Sweethearts

  “Your mom must have been young when she had you.” I looked at picture after picture of kids who looked like smaller versions of Cameron, dark hair and big eyes. All that time I knew Cam as a kid, I had no idea there were brothers and sisters. It was weird the way your world could be so small, like you’re looking at life through the tiniest of peepholes.

  “She was my age. Met my dad in high school, got pregnant, dropped out, married. Then just kept having kids.”

  “Do they know you’re coming back?”

  “Gonna call Jake later to check in. I’ll tell him then.”

  “They’re lucky,” I said. I was already imagining our good-bye — we’d both cry, we’d have a good long hug, we’d say things we might be scared to say if we knew we had to look each other in the eye the next day.

  “I don’t know about that. I can be a pain.” He laughed then, and bit into a donut. “You might have noticed.”

  I laughed, too. “Might have.”

  Ethan, waiting at my locker, wore an eye patch, puffy shirt, and raggedy vest. His face fell when we saw me. “You were supposed to be dressed as my wench,” he said, staring pointedly at my jeans and sweater.

  “It’s Halloween,” I said. “Today.”

  “Yes.”

  “Crap.”

  “I can’t believe you forgot.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “S’okay. I’ll just have to be a wenchless pirate.” He pulled me into a dramatic, swashbuckling kiss. “Arrrrr!”

  “Easy there, matey,” I said, pushing him back gently. It didn’t seem right to be making out with him when I was planning to execute the breakup within the next twenty-four hours. “We’ve got a whole day of school ahead of us.”

  Two freshman girls dressed as Mormon pioneers walked and made hungry, wishful eyes at Ethan. He did look rakish and yummy in his costume, I could see that objectively. But I didn’t have any physical or emotional reaction to the fact of him. Which made me sad.

  In trig, Katy leaned over, her hair in two sticking-out braids that nearly poked me in the eye. She glanced toward Cameron, who was feeling better and in his seat in the front row. “Has the Great Mysterioso said anything to you about the party?”

  “Like what, for instance?” I kept one eye on Miss Betts, who was involved in a lengthy whiteboard explanation with Nicole Threedy.

  “That he’s coming?” she whispered. “Or not coming? Anything about me? Anything about Steph? Anything, Jenna. Anything means anything.”

  Katy’s voice was never as quiet as she believed it to be, and I imagined Cameron could hear our whole conversation. “Not that I remember,” I said. “What are you supposed to be, anyway?” She had on a white tunic, black leggings, and striped leg warmers.

  She slapped her hands on her desk; Miss Betts turned around. “Girls? Is there a question?”

  “No, thank you, Miss Betts,” Katy said, then lowered her whisper only slightly. “I’m Pippi effing Longstocking! Please don’t tell me you thought I was actually dressed like this as me!”

  “I thought you were going to dress sexy. Anyway, shouldn’t you be more patchy than stripy?”

  “I never read the stupid book. This was all Steph’s idea.”

  Miss Betts stopped writing on the whiteboard but didn’t turn around. “Katy. I can still hear you.”

  “Sorry.”

  After class, Katy grabbed Cameron as we all shuffled out into the hall. “Hey, how come you didn’t dress up?” She meant to make chitchat, but in traditional Katy style it came out sounding overly urgent, like an accusation.

  “I haven’t done Halloween since I was nine.”

  “Come to the party tonight,” Katy said, not taking any hint whatsoever from Cameron’s flat tone. “I’m sure Jenna told you that we’re going out to get what candy we can and then we’ll use the sugar to help us stay up all night.”

  He looked at me.

  “I didn’t even realize today was Halloween until I got to school,” I said. “So, no, I didn’t mention it.”

  Katy straightened her leg warmers. “Well, it’s happening. Don’t forget.”

  At lunch, Steph and Gil were absorbed in some sort of complicated plan to acquire alcohol. “We should just get a giant bottle of bargain vodka or something,” Gil said, pushing his gorilla mask back on his head.

  “Not classy,” Steph said. “This is a special night, not a frat party.”

  “Special? Classy?” Ethan asked. “Steph. We’re seniors in high school going trick-or-treating. We look like third-rate street performers.”

  Katy’s eyes were on the cafeteria door. “What is Cameron’s problem? I saw him in the hall ten minutes ago and he pretended not to see me. He won’t even eat with us. I am so over him. I don’t know what I saw in him in the first place.”

  “Guffaw,” Gil said. “You saw he was available.”

  “Don’t give up before you’ve even started, Katy,” Steph said. “You never know what can happen. We can get him drunk and take advantage of him.”

  Katy laughed. “We? ”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her the chances of him coming were virtually zero. It would take hours to explain the whole situation — his childhood, emancipation, why he was here, why he was going back. And most of all, why he was living with me.

  Steph was detailing her master plan: “. . . and then we’ll completely beautify Katy and get everyone just the tiniest bit tipsy. Gil will come on to me and we’ll act like we suddenly realize we’re in love and we’ll be all over each other —”

  “Gee, Gil,” I interrupted, “how’d she get you to agree to that?”

  “— and Jenna will be with Ethan, leaving Cam horny and drunk with only Katy to play with. Et cetera. Unless anyone wants to swap partners,” she said, eyeing me.

  “Note how you went from ‘the tiniest bit tipsy’ to ‘horny and drunk,’ ” I said, playing along even though I knew none of this would ever happen. “That worries me. Just a little.”

  “Jenna,” Steph said in her ‘try to keep up with me’ voice, “we’re seniors. This is, like, a ritual that goes on all over the country. What could go wrong?”

  “Um, everything?”

  “So negative,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What time should I pick you up?” Ethan asked. He was ready to go into rehearsal. I knew Cameron was waiting for me at my car and I didn’t want to dawdle.

  “Maybe I’ll meet you there,” I said.

  “Jenna! Come on, let me just pick you up. It’s on the way.” He played with my scarf. “Then I can take you home and your parents will be asleep by then and I can come in and stuff.”

  “Ethan, I —”

  Bingry opened the door. “What will it take to get you here on time, Ethan?”

  “Sorry.” To me: “I’ll be there at six. Look sexy.”

  On the way home, Cameron put his hands on the dashboard, spreading his long fingers, craning his head to look through the windshield and up at the sky. “It’s going to snow again. I remember that sky.”

  Everything outside had gone gray and flat and still. “We’ve had the first snow before November,” I said. “Sign of a long winter.” I saw it stretching out in front of me, cold and gloomy with no Cameron and no boyfriend.

  “Remember that time we got snowed in at school? Everyone had to wait for their parents to get them, but our parents didn’t come.”

  “God,” I said, “I’d forgotten. Why can’t I remember any of this stuff without being reminded?”

  “School bus driver had to take us home eventually. We were the only two kids on the bus.”

  “I can picture us,” I said, “sitting next to each other on that backseat. It’s such a sad scene, really.”

  I felt him look at me. “I don’t think so. I never thought of it as sad.”

  “But Cameron, every single kid in the school got picked up by their parents except us!” I was laughing now at the tragic ridiculousness of it. “It was pathetic!”

&nb
sp; “We had each other. I never needed anyone else. That’s the difference between you and me,” he said. “You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed that one person. Only ever needed you.”

  “Not everyone has to like me,” I protested. “It’s just . . .” We’d arrived at my house. “Imagine if you’d believed I died,” I said. “Trust me, you’d start to need other people. You had the luxury of always knowing I was alive, knowing where I was and what I was doing. I didn’t have that, Cameron.”

  “I didn’t think of it that way when it was happening,” he said. “Didn’t ever think you needed me much as I needed you.”

  “I did.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I knew you’d be okay.”

  “How, Cameron? How did you know that?”

  “Look at you. From the day you marched across the school yard to talk to me,” he said, starting to smile a little at the memory, “I knew you were stronger than I’d ever be.”

  “You’re the one who got yourself away from your parents in the long run. You’re the one supporting yourself, being an adult.”

  “Maybe. Hey,” he said, teasing, “ain’t a competition, anyway. We can both be strong.”

  I smiled. “Yeah. Good.”

  I looked in my closet for something suitably wenchlike but couldn’t come up with anything. “Look sexy,” Ethan had said. I ended up borrowing a pair of my mom’s scrubs for my costume.

  She made us eat an early dinner so that the diet for the night would not consist entirely of candy. The doorbell kept ringing. After four or five times, Alan stopped answering. “What self-respecting child goes trick-or-treating before dark?”

  “I’m just not in the mood,” Mom said, taking a gulp of wine. “We should turn out the porch light and lock the doors.”

  “I’ll pass out candy,” Cameron said.

  Alan got up to clear the dishes. “Don’t you want to go out with Jenna and her friends?” he asked.

  “No,” we both said at the same time. “Also,” I said, turning to Cameron sheepishly, “Ethan is picking me up here at six. Maybe you could, like . . .” I made hand gestures of indeterminate meaning.

  “He could, like, what?” Mom asked.

  “Hide,” Cameron said. “Right?”

  “Essentially.”

  Mom did not look happy. “Jenna, have you not told Ethan that Cameron is staying here?”

  “Well, no. I haven’t.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Maybe we should stay out of it,” Alan said to my mom.

  The bell rang. Cameron jumped up to get it. He walked in with Ethan, who had on his pirate outfit, with his coat over it and the eye patch resting on his forehead. “I guess I’m early,” he said. “Sorry.” Cameron went over to the stove and ate a couple more bites of food with a serving spoon while Ethan watched.

  As soon as I saw Ethan’s face, I knew he’d been drinking. His eyes, nervous and unfocused, gave him away. I needed to get him out of there before my parents noticed. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “What about your costume?”

  “This is my costume.”

  He stared at me in the plain, baggy scrubs, disappointed. “Oh.”

  “Come on.” I turned to my parents. “Bye. I’ll be late.”

  “Be good,” Mom said.

  As soon as we were out on the porch, I said, “Are you crazy?”

  “What?”

  “You said you wouldn’t drink. You swore.”

  “Is he coming, or what? Tell him to hurry up.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Cameron. Your friend.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s not coming.”

  Ethan pointed to the door with an unsteady finger. “Then why is he in your house? You know what he said to me when he got the door? He said I’d better not get you in any trouble or he’d kick my ass. Kick my ass!”

  If I wasn’t so angry at Ethan, I would have laughed at that. “You swore,” I repeated, “that you wouldn’t drink.”

  “Steph made me. I only had a little.” He was completely unsorry. “She drove me here. You think I’m gonna drink and drive?” I leaned to look past him and saw Steph’s car idling in front of the house. She waved; I didn’t wave back. Ethan looked me up and down, making a pouty face. “Your costume sucks.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be your wench, Ethan.” Steph beeped the horn. “Let’s just go.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS CRAP. JOLLY RANCHERS? GUMMY worms?” Katy rifled through the pile of candy she’d dumped onto Steph’s floor. “Where’s the chocolate? Where’s the candy corn?”

  “I like Jolly Ranchers,” Steph said, helping herself to Katy’s rejects, her boobs in danger of breaking loose from her Renaissance dress.

  Gil watched, fascinated. “Remind me who you are again?”

  “Um, Juliet? From Romeo and Juliet? ” She popped a candy into her mouth. “Shakespeare?”

  “Did they really dress like that back then?” Gil asked. “It seems kind of like something that might get you burned at the stake.”

  “I’m pre-Puritan, baby.”

  Ethan unwrapped a peanut butter cup from his own candy pile. “You’ve obviously never been to a Renaissance fair, dude. I went to one in New York with my cousin? Boobs galore.”

  “We gotta get one of those in Utah,” Gil said.

  Our trick-or-treating hadn’t lasted long. The snow had stopped falling, but there was plenty on the ground and it was too wet and cold to be trekking around in costumes. Anyway, some people called us on being too old, and we weren’t having fun: Gil and Katy were pissed about Cameron not being there; Katy for obvious reasons and Gil because it meant his role in the plan — i.e., groping Steph — was no longer required. Also, Ethan and Steph were tipsy and being obnoxious.

  Now, we were in Steph’s family room surrounded by candy and the bottle of vodka and nary a parent in sight.

  “Are we going to watch a movie or not?” I asked.

  Katy emptied a minibox of Nerds into her mouth and asked, “Why doesn’t Cameron like us?”

  “Yeah,” said Gil. “We’re likable. Right?”

  “He barely knows you,” I said.

  Katy laughed. “He barely knows you, Jenna!”

  “Oh, he knows her,” Steph said.

  Ethan nodded. “He really knows her. He’s her body guard, too, I found out. Threatened to kick my ass if anything happened to her.”

  Katy stared straight ahead, Pippi braids drooping and knees drawn to her chest. “I knew it,” she said.

  “Knew what?” Steph asked.

  “Cameron and Jenna. Jenna and Cameron. It’s been obvious since the day he showed up.”

  Gil looked at me. “Okay, I’m officially confused.”

  “It’s simple,” Ethan said, taking a swig from the vodka bottle. “Jenna’s been cheating on me.”

  I stared at the carpet. “I have not. You guys have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know anything about the situation.”

  “Tell us,” Katy said.

  Steph looked sad. This evening was not going as she’d hoped.

  “He’s . . .” I shook my head. I could have explained how he was homeless and needed somewhere to stay. How he was wounded and needed someone who understood. How he was a hero, surviving his father and going back to save the others. But none of those things were any of their business, and none of them explained why he mattered to me. “He’s the one person who knows everything about me,” I finally said. “And loves me anyway.”

  “So . . .” Gil said, “you are cheating on Ethan?”

  “Shut up, Gil,” Steph muttered.

  “Are you saying I don’t know you, Jenna?” Ethan looked like he might possibly start to cry, staring at me like he and I were the only ones in the room. “Because what’s the point of having a girlfriend if she thinks I don??
?t know her?”

  Steph looked almost as upset as Ethan. “What don’t we know about you that would make us not love you, Jenna?”

  “Yeah,” Gil said. “Have a little faith.”

  “We’ve been friends for almost four years,” Katy added. “Hello, all of high school?”

  Ethan was still near tears. “If you’re going to break up with me, just do it.”

  I’ve been trying, I thought, but didn’t say it, knowing that would hurt and embarrass him more than anything. “Can we talk about this later?” I asked. “In private?”

  “Breakups happen all the time,” Steph said. “We’ll all survive it.” She slopped some vodka into a cup and held it out to me. “Jenna, have a drink. And I’ll put on the movie and we’ll keep ingesting sugar and things will seem better, you’ll see.”

  “Seem better,” I said. “But not be better.” I stood and got my jacket, leaving Steph there holding out the cup. “I’m sorry, Steph. Can someone sober please give me a ride home?”

  Alan was still up, surrounded by candy wrappers and watching TV. I fell onto the couch next to him. “Where’s Mom?”

  “She went to bed early with one of her headaches. Cameron turned in awhile ago, too.” He peeked into my plastic bag of candy. “Anything good?”

  “I sort of ate all the chocolate stuff.”

  “Are there any Circus Peanuts?”

  “Who likes Circus Peanuts?”

  “Me,” he said, finding one of the gross peanut-shaped marshmallows.

  We were quiet awhile, surrounded by only the sounds of unwrapping and crunching and chewing, and the TV. I gnawed on a Dum Dum stick. “Ethan and I are done,” I said finally.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He was my first boyfriend.”

  “I know.”

  “The only real boyfriend I’ve had. I’m a senior in high school and he was my only real boyfriend.”

  “I know.”

  “And I won’t find another one at Jones Hall. That is guaranteed.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is all very sad and tragic,” I said.

  Alan unwrapped a sleeve of Smarties. “Yet, oddly, you don’t seem that upset.”