The compliment caught me off guard.
“Are you kidding?” I squawked in response. “They’re weird,” and I lifted the book so he couldn’t see me anymore.
It seems dangerous, this development of something inside me that’s highly reactive to Zan Macklin. It makes me…want.
Except—and I’d never admit it to anyone because I feel stupid about it, but—I can’t imagine our differences in background not mattering to the point where we could really be friends, let alone anything else.
I push the drawer closed—without my finger in it this time—just as the door chimes.
“Hiya, gorgeous!” Jess beams like the frickin’ North Star as she bounces in.
Can’t help but smile back. “Hey, Jess.”
She props her elbows on the counter and sets her chin in her hands.
I look past her. “No Finesse? What is this, the apocalypse?”
She sighs.
“Sweet mother of Mary, you are pitiful.”
“You hush your mouth.”
I laugh. “You know it’s true.”
“Mm-hmm. You’ll get there soon enough.”
Boom. Just that quick, the lid on the box full of crap I’m trying not to think about is blown not only off, but up into the air and across the damn room. “Ha!” Totally forced laugh. “Doubtful.”
“You’ll see,” she goes on, oblivious.
“I’ll, uh…take your word for it.”
And now I feel like an exposed nerve. This is the Jessica effect. Where being around Zan makes me want to dream, Jess exists as this itchy reminder of what life could look like if I did.
It’s uncomfortable.
She nods and stands upright. “So how are you? I was in the area and figured you were here, so I decided to drop by.”
The doorbell chimes again, and a group of pubescent boys pile in with the force of a freight train. The local middle school is named Pinckneyville, so the warm-ups they’re wearing have PMS BASKETBALL emblazoned across the front.
They smell like damp gorillas who all have athlete’s foot.
“Damn, girl!” the apparent ringleader says when he sees Jess. Voice cracks and everything.
“Oh God. Grow some pubic hair.”
I snort. Despite not knowing each other, it’s impossible not to like this girl.
As the PMS barbarians ransack the store—I see bags of chips flying through the air across two aisles—Jess goes on. “So how are things with Macklin?”
Ugh. I don’t want to talk about this.
And yet, I obviously do. I need to talk about it, in fact. I need a friend to talk about it—about this boy—with. I’m frickin’ seventeen years old.
I sigh. Look over her shiny blond hair, blushed cheeks, and brand-name clothes. Everything about Jessica Barlow seems perfect…until I remember her shower cap and secret cigaretting. Her chewed-to-nubs nails and scabbed-over cuticles.
Is she trustworthy, though? Her care for Zan seems genuine…and so does her interest in me.
And really, do I have any other options? It’s not like potential friends are falling from the sky….
“Jess, can I ask you something”—*look left, look right*—“in confidence?”
“Of course.”
“Do you ever feel…strange around Finesse or your other friends?”
She starts nibbling at her thumbnail. “Depends on what you mean by strange.”
“Like…out of place?”
Our eyes meet, and she smiles. “All the time, Rico.”
Just then, the funk of middle-school boy surges forward like a cloud of teargas. Jess barely steps aside in time to avoid being knocked over. I ring them up—holding my breath the whole time; $23.64 in soda and junk food—and the boy who can’t take his eyes off Jess passes me a credit card.
Figures.
“I’ll buy you a Sprite next time, beautiful.” He winks at Jess as they grab their bags from the counter and turn to leave.
“Go get your Pull-Up changed, twerp!”
I laugh as the door shuts behind them.
“What was I saying?” she asks.
“Feeling out of place?”
“Ah, yes. That. So Ness and I have been together for a year and a half, right?”
News to me, but okay. “Yeah…”
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Ask me how many times he’s been inside my apartment.”
“How many times has he—”
“Once. He’s only talked to Mom twice, and one of those was over the phone.”
Well dang. “Wow.”
“Right. Side note, I’ve never shared any of this with anybody besides him. If it gets out, I will come after you.”
I chuckle. “Duly noted.”
“So when I first made the cheerleading squad in ninth grade, I got thrust into this mostly white, upper-middle-class wonderland. All the other girls had two parents and lived in nice houses with canopy beds and shit. Me? I wound up in therapy and on antianxiety meds.”
Whoa. “Okay.”
“As a little kid, anytime I would complain about anything, my mom would bring up ‘the starving children in Africa,’ so I wound up feeling shitty about not having as much as everyone else, and then on top of that, feeling guilty for feeling shitty.”
My gaze drops to the counter as she basically reads my own life aloud to me.
“Halfway through freshman year, Micah—you know Micah Holloway? Tall, Blasian—”
“Physically perfect and filthy rich?” I say.
“Her feet are the stuff of nightmares, but don’t tell anybody I told you that.”
I laugh so hard, I almost choke.
“Anyway, she was supposed to come sleep over at the apartment we were living in then. The night before, I had a full-blown panic attack. Started seeing a shrink the next week. Still do a couple times a month now.”
“But doesn’t that get expensive?” I don’t mean to say that aloud, but there it is.
Why does she look like I just asked if the sky was made of cupcakes? “It’s covered by Medicaid.”
“Oh.”
Never woulda guessed Jessica Barlow was on public assistance.