No one was standing in line, but it was pretty effective as a dismissal. Jason grabbed Brittney over the back of her shoulders and steered her in my direction.
Bobby’s arm squeezed mine until I was close to losing circulation.
“You mind giving us a ride?” Jason asked when they stopped in front of us.
Brittney stared at the ceiling, pretty much fuming. Then she took out her phone and texted someone.
“Sure, no problem.” I didn’t even know that Jason was aware of the fact that we lived in the same ‘hood. He’d never even given me a second look driving by.
I’m forced to do a lot of yardwork, so I saw his car all the time. I always knew when Jason was home or going out somewhere. It wasn’t that I stalked him, but his loud Camaro was kind of hard to miss when it rumbled by.
“And Britt too?” He looked down at his girlfriend to get her approval of his plan.
A girl walked up behind Brittney and interrupted her answer. “Ready to go?” she asked.
We all stood there, staring at her. The interloper.
“Yes, I’m ready.” Brittney smiled at her boyfriend, completely ignoring Bobby and me. “You coming?” she asked.
Jason frowned. “I already got us a ride.”
Brittney’s smile disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Maybe even quicker. “I’m not riding with them. I’m riding with Tiff. You are too.”
Tiff is Brittney’s best friend. They’re like clones of each other, making me wonder if Jason ever got them mixed up. People talked about them like they were one unit. Tiff and Britt. Britt-n-Tiff. They sounded like an annoying clothing label.
I got the distinct impression that Jason didn’t like having Brittney make his decisions for him. His expression was pretty clear, but his words sealed the deal.
“No thanks. I’m riding with them.” He gestured towards us with his chin.
Bobby squeezed me again. I was pretty sure he was close to squealing.
See, Bobby loves drama and he adores football players. This was a dream come true for him; Jason Bradley in my car with him in the backseat. That’s what he was imagining. I knew it then and he confirmed it for me later. Too bad he lets his brain get away from him sometimes.
I could see the steam starting to gather and spill out of Brittney’s ears, so I detached myself from Bobby’s death grip and showed the beefcake at the door my cup of cream soda, which he sniffed and tasted to verify its non-alcohol status. After his nod of approval, I reached into the bowl, snagging my keys.
“Well, I’m outta here,” I said with feigned cool. “Whoever is going with me better come now.” I walked away like I didn’t have a care in the world, like my stomach wasn’t in knots about Jason riding in my crappy car and Brittney coming after me with the fury of a thousand angry cheerleader girlfriends.
The grass was wet with dew, making me realize that it was a lot later than I had imagined. A quick check of my phone told me it was two in the morning. It made me wonder if somebody slipped something into my cream soda at the party causing me to go into some kind of drug-induced time warp. How did I last so long at this lame partay?
“Sorry about that,” Jason said, catching up to Bobby and me as I reached the side of my car. “She can be a real pain the ass when she’s had too much to drink.”
“Aren’t you worried about her getting home?” I asked, realizing that he’d totally just abandoned her. What kind of boyfriend does that?
He slipped down my scale of awesomeness in that moment. Not that he was all that high up to begin with, but I reserved a special place in Doucheville for guys who ditched girls when they were vulnerable.
“Tiffany took her. I saw her get in the car. She’ll be fine.”
Slightly mollified, I unlocked my door and got in, leaning over to unlock Bobby’s. At least, I thought I was letting Bobby in next to me, but Jason grabbed the handle and helped himself to the front seat.
Bobby’s face fell, but he stepped over and got into the back seat.
I put the key in the ignition and then paused. Bobby’s expression in the mirror was killing me.
Sighing, I stopped my ignition sequence and leaned back against my seat, turning my head to the right. “Jason, do you mind getting in the back?”
The entire car went silent. Muffled sounds of party people yelling and laughing came through the windows.
“Why?” Jason asked.
Tons of things raced through my head a split second after he asked that question. Should I lie and say that there’s something wrong with the seat? With the seatbelt? Should I make up some lame story about how I drive better with people in the back? Should I joke and say I want to be his chauffeur for the night?
My eyes bugged out at that thought. Talk about labeling oneself a leper. No. I just had to tell the truth.
“Because that’s Bobby’s seat.”
Bobby’s jaw dropped open as he stared at my reflection in the mirror. I knew exactly what was going through his mind. He couldn’t believe I just told the school’s favorite son that he wasn’t wanted.
“He your boyfriend?” Jason asked, kind of laughing. “I thought he was gay.”
I sighed heavily. Jason was now the favorite son of Doucheville as far as I was concerned. “Just get in the back, please. Or find another ride.”
He opened the door, got out, and stood at the curb for a few seconds staring into the window.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” Bobby said in a loud whisper, leaning between the front seats. “You are completely crayzola crayon.”
“Just get up here, gaylord, or I’m going to go through all this humiliation for no reason.” Gaylord is the nickname Bobby gave himself five years ago. If there’s anybody crayzola crayon crazy in this car, it’s him, not me.
“Let’s tell him I’m your boyfriend,” Bobby said before opening his door. “Really blow his mind.”
“No. Just get in, would you? I’m tired and I want to go home.” I stared straight ahead, wondering if I would be forevermore branded head pariah with Jason’s entire squad of friends and hangers-on. That would make life interesting. Just the kind of interesting I like to avoid, in fact.
Bobby got in the front seat and shut the door. We exchanged a look when the back door opened and Jason got in, but then I faced the windshield again. Sometimes Bobby makes me laugh at inappropriate times, and I didn’t want Jason to think we were mocking him. Disliking someone and mocking him are totally different things, and I didn’t want any misunderstandings between us. As if it mattered. I can be really silly sometimes.
Halfway through the ride home, I got up the nerve to look in my rearview mirror at the back seat. I was used to seeing girls back there or Bobby, so it was weird how Jason seemed to take up half the entire space. Being a wide receiver, he’s shorter and lighter than a lot of the guys on the team, but he’s by no means small. Weight training class was mandatory for all the football players, and Jason has the kind of body that takes to that stuff naturally. His shoulders are broad and the muscles in his arms are obvious even when he’s not flexing.
Seeing him back there being all fit, reminded me how I was always telling myself I should get to the gym and work on my own muscles. I always came up with other things to do instead, though. I’m not lazy so much as easily bored.
We pulled onto Bobby’s street and I slowed down as I reached his driveway. Bobby turned around and grinned at Jason as I drew to a stop.
“So, you going to be in big trouble with Brittney or what?” he asked.
Jason huffed out some air, like he was annoyed. “Probably.”
“She’s so drunk, she’ll probably forget it even happened,” Bobby said, trying to reassure him.
“You don’t know Brittney very well, do you?”
“Tell her that she got mad at you and didn’t want you to come along. We’ll totally back you up, won’t we?” Bobby looked at me and wiggled his eyebrows.
“Tiffany will set her straight,” Jason said, soundin
g like it was a foregone conclusion he was resigned to suffer. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not.”
Bobby turned back around and quickly texted something before opening his door. “Come on up front,” he said to Jason.
My phone beeped and I pulled it out of my bag enough to read the message. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
I rolled my eyes. As if.
“I thought that was your seat,” Jason said, making me wish I could go bury my head in Bobby’s front yard. How embarrassing. Did I really say that?
“I hereby bequeath it to you. Use it wisely.” Bobby started to walk away but then he stopped and turned to face us. “Oh, but don’t touch the radio. The radio channel selection privilege does not come with the front seat privilege. I learned that lesson the hard way.”
He shook his hand like it was stinging, making me wish I had a go-go-gadget boxing glove I could shoot out at him. Pop! Right in the kisser. But I didn’t have one of those handy dandy gadgets, so I just shot him the shit-eye instead. Way to make me look like a desperate loser, Gaylord.
Bobby giggled all the way to his front door. I swear I could still hear him haw-hawing, even with the thing closed up tight behind him.
Jason got out of the back and sat in the front next to me, slamming the door shut way harder than necessary.
“Wow. This thing is like a tin can,” he said.
“The tin can that brought your sorry ass home,” I mumbled. Before I’d been nervous about having Jason in my car. Now I just was annoyed he was there and wanted him out.
I took off from the curb and barely got out onto the road when Jason reached his fingers up towards my stereo buttons.
I slapped his hand away and glared at him for a couple seconds. “No touching!” Then I went back to watching the road. Only ten more blocks to go.
He jerked his hand back and laughed. “No touching? What does that even mean?”
“It means what it means.”
“That makes no sense.” He sounded like he was still laughing inside that stupid big head of his. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or just feeling a little dizzy over the beer he drank. Whatever it was, it was making me mad.
I tried to explain so his tiny brain would understand. “It makes perfect sense. Do not touch my stereo and I won’t slap your hand. Simple math.”
“Put it on yourself, then,” he said.
“No. I like the silence.”
“You’re sure talking a lot for someone who likes silence.”
“You’re the one talking, not me.” The ridiculousness of the situation did attract my attention. I just couldn’t stop once we got started.
“How do you know where I live?” he asked.
I was grateful for the change of subject. “Because we’re neighbors? Because we’ve lived down the street from each other for over ten years?” Pretty much disgusted with him at this point, I couldn’t wait to get to his house and get rid of him. I pressed on the accelerator to make the time stuck with him go by faster.
A full minute passed before he responded. “I knew that, you know. That we’re neighbors. I just didn’t know if you knew.”
“Oh, yeah?” My liar-liar-pants-on-fire alarm started going off in my brain. “Where do I live, then, if you know me so well?” I was probably being a bitch, but I couldn’t help it. I imagined he was lying to me like he probably lied to everyone. I was busy cooking up this whole persona for him during this short car ride, and none of it was very pretty.
“Riiiight there,” he said, pointing to my house. “The house with all the flowers. You’re out there every single weekend planting those things. They look nice.”
And just like that, he made me feel very small and very stupid and very mean-girl.
“Yep, that’s me,” I say, trying to play it off. “The gardener girl.”
“The constant gardener. Loved that movie,” he said, kind of wistfully.
I was speechless. Nothing I’d imagined about him before was consistent with who he was right then. Was he being a different person for me as some kind of one-act play, or was I seeing the real guy? There was no way for me to know for sure then, but I know the truth now.
But we’re not to now yet. I still have things to tell you about then.
Chapter Five
TWO WEEKS WENT BY BEFORE I talked to Jason again. During those two weeks I fantasized that I’d be out constant gardening and he’d pull up in his Camaro and we’d shoot the breeze like old friends. But that never happened. We weren’t old friends and he had a life that didn’t include me.
Bobby came over, though, of course. I gardened while he did his cuticles and worried about sun exposure. We hung out and analyzed the living daylights out of that night with Jason.
Our final conclusion was that it was one of those moments in your life where the Universe reminds you in a fairly obvious way that things won’t always be the same and people aren’t always what you expect them to be. At the time we came to this brilliant conclusion, we had no idea how poignantly awful and true that insight would turn out to be for all of us.
It was game day again. Friday. The weather was perfect. The heated talk around school was that this was Jason’s big game. The Game. The one where the college scouts would all be attending and filming and making decisions over.
Not being a football player, I really had no idea what this would feel like for him, but I imagined it was a pretty big deal. He was probably nervous. A piece of me wanted to drive over to his house after school and tell him good luck. But he wouldn’t have been there, anyway. I found out later that he was at the stadium, in the locker rooms reserved for the home team.
I went to the game with Bobby, getting there early so we could have a good seat in the nosebleed area, the top row of the stands on the fifty yard line. We liked being able to see the entire game without anything blocking our view, and the players looking like tiny ants running around the field. We’d hold up our first fingers and thumbs and pretend to squish them as they ran around after that stupid ball. Silly little ants. Squish!
The crowd was buzzing, even more so than usual. Bobby was twisted around so he could look out into the parking lot behind us. He banged me on the arm a bunch of times to tell me what he was looking at as I stared down at the groups of people huddled on the sidelines. The game should have started a while ago, but the players weren’t even out on the field yet.
“Check it out,” Bobby said. “Trouble.”
I turned around to see cop cars pouring into the parking lot.
“Whoa. What the hell is that all about?” I turned around more fully and stood up. “It better not be a bomb.”
Bobby and I held onto the back railing and watched as the squad cars parked with their lights flashing and several police officers got out. The wind ruffled my hair, and I had the strangest sensation that something evil had just blown into town. I tried to brush off the feeling, but it wouldn’t leave.
“I have no idea.” Bobby looked at me for a second before he took his phone out and started tapping away at the keyboard.
“Who are you texting?”
“Caroline. Maybe she knows something.”
Caroline was the one cheerleader who communicated with those of us on the lower echelon of the school’s hierarchy. Her little brother is gay so she has a special place in her heart for guys like Bobby.
A couple seconds later there was a response.
Bobby looked up at me, worry in his eyes.
“What?” I asked, suddenly concerned myself. I hadn’t seen this expression on Bobby’s face often, so I knew it must be a big deal, whatever it was.
“It’s Jason.”
Jason and I weren’t friends. I didn’t even really like him. But in that moment, my heart kind of seized up and I felt sick to my stomach. If nothing else, he was a neighbor. A neighbor who called me the Constant Gardener.
“What about Jason?” I asked, my voice kind of messed up.
Bobby was looking out into the parking l
ot. “Look,” he said, pointing down below us.
And that’s when I saw Jason being led out of the building in handcuffs and put into a police car.
Chapter Six
THE GAME NEVER STARTED. AN announcement was made over the loudspeaker that it had been cancelled due to an emergency. That was it; that was all they gave us, after calling in an entire battalion of cops.
The stands were full of grouchy adults who apparently lived for this baloney, but all the people my age were more interested in speculating about the reason for the cancellation. The most plausible they came up with was some sort of football player prank gone awry, but that didn’t really explain the level of police response we saw, or Jason being hauled off in handcuffs. I mean, that would have to’ve been a pretty serious prank, for it to end up like that. I thought maybe it was some sort of fight, but that really didn’t make sense either because Jason had never been the fighting type before and there would have been more than one person in cuffs, right? And all kinds of injuries?
I had to find out what had happened. Bobby’s texts had come up empty. Apparently, the cheerleaders were all on lock-down or something. They never came out on the field either that night. Good thing the powers-that-be cancelled the game, because I wasn’t sure how those players would have found the will to go on without all those pom-poms fluffing around and miniskirts flying up.
“Bobby, do you mind hitching a ride with someone else? I don’t feel very good right now.”
“Yeah, sure, you go ahead. Text me later.” He hugged me and kissed me on the forehead. “I’m here for you if you need me.” Somehow he knew that it was the Jason thing bothering me, but he also knew well enough not to say anything about it. There was a time to tease and a time to chill and he was good about recognizing the difference.
I left the stadium and drove home without the radio on, hoping that when I turned the corner, I’d see something up the street at Jason’s house shedding some light on the tragedy that had befallen him.
His house was dark. I drove past a couple times, but with all the lights off, it looked like neither Jason nor his dad were home. Jason’s mom died when he was a kid, so it was just the two of them. I felt really bad for him then. If I’d been the one arrested, I’d definitely want my mom there on the other side of the bars.