Crazy in Love (12 page)

I glance from Mom to Dad and back. And I know it’s up to me. This is my problem.

“Don’t worry about this, okay?” I say, and my voice raises an octave. “I didn’t do anything, and all I have to do now is tell kids the truth. It might take a couple of days. But everything will blow over. The truth will out.” I rack my brain for more clichés. “This too shall pass.” I realize I’m making about as much sense as my rents do when they attempt to advise me in matters of life and love. I feel as if I’m tossing peanuts to starving pigeons. But my rents
are
starving, and they’re taking the pigeon feed. They’re buying it because they need to. The carved channels in their faces are returning to lines.

“Really?” Mom asks.

I nod as if I’m positive. “Stuff like this happens all the time. Not to me,” I add quickly. “It’s probably over already. But you better let me field the calls this weekend, just in case. Anyway, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“I don’t know, Mary Jane,” Dad says. But he leans back and appears to be breathing normally again. “I could make some calls, file a complaint. . . .”

I manage a smile, an actual smile. “That would make things worse, Dad. Let me handle it, okay? Thanks for the concern. Seriously, I appreciate it. It was good to talk things out and all. And you’ll be the first to know if I need a lawyer. But it’s all going to be okay.”

I get up from the couch and head for the stairs. They don’t stop me. My rents have believed me. True, they’ve believed me because they wanted to, needed to. Rents have an irresistible need to believe that everything is hunky-dory (their words, not mine) with their kids.
I
don’t believe me. I wish I did, but I don’t. And yet I have just pulled off an amazing thing.

I have bucked up.

Mary Jane Ettermeyer may have gotten the Bucker-Upper gene after all.

15

I shower the Diet Coke
off of me, put on my comfiest nightie, then lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, fighting off images of Star and Jackson. In my mind, they turn into Barbie and Ken, then back again. I see them in their khakis and matching white shirts on the cover of
Teen Idols,
their back view on the back of the magazine, his arm around her waist, her thumb hooked in his belt loop.

The voice of
M.J.
in my head wishes Star’s middle finger would get slammed in Jackson’s car door. It wouldn’t get broken, but Star would definitely have to wear a splint on it. And everyone would see the kind of girl she really is.

I must have fallen asleep, because I jerk myself awake to the national anthem. It’s the tune I picked for my cell. Besides the fact that nobody else has it, I figure if I leave my cell on in class and get a call, the teacher may be less likely to yell at a real patriot.

It’s pitch dark in my room, so I have to grope for the phone. I pick up just as it’s switching to voice mail. “Hello?” I sound like I have a mouth full of brown fuzz, which is exactly what my mouth feels like. I didn’t brush my teeth before I fell asleep.

“Mary Jane, I’m sorry. Did I wake you up?”

The cobwebs in my head clear instantly, and I sit bolt upright. It’s Jackson.

“Jackson? What time is it?” This is the least of the questions swirling in my head, but it’s the first one to pop out.

“After midnight. I know. It’s late. I just needed to talk to you.”

“Talk to me?” Again with the repeating.

“Yeah. Can we talk?” He pauses. “Please, Mary Jane?”

“Why would I want to talk to you?” I demand.

“Because I’m asking you nicely,” he answers.

I should hang up on him right now after all he’s put me through.

“Because I won’t sleep until you let me talk to you,” he continues.

“Why would I believe a word you say?” I’m trying to stay totally angry with him. But I can’t stop picturing his brown eyes red and bloodshot . . . because of me.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to hear me out,” he says. “But I’m asking you to anyway. Please? Five minutes. Give me five minutes?”

I listen for the voices in my head and wonder if they’re still asleep.

“I’ll do anything, Mary Jane,” he pleads.

At the very least, I could hear him out, then demand that he call every boy in Attila Ill in a massive un-gossip campaign.

“Just five minutes?” he begs.

I sigh into the phone. I’ll hear him out. What can it hurt? “Okay. You’ve got five minutes.” I look at my watch, but it’s too dark to see the minute hand.

“Great! I’m outside. Hurry, okay?” And he cuts off.

“Outside?” I reach behind me and pull back the curtain on my only bedroom window. Jackson’s Jeep Cherokee is sitting under our half-bare maple tree.
He’s outside!

For a second I stay where I am. Then I grab my blue, wooly robe, step into the matching fuzzy slippers, and barrel downstairs at the speed of light, tying the robe’s belt as I clear the last step. Only after I shut the front door behind me and take a hit from the icy wind do I hear the cacophony of voices in my head:

Somehow, my fuzzy slippers keep moving down the sidewalk toward the familiar black Jeep Cherokee. My breath comes out in frost clouds. I dig my hands into the pockets of my robe and feel crumpled Kleenex.

Why didn’t I pull on clothes? Or brush my teeth?
Plain Jane
’s right. This is pretty whack. Jackson chose Star over me, and that’s that. I have no business coming out here in the middle of the night. I can’t even imagine what the rents would do if they saw me. They’d lock me in my room, and through the keyhole Mom would give me the entire birds-and-bees talk all over again.

I slow down as I near the car. The passenger door opens, and Jackson sticks out his head. “Thanks for coming, Mary Jane. You’ve got to be freezing.”

He’s right. I am freezing, although I hadn’t noticed it before now. I slide into the front seat, tucking my bathrobe under me. It’s warm inside, and I see the motor’s running. I almost apologize for looking like this, but I catch myself. I’m not the one who should be apologizing. I stare straight ahead, chew on the inside of my cheek, and wait for him to speak.

“Listen,” he begins. “Thanks again for coming out in the cold. I just had a craving for a pretzel and—”

I have one hand on the door.
Plain Jane
was right all along. He’s making fun of me. I am so out of here.

He takes hold of my arm. “Wait! Mary Jane, I’m just kidding. I’m sorry. Please! Let me start over.”

Plain Jane
is screaming at me to keep going, to step away from the car and not look back.

But
M.J.
is whispering about Jackson’s forest smell and how good his hand feels clamped around my arm.

I stop struggling, but I refuse to look at him.

Jackson starts over. “I know this is crazy to get you out here in the middle of the night, Mary Jane, but I wouldn’t get any sleep if I didn’t see you first.”

I take a deep breath and turn to him. There’s only a sliver of a moon in the sky, but it’s enough to throw light across Jackson’s face. His brown eyes are intense. I don’t think I ever noticed how perfect his ears are.

“I didn’t handle that very well in the mall today,” he begins.

I don’t argue.

“When Star asked me to meet her at Mahoney’s, she didn’t say you’d be there. I agreed to see her because I wanted to talk to her. Then when I saw you at the table . . .Well, like I said, I didn’t handle it very well. And I want to apologize.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me,” I say, not meaning it. “
I’m
not your girlfriend.”

No kidding,
Plain Jane
murmurs.
Like his girlfriend would be caught dead in a fuzzy bathrobe and slippers.

And braless,
M.J.
adds cheerfully.

His hand is still on my arm. It moves up to my shoulder, and I shiver.

“I’m trying to break up with her, Mary Jane. But when I told her that things weren’t working for us anymore, she wigged out on me. I just need a little more time.”

I want to believe him. It’s not hard to imagine Star wigging out. But I don’t want to be wrong.

“Mary Jane, why do you think I kept coming by the Pretzel Twister today?”

“The Twisted Pretzel,” I correct. Why he kept coming by there is exactly what I asked myself all day.

“I enjoy being with you, Mary Jane,” he says. “We have such a good time when we’re together.”

Good time?
I picture the Mary Jane graffiti on bathroom walls. I shrug his hand off my arm. “Is that what you tell all the guys? Mary Jane is a
good time?
”

He pulls back. “I told you I didn’t say—”

“Well, somebody did! My phone’s been ringing off the hook. Every guy in Attila thinks Mary Jane Ettermeyer is just waiting to show him a
good time!
”

His lips twitch, and his eyes sparkle. He’s laughing, although he’s trying not to.

“You think this is funny?” I shout.

The smile vanishes. “I’m sorry, Mary Jane, but we haven’t done anything.”

“I know that! But nobody else knows it.”

He sits back in the seat and asks, “What do you want me to do?” He looks over at me, and I think he’s really asking, that he’s serious.

“Fix it!” I cry, exasperated.

He drums the steering wheel for a full minute. Then he says, “I’ll just tell everybody it’s a lie, that nothing’s happened between us.”

“You will?” I feel like I’ve been battling the whole school by myself, and the idea of having someone else on my team makes me want to cry.

“Absolutely,” he promises, not taking his gaze off me.

I’ve come to this car for a fight, but he’s making it hard to stay mad at him. “Everybody? You’ll tell everybody? How? How can you reach everybody?”

He appears to be thinking this over. Then he says, “Posters?”

The vision of posters proclaiming my innocence in the halls of Attila Ill almost makes me smile, but I keep the smile to myself. “Posters,” I say in the same tone my last science teacher used when I said I wanted to fly a kite for my science fair project. “What kind of posters?”

He wrinkles his forehead, and I try not to think about the fact that his face still looks great, even when wrinkled. “I’ve got it!” he exclaims. “
NOT
Wanted
posters!” He grins, satisfied, as if he’s just solved the problem of world hunger. “We’ll put your face on the poster and a giant X over it! And below, it will read: MARY JANE ETTERMEYER: NOT WANTED.”

I can’t help myself. He’s making me laugh. I wasn’t sure laughter would ever be an option again, but here it is. And it feels pretty good. “It’s still not funny,” I insist, but I’m saying it with a stupid smile on my face.

He reaches over and touches my cheek. His hand covers the entire left side of my face, making it a thousand degrees hotter than the right side of my face. “I’m really sorry about all of this, Mary Jane. But we’ll make it right. We’ll fix it together. Okay?”

I can’t speak. I don’t want to risk jarring his hand from my face.

His fingers move under my hair, to the back of my neck. I can feel each fingertip. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Mary Jane.”

“It’s probably the robe,” I say, astounded that I can speak, when every neuron in my body is sending wild impulses to all its neuron buddies.

“The robe is undoubtedly part of the attraction,” he says, and the moonlight illuminates that dimple.

I can’t think straight. My ears are humming. Yet somehow, the voices in my head still manage to come through. So all I can do is repeat what they’re saying, more or less:

“Look, Jackson,” I begin. “I shouldn’t be sitting out here with you in my bathrobe.”

“With me in your bathrobe?” Jackson repeats. “Don’t think it would fit me. Besides, it looks too cute on you.”

“Jackson, my hair’s a mess. I’m not wearing makeup. And I look like an escapee from a mental institution. The last thing I am is cute.”

He scoots closer to me and angles around in the driver’s seat so we’re right next to each other. “Look at me, Mary Jane. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

"Jackson, I don’t get it,” I manage to say. “You’re still Star’s boyfriend. Until you break up with her, you and I can’t—”

He leans down in the same instant that he tilts my head up. Then he shuts off my words with his soft, full lips and kisses me, long and slow.

16

Sunday morning, Sandy wakes me up by bouncing on
my bed.

“Sandy,” I groan. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep. After THE kiss, I floated back to bed, fully intending to dream sweet dreams. But my eyes wouldn’t close, and it’s hard to sleep that way. So wide awake, I relived every second I spent with Jackson House. At about 3:00 a.m., I had to get up and chew antacids because it turns out falling in love makes you sick to your stomach. Who knew?

The last time I looked at the clock, it was 4:37 a.m.