Spiral (19 page)

“Why do you care though? You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Jack,” she replies, looking hurt again.

I cock an eyebrow at her. Suddenly semantics matter? “Okay, you strongly dislike me.”

She shrugs. “No matter how I’ve treated you, you’ve been there for me when I’ve been…out of it.” Her head hangs a little. Finally, she peers at me from under her long, black lashes. “Consider this my way of making up for that last night in New York.”

I gulp. “Oh. I didn’t think you remembered.”

She nods. “I remember everything.” The air stills between us, and she drops her eyes again. “And you were really nice the first couple of days after my parents died. I kind of liked having you around, you know, before you said that stuff to Uncle Jim.”

Meeting my gaze again, I see a thousand nights of tears in her eyes, and I feel really, really badly.

“I’m sorry, you know, for what I said that night.”

“It hurt a lot,” she concedes quietly. “I already felt so alone, and then you, the only person I actually felt safe with, even you didn’t want me.”

ME?
Oh, now it’s like she’s kicking me in the stomach over and over. “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. “And I didn’t mean to hurt your wrists yesterday.”

She smiles sadly. “I’m fine. Deserved it, I guess.” Now I feel even worse. She stirs the bowl of soup and sets it down, lays the spoon beside it, then looks at the clock.

“Well, I’ve gotta go get ready,” she says. I want to ask why and where she’s going. I don’t know why I even care, but I do. I don’t really want her to leave.

I nod. “Thanks for bringing the soup in. I’ll, uh, have it later.”

Her lips purse together, and she slowly walks away. She pauses at the door and turns back to me.

“I’ll, um, I’ll see you later, Jack,” she says. “Feel better.”

I smile a silent thank you and try to look away. When she finally disappears, I release the breath I had been holding for the last thirty seconds. Her sad expression and sadder words haunt me as I slump down and stare at the wall.

I think my fever finally breaks that night because I have some delirious, trippy dream filled with all of sorts of colors and sounds. Cherie is in my dream, too, lying next to me and stroking my hair, and I actually let her, which is how I know it can’t possibly be real. She is bathed in this white aura of light, looking like an angel. I try to talk, but it comes out in garbled, nonsensical sounds. She giggles and tells me I’m cute. She even kisses my cheek.

When I wake up in the morning, I’m ache-free and alert. My skin is cool and every trace of my fever is gone.

Except for the delirious dream part, because my pillow smells like Cherie.

I
t's clear that Cherie must have taken some sort of kindness pills last night because they have worn off when I finally walk out of the house and toward the pool. Danika is sun-tanning by her side, furiously typing away on her phone. She looks up at me and smirks as I pass.

“Hey, Danika,” I force myself to say. “Long time no see.”

“Hello, Jack,” she replies icily.

“Hi, Cherie.”

Cherie barely looks in my direction, even when I sit down in the other chair beside her. She keeps her face pointed to the sky, her sunglasses set over her eyes so I can’t even tell if she’s awake.

“Nice out today,” I say quietly, kicking my feet up and laying in the chair next to her, trying to be casual.
We’re friends now, aren’t we?

She turns her head the slightest bit, looks in my general direction, then turns back to the sky. “Yeah, nice.”

And we’re back!
“Yep.” Why do I sound so meek? I clear my throat and work up the nerve to ask, “Hey, did you come into the guest room at all last night? Like, really late?”

She glances over at me and tips her sunglasses down, examining me like I’ve gone crazy. “No.”

“Oh. Yeah, I didn’t think so.” I feel myself turning pink. Of course she wouldn’t have; that was just some dumb fantasy my brain conjured in my delirium. “Listen, I don’t know if I said it before, but – um – thanks for bringing the soup by last night and stuff.”

She doesn’t respond. She instead looks kind of annoyed that I’m there. She turns to Danika and says, “Did you hear from Caz yet?”

I’m not sure why, but his name sparks a twinge –
just a twinge!
– of envy. I try not to look over when Danika answers that she has indeed spoken to Caz.

“He said we should meet him and Dominick at Blue Moon at 4.”

“Fabulous,” Cherie sings with a grin.

I let this news stew in my brain for a few quiet moments, and then I get up to walk to my room.
So she’s meeting up with Caz Farrell today. Just great.

I hear Brenton behind me asking Cherie if she wants to play with him, and she flatly denies him.

“Nope,” she replies.

Brenton, brokenhearted, murmurs, “Okay.” Now I’m really bitter. She knows he adores her; can’t she take the time to play with him for five minutes?

She says to Danika, “What time should we leave?”

Brenton floats toward me as I near the casita. “Jack, wanna play Marco Polo?”

I shake my head. “Not now, buddy, maybe later, I’m still kind of sick.” It’s not even an outright lie; my whole interaction with Cherie has made my stomach churn and my skin reach a new, feverish temperature.

Brenton sighs and floats away, muttering, “And they all wonder why I have an imaginary friend…”

“Sorry, bud,” I sigh, and I watch him paddle back to the middle of the pool. My eyes find Cherie again, and she is sitting up in her chair, rubbing lotion down her legs and then across her waist. Danika catches me looking and throws up her hands.

“God, would you stop staring at us?! It’s gross!” Her words make me cringe, and they ignite flames inside of me.

The words come flying out before I can stop them. “Don’t flatter yourselves.” I disappear inside my room before our exchange can get any uglier. Cherie’s shouting something else and laughing with Danika, but I slam the door to tune her out.

My mind is spinning with fury, wondering where I went wrong and what I did now to make her mad. What could have happened between the moment she left the room last night to the moment I woke up to bring us back to square one?

Danika.
Of course, it all makes sense. She can’t be nice to me in front of other people because that would go against everything she’s been doing for the last month. She doesn’t want anyone to know she was actually kind to me last night and that her nastiness toward me is all just for show.

Or maybe I was the one she’s lying to; yes, that’s it. I should have gone with my instincts; my mother definitely sent her in to apologize. She didn’t really mean it – she was just messing with me yet again. Messing with me so she could lure me into a moment like just now where I look like a pathetic puppy desperate for her attention, giving her the chance to kick me.

My blood is even hotter now, and I’m absently pulling on my gym shorts and a fresh t-shirt. Cherie and her bitch sidekick know no limits. I yank on my sneakers. I’ve got to run. I’ve got to burn all this anger off somehow. I throw open my door and see my mother emerging from the house.

“I was wondering where you were!” my mom sings out, carrying Britney onto the patio. “We just went up to check on you – wait, where are you going?”

Britney holds out her arms for me as I slide past. “Jackie!”

“Not now, I’m going for a run,” I mumble gruffly, even though neither of them deserves my tone.

“But Jack – you just got over a fever! School starts in two days!”

“I’m fine, Mom!” I keep walking to the front of the house, my strides swallowing the ground. As I head through the front door, I hear Cherie’s voice plaguing me from the patio.

“I don’t know; he just got mad all of a sudden. He’s pretty moody, Eva.”

Once outside the gate, I break into a run, my feet hitting the pavement in hard, rapid steps. I follow the sidewalk to the end of the street and keep going, running blindly, my fury leading me down this road and up that hill until I am lost and have come upon a part of town that actually has buildings and alleyways. I can’t stop to think about where I am or if it’s a neighborhood where I could be in danger. I’m swimming in muddled, bitter thoughts about the humiliation Cherie’s exacted upon me within the past seventy-two hours.

She was so nice last night, so … perfect. She apologized – she called a truce! Had I really for even a minute thought any of that was real?
She’s a professional actress, stupid!
She was putting on a show – my mom probably gave her a good tongue-lashing for slapping me, and Cherie thought she’d make nice to get out of trouble. That’s all. She doesn’t care about me one bit. She doesn’t like me.

And I have to stop liking her. It isn’t healthy. It isn’t going to go anywhere.

But with her fiery eyes and her gorgeous smile and how nice I know she could be sometimes, it’s becoming impossible to avoid thinking about her almost every minute of every day.

My anger bubbles to the top when I stumble over a fallen garbage can that’s rolled into the middle of the alley. I crash onto my knees and palms, and I’m a mess of scrapes and blood almost immediately. I curse and pick myself up, turning on the dirty, metal can with full venom. I throw my foot against it and send it colliding against the wall of a building.

A voice rips me out of my blind fury. “Whoa, my dude! Take it easy; it’s just a garbage can.” A kid approaches me, his hands out as if he could be next. I’m too angry to be embarrassed. He looks like he might be about my age, maybe a little older. He’s black and short and lean, and he’s watching me with laughing brown eyes.

“Sorry.” I’m breathing hard, staring at the garbage can as he rights it.

He smiles with genuine friendliness, and his eyes are alight with humor.“That’s girl problems, right there. What’s her name?” I drop my gaze to the ground. How did he know that?

I don’t even want to say her name out loud because the first syllable alone may force my foot to fly forward into the trash can again. I also don’t want him, if he doesn’t already recognize me, to recognize her name and put two and two together. It’s a terrible thing when you can’t be honest with anyone.

“Trouble,” I grimace.

The kid laughs heartily and holds out his fist toward me. “I heard that! That was my ex-girlfriend’s first, middle, and last name.”

I bump his fist with my own, and we share a grin.

“What’s your name, dawg?”

“Jack Hansen.” I wait for it. I wait for him to say,
“Hold on, that Jack Hansen? Cherie Belle’s Jack Hansen?”
He doesn’t, and I’m relieved, even a little embarrassed that I actually assumed some random person would recognize my name.

“I’m Mica Williams, nice to meet you.”

“Same. Where you from?” I ask, noting the accent I hear in his voice. It sounds like home.

“Originally? New York. The Bronx. You?”

I smile. “New York. Westchester.”

“Aight, aight, I heard of it. Upstate, right?” he chuckles. “So whatchu doin’ here, besides beatin’ up innocent garbage cans? You on vacation?”

“We just moved here. I live on Palm Court.” I’m not even sure how far away that is from here, and for the first time I realize I’m really lost.

His eyebrows raise. “Word? Them some big houses. You got that Westchester money, huh dawg?”

I shrug. “Not exactly. Kind of just landed in our laps.” I feel dirty admitting to it.

“Ah, gotcha. Wish I had that kind of luck.” He gestures to the garbage can. “So, this whatchu do for fun, Jack Hansen?”

“No, I’m just a little on edge is all.”

“There’s a gym not far off. You look like a big dude; why don’t you lift some weights or somethin’? Work that aggression out,” he advises.

I shake my head. “Not what I needed today.”

The light bulb seems to go off. “Oh, you got that burn like you wanna hit some
bodies!
I gotchu dawg, I gotchu. Yo, you spar?”

“Spar?”

“Like in boxing, you know? Tyson-Mayweather-style.” He bounces back and forth, his fists up to his temples. He throws some air jabs. I marvel at how he moves; it’s graceful, like he knows what he’s doing.

“No, never tried that,” I admit. I suddenly wish I could punch like him.

“Aw, you gotta try it. There’s a trainer off Route 1. He’s got a gym. I go every day.” I’m immediately interested. While I know the last thing I need is to awaken my violent side, I always wanted to learn how to actually box. It’s probably better to take boxing lessons from Mica than to violently explode on friends like I shamefully used to do years ago.

He sees the enthusiasm in my expression. “I could teach you, ya know?” He grins. “I’m not too bad, if I don’t mind me sayin’. Yo, if you down, meet me there tomorrow. It’s called Rocco’s. We’ll get you on the bag, see what it do.”

“What time?”

“Anytime. I’m off from school right now, so I spend most of my morning there.”

Curious, I ask, “What school do you go to?”

“Worthington High School. It’s not too far from here.”

This is good news. Very good news. “That’s where I start on Monday!”

He laughs at my excitement. “Word? That’s cool, man. Thought you’d be in some private school or some shit like that.”

“Yeah, not quite,” I reply quietly. “So what time should I meet you at the gym?”

He shrugs. “It’s Winter Break, Jack Hansen. Meet me when you get over there.”

I watch him replace his earbuds and trot off. My chest swells a little. I just made my first Californian friend, and he’s from New York. What are the odds?

Once I come off of my high, I realize I have no idea where I am, and where I am doesn’t look good.

“Hey, Mica – wait up!” I call out. He turns and removes one of his earpieces. I jog toward him. “How do I get home?”

He smirks and shakes his head, waving me to follow him.

T
he next morning, I make it my business to wake up at 8 and look up directions to Rocco’s gym. I’d like to run to it and really prove I’m still somewhat of an athlete, but it probably isn’t the best idea after how lost I got in the not-so-nice neighborhoods yesterday.