Just Friends (12 page)

“It’s not just me,” Josh assures her. “Lots of people think so.”

“Oh.” Her expression and tone are the same, but something’s changed. It’s as if someone opened the door. It seems that it may be snowing outside. Very heavily. “Right. Lots of people.”

“So?” he prods. “Anything? A secret passion? A fleeting infatuation? Some schoolgirl crush?”

“No. Nothing.” She picks up a sugar packet. “Have you checked out the boys in our school, Joshua? Most of them are all about contact sports and food fights. Who would I be interested in?” She whacks the sugar against the table. “One of the teachers? Maybe Break-’em-down Burleigh? Yeah, he’s perfect. Not just because of his winning personality but because he has a wife and two children, too. He’s practically irresistible. And think of the scandal! We’d hit all the tabloids and go viral. That’s all I’ve ever wanted out of life.”

“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I was just curious, that’s all. You know. Because you are attractive and I’ve never known you to date or anything.”

“That’s because I haven’t.” This is one of the few times she’s ever reminded him of her mother; she looks like she’s trying to commune with the spirits of the woodland. And convince them to make him disappear. “Neither have you dated or anything.” She gives the bag of sugar another whack. “Unless you’ve been holding out on me.”

“My only ‘anything’ was the time I walked Briony Shaksi to her house because there was a cat at the corner of her street she was afraid of.” Briony never thanked him and never spoke to him again; the cat attacked him. “But I’m not attractive. Expectations are way lower for someone like me.”

Ramona is not a girl to blush, but she blushes now. “Are they?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Well, I haven’t. Been interested in anyone.” Of course, she is not a girl to mumble, either. “Not really.”

Not really
. “What does that mean?”

“It means not really. Like maybe when I was really little. Not really.”

“Right.” Josh nods as if he’s thinking that over, when in fact he spent at least an hour last night preparing what he was going to say. “Okay. But let’s say you were. Interested in someone. Just supposing. Hypothetically.” Her attention is on her tea as she starts to open the packet. “Would you say something, or would you wait for him to make the first move?”

A fine spray of sugar falls on the table.

“Damn!” She brushes it into a tiny pile and reaches for another. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

He repeats the question.

This time she manages to get the sugar into her cup. “I’d wait for … for the other person. You know.” She looks into his glasses. “So I didn’t make a fool of myself.”

“Of course. I agree. That makes perfect sense.” He makes a fool of himself enough unintentionally without doing it on purpose. “Only, what if he’s waiting for you to say something? What if he’s as nervous as you are? Guys don’t like rejection any more than girls do.”

Possibly less, given the number of men who shoot the woman who breaks up with them. But he’s not about to mention that now, either; Ramona has a lot to say about male violence.

“Okay, so I do know lots of people are really shy in that kind of situation. Not everybody thinks they’re God’s gift or talks the talk or anything.” She tilts her head so that she seems to be studying his chin. “So I guess I can imagine I might like somebody like that. But I’m like that, too. So how would I know someone wants to go out with me if they keep it a secret?”

“Okay. But how’s he going to know that you’d go out with him if
you
keep it a secret? Especially if he’s not” – he wonders if he’s said too much, but it’s too late now – “not experienced with girls.”

Ramona takes a sip of tea. “There are signs.”

“There are?” Obvious? Subtle? Written in a code no man has ever deciphered? “What kind of signs?”

She gazes into her cup as if the answer is in there. “You know. Signs.”

This is what he means about the workings of the female mind. Would he be asking if he knew?

“Yeah, but are they recognizable signs? Or do you need a degree in cryptology to read them?”

She makes a face. If she were Lara Croft she would probably shoot him. “You know if somebody likes you, don’t you? Like if they don’t run in the opposite direction the second they see you. And they get your jokes. And they have no trouble talking to you.”

“Yeah, but there’s like, and there’s
like
. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. You’re the one who said you wouldn’t make the first move.”

“Hints.” The cup clatters back in its saucer. “I think if someone’s interested in someone, they’ll be able to tell if the other person’s interested in them. You just have to pay attention.”

“Right.” Josh nods. “I see. Just pay attention.”

He still doesn’t know to what.

She leans forward, elbows on the table. “So who are we talking about here? Who is it you’re interested in?”

“I wasn’t talking about me. I was just talking in general.”

She makes a yeah-sure face. “It’s Capistrano, isn’t it? I know you go over there. It has to be her.”

“I go over there because we’re friends,” says Josh. “That’s all we are. Just friends.”

“And we’re friends, too, yeah?”

“You have to ask?”

“It’s just that … I don’t want you to take this wrong…” She seems to be choosing her words from the bottom of a very deep box. “And I don’t want to sound mean or anything – but I really don’t think that girl is for you, Josh. I’m not saying she’s not nice or pretty or anything. But you see the crowd she hangs out with. I know she likes you, but, trust me, you are not her type. Not for a boyfriend.”

This is why people have friends. For support and encouragement.

“Then it’s lucky I’m not interested in her, isn’t it?” says Josh.

“It sure is,” says Ramona. “Because Tilda Kopel would never allow it.”

Josh
asked his friends for their advice, and they gave it. Two to one in favour of keeping his mouth shut. Sal with his big-screen dreams obviously has a romantic streak missing in the more pragmatic Carver and Ramona. Put another way, Sal is less realistic, given to fantasy and special effects. So Josh has decided to listen to reason – the foundation on which man’s knowledge of the universe is based – and reason says that no best friend of Tilda Kopel will ever be a girlfriend of his. His mouth is shut. Shut, bolted and double-locked.

Not that he would have much chance to open it. Suddenly, he and Jena are both very busy. Josh has rehearsals with the band; she has to help Tilda with her lines. Josh has a chess match; Jena’s busy on the weekend. He sees her at school, of course, and even walks with her after language arts, but always on her other side is that most unlikely (and most efficient) of chaperones Tilda Kopel in her knee-high boots, short skirts and force-field smile, acting as if he isn’t there, keeping up everyone’s end of the conversation and making sure the only words Josh gets to speak concern hello and goodbye.

And then one afternoon he winds up leaving the school grounds with them. After an enthusiastic greeting from Jena and the nod of a queen acknowledging the presence of a very minor servant, Josh walks beside them in silence. Tilda’s voice, of course, is the voice heard most.
Blah blah blah, yada yada yada, yakaty yak
. Josh’s mind wanders, trying to remember the lyrics to a Reginald Hall song about someone who talks too much, when he hears Tilda say, “Let’s hope the guy you’re seeing Friday night turns out better than that last wastoid. Like, ohmyGod, he was just so not right. I told you that. Didn’t I say he had ‘vacant space’ written all over him?”

Josh doesn’t look over at them, but if he were a cat his ears would be standing at attention.

“He wasn’t that bad.” Jena laughs. “He was a lot better than the guy I went out with before him.”

Before him?
When did she start dating? How many guys have there been?

“And I know you’re right about him, but he wasn’t all bad. He was kind of cute.”

“You can do much better,” Tilda decrees. Jena makes a non-committal sound that could be agreement or could be doubt. “Trust me,” orders Tilda. “Nobody thought he was good enough for you.”

“Really?”

“Really,” says Tilda.

Jena, it seems, can’t argue with Nobody.

Slightly stunned that he’s been in Parsons Falls all his life and has never had a single date, but Jena, here since August, has already had at least two, Josh chooses this moment to use one of his opportunities to speak. “See you later,” he says. Only Jena shouts after him, “Laters!”

She calls him on Saturday afternoon. Tilda was supposed to be spending poker night with Jena, but Tilda is indisposed. “She has really bad cramps,” says Jena. “She says it’s like she’s being squeezed in this giant vice and—”

Josh stops her before blood can become part of the story. “I don’t need to know the gruesome details,” he assures her. “I’ll be over at seven.”

Which means he has to adjust his Saturday night plans.

“What are you, rent-a-pal?” asks Sal. “It’s a good thing Ramona and Zara are coming along tonight. So at least we won’t be a man down.”

Ramona? Why was Ramona coming to movie night?

“I asked her,” says Sal. “I have a movie she’s always wanted to see.”

“Really?” Josh can’t tell if he’s surprised or suspicious – or, possibly, both. “How do you know that?”

“She told me,” says Sal.

“And Zara?”

“Carver said she should come, too. You know, since they’re friends and usually hang out together on Saturdays.”

Thank God no one’s going to miss me
, thinks Josh.

Nothing is without its drawbacks, of course. Thorns on roses. Pips in oranges. The challenging shell of the coconut. The drawback to hanging out with Jena at her house is her father. The General makes a habit of answering the door. It may be that he is always the first to greet visitors and salesmen, but Josh takes it personally. The General never stops sizing him up; asking questions he knows Josh either can’t answer or will answer incorrectly. That he isn’t a fan of Waylon Jennings, for example; that he doesn’t know how to change a tyre; that he has read Howard Zinn’s
A People’s History of the United States
. When Josh said his mother couldn’t recommend a good butcher because they’re vegetarians, the General smiled triumphantly. “I should have known.”

Tonight Jena answers Josh’s ring. He glances into the living room, but there is no large man in a baseball cap looming behind like the threat of nuclear disaster looming over the world.

“It’s okay.” Jena shuts the door him. “Dad already left.”

“Really?” Josh follows her along the hallway and into the kitchen to get the snacks. “Does this mean he’s decided to accept me?”

Jena laughs. “Not exactly.” Her back is to him as she takes something from the counter. “What he’s decided is that his daughter is safe with you.”

“Because he finally realized what a nice kid I am?”

She turns around, holding two plastic bowls and wearing a smile admirers of the painter Leonardo da Vinci would recognize. “Because he thinks you’re probably gay.”

“Damn it.” He knew the General’s small talk was all trick questions. “It’s because I’m not into football, isn’t it? And because I don’t eat dead animals.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not from the Stone Age. He knows you don’t have to be gay to be vegetarian.” She hands him one of the bowls. “It’s because you’re so different from what he thinks is a normal guy.” She opens the fridge and takes out a bottle of soda and a bottle of water. “And so that’s the explanation he came up with. If he believed in UFOs he’d think you came from another planet.” She hands him the water. “And I didn’t even tell him you don’t drink Coke.”

She orders pizza and they move into the living room.

At least partly to change the subject from his deviant dietary habits and disinterest in competitive contact sports, he braces himself for the worst and asks her how her date went, silently begging that it was less successful than the maiden voyage of the
Titanic
.

“OhmyGod! You won’t believe it! It was really bizarre. Tilda couldn’t stop laughing when I told her.”

Maybe God has moved over to Josh’s side. Or at least stopped pitting Himself against him.

“I mean, it was way better than this one guy I went out with who not only finished my hamburger platter for me because I put my fork down for like two seconds but couldn’t stop talking about his sailboat. Not for a single minute. By the time the evening was over I felt as if I’d been to China with him on it.”

“So what happened this time?”

She giggles, a sound that, it seems, only bothers him when it’s made by Tilda Kopel. “We went to a movie.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad. At least you didn’t have to talk about sailing.”

“Or listen,” says Jena.

Josh is smiling, he’s relaxed, he’s really interested. He’s experiencing a form of
schadenfreude
; being happy over the misery of others. If she’d had a terrific date he’d be so down he’d be below the Earth’s surface. “So what was so awful?”

“Well, for openers, as soon as the ads came on, he started humming along with the theme songs.”

“No way!” He gives her a playful shove.

“Yes, really, Josh. I swear it’s true. And loud. Really loud. Not like under his breath or anything. So everybody around us could hear it.”

“I don’t believe you.” As much as he’d like to. “Nobody would act like that on a date. Especially not a first date. He might as well have shown up dressed as a giant rabbit. You’re making it up.”

“OMH, Shine, I’m not making it up. I swear.” Jena mimes cutting an X over her chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Really and truly. People kept looking over at us. Even though it was dark it was sooo excruciatingly embarrassing. I swear, I wanted to crawl under my seat. A giant rabbit would’ve been a really big improvement on the hummer. At least people would’ve thought it must be a publicity stunt for some movie.”

He’s still not convinced. “So what did you do while he was singing back-up? Tap along with your feet?”