Spiral (21 page)

A loud pounding on my door jolts me out of a deep sleep at two o’clock in the morning. I sit up and look around in a haze, wondering if maybe I was just dreaming. But then the knocks come again, and I know it has to be the girls outside my door, up to no good. I pull my pillow over my head and try to ignore it.

I hear Cherie’s voice calling, “Jack, open up!”

There’s no way I’m falling for that. For all I know, she could have her minions, including those guys, waiting to ambush me. I lay as still as I can in bed, hoping she will give up and just go away.

“Ja-ack!” she whines. “Wake up! I want to talk to you!”

I hear a familiar, inebriated slur in her voice, and I know Drunk Cherie is waiting on the other side of that door. “No, go to sleep!” I finally shout back.

“Jack, come
onnnn
!” she whines again. I groan. I get out of bed, shuffle toward the door, and lean against it.

“What do you want?” I ask quietly.

She wiggles the knob. “Unlock the door please? I want to talk.”

I scoff, “No way. I’m not falling for that.” I can picture those three dudes standing behind her, waiting for me to be dumb enough to unlock the door so they can pounce on me and do her bidding.

“Jack, I promise I’m not going to do anything. I’m by myself. Please just open up?” She’s genuinely begging, and I want to believe her.

Resisting the temptation to let her in, I reply, “It’s two in the morning and some of us have to go to school tomorrow, Cherie. I know that’s a foreign concept to you.”

“Har har, Jack,” she grumbles. “C’mon, it’ll only take a second. Don’t be such a baby.” She’s not going to let up, but I am not going to be jerked around tonight either.

I sigh and look around my dark room, catching sight of my baseball bat in a far corner. I retrieve it and unlock the door slowly.

“Yay!” When she opens the door and sees me standing with the bat in my hand, she erupts with giggles. “What are you doing?”

“Where are your little boyfriends?” I demand, peering behind her. The smell of vodka and chlorine oozes from the top of her head and wafts into my room. She looks dry, but her hair is stringy, and she’s wrapped in a towel that’s cinched across her chest. Two thin strings are tied loosely behind her neck, and I have to stop myself from immediately picturing what she’s wearing under that towel.

She giggles again and pokes my side. “Ooh, someone was watching us! Jealous, Mr. Hansen?”

“Stop.” I jerk back and push her hand away, thankful it’s dark enough that she can’t see me blush. “I’m not jealous,” I grunt. “I just don’t want some guys lurking in the bushes, waiting to beat me up in your honor.”

She laughs loudly then. “Oh, darn, I didn’t even think of that!” She notes my scowl and purses her lips. “I’m
kidding
, Jack. And they’re not my boyfriends. They’re just some friends, and they’re gone, okay?” She gestures grandly out to the pool for emphasis.

I nod and relax, realizing she really is alone. I step back to allow her inside and set the bat aside.

She sweeps her hand along the side of the door and finds the wall switch, flicking it up and bathing us in harsh yellow light. I have to scrunch my eyes closed against it and quickly turn it off.

“Too bright.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Just tell me what you want, Cherie.”

She wanders into the room, her eyes rolling, ignoring me. This close, I can smell the alcohol on her stronger than before. “They sure did change this place for you.” She stumbles over something, maybe her own feet, and I reach out and catch her before she falls. Her towel slips off of her body and pools at her feet. She squeals and twists inside of my arms, her fingernails clawing into my flesh while she finds her footing. Feeling the soft, bare skin of her back against my stomach makes me dizzy.

“You’re drunk,” I grumble, promptly stepping back and releasing her. She laughs again.

“Maybe just a little.” Her fingers squeeze together, and she squints one eye like a pirate.

“Cherie, I have school tomorrow,” I remind her again, and she waves me off, making her way to my bed. I should be used to seeing her in a barely there bikini by now, but I can’t stop myself from staring at the perfect lines of her body. She plants herself on top of the mattress and looks at me with doe eyes.

“Can you close the door?”

Jim’s voice resonates in my ears. No guests after eleven. No one in here we
don’t know about
. But does Cherie count?

“Jack?”

I’m uneasy, but I do it. It doesn’t help that she pats the mattress beside her, insinuating I should sit down. I comply with even more hesitation, making sure there is plenty of space between us. She turns to face me and curls her legs beneath her body.

“What did you want to talk about?” I ask as patiently as I can. My adrenaline is pumping, and I’m kind of nervous about being alone in a room with her when she’s drunk. The last time this happened, I spent the night trapped in her grasp.

She shrugs. “Nothing. I just don’t want to go back upstairs.”

My shoulders drop. “Are you kidding me?”

She is hard to see, her face only slightly visible in the dark, but I can feel her eyes boring into mine. “No.”

“Cherie, come on!” I am beyond annoyed now, and I won’t do anything to mask it. “This thing about the room has got to stop –”

“I know, it’s not that,” she mumbles, fumbling with her inebriated speech. “I’m sorry. I just – I can’t go back up there right now. I can’t be down the hall from…”

Her words fade away, and I am too irritated to put it together. “From?” I’m waiting for her to say my sister, or her cousins. Instead, she takes in a deep breath and spews out the reason in one long exhale.

“From where they used to sleep!” She’s a puddle of tears and sobs suddenly, and the anger dissolves from my body. I stare at her, paralyzed by the crying and immediately feeling like the biggest jerk in the world as it all starts to make sense.

Cherie doesn’t covet this room because she wants to avoid my family; she wants to avoid the room of her deceased parents that sits just across from her own.

“I – I’m sorry,” I murmur weakly. I don’t know what else to say, so I reach out and pat her shoulder awkwardly. She’s hysterical, holding her stomach and whimpering things like, “Oh God!” and “It hurts so much!” I want to call for my mom because I’m not equipped to handle this outburst.

Without warning, she crawls into my lap the way Britney would, and she buries her face into my neck. I wonder why this is always happening to me, why she cracks and breaks down with me when we are alone but acts like a cold-blooded monster whenever there are other people around. I can’t keep up with her mood swings.

“Maybe you should talk to my mom,” I say.

“No, I don’t want to. Promise you won’t say anything to her, Jack,” she whimpers.

“But, Cherie –”

“Please, Jack?” I fall silent. “I don’t want them to worry.”

My logical conscience starts to scold me.
This is a big deal. I shouldn’t be the only person to be privy to this information, and I’m certainly not the right person to help her through it. She needs adults. She might need professional help.

We sit like that for a long time as she sobs and sniffles and cries, and I beat myself up for not knowing what to say and focusing more on how much of her skin is pressed to mine. My body begins to convince my mind that this is nothing terrible.

Maybe she wants to be my friend now, I think hopefully. I can do this; I can be there for her. I have been before.

Then I remind myself that she is drunk, and it is my duty as a gentleman and a human to just be quiet and supportive when she falls apart like this. Soon enough, she will work it all out of her system and go back to hating me and smacking me with her words or her hand.

I feel her grow heavier against me. “Cherie?” She’s calm and still, and I think it’s possible she’s passed out. “Cherie, you should get to bed.”

Her lips move against the skin of my neck while she mumbles, “Can I just stay here?” I get a chill, and the sensation spreads through my whole body.

Bad idea
. I try to urge her off of my lap and onto her feet. “Cherie, that’s not a good idea – “

“Please, Jack? I’m just so tired,” she says, and she snuggles against my chest. I grind my teeth against giving in, which would be an easy thing to do when my whole body is determined to say yes.

“Cherie – ”

Her hand stumbles up to my mouth and covers it. “It’s okay.” Her fingertips brush my lips, and I tremble in a dangerous place. “Just for tonight.”

Every neuron in my brain is telling me this is going to get me in trouble, either with Jim and Mom or with her. I have to say no. But then Cherie twists out of my lap and collapses against my pillow.

Cherie is almost naked. In my bed. My brain fries, and I look away quickly.

“Fine, but just for tonight, okay?” I say to the floor. She mumbles something incoherent in response, and curls up beneath my comforter. I look around the room, spy the couch, and know I should go to sleep there instead of next to her.

But she’s pulling on my elbow, urging me to lie down next to her. “Come here, Jack,” she insists.

“I’m going to stay on the couch,” I tell her, urgently pulling away.

“No, please stay here?” she pleads. Stupidly, I listen. As I lie back, she clutches my arm and presses her face to my shoulder. Her cheek is still damp with tears. She murmurs, “I don’t want to be alone,” and slips out of consciousness.

I stare up at my ceiling, my thoughts spinning wildly and my heartbeat fast. For all the things I hate about her, I’ll never be able to ignore how unbelievably gorgeous she is.

But I can’t let the physical attraction I have for her dominate my rational thought.

This is dumb. This is such a dumb chance I’m taking.

And she’s a mess. I know I have to tell someone, but then she will get in trouble for drinking, and she will really have a reason to hate me. I don’t want her to hate me anymore.

I pull the sheet of the bed around her to cover her and keep her warm. And I tuck it in the small space between our bodies to keep our skin from touching, because I don’t think I can physically handle it much longer.

One night, I convince myself. This is just for one night, and this will never happen again.

But when I wake up the next morning to my agonizing alarm clock, I look over and see that she is gone. I don’t know when she left or how she made it out of the room without waking me. For some reason, I’m disappointed in myself for missing her exit. I’m irritated that I fell asleep at all. Most of all, I kind of miss her.

Correction: Worst of all, I
do
miss her.

I
t’s easy to be the new student in September, when everyone is just getting back from the summer. New cliques are forming because so-and-so suddenly got hot, or they earned credibility with a sports team, or their parents bought them an awesome new car. You can completely change your position in the high school hierarchy, like plotting a winning Jenga move. It’s a fresh start for anyone who puts their piece in the right place.

But February? You’re just glaringly, embarrassingly new when someone plops you into a pre-calculus class in February. First, it takes me twenty minutes to find the door to my class, which is not inside of a hallway; it’s out in a courtyard because this is California, and everything in California has to be different from New York. And the door looks like every other door in the courtyard. Then, class is stopped when I enter, and I’m introduced to my class as Jonathan Hansen, because that’s my real name, and I have to politely say, “I go by Jack,” before the whole class starts yelling out “John!” or, worse, “Johnny!” So now I’m late, flustered and holding up class to repeat my name to a group of kids who couldn’t care less about my name because they’re not going to talk to me anyway.

“Ah, well, welcome Jack,” the pony-tailed teacher says with a warm smile as he shakes my hand. “Just one second.” He shuffles inside of a cabinet and pulls out a thick textbook for me. There’s a low hum of whispers among the waiting kids, and I try not to meet any of their gazes.

The teacher, oblivious, hands me the book and a syllabus. “This is your book. We’re on page 352 right now. You can find a seat.”

The smile is warm but the words leave me cold, sending me into a blind search. The class stays silent as they wait for me to find my seat. I feel twenty pairs of eyes on me and wish the teacher would keep teaching and let me do my thing without an audience. I finally find an empty seat in the back, and of course it’s too small for me, but I have no choice but to sit and try to stretch out my body without invading someone else’s space. The desk makes a deafening noise as I scrape it backward to give my legs room and not put my feet anywhere near the expensive-looking bag that belongs to the girl in front of me. She swivels her head to look at me and then my feet, as if she’s thinking,
“He’d better not be stepping on my bag!”

But that’s not what she’s thinking. Instead, she whispers, “Are you
the
Jack Hansen? Like,
Cherie Belle’s Jack?”

I stare at her dumbly. That just happened. And it’s only first period.