“Really?”
“You didn’t think we were gonna live on food stamps forever, did you? We’re better than that.” He lathered up from an old can of shaving cream and pressed the razor to his face. Honestly, I had thought we’d be on food stamps forever, and I was kind of okay with it, but I had noticed that my dad was trying to pull things together lately. He was still a mean drunk, but it wasn’t as bad as it was right after my mom left, and he’d mellowed some with time. “Where’d you get a job?”
“Doing maintenance at the motel.”
“Did Susan get you that job?”
“No, I got me the job.”
I’d wounded his ego, so I had to flee. “Okay, I’ll be home later. I’ll put a shirt on.” As I walked away I said, “I’m glad you got a job, Dad.”
I got to the shed before Jax. When I lay down on the cot, I felt a lump under the blanket. I pulled it out from under me and saw that it was his journal. My stomach did a little flip. Just a little peek wouldn’t hurt anyone.
She sat there holding her smooth legs to her chest, staring out the window, popping her gum, bored, and saying inconsequential things. But still . . . she was the center of the universe. She could make the whole world go around without even breaking a sweat.
The wooden door swung open. I closed the journal and looked up to see Jax in the doorway, scowling at me.
“What the hell is the matter with you? Have you no respect for my privacy?” He marched up to me and tore the journal out of my hands.
“I didn’t read any of it.”
“Liar. I can tell you read it. Your face is beet red.”
“I only read one line.”
“It’s not about you.”
It’s totally about me, I thought.
He turned and headed back out the door.
“Who’s it about then?” I called after him.
“Not you. I’m going home.”
I ran after him and yanked his shoulder back and spun him around in the field of weeds. “Talk to me, Jax.”
“It’s about Desiree Banks. She’s my girlfriend. Go home, Emerson, and mind your own business.”
“We’re not little kids anymore, Jackson,” I said to his back.
“Yeah, exactly! I don’t have time for your kid games.”
My kid games? “You can tell me how you feel about me. I’m here. I’m listening.”
He said nothing, so I followed him until he went inside of his house and slammed the door. I turned around and dragged my feet home, regretting what I had done. My dad had already left to go to his new job, so I was alone, left to think about the passage Jax had written.
IN THE MORNING, I waited fifteen minutes for him to come outside, but he didn’t, so I had to run all the way down the road to catch the bus. The white Converse I had bought with my own money from my new weekend job were covered in dirt. I was pissed. When I got to the mailboxes, Jax was already there, waiting for Ms. Beels.
“Why didn’t you wait for me?”
He looked up from his book and then looked back down and said, “I don’t have to do everything with you.”
“These shoes were five Saturdays at Carter’s, and now they’re all dirty.” Jax and I had been doing odd jobs around Carter’s egg ranch on Saturdays for three dollars an hour. We were grossly underpaid, and we had to walk two miles to get there, but at least it was a job.
“That’s what you get for spending all your money on shoes.”
I stomped my foot. “Ugh! You’re not being fair.”
Still staring at his book, he said, “I’m not doing anything to you.”
“I said I was sorry. You left your dumb journal in our fort, almost like you wanted me to find it.”
“I’m not fighting with you because I don’t care, Em. I told you ten minutes earlier not to read it. You can’t even apologize the right way.”
“Sorry I’m not perfect like you.”
“Oh, and by the way, it’s not a journal, it’s a novel, and it’s going to kick ass when I’m done with it. And the fort is mine, Emerson, not ours. It’s on my property.”
I turned my back to him and stared down the road, fuming silently. When the bus pulled up, I took our normal seat at the front. Jax passed me and went all the way to the back.
“Real mature, Fisher,” I called out. We were acting like our ten-year-old selves, but we weren’t ten anymore.
The freshmen at Neeble High had their own hall, so it would be impossible for Jax to avoid me all day. And avoid me, he didn’t. Coming out of English class, I saw that he was standing in the spot he always stood to walk with me to math, except he wasn’t alone. He was leaning against a row of old lockers no one used anymore with his arm around Desiree Banks.
STUPID BOY.