They Wish They Were Us(8)

He didn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, he picked up the box and walked toward the back of the kitchen, leading to the deck that jutted out over our backyard. I followed him through the screen door. He dropped the box down on the glass table and disappeared back into the kitchen. When he returned, he was holding two glasses full of ice and two cans of soda.

“Thanks,” I said when he handed me a cup.

But before he took a sip, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a metal rectangle. He unscrewed the top and poured a dark and shiny liquid into his cup. “Want some?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

I nodded. The first taste made me cough.

“It gets easier,” he said with a laugh.

I wanted to tell him that I’d done this before. I was cool, too. But I just brought the glass to my lips and sipped again, listening to the ice crackle beneath the booze. It burned in a way that ignited the nerves in the tips of my fingers. Then I did what I always did when I was anxious. I looked up. The stars swirled overhead and I could spot my favorites with ease. My dad’s instructions played on a loop in my head. Find the North Star. Look down to the left. Then tilt your head just a little more. Bam. Big Dipper. A calm settled into my skin.

I took another sip.

“So, Jill,” Adam said, holding out the last letter of my name. Ji-llllll. “Who are you?”

I laughed. “Excuse me?” The nerves came flooding back. I forced myself to find Orion’s belt and focus on the three blinking lights instead of Adam’s question.

“You heard me,” he said. “Who are you? Who is Jill Newman?”

I chewed the inside of my mouth and looked down, then back to him.

“I’m no one.”

“That’s not true.”

“No?”

“No. You’re just still becoming.”

My bottom lip fell. It was so precisely true, it stung.

“That’s okay. I am, too,” he said. Adam held out his drink as if to meet mine in a toast. “We’ll find out together.”

Then he reached over and slipped my phone out of the pocket of my jeans, a motion that made my insides turn to jelly, my toes curl. “Here,” he said, typing with flying fingers. “I’m texting myself so I have your number.”

Later that night, hours after we had finished the last of the cold pizza crusts and he had gone home, my phone buzzed.

I know who you are, Adam wrote.

Oh yeah? Do tell.

My new critic. His typing bubble paused, but then Adam sent an enormous block of text followed by an explanation. The first scene from my next play. You’re the first to read it. Tell me what sucks, Newman. I can take it.

My heart thumped as my eyes decoded the words. I bit back a smile and responded.

I’m honored.

That’s how it started.

Soon, he was over once a week to read and do worksheets with Jared. And then hang out with me after. Fridays usually. Sometimes on Wednesdays when Mom taught evening classes and Dad had late nights. Never Saturdays. Those were Player nights.

At first, I told no one. I wanted to keep my time with Adam secret. I was greedy for more of it. At school, I watched him flit between classes and occupy his place at the senior Players’ Table. He wasn’t Toastmaster but he anchored their unit. Everyone turned to him for approval, to make sure he laughed at their jokes, to hear his wild, winding stories.

We had an unspoken understanding. My house was safe. School was not. Instead, we exchanged secret smiles in the halls only once in a while. Then, one Thursday, when I walked by him in between second and third period, he changed the rules. Adam stuck out his index finger and pressed it to the back of my shoulder just for a moment. His touch traveled through my veins, zapping me into an alternative reality.

That’s how Shaila found out. “What was that?” she said, gnawing at her cuticle, a gross habit she was always trying to kick. I picked it up too after she died. “Why does Adam Miller know who you are?”

I tried not to smile. “He’s been tutoring Jared. I think our moms are friends.”

“Huh,” Shaila said, her eyes trained on Adam, who was gliding down the hall, turning into the math wing. A wake of students rippled behind him. “He’s dating Rachel, you know,” she whispered. “Rachel Calloway.” My heart sparked and cracked. Rachel was Graham’s stunning older sister. Captain of the field hockey team. President of their class. She was a towering goddess. A senior. A Player. That made it all so much worse.

“I know,” I lied.

“I saw him over the summer once or twice,” she said. “With Graham.”

I stayed silent, seething that Shaila had yet another thing to show me up. First a boyfriend, then Adam’s attention.

But perhaps she picked up on this because she quickly ceded the power. “He never really wanted us around, though,” she said.

I had always been jealous of Shaila, of the way her clothes smelled like summer and were super soft when you rubbed them through your fingers, and how she seemed so comfortable with her long legs and her growing chest. She never had oily little pimples on her back or weird fine fuzz growing above her lip. Even her hair stayed in place, unbothered by the Gold Coast mist.

I was jealous that things were so easy for her. That she could be the number one student in our class, run miles, star in plays, and dazzle anyone without much effort at all. She claimed to have only one real fear. A totally benign, normal one. Heights.