Wake (30 page)

But I did. Two months of making soups and drinks for Jem adds up. I take the empty jar down from the shelf and stare at it. Should I buy more? Should I keep making him food? He needs it. I enjoy doing it. I worry about him when I don’t do it. But does that mean I
should?

I end up buying honey. And ginger. And rice flour. And after I’m done checking out, I hate myself. I’m a foolish masochist, revisiting all the painful shit in my life just so he can gain a pound or two. I should stop.

Let him eat Jel -O and fend for himself.

But then I’d really hate myself.

When I get home from the grocery store there is a box of hinges on the porch. A note rests on top, penned in Luke’s wide, sprawling hand.

I told Frank I’d drop these off for the greenhouse windows. Sorry I couldn’t stick around. Dad needs my help today. – Luke He’s drawn a big ‘O’ underneath and fill ed it with X’s. How downright cheeky of him.

I change into my plaid work shirt and head through the garage toward the shed with the new box of hinges. It can go on one of the overburdened shelves with Frank’s tools and the rest of the greenhouse parts.

When I open the door at the side of the garage and nearly walk into the bumper of a blue Neon. I didn’t even hear him arrive. Jem steps out of his brother’s car, watching me intently, as I kick the side door shut behind me.

“You could have called before coming over.”

“You could have answered.” He notices the box in my hands and frowns.

I walk away, through the side gate and toward the back shed. Jem follows me slowly, quietly, like he’s trying not to be too intrusive. That’s a new thing for him.

I put the box inside with all the other crap and step back into the wan light of day. Jem studies me with a scowl as I replace the padlock on the shed door.

“Why are you here?”

“Are you still mad at me?” he demands.

“Yes.” Probably not for the reasons he’s thinking, but that wasn’t the question. He asked if I was mad, and I am.

Jem steps forward and stands close enough to invade my personal space. He corners me between the shed walland his tall frame, looming over me like a bully spoiling for a fight.

“And you won’t even listen to an apology?” he snarls.

“Piss off, Harper.” I put my hands on his shoulders and push him back. “You have no right to intimidate me like that.”

“Why won’t you look at me?” he demands.

“Why does it matter?” He takes another step in my direction and I back away. Space is a very good thing right now. Last time he lost his temper, he shoved me into shelves hard enough to cause bruises and kicked a chair. I don’t want to be the thing he lashes out against this time, and I don’t want to have to hit him back when I know he’s still unwell.

“You know why it’s important to me,” he snaps. That selfish ass. Al he thinks about is his own ego and emotional well being. It never occurs to him that it might be difficult for me to look at him, no matter what my reason.

“No, why is it important to
me
?”

It occurs to him now, but as usual, he twists it with selfishness. Jem gapes at me with a wounded look and takes a step back. Al he perceives is rejection, with no thought spared for what’s going on in my head. He tries and fails to compose his face into blankness before turning away and walking toward the gate. He folds his arms around his front as he goes.

Fuck him,
I think, and lean back against the shed door. Jem has a way of sucking all the energy out of me. Since I met him all he’s done is take from me and give barely anything in return. I’m crazy to hang out with him. I’m crazy to like him. The entire dynamic of this friendship is downright unhealthy.

He didn’t latch the gate properly when he left. I slowly make my way across the muddy lawn to close it, and when I get close I see the front bumper of the Neon around the corner of the house, still in the driveway. He hasn’t left yet.

I feel like a bitch just for contemplating it, but I know that I should stick up for myself and run him off. If he’s loitering around waiting for me to cave and give him what he wants, he can forget it.

I march around the side of the house to tell Jem off, but I can’t hold onto my resolve once I get a look at him. At first the only thing I see is the top of his hat above the steering wheel, on which he rests his forehead. I step slowly around the side of the car and see him clutching his arms around his middle like he’s in pain. My first thought is that something is physically wrong with him—that he’s sick and needs medical attention. Then I pause to take a closer look at him through the window. I didn’t see it at first with his head bent like that, but his face is twisted up in pain and he’s crying.

The cold, calculating part of my brain wonders whether I should call the hospital or his parents first. I reach for my cell phone and open the car door to get a better look at him.

Jem startles and flinches away from the door. I hold a hand up for calm. “It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry.” Jem turns away and wipes his cuff over his eyes with embarrassment.

“Do you want me to call someone?”

Jem shakes his head. I reach out to touch his shoulder and he grabs my hand so hard it hurts. I guess I have a spare, but damn…

“Please.” His free hand fists around my shirt and his head tips to rest against my front. I put an arm around his shoulders—he’s trembling with tears that he’s shamefully trying to quiet.

“Don’t cut me out,” he says shakily. I wish he wouldn’t beg. “I’ve been a really shitty, fucking awful friend, but
please
…” A little sob escapes and fuck if that doesn’t make my traitor heart melt.

I dislodge my hand from his grip and he backs up. He’s got that wounded look of rejection again.

“Calm down.” I wrap both arms around his shoulders. Jem practically falls into the hug with a grateful little whimper, holding onto my middle so hard I can barely breathe.

“I didn’t mean to upset you like this,” I say as he hiccups and gasps. I had banked on him feeling anger and resentment, not falling to pieces in my driveway.

“I didn’t mean to m-make you mad,” he answers with a thin voice. “You just…I reacted badly, and I couldn’t make it right…” His face twists in pain again and I tug on his shoulders before the water works can gear up again.

“Come inside.”

*

I give Jem a cup of cool water that he’s shaking too badly to drink, and sit him down in the kitchen with his head between his knees and a cool cloth across his neck. He’s shaking and breathing like he just ran a marathon in cold weather.

“You’re all right,” I encourage him, rubbing circles on his back.

“You must think I’m such a pussy,” he says lowly, sniffing back snot.

“You have no idea what I think.” Neither do I. My indecision bothers me.

Jem sits up slowly and takes the towel off his neck. His thinly lashed eyes are swollen and his cheeks are stained. “Why wouldn’t you let me apologize?”

“Because I didn’t want to fix it.”

That was precisely the wrong thing to say. He presses his lips together and stops breathing. At first I think he’s angry, and watch as he lowers his head again and replaces the cold towel. He doesn’t make a sound, but little drops begin to strike the tiles. It’s not the towel that’s dripping.

“Jem.”

“You’re my only friend,” he says quietly. “We can’t—? I won’t hang around if you don’t want me to.” He tries to stand up but I grab him by the shoulders and sit him right back down.

“You have no idea what I want.” And coincidentally, neither do I, apparently.

“You don’t want me around.”

“Let’s talk about this when you’ve calmed down a little.” I take the towel off his neck and brush it across his cheeks. “Lay down on the couch for a bit, ok?”

Jem lies down on his side, still breathing shakily, and tucks one of the throw pillows under his head.

There are spots of color on his cheeks, whether from exertion or embarrassment, I can’t tell . Maybe it’s a little of both.

Jem grimaces and points at my front. I look down and see a big, smeared string of snot on my shirtfront from when I hugged him in the car.

“I’m sorry.” He reaches for the Kleenex box but I hold out a hand to stop him.

“That’ll just smear it around.” I turn to go change out of this shirt and Jem sits up as I leave. I point a finger at him and say, “Lay down.” He wisely obeys, but there’s a distrustfull look in his eye, like he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight.

So I don’t go upstairs. I go across the hall to the laundry room and take a clean t-shirt off the top of the basket. I bring it back to the living room—because I know if I was gone for more than fifteen seconds he would get up to follow me like a puppy. Jem looks up when I come back in, plainly trying to read my face.

I toss the t-shirt on the recliner and take a seat. I have to unbutton the plaid shirt carefully to avoid touching the snot, but I get it off without smearing. My bra today is a tired, well -loved one: old white cotton, as modest coverage as they make, with sweat stains under the arms that even bleach won’t take care of. I pull my t-shirt over my head and straighten it around my shoulders.

Jem is glaring at me.

“What?”

“You don’t think of me as a real guy, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You wouldn’t have just taken your shirt off in front of Chris Elwood.” His tone is accusatory, which sets me on edge.

“A gentleman would have looked away.”

“A lady wouldn’t have taken her shirt off in the first place.”

I grab the snotted-up plaid and stand up with a huff. “There’s always something up your ass,” I complain, and march off to the laundry room to wash the plaid. I throw it in the washer with a load of dirty dishtowels, still ruminating on what an oversensitive prick Jem can be. He’s right, I probably wouldn’t take my shirt off in front of Elwood, but that’s because Chris would read it as an invitation. Under any other circumstances, I wouldn’t mind being shirtless at all. This bra covers way more than the average bathing suit, so it’s hardly pushing the bounds of modesty to show it off, not to mention it’s probably the least sexy thing I own. It’s not like I flashed him.

When I return to the living room Jem is sitting sideways on the couch with his knees bent, arms resting over them, looking contrite. “I’m sorry,” he says. I know it’s emotional blackmail, but it’s sort of nice how politely he speaks to me now. He’s terrified of doing anything that might dissolve our friendship even further.

I stand over him and bury my hands in my pockets. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you before I cold-

shouldered you.”

Jem looks down at his lap and smiles sadly. “Why’d you do it?”

“I told you from the start I’d be a bad friend. I intend to kill you, remember?”

He looks up at me with squinty eyes, like he’s irritated but trying to hide it. Eventually Jem looks away and shrugs dismissively. I watch him flex his hands around his knees. His knuckles dig into the denim, tightening and releasing, before he knits his hands together and looks up at me. If his hands are an obvious indicator of his thoughts, his eyes are even more so.

“Are we still friends?”

“Can you handle me?”

“Can you handle
me
?” he returns quietly but earnestly.

“Maybe. Do you have it in you to stop being so pessimistic all the time, and to be a little less possessive?”

“I shouldn’t have snapped on you,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” I agree with a nod. “I get it that you were mad, but there’s shit you just don’t do. I don’t call you Uncle Fester, you don’t steal my phone and mess with it, or get pissed off that I have a life outside of this.” I gesture between us. Whatever ‘this’ is.

“You don’t cut me out like that again,” he adds.

“I won’t. And will you please quit calling all the time and asking Frank where I am? He thinks I have a stalker.”

Jem smirks. “I’ll cut back. A little. You could just, y’know, answer your phone.”

“I’ll work on it.”

“So…friends?”

The word sounds wrong; frightening, strangely pleasant, and somehow not enough. I feel like I know him better than that. I’ve shared my memories of my happiest and hardest days with this guy. I’m not ‘friends’ with Jem the same way I am with Paige or Hannah. Or Luke.

“I’m not a good person.”

“I’m not either.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay, friends?”

“Okay, we’ll call it even. I guess that’s as good a foundation for friendship as any other.” That gets a smirk out of him. Hail the return of the smartass.

Jem excuses himself to use the washroom and I go upstairs. There’s something I want to show him. I brought very few books with me to Frank’s house, but the one I couldn’t do without was Darrel Epp’s
Imaginary Maps.
I thumb through the worn pages for the poem I have in mind. By the time I find it I can hear Jem calling for me nervously on the ground floor, like I would take off and ditch him in my own house.

“Coming.”

He meets me halfway up the stairs. He’s got that frightened puppy look again.

“For you.” I hand him the book with the cover folded back and he takes it like it’s a death warrant.

Hardly. Jem reads “For A Sick Friend” through a few times, standing below me on the stair. I’ve never seen him from this angle before. Standing on the upper stair, we’re almost equal height.

The poem is one about the helplessness of watching a loved one deal with sickness, and the contradiction of both needing and failing to express what that means. It was always good at making me feel a little less alone.

“Is that how you see me?” he asks, looking up at me from under red lids.

“I figured you’d get it.”

He turns back to the page. “So…” He struggles for a few seconds, blowing sighs out through his nose and fiddling with his hat and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Is that why you…y’know, ditched me? It was too much to handle…with your sister. And…stuff. I mean, I know what everyone thinks—were you tired of being stared at?”

“If I had a problem with you having cancer I wouldn’t have been decent to you in the first place. It’s not like it’s something you have to disclose.” I gesture up and down to his tall , thin frame. He looks absolutely sal ow in the late afternoon light.