Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend (8 page)

That’s a really nice way to treat the guy who helped you through
your father’s funeral and the girl who just gave you your identity,
one
of the voices in my head says.

I tell it to shut up.
The stage door opens again and this time Mr. Donnelly sticks
his head out. “Ready for your close-up, ladies? It’s time to
act,
”
he says, looking at Holly expectantly.
“We’re ready, Mr. Donnelly!” Holly says. She leaps up and
holds out her hand again. I take it and she pulls me up with surprising strength for someone who is the size of a pixie. Before
I can make a decision about whether or not a girl with an oldschool rock star’s voice should bother continuing with an audition for musical theater, Holly drags me into the auditorium and
the door behind us closes with an appropriately dramatic thud.

Conrad is waiting for me at my locker before homeroom the
next morning. My stomach instantly feels like it’s tying itself into
a really complicated nautical knot. I know how much he doesn’t
like me, so I’m pretty sure that whatever this is, it’s not going to
be pleasant. It irritates me to be nervous about talking to a freshman, but this isn’t just any freshman. This is a freshman with
the knife-sharp confrontation skills of a Deladdo.

“This should be fun,” Tracy says as she holds up her phone and
snaps a photo of Conrad, ignoring the people around us who are
pretending not to pose for her but totally are. I swear, she takes
about fifty pictures in the time it takes to get from one class to
our lockers to our next class. When we walk down the halls
now, Tracy basically navigates through the lens of her phone as
she snaps a continuous stream of photos, and she never bumps
into anyone because the sea of humanity just parts for her. She’s
mastered the art of making her way through a crowd of people
clamoring for her attention without making eye contact but still
managing to seem gracious and charming.

I guess you could say she’s a natural.
As we get closer, Conrad pushes off my locker and turns to
face me like we’re about to have a showdown. I half expect him to
reach for a pistol on his belt. Fortunately, he just crosses his arms.

“Did you do this?” he demands.
“Good morning, Conrad!” Tracy chirps. “How are you? ‘Oh,
I’m fine, Tracy, thanks for asking. Nice to see you. Oh, and hey,
thanks so much for driving me home from that party a few weeks
ago—I really appreciate it.’”
Conrad looks at Tracy for a solid five seconds. “Are you done?”
“I think I made my point,” she answers.
“Did you do this?” he repeats, looking back and forth between
both of us.
“Do what?” I ask as I reach past him to spin the dial on my
lock. He juts his chin toward one of Ms. Maso’s posters announcing the tolerance assembly as my locker door pops open and two
textbooks fall on my foot, capturing exactly what it’s like to have
a conversation with Conrad Deladdo first thing in the morning.
“If you’re asking if we told anyone what happened to you at
the party, then no, we didn’t,” Tracy replies.
I pick up the books and swap them for the ones I need. When
I slam the door shut, I see that Conrad is waiting to hear what
I have to say. He looks too skinny, and he has big circles under
his eyes.
Tracy is checking out Conrad’s clothes, and that’s when I
notice that he looks different than he’s looked recently. He’s
not doing the blending-in, jeans/T-shirts/sneaker thing he was
doing on the first day of school. His outfit is more like the one
he wore to the party—blue polo shirt with the collar flipped up,
red skinny jeans and those loafers Tracy was so worried about.
“Ask Ms. Maso about the assembly. It’s her deal,” I finally answer.
“How do you know that?”
“I saw her putting up the posters yesterday.”
“Did she say anything?” He’s being so intense that I take a
step back.
“Hey, you guys!” Kristin comes bouncing down the hall toward us as if we are her dearest friends in a cool-looking floral
shirt and super-dark jeans with white stitching. It’s the first time
I’ve seen Kristin in anything other than a cheerleading outfit—
aside from her demonic fairy costume last Halloween—in over
a year. She stops right in front of us and puts a hand to her hip
as she twists slightly away from Tracy’s camera, to make sure
she looks as thin as possible in the photo.
“Ooh, nice one, Kristin. Is that shirt Rodarte?” Tracy says,
genuine excitement in her voice.
When Kristin shrugs, Tracy reaches behind her to check the
label, then circles her, continually switching the orientation of
her phone to get different shots. I have to hand it to Tracy—she
is an equal-opportunity photographer. If she likes the clothes,
she’ll take the picture—it doesn’t matter who the person is. Although I haven’t seen her take any pictures of Lena or Matt yet.
Conrad gives my shoulder a sharp little shove. “Focus. Did
she say anything?”
His attitude is supremely annoying, like we’re all just here to
serve him. But in a weird way, I’m sort of impressed. He’s trying
to take charge of what’s happening to him, which is a pretty far
cry from what I did last year.
Conrad is never what I think he’s going to be.
“She said there are rumors going around about the party—”
Before I can finish, he cuts me off.
“I can tell by the look on your face that that’s not all she—”
I cut him off right back. “You want to know or not?”
A few people turn to see what’s going on. Conrad looks at
the staring faces of our fellow students and for a second, I see
the kid he turned into when his mother was holding open the
door, waiting for him to come inside, wondering why her son
had come home early soaking wet when he was supposed to be
having fun at a party. Conrad mutters an apology, but just as
quickly, he makes a sarcastic little gesture to indicate that I now
have the floor.
“Chen wants to find out what happened at the party because
you quit the swim team.” I hesitate for just a second before adding, “Even though people are saying you’re the best athlete the
school has seen in a while.”
I recognize the look on Conrad’s face. I think I probably
looked pretty similar when Holly said I sang like a rock star.
If you’re not used to compliments, they can really mess you
up for a minute.
“Fuck,” he says to his loafers.
Tracy chooses that moment to take a step away from Kristin
and snap another picture of Conrad. He spins around. “What
are you
doing?
”
“It’s for The Sharp List,” she says, in an isn’t-it-obvious voice.
“You’ve got style, Conrad, whether you want to admit it or not.
I want to feature you—”
“Do. Not. Even. Think it.”
“It would be a great way to revamp your—”
The warning bell, followed by the sound of locker doors being
slammed in unison, drowns out her last words, which is just as
well because Conrad was about to unleash some ugly fury.
“Don’t say
anything
to Principal Chen if—”
Conrad spots someone behind me and shoves past me. He
literally uses the back of his hand against my upper arm to get
me out of his way. “Did you get my text?”
I turn to see who Conrad ditched me for in midsentence, and
there’s Jamie. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in his army jacket
since last spring. I love that jacket on him—I want to check all
the pockets for clues. He doesn’t even have to be in it.
Although that would be nice.
“Yeah, man. What’s up?” Jamie says to Conrad, sounding confused. Before Conrad pulls him off to the side so they can have
a private conversation, Jamie spots me and winks. It throws me
off guard. I try to be all 2.0 and I wink back, which a) is not
what you’re supposed to do when someone winks at you and
b) looks super lame if you can’t actually wink. Which I can’t, I
just found out.
I end up blinking at him. Fortunately, he doesn’t see because
he’s already deep in conversation with Conrad, who is jabbing a
finger at Ms. Maso’s poster on the wall.
“That boy is rude,” Tracy says as she opens her locker and slips
her phone into the chic little leopard-print holster she affixed to
the inside of the door.
“He’s just freaking out.”
“That doesn’t give him a reason to be rude.” She checks her
makeup in the mirror above the holster, slams the door shut,
loops her arm through mine and starts pulling me along to class
when Jamie calls out, “Rose, wait up for a second.”
I turn around just in time to see fury overtaking Conrad’s
face. He shoots a disgusted look at me, smacks the locker behind Jamie’s head, snarls, “Thanks for nothing” and stalks off.
Jamie runs a hand through his hair as if he’s at a loss. Then he
starts toward me.
Tracy disentangles her arm from mine. “Maybe you’re finally
going to find out when His Highness has time for you,” she whispers, and then she’s heading to Camber’s class, which is what I
should be doing if I don’t want to get another detention from him.
“Hey,” Jamie says.
“Hey, yourself.” Lame. So very, very lame.
“I’ll walk you,” he says. We start off down the hall and I feel
my face getting red before I realize why. It’s not like we’re holding hands, and no one is looking at us or anything, but this is
the first time that I’ve been seen with Jamie Forta in school.
I have to act like it’s nothing or I’m going to end up being the
biggest dork in history.
“Is Conrad okay?” I say.
“He thinks that assembly is about him.”
“What does he want you to do about it?”
Jamie shakes his head and shrugs. He turns into the stairwell
to the second floor and I follow him.
“I thought…I guess I thought Conrad didn’t really like you,
or that he was mad at you.”
“Conrad’s always mad at me.”
“But he still texts you when he needs something?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucky you,” I joke.
Jamie says nothing.
We’re outside Camber’s room before I realize that I never told
Jamie what my next class was. He turns to me with such a serious expression on his face that I have no idea what’s coming
next. “I have Saturday off,” he says.
“You do?”
“You free?”
“Yes!” I say.
Jamie cracks half a smile. “Don’t you have to check your schedule or something?”
“Yes. I do. I’ll check my schedule and get back to you.” I try to
pass off embarrassment as sass, which is about as easy as winking when you don’t know how. The last bell rings, and Camber
comes to close the door.
“Mr. Forta,” he says by way of greeting, looking from me to
Jamie.
“Hey, Camber.”
“Ready for today?” Camber asks him pointedly.
Jamie nods. “Yeah.”
“Good,” Camber replies. “You joining us, Rose?” I must have
a weird expression on my face because Camber says, “Yes, Ms.
Zarelli, I am not the sole property of sophomore English. I do
teach other students.” Camber gazes at me over the top of his
cool glasses to emphasize the point.
I’ve become suspicious of Camber’s glasses recently. I think
he wears them to try to be less appealing to his students, but
based on the group of hot seniors who just cruised by and waggled their fingers at him—eliciting only a scowl, which just made
them throw back their flat-ironed hair and laugh—I think it’s
going to take more than glasses for him to be less appealing.
“Take your seat, Rose,” he says a bit more urgently.
Jamie heads back down the staircase. “Text me about Saturday,” he calls over his shoulder.
Camber raises an eyebrow at me and I blush so fiercely I feel
like I’m covered in sunburn.
As I walk into the classroom, I replay how uncool I was with
Jamie. I might as well have said to him that I have no life, and
I’m always free, just sitting around, waiting for him to call.
But I’m too excited to really care about my dorkiness.
It’s finally happening.
All will be revealed.
Saturday.

SITTING ACROSS THE TABLE FROM JAMIE AT MORTON’S
is a surreal experience for a bunch of reasons. First, we’re on a
date, I think. That’s the weirdest thing. Second, we’re on a date
in public, which means that people can see us—together. Third,
Robert is our painfully attentive waiter, which wasn’t supposed to
happen because last I heard, he got fired over the summer when
the owner got busted for hiring underage servers and undocumented workers, and paying them all under the table.

But the most surreal thing of all is that tonight is the night I’ve
been waiting for, when I will finally have the opportunity to ask
Jamie questions—about Regina, about the summer, about us.

If there is an
us.
I just need a little more…confidence, I guess? I’m having trouble getting the words out. Probably because Jamie’s quieter than
usual.
And that might be my fault.
I told Jamie that he didn’t have to pick me up, and I asked
Tracy to drop me at the restaurant. It didn’t have anything to do
with him—I just didn’t want to deal with Mom. She’s known for
a while that I like Jamie but she and I are in a weird place now,
not the halfway decent place we were in when she agreed to let
me go to the junior prom. Back then, she was so happy we were
talking to each other again that she didn’t dare say no, especially
since I’d just gotten in that fight and I was in a somewhat “precarious emotional state,” I believe is how she put it.
I didn’t lie to her, exactly. I told her I was spending the night
at Tracy’s, which is true—I’m going over there later to help with
the redesign of The Sharp List site.
It’s just that I’ll be out with Jamie first.
So far, my attempts at conversation have yielded a few threesentence discussions—with two of the sentences being mine—
on the beginning of school, and how nice the weather has been.
His one sentence, which consisted of a single word, probably
doesn’t even qualify as a sentence. So I’ve temporarily given up
on conversation, and now I’m pretending not to watch him as I
try to decide if I should apologize or just not say anything.
Robert keeps interrupting my decision-making process by
coming over every minute or two to fill our water glasses, check
our bread basket, take our order, double-check on our order and
swap out a perfectly clean knife for a less clean knife, so he can
come back later and swap it out again.
Watching Jamie Forta is never a bad thing—he looks really
handsome tonight in a dark green shirt that kind of matches his
hazel-gold eyes. But I did not come here tonight just to watch
him. I came to talk to him.
Rose 2.0 gives me a sharp kick and tells me to get off my ass—
apologize or ask him a question, but
do
something.
“Remember last Thanksgiving, when I was here with my mom
and we saw you?”
He nods.
“That was after Peter told me he’d asked you to look out for me.”
Robert arrives with our burgers. “Need anything else?” he
asks, directing the question at Jamie. When Jamie shakes his
head, Robert turns to me. “Everything okay here?”
He sounds like he’s playing a detective in a black-and-white
movie, talking to a damsel in distress who needs to be rescued
from the man she’s with.
“I’ll let you know after I have a chance to
taste
it,” I answer,
trying to subliminally convey to him that yes, I am on a date
with Jamie Forta of my own free will, and yes, he should please
leave
now.
When Robert finally does tear himself away, Jamie takes a
bite of burger. While he’s chewing, he unbuttons his cuffs and
rolls up his sleeves like he’s about to take on some big, heavy
task. “That was when you found out I knew your mom,” he says.
I freeze with my burger midway to my mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Robert standing near the bar, watching. I
ignore him, and put my burger down without taking a bite, trying to figure out exactly what I should say next to make sure I
don’t blow this.
“Is that what you wanted to explain tonight?” I ask. “Why you
had to see my mom?”
Jamie runs a hand through his hair and stares at the table for
a few seconds. “Yeah. Well, no. I wanted to tell you about mine.”
I wait. I wait some more.
“That note I wrote. About being different. I was talking about
her.”
The noise level in Morton’s is rising by the second as people
fill up the bar to watch some game. The sound makes it hard
for me to keep up with Jamie, which involves trying to fill in all
the blanks. Sometimes when Jamie talks, his sentences have big,
giant gaps right where information should be.
“So, it’s your mom who makes you different?”
He picks up his fork and presses it into the tablecloth, making an indentation pattern as he tries to figure out what to say.
“She was sick. She had some things wrong with her.”
Last Valentine’s Day, Jamie and I sat in his car up on the golf
course, and he told me that his mother had died in an institution
of some kind. He never told me anything more than that—at the
time, I thought it was obvious that he didn’t want to, so I didn’t
ask. But now I think maybe you’re supposed to ask, so that the
other person knows it’s okay to talk about it.
I’m sitting as still as I possibly can as if any sudden movement
would stop what’s happening. “What kind of things?”
He pushes the fork into the tablecloth a little harder, then
picks it up and turns it ninety degrees and does it again. “She
heard voices and stuff. Growing up, she did weird things. That’s
why my dad sent her away. He thought she was gonna do something. To me. That kinda shit, it makes me different. From normal people. Like you.”
He turns the fork one more time. I look down and see that
Jamie has made a little house using the fork-tine indentations.
The first time we ever talked, he was drawing his dream house on
the back cover of his notebook. I watched his hands as he drew,
thinking how beautiful they were. They still are—that hasn’t
changed. What has changed is my idea of how Jamie sees himself.
“You think
you’re
the one who’s not normal? Seriously?” I ask.
He gazes at me steadily, as if daring me to tell him differently.
“There’s nothing normal about me, Jamie. I’m totally weird—”
“That’s not the kind of normal I mean.”
Robert appears and looks down at my plate with the intact
burger. “Is something wrong with your food?” I shake my head,
hoping that if I don’t use words, he’ll just disappear. There’s a
long pause, and then he says, a little grudgingly, “You sounded
good yesterday.” He turns to Jamie. “Did she tell you about her
audition?” He sounds like he’s accusing Jamie of something, of
not knowing something about me that’s super important.
Jamie looks at Robert like he dropped in from another planet.
“Robert, we’re in the middle of something,” I say, trying to politely tell him to get lost. I am finally—
finally
—really talking to
Jamie. The last thing I want to do is talk about musical theater.
Jamie stands up. “I’ll be back,” he says to me.
I want to throttle Robert. It’s like he could tell that Jamie and
I were having a totally crucial moment so he came over specifically to mess it up. He fills up our water glasses for the seventh
time and hovers. Having no desire to make anything easy for
him right now, I don’t look up.
“Rose, what are you doing? He’s still seeing Regina,” Robert
whispers. “I see them together all the time.”
I want to smack the bottom of the pitcher and send all that
ice water flying, even though I’m supposed to be keeping my
violent urges firmly under control.
“Robert, why did you lie and tell Holly that I loved you?”
He looks down into the pitcher and swirls the ice around,
and for a second it seems like he’s going to try to deny it or put
some kind of spin on it. But maybe Robert’s been working on
keeping his lying under control the way I’ve been managing my
violent urges.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
“She’s, like, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of girlfriend.”
“No,
really?
” he says.
“You tell her, or I will.”
“Tell her what?” Panic crosses his face.
“That I was never in love with you and that you have a problem telling the truth if it doesn’t fit into your version of how you’d
like the world to be.”
Robert’s blue eyes narrow at me. “In my version of how the
world should be, you’re going out with someone who doesn’t already have a girlfriend.”
I clench my jaw. “They’re not together anymore.”
“So why is she always with him?”
“If you would just—” Jamie is heading back from the bathroom. “Please, Robert. Leave us alone, okay?”
“I don’t want you to get hurt, Rosie,” he says.
It’s not lost on me that Robert hasn’t called me Rosie in a
long time. But that doesn’t change the fact that I still want him
to leave.
“Go. Away.”
Robert fills up Jamie’s glass so high that Jamie won’t be able
to pick it up without spilling water everywhere. When Jamie arrives, he stands next to his chair, waiting for Robert to go.
Robert says, “Ask her about her audition.”
Jamie gives me a questioning glance and I shake my head as
if to say it’s not worth discussing. Which it isn’t, in the context
of what we’ve been talking about.
When it seems that Robert plans to stay indefinitely, Jamie
says, “Is it legal for you to work here?”
Without another word, Robert takes his pitcher and heads off
to refill glasses somewhere else. Jamie watches him and then sits.
“You auditioned for something?” he asks.
“I probably didn’t get it,” I say, trying to shake the horrifying
memory of the dance audition. Apparently, watching a video of
dance steps doesn’t actually qualify a person to perform those
steps in an audition. Who knew?
“What was it?”
“Just the school musical. So—” I start, trying to figure out
how to get us back to where we were.
“You’re a singer?” he asks. Surprise lights up his eyes and a
real, unguarded smile spreads across his face before he can stop
it. It takes everything I have not to tell him how beautiful he is.
“Um, I…am?” I answer. “Holly Taylor says I am. She’s Robert’s girlfriend, and her dad is a real actor, so I guess she would
know. She says I sound like an old-school rock star.”
I’m embarrassed telling him all this, but there’s something real
about saying out loud, “I am a singer.” It’s like it came true the
instant I said it, and I feel different by, like, ten degrees. Maybe
even fifteen.
“Cool, Rose,” Jamie says. I watch the surprise in his eyes dim,
and it’s replaced by sadness—I don’t get what’s happening. The
people at the bar suddenly cheer—someone just scored in the
game—and the noise level is overwhelming for a minute. Jamie
turns to look at the TV but I don’t think he really cares about
the game.
“Jamie? Can I ask you a question?”
He turns back and lifts his glass, managing to take a sip of
water without spilling any. My stomach tightens into a little
knot. Here we go.
“What’s the deal with you and Regina?” I ask the question as
purely as I can, with no anger, or jealousy, or judgment. I just
want to know the truth.
He answers as if he’s been waiting for this question. “Nothing.”
I tilt my head. “Really?”
“She’s with Parrina.” A shadow crosses Jamie’s face. “You know
that.”
“You two aren’t…?” He shakes his head. “Conrad said you
were in summer school together and that…you…”
“That I what?” he asks, sounding mildly amused by the prospect of hearing what Conrad said.
“That you wanted her back.”
“He’s just messing with you.”
“So you don’t?”
“No.”
“Does she want
you
back?” He shrugs like it doesn’t make a
difference one way or the other. “I mean, she’s with Anthony just
to piss you off, right?”
Jamie looks surprised—maybe it never occurred to him that
I spend almost as much time thinking about Regina’s motivations as his—but I’m on a roll and I’m not going to stop now.
“Jamie, what did Anthony say to you at that hockey game?”
Thinking about it makes him angry. His jaw clenches like he’s
grinding his teeth. “Something about my mom. She’d been gone
a month or something. I lost it.”
I think back to that moment, which I remember thinking was
sort of exciting. I’m not sure what that says about me. Jamie was
flying across the ice toward the goal with Anthony right behind
him. Suddenly, Jamie just spun around, lifted his hockey stick
and hit Anthony in the neck. Anthony went down, sliding across
the red centerline frozen into the ice. I can still hear the sound
of the whistle and the ref throwing Jamie out of the game. Anthony had to be carried off the ice, and he went to the hospital
in an ambulance. I learned that day from my dad that professional hockey players have been killed by what Jamie had done
to Anthony. If you do it with the intent to cause injury, you’re
out of the game—and in this case, off the team.
“Parrina’s shit,” Jamie says.
“Why’s she with him?”
Jamie starts making more indentations with his fork on the
other side of his plate. “I don’t know. But I gotta keep an eye out.”
My inability to understand is frustrating me. “After what she
did to you, why do you care?”
Jamie drops the fork. “I owe the Deladdos.”
“Because they let you live with them?”
Jamie leans forward. “I’m gonna tell you something that’s private.” He lowers his voice—I can barely hear him over the bar.
He waits until I understand that I’m not ever supposed to repeat
what he’s about to tell me. I nod. “Mr. Deladdo hit Conrad and
Regina and their mom. This summer, I made him stop.”
Everything turns upside down in an instant.
I close my eyes.
I picture Conrad and Regina getting beaten by a man whose
face I can’t see.
I see Jamie lifting his stick to hit Anthony; Anthony grabbing
Regina; Conrad getting shoved into the pool.
I see my dad on the desert floor, fractured like a broken mirror dropped from a great height.
The last thing I see is a girl, flying across a track and crashing
into another girl, knocking her to the ground with every ounce
of strength she can muster.
It’s me. I did that. I did that to someone whose father hits her.
It’s in me, too.
I push my plate away and watch my hand as it slides across
the table to touch Jamie’s fingers. “How did you make him stop?”
I whisper. I don’t understand how Jamie could make a grown
man—an abusive man—just up and leave his family.
“I held a gun on him.”
“You…” My mind goes blank and I can’t finish the sentence.
“He was looking for an excuse to leave—it didn’t take much.”
“A gun?” I gape like a moron.
“My father’s.”
“Does he know?”
“He handed it to me himself after I told him what was going
on over there.”
“Your
dad
gave you…? Was it— Were there bullets in it?”
“I don’t know.”
I’m freaked out about a lot of things, like the fact that Jamie’s
father would just hand over his weapon to his son, loaded or not.
But somehow, I’m not freaked out that Jamie has held someone
at gunpoint. He looks so guilty, I want to put my arms around
him right in the middle of the restaurant.