Junk Miles (24 page)

Thorsten and Mom used Christmas as an excuse to spoil me again, and this time it had been in the form of software and a new printer, plus a huge pile of soft cotton t-shirts in my size. I also had a feeling there was a silk screening press in my future. After my successful sale of t-shirts at local Folly concerts, Mom and Thorsten were so impressed with my skills, they upgraded and added to my equipment. That’s just the kind of awesome they are.

I put some of the pages through my scanner and manipulated them on my laptop so they would make workable images. Then I fiddled with the contrast and repaired the low resolution. But there wasn’t a lot I needed to do. My kindergarten self had all of the artistic imagination in an afternoon of scribbling that I now needed hours of focused work to achieve.

I ran the print-offs and pressed them with the iron. The design was incredible. I had never been so impressed with anything I made before. I got so into it, I didn’t hear Mom come in. She was in the doorway when I finally sensed her presence and looked up.

“
Mom!” I ran to her and gave her a hug.

“
Hey sweetie. I see you found your book?” She sniffed my hair. “You smell like smoke.”

“
I rode my bike a little far, and Saxon drove me back here.” I obviously omitted any mention of the action in his messy bedroom.

“
That was sweet of him,” Mom said carefully, looking at my shirt. “This is incredible, honey.”

“
Yeah. Too bad I made it when I was five.” We both studied it for a minute.

“
Well, use it as inspiration for new things.” She ran her hands over the design. “So where was Jake today?”

“
He and I still aren’t dating.” I swallowed hard as the ugliness and confusion of the day shook through me again. “And we’re not really talking right now.”

“
Oh, Bren. I’m sorry.” She did sound sorry, but I knew it wasn’t so much about the fact that I wasn’t back with Jake as the fact that I might be hurting over it.

“
Saxon invited me out on Friday night. I wanted to go to that new sushi place Thorsten told us about.” I glanced at her, interested to see her reaction.

“
That sounds fun.” Her voice was guarded. “Does Jake know?”

I wasn‘t positive why she was asking. I figured it was mostly curiosity. I was sure she wanted to know if I was following her ‘date lots of guys’ advice. “I don’t think Jake cares one way or the other,” I said, remembering our kiss in the greenhouse. Which was technically our second kiss in a Zinga’s greenhouse. That kiss was sharper in my mind than every deliciously intimate thing Saxon and I had done together, and I really didn’t know why.

“
It will work itself out, Bren,” Mom promised. It was a promise that made no sense, but I somehow trusted her simple words.

“
Thanks, Mom.”

She left me in my room, my beautiful, comfortable room, and I worked like a fiend, printing and ironing. I took a long shower. I made some playlists. I did some extra homework. I ate dinner and watched TV. I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want Monday to come. Or, more pointedly, I didn’t want Monday afternoon to come. I didn’t want to see Jake, to have to deal with what we still had and didn’t have anymore.

Especially since what we had before was comparatively simple.

And so completely good.

Damn my longing for Saxon. If I had known how complicated this would all get…I still would have done it. No doubt. I needed to know. And I needed to be free. Even from the most amazing, understanding guy there was.

That night I lay in my bed and wished the phone would ring. I willed Jake to dial my number, to tell me that kiss had sparked something in him, that even though I screwed up he still wanted me.

I had done as much for him once, and it had sucked. I had accepted his massively unbalanced past. Thinking about the crazy things he had done had made me insane; imagining the other girls, wondering what it had been like and how I held up. Especially since I had nothing to compare. And the better he was, the more adoring, the harder it was. Because it clouded my judgment and made me unsure.

There was always the feeling that I was being adored from a really high pedestal. Had I willed my own fall? It seemed a little crazy, but so did everything right now. Maybe I wanted to even the field with Jake. Maybe I wanted to see if he was as tolerant as I had been. Was I testing him?

My mind raced. All I knew was that letting go of him was proving more and more difficult, and there wasn’t much of a chance of it getting better when I was going to be seeing him regularly every day.

My head ached, and I felt flushed and achy. Early January bike rides to the middle of Nowhere, New Jersey will do that to your body. I had too much to think about, but sleep eventually wound itself around me and pulled me down into its inky depths.

The next morning, I woke up with less time than I’d prepared to have. I did my hair in hot rollers, something I rarely did. I also used a new technique with my eye makeup and put on a new shade of lipstick. I wore one of the new t-shirts I had designed, a red one with a deep v-neck and tight, slim dark jeans with red Converse. I knew I looked hot. I wanted to. I wasn’t about to think about who for.

I ate my oatmeal, grabbed my backpack and headed out the door. Mom wasn’t there to join me most mornings now. Since she’d gone back to teaching, she left in the early morning and was gone for most of the day two or three times a week. I was so preoccupied as I stepped out of the garage that I almost smacked into Saxon.

“
Saxon!” I cried. “What are you doing here?”

“
You forgot your bike. In my trunk. So I decided to do the right thing and bring it back. This morning. And force you to ride in with me.”

I had forgotten my bike? Where was my brain?

“
I guess so.” I felt a little like my head wasn’t fully attached to my shoulders. “We should go. If you want.”

He gave me a long look, his brow knit. “Okay.” He came around and opened my door. That Nessa Celtic girl was singing, her voice beautiful as an angel’s. And grating. On my worn nerves.

I flipped the stereo off. My head was still killing me, and I saw little explosive points of bright light whenever I closed my eyes. I knew that was probably not a good thing.

“
What the hell’s up, Bren?” Saxon snapped as he peeled out of my driveway.

“
I just don’t want to face today.” I realized that Saxon had no idea how close Jake and I were for hours on end at Tech. Saxon had no concept how awkward this would be, and I had no will to explain it all.

“
Relax,” he said, and that was his big comforting speech. “And turn the music back on. If I’m going to listen to a girl bitch, I’d like it to at least be in Gaelic.” His voice was irritated.

I wished I’d insisted on riding in. Nothing would have made me feel better than a few miles of hard riding, but we were already far enough there, and I wasn’t up for an argument with Saxon. Before I knew it, we were in the Frankford parking lot and the haunting Gaelic singing stopped when he switched off the engine.

I got out and went around to the trunk.

“
What do you need?” He followed, close on my heels.

“
My bike.” Jake had been picking me up for lunch at Tech, but he wouldn’t be now. I needed to ride there again.

“
You’re not riding to Tech. It’s freezing.” Saxon grabbed my wrist and held on tight.

“
Actually, I am, but thanks for thinking you can tell me what to do,” I snapped and wrestled my wrist free of his grip. “Pop the trunk.”

“
Pop it yourself,” he said nonchalantly.

Without another thought, I swung my backpack around, fully intending to smash a dent in Saxon’s trunk, even if I couldn’t open it.

Before my backpack could make contact, he grabbed my arm and my bag swung down and smacked my hip.

“
Ow,” I whined.

“
Jesus, you’re lucky you’re so damn hot,” Saxon growled. He popped the trunk, and I got my bike out, glaring at him a little.

We walked to the nearest bike rack, and I locked it on, then we walked into school together. I had English first. We were still working on
Ethan Frome.
Great. Always nice to have an uplifting read; nothing like a doomed Puritan winter love triangle to lift my spirits.

I took my coat off and put it in my locker.

“
Great shirt.” Saxon touched a finger between my breasts. I stared him down.

“
I made it,” I bit out shortly.

“
Obviously. It’s brilliant and ironic. Blixen all over.”

I couldn’t coax a smile, even though he completely deserved one for that.

“
I’m done.”He held his hands up and shook his head as he walked backwards down the hall. “Maybe your bitchy mood will have evaporated a little by Government. God, I hope so.”

I watched as he walked away, his one rolled up notebook jutting under his arm. I felt bad for being so weirdly cold to him, but I felt worse for myself. I slumped into English and sat in my usual seat behind Devon Conner, my newest friend at Frankford.

“
Hey,” he said carefully.

I smiled a little. “Hey yourself.”

“
Your hair looks different.” He pointed and made a circle with his finger. “Curly.”

“
You should never just make an observation like that.” My head pounded and it felt like Devon’s face was blurry in front of my eyes. “You should compliment or say nothing.”

“
Your hair is pretty,” Devon amended, not a hint of flirtation in his voice. “Did you finish
Frome
?”

“
It’s a novella, Devon. Please don’t tell me you didn’t read it.” I sighed. Devon was brilliant, but chronically lazy. He was always behind in his reading and, annoyingly, he was always freaking out because of it.

“
I did. I just really hated it.” He held the book up and stared at it doubtfully. “I mean, it’s normal that I hated it, right? Can anyone like that book?”

“
I liked it.” My voice was sullen. “It’s realistic.”

“
What? Attempted suicide on a sled? Come on, Brenna. That’s just crazy!”

“
No, not the sledding stuff. Although that was probably ordinary back in the day in New England. What else are they supposed to do but be depressed and sled to death?”

Devon looked at me critically. “You also said the love story in
Pride and Prejudice
was realistic,” he griped.

I shrugged. Devon got nervous. He had been an outcast since middle school, socially retarded by Saxon’s heartless bullying when they were young. It was easy to make him feel like he had done something socially stupid and get him all antsy. My bad mood was driving him that way.

“
Sorry, Devon.” I patted his shoulder. “I had a crazy break.”

“
Did something happen?” He looked much more nervous than interested.

“
I went to Paris.” I rubbed my temples and spoke through the crush of a headache so intense it felt like my brain was in a vice. “And I wound up messing things up with Jake. And I kind of got involved with Saxon.”

Now Devon shrugged. “Well, that was probably inevitable, right?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Saxon has been pursuing you since the day school started. And he had all that mystery going on. He must have seemed enticing. If he got shoved in your face so often, what else were you going to do?” Devon looked at me pointedly. “You’re human, after all. And he’s Saxon.” He said it like the name ‘Saxon’ was synonymous with some intense, undeniable deity.

I was positive that he was saying it to be helpful, but it made me sound like a two-timing wandering-eyed slut. My eyes filled with tears.

“
Are you crying?” he asked, with none of the panic or sympathy most guys would have shown. He looked confused.

“
Yes, Devon!” I sniffled and wiped under my eyes before my makeup ran down my face. “I’m human, remember? When I screw life up, I feel this emotion. It’s called ‘sadness.’”

“
But I don’t think you did. Mess things up, that is.” He looked thoughtful. “I just think it would have been easier for you if you’d been with Saxon first.”

“
Why?” I wailed.

“
Because then you would have gotten him out of your system. But now you put Jake aside. Which was probably not a good thing.” He blinked hard.

“
Maybe you’re right.” I contemplated his idea.

“
But maybe not.” He flipped the pages of his book distractedly. “If you were with Saxon first, you would have been burned. I mean, you most likely will get burned. Then you’ll be able to judge the two of them from a much better perspective. Like a much higher perspective, I mean.”

“
I don’t get it.” My brain wasn’t working on its normal level, and piecing Devon’s logic together was taxing it beyond its limited capacity.

“
Well, if you had the worst boyfriend ever first, whatever you had next would seem great. But you’ve had a great boyfriend first. So that’s good, because now you have a really high standard for other boyfriends to live up to. So that’s good,” he concluded awkwardly.

I looked at gawky, socially weird Devon Conner and felt a rush of affection. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. “You should write a column.”