The High Season(97)

A deep blush began on Jem’s cheeks and spread to her neck. “Yeah.”

“Shit, that sucks.” Doe adjusted her position, which hurt, so she relied on eye contact to signal interest.

Jem looked at her hands. “Annie says you’re nice.”

“I like Annie.”

“I do, too. I sort of trashed her. I mean, we used to be friends.”

“Yeah. She still likes you, though. She hates that girl Meret.”

    “Yeah.”

“It’s funny how people you don’t even like sort of make you do things,” Doe said. “I remember that from high school. Don’t worry, it wears off.”

Jem snapped off a thread and wound it around her finger until it was white.

“Hey,” Doe said. “Every single person on the planet has been an idiot about sex, okay?”

“Even you?”

“Oh, dude. Especially me.” Doe waited. She wanted to still Jem’s hands and rub some circulation back in that finger, but she knew better.

“There was this thing he said,” Jem said.

“Uh-huh.”

Jem twisted in the chair. “I said something about how weird it would be if his stepmom and my dad got married. And he said he thought that would be so cool, because hey, easy access for him. It was so…awful the way he said it.”

“Pig,” Doe said.

“I got pissed. So I said, Wow, how romantic. What the eff. And he said I was cute, because I wouldn’t say fuck. So already I’m thinking, How can I want to get with this person if I don’t even like him?”

“Well, that happens sometimes,” Doe said.

Jem twisted even more in the chair, winding her ankles around the legs. There was more.

“What else did he say?” Doe asked.

Jem dropped her head. “So he said, Are you a little girl after all, the little girl who can’t even say fuck, even when she wants it so bad?” Tears squeezed out of Jem’s eyes, and Doe watched them drip. “I hated him, and I did it anyway! I’m so stupid!”

Doe placed her hands under the covers and squeezed. The problem was that the world was full of men like this.

“Thank you for hitting him really hard,” Jem said.

“My pleasure.”

    Jem’s face was now gross with tears and snot, so Doe groped for the box with the flimsy one-ply tissues that didn’t do shit. Did that make sense in a hospital, a building full of tears? She slid the box across the bed toward Jem.

“Let me guess. He called you Beauty.”

Jem looked at her over the tissue.

“He said, Let’s be alone, just us. I like the sound of that. Just us.”

“How do you…oh.” Jem twisted the tissue. “Oh.”

“I told you I was an idiot. Look, I don’t want to make you feel bad. I did a lot of things at fifteen that were worse than this. The thing is, you’ve got a gift you didn’t even ask for. You’re beautiful. You’ve got to be careful with that. Anybody will want to get with you, but you’ve got to think it through.”

Listen to her, giving advice. Easy enough, especially with her acres of hindsight.

“Someday,” Doe said, “you’re going to be sitting in some dorm room, talking about your first time, and you’re going to say ‘Bouncy castle,’ and everybody’s going to scream. I’m telling you, you’re going to kill it with that story, for the rest of your life.”

Jem smiled a little. “But it will never be funny, because you almost died.”

The sweetness of this girl! Doe remembered watching Teletubbies while Shane got out the kitchen door. How long had he been out there? How long did it take before she looked around and saw his bowl of Lucky Charms abandoned? The milk stained pink. Not long. Maybe two minutes. Three. Long enough. Seconds and minutes counted, and who knew that better than her?

“Hey, we’re a team,” Doe said. “We survived Howl’s Moving Castle, dude.”

“Are you really okay, though?” Jem asked.

I don’t know, Doe wanted to say, and she felt like crying.

Shari pushed open the door, followed by Ruthie. “We have doughnuts!” She saw Jem, slapped down the bag, and hugged her. “Honey! You were so brave! There you were, holding on for dear life, and I’m thinking, Jump, jump, but you waited for the exact right time! And you jumped! So brave!”

    “Not really,” Jem said. “Doe was the brave one. She’s the one who said Go! And she’s the one who got hurt.”

“You know what I say, there’s a crack in everything,” Shari said. “That’s what glue is for.”

Doe dropped her face in her hands and groaned. “One time my mom picked me up at school in seventh grade,” she said.

“Not that story!” Shari cried. “Doe!”

“…and all the car windows were down, and Shania Twain was blasting, and she was wearing a bikini top and orange pants, and she got out of the car and waved and yelled my name and everyone saw.”

“She yelled your name?” Jem repeated, in horror.

Shari shook her head, placing the doughnuts on the bed tray, pushing a cup of coffee toward Doe. Smiling as big as a river.