Beast(76)

“Go ahead, laugh it up. You think I’ve got it so good? Everyone’s got problems. I know how easy it is to just frigging smile at someone while you’re asking them to do something. And then they do it? It’s like this weird superpower.”

“For a super villain,” I add.

“Whatever, fine. All these tricks—I can’t unlearn it in a day. Give me a chance.”

“I never should’ve let you talk me into that pretzel idea,” Jamie mutters.

“Wait! The pretzel was JP’s idea?”

“You refused to talk to me!” Jamie shoots back. “I didn’t know what to do. At least JP was there and listened to me, heard me out. He was a friend; where were you?”

“Yeah, man, you can’t treat girls like that,” he says.

“Oh my god, I can’t even, my ears, I’m hearing things,” I ramble. “You’re telling me how to treat girls? Am I in an alternate universe? But okay, fine, I do want forgiveness, I do want—”

A timer goes off. “Yay, I’m done,” Jamie says, hitting a button on her phone. She gets her bike and whirls it around. “Are you coming?” she asks JP.

“Even after everything you know about JP, you want to go with him?”

“He’s at least trying.”

“And I’m not?”

“Stop. Just stop,” she says over her shoulder.

“You don’t know what you did to her,” he says.

My forehead’s all damp from the flying mist that’s finally letting up, and I flick the water to the ground. “Yes, I do. I broke her heart.”

“Oh, Dylan…” Jamie laughs. A hollow, empty laugh. “You were always so worried about people hurting me. Then you go and hurt me more than anyone in the entire world. You didn’t just break my heart; you stabbed me in the kidneys with rusty knives so that every time my heart pumped, it sent nothing but toxic shit through my veins. I can’t even stand looking at your face.”

“You can stand it for ten minutes so you can get a show at some café. And this one?” I point at JP. “If he changed, even the littlest bit, he’d sponsor your show because you two are the most awesomest awesome friends ever. Not because he needs a favor.”

“Dylan, wait a minute….” JP hops near.

Years of backed-up anger comes pouring out. The miserable things I did just so I’d have a place in this world. “Just be quiet.” I get over him and leer down. “You treated me like a dog my whole entire life. I do a trick so you throw me a bone. I hate your f*cking guts, JP.”

He covers his neck and Jamie separates us. “Leave him alone. He said you choked him in the cafeteria. You can’t do that. Like, ever,” Jamie says.

“Oh my god.” I spin in a stupid circle, cursing up at the sky. “Yeah, I did almost choke him. Did he tell you why? Because he wanted to embarrass me for being with you.”

“JP said he was publicly supporting our relationship in front of the whole school.”

I can’t even look at him. “That’s what you told her, JP? Neat. You know what, Jamie? You got a real sweet deal here. You get a piece of your dreams fulfilled. I have memories of busting kids’ faces for the rest of my life.”

“Get over yourself, Dylan,” she says. “And do shut the f*ck up.”

JP stands torn between us. Looking at me and then looking at Jamie. “Seems like this was the king shit of all shit ideas,” he says. “I thought we could all figure something out. Seems like I was way wrong. About everything.”

He follows Jamie and they leave together.

“Wait,” I say, wanting to stop her.

Jamie slowly turns around. “You know what I think when I look at you, Dylan? How can someone so smart be so stupid?” She grips her bike even harder. “Let’s go play video games,” she says to JP.

I lean into my crutches and watch them climb up the slight hill next to the football field. In all this shitty mist, I feel like the world is taking a cold, wet dump on me. I’m this close to running. She thinks I’m the * of the universe. Fine, I deserve that, but she got to say her piece and I never got to say mine. About how much I missed her and thought about her every day. She needs to know. Launching myself after them, I race on one leg to get there and do something, say something brilliant, to keep her from going home with him, when the sky changes. The sun sneaks just enough through the clouds and my mouth drops.

“Motherf*cker,” I mutter.

Careening over them, in a big, happy bank of color, is a rainbow. A bright, shiny, and twinkling-with-every-meager-speck-of-lightin-the-spectrum rainbow. My sign from above. After all these weeks, Dad finally sent me THE SIGN. Let her go, he says.

So I do.

I turn around and head for home.

I let her go.





THIRTY-FOUR


My room isn’t as warm as I’d hoped. My back hurts from dragging home mountains of homework and I’m cold and wet. Not to mention, I have nowhere to put all the things clamping my arteries shut with emptiness. I don’t know how else to explain it: it’s like all my blood stopped moving. Which explains why I’m freezing, I guess.

But I finally got my sign, so it’s time to shut up now. I’m going to do the same things I’ve done for the past several weeks. Eat, sleep, do homework, try to forget Jamie, and lift shit. Only bright side will be getting my cast off tomorrow.