News Flash (13 page)

As I descended the steps that lead down to the court I could hear the shouts and laughter of enough people that I could guess that a pick-up game was going on. Jake's mom had assured me that I would find him here, and she had even offered to drive me. Obviously either Jake or my mom had told her about the mugging, but I had declined because I knew I had to get on with my life.

I paused on the soft grass at the bottom of the stairs. Sure enough Jake was in the center of a pack of guys running up and down the court. He grabbed the ball as it was passed to him, and took a jump and sank the shot without blinking. I had always been impressed watching him play basketball, but seeing him do that gave me a strange fluttering in my stomach.

When he looked in my direction, I felt my breath hitch. Feeling like an idiot, I gave him a self-conscious little wave, put my head down, and made my way to a picnic table on the edge of the court. I hopped onto the tabletop. The hazy purple of dusk wrapped long fingers across the inky blue sky. A soft, warm breeze blew across the river bringing a faint smell of fishiness. I lay back on the table, staring up at the sky overhead. The first star of the night winked back at me.

I closed my eyes. My grandmother would have told me to make a wish, and I promptly would have rolled my eyes. And possibly have told her that I wasn't Brooke. The rhythmic thump of the basketball on the court set my nerves on edge. I knew the bulk of my anxiety was waiting to talk to Jake, but I couldn't figure out what else was pushing at me. I wished that I could talk to Jake about all of it. That would have helped, but we didn't have that relationship anymore.

Maybe that wish wasn't such a bad idea. I looked up at the star, which seemed brighter now. “Star light, star bright,” I whispered. Then I squeezed my eyes shut tight as I wished that Jake and I could be best friends again.

“What are you doing here?”

I gasped, and sat up too fast as Jake dropped onto the table beside me. The lights around the court made a halo around him as he looked down at me. His hair curled, matted to his forehead with sweat. I glanced away so he wouldn't realize that I was staring at him.

“Your mom told me you were here.” I shrugged, still not daring to look at him. What was wrong with me? This was
Jake.
I couldn't figure out how to be around him anymore. If I had realized that our friendship was slipping away, maybe I could have done something before we got to this point. The empty, lonely feeling that filled me at that moment chilled me to my bones. I had never realized how much I relied on Jake as my support system. As pathetic as it was, I really had no other good friends, no one that I was close to.

The silence stretched between us, a big, yawning chasm of things unsaid. I couldn't believe that nothing could be so loud or speak so much. I was about to tell him that I had been stupid to come down, that I'd leave him alone, when I felt his fingers dig into my ribs. A short gasp of air escaped my throat as laughter bubbled up inside of me. Seconds later I was flattened against the table in hysterics as Jake tickled the life out of me.

“Stop. Stop. Please.” I pushed the words out between gulps of air and laughter. When the tears cleared from my eyes, I found myself looking up at Jake. His face was just inches from mine. Our eyes locked, and I had no thoughts in my head except that this felt right.

We came to our senses at the same moment. I could see it in his gaze when he blinked. One second he was hovering on the edge of something different, something new, and then the next he was just Jake again. He sat up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me with him.

I squeezed my hands together between my knees to stop the shaking that was racking my body. Words tangled on my tongue as I tried to figure out what happened. It would have been nice if I could have talked to Jake about it, but obviously that was part of the problem. I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

“So why did you come down?” Jake asked, his voice softer now.

With a deep, steadying breath, I said, “I wanted to know if you'd crash a prom with me tonight.”

Jake laughed. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, I know. It sounds absurd, but I mean it. We have so much work to do, and no time. Kelly Hills is having their prom tonight. It's Eighties themed. What do you say?”

I glanced over at him, and felt a little jolt as I found Jake staring at me, almost pensively. He shrugged. “Sure, why not? I need to grab a shower first.”

When we met in front of our houses an hour later, I figured the Kelly Hills prom had been going for at least two hours. All of the dinner stuff had been done for quite a while, and there was a good chance we could slip in without ticket takers sitting at the door.

Since the theme was the eighties' we had agreed to go with an homage to John Hughes movies. Rummaging through Lauren's closet, I had managed to put together a decent outfit, but Jake had it spot on. I wanted to tell him that, but once again the words jumbled in my mouth.

“You look great,” he said, with an easy smile I didn't recognize.

“You too.” My words sounded raspy, which embarrassed me.

“We're going to take my dad's car if that's okay.” Jake dangled the keys in front of me, and I couldn't help but gasp. Jake's dad's car was his prized possession. He kept it under a thick canvas sheet in the garage. No one else was ever allowed near it. In all the years we had been neighbors I had only seen the car driven a handful of times. Needless to say I had always dreamed of riding in it. That's how off limits things always were for me, I supposed.

“He said it was a special night. I tried telling him that we were only going to another fake prom, but he insisted.” Jake opened the passenger door so I could climb in. My suede skirt hit mid-calf, and was slightly tight, making it hard to maneuver. As I sank down onto the leather seats, I decided that the car fulfilled every dream I'd ever had about it. Jake slid in behind the steering wheel, and started the car.

“Ready to do this?”

I laughed. “We're going to get good at this prom thing before we even get to ours.”

Jake laughed along with me. “You'll make it great.”

His compliment made me blush, and I looked out the car's window. He sounded different to me. Not the actual tone or timber of his voice, but the emotion behind his words. Part of me thought that I was imagining it, but we'd been friends long enough that I still knew how to detect changes in him. I just couldn't figure out how it made me feel.

“I hope Mary Beth will like what we're doing,” I said, then almost gagged on the words.

Jake shot me a sideways glance. “Are you feeling okay there, Al? You do know what you just said, right?”

“Shut up.” I smacked his shoulder slightly harder than I intended. He grimaced slightly, but shot me a sly grin that I did recognize.

“I'm sure Mary Beth will be thrilled with the hoe down theme you proposed.”

“I did not! If you tell her that she's likely to hunt me down and force me to watch every prom related movie ever made.”

“I might make you do that anyway. You know, to inspire you.” Jake pulled into the parking lot of Kelly Hills High. “It'd be like the old days.”

The sentimental tone in his voice belied the sarcastic comment, and made me squirm. I almost felt guilty for ragging on Mary Beth. “I'm sorry for being so, you know, about your girlfriend.”

“Mary Beth? Naw, she's not my girlfriend.” Jake swung the car into an empty parking space.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I bet she doesn't feel the same way.”

“We're just hanging out. We've had that conversation, and we're both cool.” Jake unclipped his seat belt, and turned toward me. “What about you and that…guy?”

I sighed. “I don't know what Rory and I are, but I doubt he thinks of me as his girlfriend.”

“Then he's an idiot,” Jake said in a husky voice. My eyes widened, but I couldn't think of anything to say. “Look, you know what I think of the guy, so let's not go down that road. I'm just glad we're hanging out again.”

“Me too.” I stretched out my hand to touch his, but hesitated a moment too long, and let it drop back to my lap. “Jake…I know I've been a lousy friend these last few months, and—“

“Don't,” Jake said. “You've never been a lousy friend.”

I wanted to ask him how he could say that when all evidence pointed to the contrary, but I accepted his grace instead. That was one of the many qualities I loved about Jake. The depth of my feelings for my best friend surprised me, and I wondered how I had never noticed them before. I didn't have a chance to dwell on this newfound thought, though, because Jake stepped out of the car.

When we walked into the lobby of Kelly Hills High, I was shocked to see how…nice the school looked. The floors gleamed like they had been freshly polished, and there was no security desk, just a little table with an empty clipboard. I glanced up at Jake, and I could tell from the slightly widened eyes that he felt the same way. Luckily there was no one around as we made our way to the gym.

A set of doors stood propped open, and the flashing of a strobe light accompanied the thumping of bass from the music. Jake and I slipped inside, and we stood along the wall taking in the scene. The school had done a decent job of turning a sweat infused space into a time machine back to the nineteen-eighties. Granted the number of clichés in the room made me want to vomit, but still.

“The giant Rubik's Cubes on the tables are a nice touch, huh?” Jake muttered, his breath hot in my ear. My pulse quickened at the sarcasm in his voice. What was wrong with me? “Let's go find a place to observe the action.”

Jake pressed his hand against the small of my back as he guided me through the tables until we came to one at the edge of the dance floor. Most of the attendees seemed to be gyrating to the music that was definitely not from the time period they were supposedly portraying.

“This music doesn't work,” I half yelled to Jake. He'd folded his tall frame into one of the chairs, and he had to lean forward to hear me. Instinctively I moved toward him, too, and our heads bumped. The laugh that broke from me put me at ease, and a moment later Jake chuckled too.

He scooted his chair closer so we could talk without shouting. I found the new phase of our friendship disconcerting on so many levels, the most distressing was the fact that I thought I might be developing a little crush on Jake. But that was absurd because it was
Jake
. I'd known him since we were just kids, and I'd never thought of him that way before. The mere tease of the idea of a crush seemed too ridiculous to actually entertain, so I stomped it down to the farthest reaches of my being.

“Hey, I don't recognize you two.” A blond girl dressed like Madonna stopped in front of us, propping a hand on her hip. The way she swayed made me think she was drunk or at the very least tipsy.

I glanced at Jake. Going to this prom had been my stupid idea, and now we were going to get in trouble because some ditz had gotten smashed and decided to talk too loud. “Uh, are you sure?”

Jake smirked at me. I knew he was thinking that he could have given a better answer, but then why didn't he? The blond girl pushed her shiny hair over her shoulder, balanced herself by grabbing onto the back of a nearby chair, and narrowed her eyes at us. I raised my eyebrows at her as innocently as I could. At our school crashing the prom would have led to a slap on the wrist, maybe detention, but I had no idea what the punishment would be for crashing another school's prom.

“Margaret, are you bothering my cousin?”

We all turned toward the sound of a voice that held a hint of laughter. The blond girl, Margaret, took two steps back as she stared at the newcomer. “No. I didn't know that this was your cousin. You should have her wear a name tag or something.”

“He's my cousin, and no one wears a name tag at the prom. What are we, in preschool? Go outside for a few minutes, Margaret, or I'll tell Ms. Simmons that you brought a flask.”

“Thanks,” I said as I watched Margaret thread her way swervingly through the dancers.

“No problem. I recognize you two. You're Mary Beth's boyfriend, right? And you're that girl from the news. It's cool that you're here. Mary Beth thought you might show up. She told me to keep an eye out. She's my cousin, but Margaret won't remember any of this tomorrow anyway. I'm Cassidy, by the way. Have fun.” With that she flipped her overly teased hair over a shoulder and flounced away.

“Well, that was interesting,” Jake said as we watched her go.

“Did you tell Mary Beth that we were coming?” I felt a vague sense of dismay at the thought of him sharing our plans with her, especially after he had told me they weren't dating. It felt like a betrayal. No matter how many times I told myself that I didn't care who Jake spent his time with, the fact remained that I did care. I really did.

“No. I have no idea how she knew we'd be here. Hey, who cares, right? Let's dance.” Jake stood up, and held out his hand to me. I blinked up at him, and wondered why he wanted to change the subject so much. With a quick shake of my head I cleared out the suspicious thoughts, and let him help me up.

The DJ began to play an up-tempo number about some guy loving a girl forever, and that everywhere he went and looked there was always something that reminded him of her. I squirmed at the cheesiness and sentimentality of the lyrics. Well, that and the fact that Jake had pulled me close, and I could feel the heat radiating off his body.

“This is pretty much my song,” Jake said, then laughed. I tipped my head back up to look at him, but he was staring across the dance floor, a hazy look in his eyes. My stomach tightened into a knot even as I wondered what he meant by that. I decided to just let it go. There wasn't any point pushing him to explain things that might drive us farther apart. I couldn't risk that. If the past few months had taught me anything it was that Jake was more important to me than the path that I had been trundling down these past few months.