Every Other Weekend(24)
That is weird.
Adam:
Maybe you’re not that mean.
Jolene:
Maybe you’re not that weird.
Jolene
I ducked to avoid getting hit in the face by a soccer ball as I left my house on the Saturday morning of my second non-Dad weekend of the month. It still clipped me in the shoulder, which was apparently good enough for Cherry and Gabe to high-five each other from where they were standing in front of their minivan. The glint of brilliantly white teeth, the kind that only the kids of two dentists could have, contrasted against the deep brown of their skin as they grinned.
“Awesome,” I said without smiling. “That never gets old.”
“Then be on time,” they said together, then scowled, because they hated when they inadvertently spoke in unison.
Cherry caught the ball, which I’d thrown back at her, and tossed it to her twin before focusing her attention back on me. “Are you ready to fight?” She held a hand to her ear. “Are you ready to win? Are you ready to make those Elkins Park girls wish they’d never been born?”
“Yes!” I jumped off the last step on the porch, and Cherry met me for an impromptu chest bump. We double high-fived before pulling back. She linked her arm around my neck in a half headlock and shoved me toward the front seat.
I was smiling. I was in a half headlock, and I was smiling. It was a side effect of being around Cherry, one I’d taken full advantage of since my parents’ divorce. Cherry and I had been friends before then, but we’d been more like the kind of friends who said hey to each other when we bumped into each other outside school. Now we were the kind of friends who asked each other for deodorant checks, which Cherry did then, given my proximity to her armpit.
“You smell like a meadow made sweet love to a bottle of mouthwash,” I told her.
“Yeah?” Half of her mouth kicked up as she opened the sliding passenger door. “Awesome.”
“Hey, Teen Spirit,” Gabe called from the driver’s seat. “Let’s move.”
“Thanks again for the ride,” I told him, hopping into the front seat.
Cherry rolled her eyes. “He’s such a loser. All I have to do is shake the keys from anywhere in the house and he comes running.”
Gabe started the car with a wild grin that reminded me he’d had his license for only a couple weeks. Music was soon blasting, vibrating through the back of my legs and making it impossible to hear what Cherry was saying. She was talking, her violet-glossed lips opening and closing like a fish out of water. She leaned forward and clapped Gabe on the shoulder and then pointed to the stereo.
He turned the music up so that the beds of my nails seemed to thrum with the beat. Cherry rolled her eyes at me and doubled her efforts on her brother’s shoulders until he lowered the volume.
“We’re all deaf now, Gabe.” Cherry sat back with a huff. “You probably blew the speakers out, too.”
“My car, my rules.”
“Mom’s minivan, you’re pathetic,” Cherry said, echoing the rhythm of his words.
I tried to choke back my laughter, but Gabe saw me and barked out his own laugh. “Jealous, baby sister? Uh, yeah,” he said, starting to sing. “You are jealous of a minivan, jealous of a minivan.”
“You are tragically uncool.”
“Says the sixteen-year-old without a license. Burn!” He covered his mouth with one hand and held up the other for me to slap.
I eyed Cherry and tapped Gabe’s hand as lightly and quickly as possible. “What? He’s voluntarily driving us an hour early to our soccer game. He’s getting high-fived.”
By way of answering, Cherry narrowed her eyes and showed me the side of her short, bleached afro.
“You need to quit being stupid,” Gabe said to his sister. “Get your grades up and Mom and Dad will get let you get your license.”
That sounded cruel on the surface, except both Cherry and Gabe were super smart. I’d never seen Cherry get less than an A-on any test she’d ever taken. She just didn’t like homework. I couldn’t believe a driver’s license wasn’t motivation enough for her, but there we were, nearly a year since her parents had laid down the law where her grades were concerned, and she was still coasting on test scores alone. I, on the other hand, planned to spend my sixteenth birthday at the DMV if I had to walk there myself.
“Hey, hey,” Gabe said, lightly smacking my arm a few times. “What did you think of the song before the uncultured among us made you turn it down?” He narrowed his eyes at his sister through the rearview mirror.
“No way!” I turned the sound back up—though not to the same eardrum-bursting volume as before—and listened to the song.
Now that I was paying attention, I could pick out Dexter’s gravelly voice and Gabe’s deeper harmony. It was my turn to smack his arm and grin. I normally didn’t go much for alternative rock, but Venomous Squid was the exception. I was obviously biased, because I was friends with all of them, but even Cherry admitted they didn’t suck. The new song was one I’d heard a stripped-down version of when Grady, the lead guitarist, had been working on the melody while I shot B-roll footage for their first music video (which had turned out way better than I was expecting, as I’d never made a music video before). But that had been without lyrics. As I listened to the song, which was about a guy having to watch the girl he loved choose someone else, I started seeing the couple in my head, the close-up shots I’d start with and then how I’d slowly zoom out from her throughout the song, ending with an extreme long shot showing that distance she’d put between them as I choked tight on him.