Cracked Up to Be (8 page)

“I’m not kidding. Loosen the fuck up.” He kisses me again and slides his hand up my shirt. “Forget it. We’ll talk about it later
—”

“No,” I say. “We won’t.”

My hand is wet. I open my eyes, hold it out in front of me and stare. Wet.
Tap, tap, tap
. Rain against the window. It’s raining out and my hand is wet.

I sit up in bed, groggy. Is there a leak?

A loud clap of thunder startles me and there’s a whimper at the side of my bed. I turn on the light. Bailey. It’s three in the morning and he’s been cowering on the floor, licking my hand. The thunder sounds again and he cries.

“Bailey, you’re not allowed in my room.” I climb out of bed and grab him by the collar. “Come on. Out.”

He resists. I give his collar a sharp tug and he whimpers, anticipating the next round of thunder, but he can anticipate it in Mom and Dad’s room for all I care. I lead him down the hall. Their door is closed, of course.

I let go of his collar.

“Stay,” I say firmly.

He stays. I head back to my room and crawl back into bed. The storm picks up. Every so often I hear Bailey whimpering and pawing at Mom and Dad’s door and pretty soon I accept the fact I’m never getting to sleep again, so I get out of bed and find Bailey curled up in a terrified ball at the end of the hall. I slip my finger under his collar and we head downstairs to the living room.

A flash of lightning reveals Dad’s armchair. I let Bailey go, grab an afghan and wrap myself in it. The dog sits beside me, frightened out of his mind. I reach out and run my hand over his head. I might scratch him behind the ears if I’m feeling particularly inspired. The thunder goes again and again and he shakes and cries.

“It’s fine, Bailey,” I say. “Don’t be such a wimp. It’s only a storm.”

I wake up to Mom and Dad hovering over me. Bailey’s asleep at my feet and—

Mom’s holding the camera.

“You didn’t,” I say.

“That’s one for the photo albums!” Dad winks at me. “You’d better hurry, Parker. You’ll be late for school.”

I hate my parents.

Chris and Becky
enter homeroom joined at the hip and I make a gagging noise when they sit behind me, just because I can. Becky’s still sore at me about cheerleading practice, so she calls me a bitch and excuses herself for the washrooms to confer about it with whatever minion she’s got stationed there.

I turn to Chris as soon as she’s gone.

“I’ve been thinking about the offer you made,” I say. “About math.”

He straightens. “Yeah?”

“I’m game if you are.”

He looks around the room to make sure no one’s overheard.

“Becky can’t ever know,” he says, an odd gravity to his voice.

“We’ll see.”

“Parker.”

“Becky can’t ever know.” I hold up my hand. Scout’s Honor. “Got it.”

He frowns. “Meet me in the guys’ change room at lunch.”

“That soon, huh?”

“Just in case you change your mind.”

Becky comes back five minutes later and Chris wraps his arms around her and they start sucking face. I know he’s trying to make a statement, but I have no idea what that statement is. Bradley breaks them up when the Pledge of Allegiance starts, and we all stand, hands to hearts, hands to hearts—hands always to our hearts.

“
If I tell
you something about me, will you tell me something about you?”

Jake and I are sitting close, trying to sketch out the landscape in pencil before we start working with paint. Norton advises us to plan everything down to the most painstakingly minute details. It should be days turning into
weeks
before we get to the actual painting, he says. I think he doesn’t want us to finish anytime soon, lest he be forced to think up new ways to occupy a class full of eighteen-year-olds. Either that or this is one of his cruel tricks where he waits until we’re good and relaxed and tells us, whoops, his mistake, the project is actually due tomorrow and still counts for half our grades. That’s the kind of teacher Norton is.

“No.”

I’ve been tracing the same rocks for the last thirty minutes.

“Come on,” Jake says. “I’m going to make you tolerate me if it kills me. Or you. Preferably you. But we should get to know each other on some level or else it will be impossible to work on this together.”

“I don’t know; it’s working okay so far. And besides, what about you could I possibly want to know?”

“Try me. I will hold nothing back.”

I decide to shock him into silence.

“Which do you prefer: top or bottom?”

His mouth drops open a little and I go back to my rocks. Mission accomplished.

“Up,” he says unexpectedly. “Against the wall.”

I laugh, my pencil hovering above the paper. “Right.”

“Top.”

I glance at him. “Really?”

“With my last girlfriend,” he says. “More often than not.”

“Sure. She still in the picture, this last girlfriend?”

“Dumped me when I told her I was moving.”

“Ouch.”

“Eh.” Jake shrugs and works on the base of a tree stump. “We were together too long. How long were you and Chris together?”

“Why would I tell you that?”

“Because we agreed—”

“No, we didn’t.”

His eyebrows come together as he replays the conversation in his head and realizes I’m right, but I decide to go ahead and share because what I’ve chosen to share might make him realize I’m not a person worth getting to know. Get him off my back.

“Actually, Chris and I were together since the ninth grade. We broke up after I stole about three hundred dollars from his savings account. Let that be a lesson to you, Jake: never give your high school sweetheart your PIN number, no matter how many times you’ve had sex or been Winter Ball King and Queen.”

And that’s not even the worst thing I’ve done. Jake studies me.

“Wow,” he finally says. “Why’d you do that?”

“Gambling addiction,” I say without missing a beat. “I spent all my money and some of his betting on horses and racked up a little debt. After a while Chris goes, ‘Look, Parker, I’m not giving you any more money!’ So I stole it from him.”

“Actually, she ran away from home.”

I plaster a bright smile on my face before turning around.

“Chris!” I say, all exaggerated cheer when I do. “And just how long have you been standing there?”

“Obviously long enough!” he says with a similarly exaggeratedly cheerful voice. He pushes past me, for Jake. “Anyway, Jake, I’m not going to be in the gym at lunch, so take center. Tell the guys I said you could. Aaron will want it, but I want to make Aaron cry like a little bitch for being such an asshole last Thursday.”

Jake nods. “Center. Got it. Where will you be?”

“Nowhere special.”

“Nowhere special” is a pretty apt description of the boys’ changing room. Its rows of orange-painted lockers and square windows that filter weak rays of real light into the room—real light that’s promptly swallowed by the fluorescent lights overhead.

And it smells bad.

Chris is sitting on the bench closest to the door when I sneak in. There’s a binder resting beside him—math homework. At least it better be.

“What if someone comes in?” My voice echoes around the room.

Chris stands, drags the bench to the tiny alcove where the door is and wedges it in such a way that no one should be able to get in. There was definitely a time when he wouldn’t have cared if anyone caught us in here—and we’d been caught a few times—but now he’s with Becky and those days are dead.

“So.” I clear my throat. “How many pages of math will this be worth?”

He nods to the bench. I sit. He sits beside me.

This is the skankiest thing I’ve ever done.

I try to ignore how it starts with his hands carefully coming up past my cheeks and around my neck until his fingers are in my hair. He doesn’t kiss me then, but he brings his face close, forehead against mine, and breathes me in because he wants me to feel guilty, I think. I think maybe it’s working.

I haven’t thought about the money in a long time.

His lips get excruciatingly close to mine and he pauses.

“Do you even miss me?”

“No,” I say.

He finally kisses me, presses his lips lightly against mine. I know what he’s doing. He’s teasing me and I won’t have it. I make him
really
kiss me, full on the mouth, and force his lips apart with my own.

And then he stops.

“What about everything you felt about me? Where does that go?” He leans in again and stops before anything can happen. “I would’ve stuck it out. You wouldn’t let me help you.”

“I didn’t need your help.”

“Yes, you did. You do. Everyone got through it together but you. You’re so perfect, you just couldn’t handle it—”

“You’re as bad as Jake,” I say. “You talk too much. Shut up and forget it because it’s not worth your homework for me to sit here and listen to you nitpick the past.”

That kills it. After a second, he presses his binder into my hands.

“Take it,” he says, before I can ask. “Have it back to me by tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, come on. Afraid you won’t respect yourself afterward?” I study him. His cheeks are pink. “I’m not going to tell Becky.”

“I just wanted to kiss you again.”

“Stop it.”

“You could’ve said no,” he says, standing. He pulls the bench out. “You know I’m not over you. You could’ve said no and done the homework yourself, but you didn’t.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You know what? You’re absolutely right. Call it a momentary lapse of sanity.”

He opens the door.

“Or maybe you just wanted to kiss me again, too.”

I roll my eyes.

eight

Bailey’s developed this weird attachment to me. He follows me from room to
room, lays at my feet under the dinner table and stands guard in the living room for the two hours it takes me to copy Chris’s math homework. My parents can’t shut up about how
cute
it is, so three guesses for how I feel about it, and the first two don’t count.

“Maybe you could take him for a walk, now that your foot is better.”

Mom says it in a voice that tells me it’s less of a suggestion and more of a command. I go along with it because I want out. I throw my coat on, attach Bailey to the leash—his tail wags back and forth excitedly—and escape.

“Hey, Parker!”

I’ve been walking a good forty minutes when I hear my name. Somehow I took a turn that landed me on Victoria Street, where the traffic is kind of heavy and I cross the paths of more people than I normally like to do. I cock my head to the side. Nothing. Maybe I didn’t hear it after all. I keep walking.

“Parker!”

Damn. I turn in the direction of the voice and spot Jake emerging from the video store, holding a plastic DVD case in his hand. He jogs over.

“Didn’t figure I’d see you before tomorrow,” he says.

“That makes two of us.”

“Who’s this?”

Jake crouches down and gives Bailey a vigorous head petting. He scratches Bailey behind his ears, under his chin, the works.

“This is Bailey. Bailey, this is Jake Gardner.”

“Hi, Bailey,” Jake says, patting his nose. Bailey loves the attention. His eyes half close and his tongue hangs out, but his tongue always does that. I realize it’s been thirty seconds and I haven’t said anything mean to Jake.

Jake smiles at me. “I think Bailey likes me.”

“Bailey doesn’t have very discriminating taste,” I warn him. “He adored his last owner and his last owner used to beat him, so it doesn’t really say much about you.”

Still got it.

Jake gives Bailey one last pat on the head and stands.

“So why did you run away from home?”

“How many minutes a day do you spend thinking about me?” I ask. “Like, do you have anything else to live for?”

“It’s your own fault,” he replies. “The less you want me to know about you, the more I want to find out. Especially if it bothers you.”

“Nice. What gives you the right?”

“You kind of set the precedent when we met, didn’t you?”

“Bailey, attack!”

I give his leash a sharp tug. He only stares at us happily.

Jake laughs. “So cute.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know about you, but I’m walking now.”

“Wow, that’s practically an invitation coming from you.”

So we walk.

“Got any more ideas for our project?” he asks.

“I’m supposed to be thinking of ideas?” I ask back. “I wonder if Norton knows how dumb this assignment is. Do you think he does? Think he’s just fucking with us?”

“I don’t know, maybe. So why did you run away from home?”

“Okay, Jake?” I stop; he stops. “I’m going to tell you something and I want you to listen carefully and then every time you want to ask me a personal question, you can just refer back to this answer. Are you ready?”

He nods and his hair falls into his eyes. He brushes it away.

“I’m really fucked up,” I tell him. “And I don’t like people.”

“Got it,” he says. “But why?”

“It doesn’t matter why. I don’t give the people I
know
valuable insight into my psyche. You’re the new kid. You have no chance.”

“I’m going try to have a conversation with you anyway. Are you ready?”

I think if I roll my eyes any more this year, they might get stuck in my head, so I refrain. But not rolling my eyes leaves me with an anxious feeling, so I hand Jake Bailey’s leash and start snapping my fingers.

“So, Parker,” he begins. “How are you?”

“Oh my God.” I give in to the eye roll. “I’m fine, Jake. How are you?”

“I’m good. Getting used to St. Peter’s and stuff.”

“Why bother? You’ll just be leaving soon anyway.”

“I believe in making the most of my time,” he says. We head farther down the street. “It hasn’t been easy. I used to go to a public school and now I’m stuck in your stupid uniforms. And the praying drives me crazy.”

“You and everyone else.” I stop snapping my fingers and cross my arms. It’s chilly out. “Do you know how much harder it is to become popular when you have to wear a uniform? You can’t rely on being fashionable to help you climb the social ladder. Becky and Jessie and I had a hell of a time working our way up in those uniforms.”