.”
“Hey,” he says, smiling, pleased with the success of his little joke. “Hey, guess what,” he continues, “I think your cross-country friend Jamie is a lesbian. I heard someone saw her like, kissing another girl this weekend. My cousin was at this meet at Stanford and she said her teammate saw a Mexican girl from Anderson and some runner from Palo Alto totally kissing. A girl runner, I mean. Obviously.”
“Kissing?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what my cousin said.”
“Caleb and Sana. Is there something you’d like to share with the class?” Caleb shakes his head and leaves me to spend the rest of trig playing a new endless loop in my head of Jamie and hot Kelsey totally kissing, over and over and over.
On the walk from trig to Spanish, I ask Reggie and Hanh if Caleb’s rumor is true (Elaine, uninhibited and with no need to consider how people will react to her being straight, has left us to be part of Jimmy-and-Elaine). They can’t confirm it, but Hanh thinks that Jamie and Kelsey were acting friendlier than just friends. She can’t explain it. “Just, you know, body language” is the best she can do.
I spend the next eighty minutes worrying about Jamie instead of doing Spanish, followed by ten minutes of worrying about Jamie instead of listening to the announcements, which, let’s face it, no one really listens to anyway. The rest of the day passes the same way—everything that happens, everything anyone says, gets pushed out by Jamie and Kelsey, Kelsey, not me, Kelsey.
At practice, I avoid Jamie. Everything I do or say around her feels like a lame cover-up for my worries about her and Kelsey, and I’m afraid she’ll see right through me. Though why I don’t want her to know I’m upset is beyond me. And is it my imagination, or is Jamie acting a little distant, too?
By the time we’re walking back to my house, I’m a tangle of nerves. I want to hear the truth, I don’t want to hear the truth. I don’t want her to know I’m upset, I do want her to know I’m upset. We never hold hands on our walk home, but usually we walk close enough to touch each other every once in a while. Today—is it me, or is it her?—there’s no touching.
We reach the house; even Mom notices that something’s not quite right. Ever since I showed her Jamie’s perfect scores on a couple of trig and physics tests, she’s found it in her heart to ignore Jamie’s makeup and welcome her in. And since I’ve been doing better on my tests as well, Mom is happy to leave us alone to “study.” And in true Mom fashion, she often seems more concerned about Jamie’s well-being than my own.
As I put a bowl of chips and two cans of Diet Coke on a tray, she asks, “Jamie, are you feeling bad? You’re very quiet today.”
“Oh, no, I’m fine. Just a little tired from practice,” Jamie says. Except that practice wasn’t that hard today.
Then we’re alone in my room with the usual snacks, but without the usual easy conversation. She has to feel the tension—we’ve been apart all weekend and we haven’t so much as pecked each other on the cheek. But I don’t acknowledge it and neither does she.
Instead, I sit on the floor and dive right into my homework. We’re supposed to be rereading this part in The Awakening where Edna tells her husband that she’s going to move into her own little house down the block, and he arranges to have their entire actual house redecorated so it looks like that’s why Edna has moved out.
I can’t get into it. I can’t get Kelsey out of my head. She’s replaced Christina as my number one worry when it comes to Jamie. Eventually Jamie looks up from her book and says, “So, uh. I haven’t told you about the weekend.”
“Oh, right. How was it?” I put on an inquisitive smile.
“Yeah, actually. There’s something I have to tell you.” The smile slides off my face. She chews her lip, then says, “I kind of spent some time with Kelsey after the meet. I wanted to tell you before anyone else did, so you wouldn’t get the wrong—”
“Reggie and Hanh already told me, actually. And Caleb. I guess a lot of people saw you together.” I mean to sound neutral, like I’m just reporting the news, but it comes out resentful and sulky. I suppose that’s better than scared and pathetic, which is how I really feel.
“Oh, no. What did they tell you?”
“I heard you were kissing each other. Is that true?” She’s not denying it. I feel like the ground is suddenly tilting, like my life is tipping over. “Is that why you didn’t want me to come? Because you knew she was going to be there?”
“No! Yes. I mean. I knew she was going to be there, but I didn’t know we were going to hang out. You not coming to Palo Alto—that was about Arturo and JJ and Christina, not about Kelsey.”
“Then what—why did you kiss her?”
“I didn’t. She kissed me.”
“Did you kiss her back?”