“No fuckin’ way. The three slutketeers are not going to welcome me into their party.”
“Stop. They don’t give a shit about you. Remember?”
“I’m on their radar now, Jackson Gray.”
“What? Why?”
“Long story.”
He gives me that look—the one only someone who knows everything about you can give you. It’s loaded full of memories and almosts and disappointments.
“Fucking Colter.”
“Ah, Kirstyn-with-a-Y?” He grins. “Are you and Colter . . . .”
“That’s funny. I still can’t believe you gave him my number, asshole.” I smack him in the arm.
“Hey. Stop,” he says, avoiding my next smack. “He’s a nice guy, Ell. I mean, if you forget about his whack-job mom and bitchy ex. You could use a nice guy in your life.” He gives me his goofy, toothy grin, the one that makes me forgive anything he does.
“But I already have you.” I lick my finger and stick it in his ear.
He wipes my spit away, groaning as the car swerves to the right. The jolt smashes him into me and he corrects and straightens out the wheel. “Thanks for that.”
I laugh at the phrase he utters so often that I’ve started to use it myself. “Why a party? Can’t we go . . . I don’t know, to a shooting range and pretend the clays are our fathers?”
He contemplates it for a second, then he must decide it’s too late at night. Jackson never turns down an opportunity to shoot something. He’s been trying to drag me to his dad’s gun club for months. “Janie invited me. She likes me. We’re dating.”
I turn to face him. Saying I’m surprised is an understatement. “What?” I shake my head. “Get me out of here. Now.”
“She doesn’t hate you. She knows we’re friends. She wants to get to know you,” he says in clipped sentences. He always talks in short phrases when he tells me information he knows I don’t want to hear.
I clap my hands together. “Oh, a playdate? You’re so thoughtful.” I glare at him.
“Just give her a chance.” He smiles mischievously over at me. “She says you joined choir?”
I groan. “Yeah. Aunt Sue to the rescue. Mom made me join. She used a damn shrink attack against me.”
“Shrink, huh. Might not be a bad—”
“Jackson Gray. I’m not in the mood.”
Jackson’s done a million things for me and I’ve done none for him. Because I’m selfish and I deserve to die. But tonight, I can do this for him. “Fine, I’ll go. Just don’t expect me to be friends with any of them.” His face lights up and I smile. It feels good to make him happy. I switch the subject before I can change my mind again about going. “Hey, do you remember Dean Prescott?”
Jackson tilts his head to look behind him, flipping on the turn signal. He darts the car into the left lane. The clicking sounds like a metronome and quickly lulls me with its hypnotic rhythm. “Um, yeah,” he says knowingly. The whole school talked about Dean and what happened to him last year. Of course he remembers him. What a stupid question for me to ask. “Why?”
“I’ve started trying to talk to him again.”
He turns to me and gives me a strange look. “He still goes to McKinley?”
“Jackson Gray,” I tease.
“What?” He grins. “Okay, yeah, he’s in my Biology class.”
“He won’t talk to me and I have no idea how to get through . . . .” I almost give away Dean’s secret. “How to get him to talk to me.”
“Why in the hell would you want that?” he says through a laugh, turning down Janie’s street.
I chuckle a little too, but it’s fake. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I’ll just leave it alone.”
I don’t need to worry about anyone but myself. I have my plan, and I’m not going to let anything or anyone derail it.
? ? ?
Janie’s house sits on a humungous hill in the middle of nowhere, staring down to the street like Janie and her friends do to everyone else in the school. The pillars on the front rise into the sky and the huge backyard is the span of a football field, which right now is filled with people I go to school with.
My stomach jerks with the loud music and my head spins at the muffled voices and bass jammed together. I clutch onto the seat belt strap. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Since when do you care about what other people think?” He turns the car into the yard and parks beside a blue SUV. “Don’t change that. It’s one of the many things I love about you,” he adds, jerking the keys out of the ignition.