Tats ditched me.
I start to panic and look around the kitchen. There’s a door behind Tall Guy, near the counter. It’s a side door. I can make a run for it and then text Tats from across the street to see what’s going on. I wouldn’t leave her. I’d wait, just away from this place.
While I’m thinking this, a group of guys come into the kitchen. Jeremy’s one of them.
I try to turn back to the window, but he’s seen me already.
“Hi,” he says, from near the counter.
I wave back.
He turns around and that’s it.
I feel strange: relieved in two ways. That he dropped everything and that he’s here, in the room. I feel safer.
“Jeremy,” I say, the first time I’ve said his name.
He looks at me, then comes over, holding a Coke too. I move over on the window seat until there’s a wide space for him to choose a spot from. He chooses wisely, with a nice distance between us.
“I need to leave the party, but I can’t, not without Tats. But I don’t want to look for her around the house.” I turn the tab of my pop can. “I don’t really know anyone here.”
“You want me to help you look?” he asks. I nod.
We get up and move out of the kitchen. There are more people in the foyer now, but Tats is not there, so we pass through to the den and connected dining room. The music is loud here, but I shout over it because I remember something. “Where would Matt be?”
“He’s in the living room. She wouldn’t be there; no one’s there except his friends.”
Matt was one of the guys Tats waved at when we came in? Did she even realize she’d passed her whole reason for coming here?
“She’s not on the first floor. Maybe she’s outside,” Jeremy says when we’re back in the hallway.
“No, I looked there already.”
He’s already opening the French doors leading into the backyard. It’s strangely still, even though the yard is full of people.
It’s the June air, when you can hear every stir in hyper-audio. Maybe that’s why everyone around the pool is lying there listless.
“Is that why you didn’t want to come to my house that day?” Jeremy is looking at the pool. “Because Farooq was there and he’d see us?”
I can’t believe he believes we were together, the monster and me.
Wait, does he believe it?
“Jeremy, I wasn’t with him; I never was.” I take a step back and sit on one of the stone benches flanking the doors. He turns to me.
“But is that the reason you wouldn’t come in? You didn’t want him to know, right?”
“I didn’t want anyone to know, but yeah, I especially didn’t want him to know. But not because we were together.”
“So if there’s nothing between you two, he was just playing me? Why wouldn’t you have texted me or something then? To clear it up?”
“I guess I realized that it wasn’t going to work for us anyway.”
“Okay, so it made sense in your head, and that was enough for you?”
No, no, no. Why is he making this about us? There can be no us, doesn’t he see that? “I realized the way I felt wasn’t fair to you. Like I said, I didn’t want anyone to know about you. Not just Farooq. Because there are these things that are important to me, and I haven’t figured out how other people fit into them yet. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten into things. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. If that’s how it is.” It doesn’t sound okay, the way he says it. The way he says it opens a space in me, like a skipped heartbeat.
I’m sad.
When it was in my head, it was easier, this thing between us. It was almost better than the real thing because it was neat and could be opened and closed as much as I wanted it to be.
It didn’t involve another person’s heart. Or two worlds colliding. And Jeremy getting hurt in the collision. “I messed up, Jeremy.”
“Don’t worry about it now.” He shrugs and then goes still. “Shh, look. To your left. Slowly.”
I turn slightly. A bird is on the sill of the kitchen window, tilting its head as though listening to something. It’s small, and its claws remind me of the one that landed on my palm at the lake.
“Is it a chickadee?” I whisper.
“No, a white-throated sparrow.” He lets out a laugh and the bird flies.
“Why’d you laugh? It got scared.”
“Because not every bird is a chickadee.”
“I know that. Ostriches, chickens, eagles, the list goes on.”
“And penguins, right? Come on, let’s go find Tats.” He laughs again and moves to open the doors to the house.
“Maybe she’s down in the basement,” he says, heading to a door opposite the French doors we entered through. Music, different from the kind upstairs, blasts into the hall. “This is where Lauren and friends hang.”
I follow him down, a stab of worry making me flinch when I hear the door close behind me.
There’s no one in the rec room. I turn quickly on the stairs, aware that I’m in a basement with the door closed again, with a guy again, and music so loud.
I’m almost back at the top when I hear Tats. She is in the basement. I lean down and look through the banister railings. She’s coming out of a room off of the rec room. She sees me and smiles, totally ignoring Jeremy standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Ready to go, Janna?” She has the weirdest smile on her face.
“You guys want a ride?” Jeremy asks. “I need to pick up something.”
“We’re going home,” I say.
“It’s far from here, so don’t bother,” Tats says, not looking at Jeremy but talking to him.
“It’s not a problem,” Jeremy says.
Tats turns to him. “We don’t need a ride!”
“It’s okay, a ride would get us there faster,” I say quickly, smiling at Jeremy. “Thanks.”
“Fine.” Tats goes by and we follow behind.
? ? ?
The ride is silent, with Tats and me in the back like we’re being chauffeured.
Finally, I whisper, “I don’t think he knew. Jeremy didn’t know. He’s clueless in this whole thing. He had nothing to do with it.”
“I don’t believe that,” Tats says out loud. “How could he not know his friend was a douche bag?”
I don’t say anything. Neither does Jeremy. He probably thinks we’re having a private conversation.
“Tats, why’d you go to the basement with them?”
“To make a deal.” She’s looking out of the window.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Janna.” She turns to me. “We can’t go to the roof anymore. Access denied.”
I think about that. “Did they tell on us? Lauren and them? How’d they know?”
“Now they know.” She pulls the Espa?a key chain out of her shorts. There’s no key dangling from it. “They’ve got the key. I gave it to them.”
“Tats,” I say, uncomprehending. “For what? Matt?”
She laughs and whispers, “Was he there? I didn’t even notice.”
“Tats?”
“For you, Janna. They’re going to leave you alone. They’re going to leave my friend alone.”
She turns to me, her eyes glistening. They make me lean over and give her a hug so I can hide my own eyes.