Fancy White Trash (15 page)

The Jennings family were amateurs when it came to family fights, but they'd been loud enough tonight that I'd closed Hannah's window so she could go to sleep.

“Sounds like it was World War Three,” I say.

Jackson's forehead scrunches up. “I knew they wouldn't be happy with me. Why make Cody take all the parental rage when I had a share coming my way? It only seemed fair.”

I lay my head on his shoulder, something I do all the time with Cody. But it feels different with Jackson. “How's Cody?”

“I don't think he's coming out of his room anytime soon.”

Cody has hermitlike tendencies. It's not unusual for him to lick his wounds in private. I know he'll come out when he's ready. Still . . .

“Can you sneak me in tonight? I want to check up on him.”

Jackson snorts. “Wish you were planning to sneak into
my
bedroom in the middle of the night.”

I push against him, but not too hard since he's my balance. “If you're gonna start talking like that, I'm leafing.”

He looks at me blandly.

“Get it? We're sitting in a tree? Leafing?”

He doesn't crack a smile, and I feel stupid. “Forget it.”

Only then does he let a smile spread across his face. “Got you,” he says.

“Jerk. You gonna let me in tonight or not?”

“Only if you promise to check on me, too.” His face is innocent, but his eyes are teasing.

“Uh-huh,” I agree. “Just close your baby blues and wait until I get there.”

“I'm holding you to it,” he says. “One good-night kiss in exchange for a sneak-in. Deal?”

“I didn't say anything about a kiss.”

“What do you think's gonna happen if you visit me in my bedroom in the middle of the night? We're not playin' checkers, if that's what you're hoping.”

“Maybe I won't stop by then.”

“And leave Cody, your best friend in the whole world, all alone on what is possibly the worst night of his life? You can't do it, Abby. And you can't sneak in unless I turn off the alarm for you. So, deal? Right?”

I decide to negotiate terms once I'm inside their house. “Deal.”

Jackson laughs and kisses the top of my head. “I'm suddenly feeling so tired. . . .” He swings one leg over the branch and onto the highest step.

“Wait.” I stop him. He freezes in place, balanced on the old piece of wood, face turned up to me.

“Yeah?” His eyes are as dark as the sky above us.

“Do you think you're Stephanie's dad?”

He blinks once, very slowly. “Kait told me Steve's the father.”

“But it could be you, right? If Stephanie wasn't a preemie, I mean.”

He shrugs. “I'm not sure how. It was only a couple of times, and we used protection.” He nods, and I'm not sure if he's reassuring himself or me.

“Condoms break,” I say.

His face hardens. “Well, ours didn't. Kait says it's not me and I believe her.”

I want to believe her, too, so I decide, at least for now, that that's enough.

“Good night, Abby.” Jackson shimmies down the tree, leaving me alone on the lowest branch.

“Night, Jack-Off.”

I watch until he is inside. He flips the lights twice, a signal Cody and I made up back in third grade, to let me know the alarm's disabled. I carefully pick my way down the tree and go into my own house, worrying because Cody has never given me rules about what to wear for breaking and entering. Guess I'll have to figure it out on my own. And I may as well brush my teeth, too, in case my negotiations aren't successful.

Homecoming. Your school probably has one, too, and there's a game and a dance and everyone talks about who's going with who. Maybe it's in the gym or maybe they rent a place. Wherever you have it, there are cheesy streamers and balloons and an even cheesier photographer who charges an outrageous amount of money for you to take pictures against his “fantasy” backdrop. It was the last thing I thought Cody'd want to talk about at one in the morning, but there you have it. He won't talk about dinner, about what was or wasn't said. How he's feeling or what comes next. It's all about homecoming.

“She's worried about prom, but come on, homecoming's less than a month away and who will I go with?” It's not like Cody to be overly dramatic. It's more like him to have already made a chart of all possible dating scenarios and ranked them in terms of cost vs. fun. I'm surprised he wasn't already at his laptop working on it. Instead, I'd found him half sitting in bed, lights out, brain revved up in high gear. Not even slightly amazed to find me creeping into his room so late, he'd been quick to scoot over and make room on his small bed. His only comment? “What took you so long?”

“You'll go with me,” I say, answering his homecoming question. “Like we did last year. We had a good time, remember? ” My voice is whisper quiet. Although Cody's parents are far down the hall and can sleep through anything, the darkness calls for soft words. Just like it also calls for black clothes, which is why my cat-thief outfit is black yoga pants and a matching tank top with little glittery butterflies across the top.

He sighs, very melodramatic, slides down in the bed, and draws the white sheet up to his chin. Although it's too dark to see it, he stares at the poster of the New York skyline tacked to his ceiling. “Don't you want your own date? The Plan will be under way by then, won't it? I'm not coming along to watch you suck face with some mediocre-looking guy.”

Why that stung, I'm not sure. “Brian's better than mediocre.”

“But he's not playing for your team.”

“Doesn't mean we can't go as friends. We could all go as friends.” Sounds like a perfect solution to me. Brian gets to go with Cody, Cody gets to pretend he's not gay, and I get to . . . be the third wheel. So it's not a perfect plan.

Cody reaches out from under the covers to hold my hand. I'm lying on my side, facing him, on top of the bedspread. Despite the warm cocoon, his hands are cool and dry. He laces our fingers together.

“Abby, you're the best. I'm sorry I've been so freaked lately.”

“It's understandable. You're my Cody, and I love you just the way you are. I only want what's best for you.”

He squeezes my hand. “That's what I wanted my parents to say. But I knew they wouldn't.”

“Give them time,” I say. “They'll come around.”

“I'm not so sure.”

“Relax.” I stroke back his hair with the hand he's not holding. “The worst is over.”

It is not unusual in a soap opera for a femme fatale to sneak into a man's bedroom and wait for him on his bed. I've seen it on all of my soaps, but it's a particular favorite on
Moments of Our Lives.

But this situation doesn't apply to me right now. Jackson is already in his bed, so I can't wait for him. Although I want to pretend to have forgotten our deal, I also don't want to be the one who backs out. Maybe Cody and I talked for so long that Jackson fell asleep.

No such luck.

“Right over here,” Jackson says in a sleepy voice. “I'm all puckered up and ready.”

I take one step into the room and close the door behind me. Jackson's room is even farther from their parents' than Cody's, but I'm not taking any chances. His room has the same basic layout as Cody's—bed, desk, shelves—but unlike Cody's room, always so neat and tidy, Jackson's looks like a tornado might actually improve things.

“About that deal . . .” I say.

“Nope, no backing out now. You made a promise and you're going to keep it.”

He knows me too well. After having so many promises broken in my life, I'd sworn never to do the same to anyone else. Of course, a deal isn't the same as a promise.

“Did you brush your teeth?” I ask to annoy him.

He laughs. “Did you?”

“No, and I've been sucking on a garlic clove all evening.”

“I love garlic.”

“And smoking.”

He laughs so hard the bed shakes. “Abby, just come here. I'm not going to hurt you.”

Gingerly, I pick through the dirty piles of clothes and discarded what-have-yous to the side of his bed. The outdoor light leaking in through the window illuminates a Barnes & Noble bag.

“You bought me a replacement Rumi?” I ask, toeing the bag open.

“I don't have to replace it. I never lost it.”

“Then hand it over already.”

“I told you I'm still reading it.”

I reach a hand into the bag. “So what's in here?” I pull out a heavy book but can't quite make out the title in the dark.

“Mom's idea of a going-to-college gift.”

“What is it?”

“A PDR.”

“What, like an organizer or something?”

He laughs. “
Physician's Desk Reference
. Subtle, isn't she?”

I drop the book. It makes a muted thunk on the floor. “You could use it to prop open a door, maybe clonk an intruder on the head.”

He pats the edge of the bed. “Stop stalling and get over here.”

I sit. The bed smells like him, clean and fresh, his hair still damp from a shower.

“See, not so bad, right?” He's not even touching me. His face is shadowed, but what I can see looks dead serious. “How's Cody?”

“Okay, I guess. Considering. But you know him. He's not ready to talk too much.”

Jackson sits up a little, and his white T-shirt stretches across his chest. He takes a deep breath, straining the fabric even more, and says, “I'm not sure what's going to happen. I'm just glad I'll be here for him, and not off at college.”

“Are your parents raging about lost A.U. fees?”

Jackson is silent. “Come here.” He gently pulls me toward him, rearranging my suddenly limp body so that I'm stretched out next to him. Like with Cody, he's underneath the covers and I'm on top. He rolls to the side and tucks my head under his chin, wraps an arm around my waist.

“Stay for a while,” Jackson whispers. “I won't bug you about that kiss if you'll just lie here with me.”

“Okay,” says my mouth, which is so disconnected from my brain. My brain is saying that this cuddling thing could be a lot more dangerous to the Plan than a simple kiss.

He breathes out, tickling the hair at my temple.

“To answer your question, my parents are not happy with me,” he says. “Really, spectacularly not happy.”

“You did pick possibly the worst time to tell them.”

“Hey, give me some credit. I was trying to draw fire.”

“Were any ultimatums given? Any children disowned?”

His arm tightens around my waist. “They're putting my college money in a trust fund that I won't be able to touch until I'm twenty-one. They think by then I'll be over my ‘insane' desire to save the world.”

“It's not insane.” I sketch an invisible tattoo of my name on his bicep. “It's good. Kind of noble.”

“You think?”

I relax back into him. “Yeah. I wish you'd tell me more about it.”

He sighs into my hair and his fingers slide back and forth across my stomach. “It's kind of hard for me to talk about. Things are so different there. It was all so gritty and, I don't know,
real
. When you know there's a sick five-year-old who's going to die if you don't get the truck with the medical supplies back before nightfall, it makes you think about what's really important.”

“Like what?” I calm his restless hands by trapping them at my waist. “What's important to you now?”

“I have to get back there.” He drops his forehead to rest on my hair. “I promised Isabel I'd be back now.”

I twist around to face him. “You have a girlfriend waiting for you?”

His teeth flash white in the dark. “Relax, Abs. She's eleven. She was teaching me Spanish.”

“Oh.” I flip back around and pull his arms around me again. “How'd you meet her?”

“She came to us—Carlos, he's the head of the relief camp, said she'd come before, when she was younger—and asked us to help find her big brother. She hadn't seen him in two months. He disappeared one night, and she's desperate to find him.”

“How sad,” I say, drawing figure eights between his knuckles with my finger.

“That's not the sad part. She'd been on her own since he disappeared, homeless. She was starving, sick, and one of her arms was broken when she came to us. She didn't even know it. Said it must've happened while she was sleeping.”

My hands still. “How do you break your arm in your sleep?”

“You wanna know how an eleven-year-old homeless girl is treated? Like garbage. When people pass kids curled up, sleeping in doorways or in alleys, they kick them, spit on them. Isabel told me once a guy actually peed on her.”

“So someone kicked her hard enough to break her arm and she didn't even wake up?”

“Isabel's used to it, but she told me how some kids she knows go to sleep in the Hotel of a Thousand Stars.”

“That sounds nice,” I say. “Pretty.”

“It's a cemetery.” His voice is flat, hard. “The kids sleep there because no one goes to graveyards at night. It's the only place they can sleep unmolested.”

“That's horrible! All those children . . .” I think of Hannah, Stephanie, and the baby-to-be. “What about Isabel? Where is she now?”

“With Carlos, I think, but no one at the camp has time to help find her brother.” He wraps himself more tightly around me. “That's why I've got to go back. So many people have let her down. I need to keep my promise.”