Falling for Romeo (15 page)

“Plastic maybe?”

Jennifer wanted to slug him, but with Lacey looking on she had to protect her reputation. She settled for glaring.

Behind them, Lacey swung her hips. “John?” He didn’t look at Lacey because he was glaring into her eyes. “What?”

“Since my mom’s going to be schmoozing Chip for a while, I was wondering if you could give me a ride home?”

Her voice was sweeter than corn syrup. Jennifer sneered out a laugh. She gathered the rest of her things.

“I don’t have a car,” John told her.

“He’s grounded from it,” Jennifer informed Lacey, without sparing John a glance. She could tell he was k 0

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seething by the way his body drew tight next to her.

Smiling, she headed for the door. “As his next door neighbor I know these things.”

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Thirteen

There weren’t any lingering affects from the fainting.

Most of Jennifer’s suffering was due to the fact that the air at Pleasant View High School thickened with praise for John’s performance, Chip’s directorial efforts, and the quality of the production in general.

Oh, her fainting incident was up there on the hot-whisper-of-the-day list, but she took very little enjoyment for the notoriety. She wanted to hear how great she’d done as Juliet, not, “Did you really faint from John’s kiss?” Jennifer’s blood boiled.

She tucked the school newspaper under her arm and made her way to class. It didn’t matter that people she’d never met smiled at her with awe. She’d taken drama in school since junior high, and she’d auditioned for and made every play in the interim. She’d secured the coveted crown of Chip’s favorite. She was set to ride on a full drama scholarship in the college of her choice, if she didn’t choose English as a major instead.

Then John came along.

John who, from the inception of their lives as neighbors, had been racing her up the ladder to the top, and now stole the one crown she wore right off of her head.

For years she thought she was just imagining the competitive wall they were climbing. Her mother told her k

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she overreacted, part of the drama queen thing. Now, Jennifer knew that the wall was real.

“Great job last night.” Somebody tapped her shoulder in the mass of bodies in the hall. She turned around but didn’t know who the smiling blonde boy was.

“Thanks.”

She should enjoy this, but all she felt was the familiar simmering of ever-present jealousy whenever she and John were involved in anything together. She felt like the Grinch.

As she neared English she saw his dark hair like a black buoy bobbing in a sea of admirers. She heard his name, the high-pitch of girls’ laughter, and the low voices of his guy friends.

He wore a white tee shirt that made his smile dazzling, his dark hair like midnight, his eyes like golden moons. She didn’t stop at the adoring gathering but pushed past, going into the quiet of the class room.

Ms. Tingey was writing on the blackboard but she turned around when the door opened and noise filtered it. “Jenn. I’m surprised you’re here.”

“Why?” Jennifer dropped her books onto the desk with a thud.

“After your injury. Are you okay?”

“I just fainted.”

“I heard you were out for forty minutes.” Jennifer laughed. “Try forty seconds.” Ms. Tingey shook her head and finished writing the journal entry of the day:
Resolving conflict
Other students entered and laughter and noise from the group surrounding John lured Ms.Tingey to the door.

Jennifer watched through the long glass panel in the

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center of the door. Ms. Tingey went to the group and was soon laughing and talking just like the rest of them.

Jennifer sat at her desk with a sigh, her eyes settling on what Ms. Tingey had written on the blackboard. Her mind swam with fantasies of John falling off the face of the earth or being lost somewhere on safari or some other such event. That would rid her life of conflict quite nicely.

When the bell shrilled the boisterous group dispersed. John came into the room behind Ms.Tingey, both of them laughing about something.

Jennifer watched him through narrowed eyes, not expecting him to do anything but plant his butt in his chair. It surprised her when the first thing he did was look at her. She pinched her lips, forbidding them to smile.

Confusion shifted on his face. He sat down. Then he mouthed something to her. She wasn’t sure what it was, she was too annoyed to study his lips. If she did, she’d lose the anger and she was enjoying it too much.

“What?” she finally whispered after he’d tried twice to unobtrusively mouth a message to her.

The room went quiet.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I suppose you all heard about Jennifer’s accident during opening night last night,” Miss Tingey announced with all seriousness. Jennifer sat erect, pleased to have the spotlight.

“I was there,” somebody said. “You’d have never known anything was wrong.”

“Yeah. Way to go, Jenn.” The boy sitting across from her lifted his palm and waited for her to slap it. After she did, she sat back, ready to tell her side of the story.

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“An intense play.” Jessica linked fingers crusted with gnarly silver rings. “I totally cried at the end when John was completely into it. You rock.” Jennifer’s head jerked right. The spotlight now flashed on John. He sat casually in his chair, head dipping humbly every now and again, his cheeks infuriatingly pink. I’m surprised he has the grace to blush, Jennifer thought crossing her arms over her chest.

The conversation was all about John then, and Jennifer steamed. Finally, she raised her hand and Ms.Tingey called on her.

“You have to be prepared to improvise. Who knows what an unseasoned actor would do if something like that happened.”

Some of the class murmured in agreement, but for the most part, the comment ended the discussion centered on John and that left Jennifer with a smirk of satisfaction.

“Journal entry for today.” Ms. Tingey pointed to what she had scrawled on the board. “Five minutes and then we’ll discuss it.”

Jennifer quickly wrote about how she would eliminate the problem causing the conflict. Case in point,
an annoying neighbor = moving
. Her thoughts drifted to the fantasy. His family moving out, knowing she’d never have to take another rung up the ladder with John nipping at her heels.

She glanced over at him. His head tilted over the desk. He was deeply focused, writing. Jennifer was dying to know what he was writing about. What conflict would John Michaels have to deal with? his temporary lack of a vehicle? There were hundreds ready to jump at the

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opportunity to be seen giving John a ride anywhere. He had the usual family conflicts, even he wasn’t immune to that yet it seemed to her the world and everyone in it opened their arms to him.

“So how do we do it?” Ms. Tingey perched herself on the corner of her desk. “How do we resolve conflict?” Ms. Tingey corrected herself. “Let’s first look at
Pride
and Prejudice
since I know you’re all close to finishing it by now, right?” She held up her hands to quiet the mumblings. “How did Mr. Darcy resolve the conflict?”

“He was wealthy and socially powerful,” Jennifer said. “He had everything at his disposal to make Lydia’s life different, so he did.”

“But he did it for Elizabeth,” John added.

Their gazes locked across the room. Jennifer wondered why he chose to stare at her with a look she couldn’t figure out.

“So he resolved Lydia’s problems with money, something most of us don’t have the luxury of.” Miss Tingey walked in front of the room. “And, as Jennifer so astutely pointed out, he also used his social position.

Another extra most of us don’t have as part of our repertoire. What about his conflicts with Elizabeth?” Jessica raised her hand and Ms.Tingey nodded at her. “Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth finally ditched their pride and talked it out.”

“Pride was an issue for them both, wasn’t it, up until the very end,” Ms. Tingey said.

“There’s no substitute for communication,” John said. The class erupted into agreement. Jennifer looked over at him again. This time he was not looking at her.

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Jennifer knew all of the cars on her street and who they belonged to. It came from having spent the last ten years living in the same house. It also came from being a girl who noticed everything, like the random car driving by with wide-eyed girls trying to nonchalantly look at John’s house on a stalker cruise-by.

The fancy white Mercedes sitting in front of the Michaels’ house didn’t belong to anyone on the street.

Jennifer parked her car in her driveway. John’s grandparents both drove Toyota’s. She knew what his friends drove—and none of them drove a Mercedes. The license plate wasn’t from out of state.

Her curiosity was pricked.

She found Parker at the kitchen table doing homework, dipping Oreo’s in orange juice. “Where’s Mom?” If anyone knew what was going on at the Michaels’, it was her mother.

“Cleaning Amber up. She poured orange juice all over herself.”

Snatching an Oreo out of the plastic tray, Jennifer hummed the tune they danced to in the play, seeing John’s face in the corner of her mind. She took the stairs two at a time and found her mother on Amber’s bedroom floor with a wet washcloth rubbing Amber’s orange-stained face.

“Jefer!” Amber lifted her arms up.

“Hey, baby.” Crouching down, Jennifer took her sister into her arms. Her mother stuffed the washcloth into Jennifer’s palm.

“Finish, will you?” The request was more demanding

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than Jennifer was used to. Her mother stood, wiping her brow with the back of her hand.

“Something wrong?” Jennifer took another swipe at Amber’s face before concentrating on sticky little hands. The line between her mother’s brows warned her something was up.

“The Michaels may list their house.” Jennifer’s heart jumped to her throat and lodged there. Her hands, holding Amber’s, froze. “Why?” Her mother’s eyes glistened. Her mother loved Janice Michaels—the women were best friends. Jennifer’s heart ripped down the center with the news. She stood, clutching Amber to her hip. “Things still bad?” Maggie nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I wish there was something I could do.” Jennifer lowered Amber gently to the floor then put her arms around her mother, her own tears choking her throat. It had been financially hard for the Michaels’ for some time.

Maggie eased back from her daughter’s embrace and cupped her cheeks, smiling. “The stock market’s so crazy. It’s been hard for people to want to invest.”

“But he’s trustworthy,” Jennifer said.

“I know, I know. It’s just that nobody wants to trust the market right now. They’re all pulling out, sitting back and waiting. That leaves Mitchell with very little business.” For Jennifer, it would be easier being dropped into the darkness of the ocean, rather than hear the news.

Her brief fantasy of John moving out of her life vanished now with reality. She turned away so the tears she blinked back would not be seen. Her mother’s warm hand went to her shoulder.

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“Will they move?” The crack in Jennifer’s voice gave her away. John was moving. Her mind flashed with barbecues at sunset, hours swinging from the tire swing in his back yard, Christmas parties, birthday parties, his face out her window.

“If they have to, yes.”

“Where?”

“They haven’t talked about it, at least not that they’ve told us. But they need to lower their mortgage payment.”

When her mother brought her in for a hug she closed her eyes, feeling amazingly like a child, and wishing she was. Wishing she and John were children again.

“Want some dinner?” They walked arm-in-arm down to the kitchen with Amber at their heels. Jennifer’s stomach hollowed. She wasn’t hungry. She shook her head.

“How’s the show?”

Her mother was trying to take her mind off of things, but the void in Jennifer’s stomach spread to her heart.

“Good.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“Does everybody know? The kids?”

“I’m sure they do.” Maggie’s arm slipped away and she went to a cabinet and opened it. “Set the table, please.”

Mechanically, Jennifer set the table. No more whispers across the yard through their windows. The clattering chug of John’s old truck wouldn’t announce that he was nearby. No longer would the pleasant calm of his voice drift up through her open window when he

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was outside doing something, anything at all.

She didn’t want to eat. She had no desire to make small talk over dinner. After she finished with the table, she ran upstairs to her bedroom. She could have flung herself across her bed and sobbed, she ached inside. Instead, she paused in the door frame, staring out the window with trepidation.

John was still back at school. On her way out of the main building she saw him talking with Runt and the only other boy she’d ever seen Runt hang around besides John. She didn’t even know the kid’s name. But John was laughing and talking with them.

Crossing the floor to the window, she was overcome with conflicting waves, like angry tides inside of her. She’d been stupid, rude. Mean. She’d wasted time. Pride, the strongest tide of all, had sucked her into its fierce vortex and she’d let it take her under, and now it was too late.

Lowering to her bed, she sat in a daze, staring out into the darkness of his window.

She caught sight of him the next day in the hall on the way to Miss Tingey’s. Of course he was surrounded by friends. To look at him now, knowing he might soon be out of her life poked a hole in her heart. She slowed as she neared, hoping he’d see her, that maybe—well, she didn’t want to hope that he would sense her presence.