Come to Me Quietly(94)

Still she’d never believed hearing something could cause her so much pain.

For years she’d imagined being thirteen would make her feel mature. Grown-up. She’d studied herself in the mirror as her body had begun to change and thought maybe Jared would begin to notice her in the same way she noticed him.

But now that she was just a few months from turning fourteen, the only thing she felt like was a stupid little girl.

On the carpeted hall floor, she slid her bare feet a little farther down, coming right up to the outside of Christopher’s door. Anxiety twisted her stomach into heavy knots that made it hard to breathe. Or maybe it was the pain in her chest that made her feel as if she were suffocating. She couldn’t tell.

She only knew it hurt.

She swallowed over the pain that lodged in her throat and tried to still her shaking hands.

Christopher’s door was barely cracked open, but she could make out the back of her brother’s head from where he sat on the floor in the middle of the room. Loose sheets of homework and a textbook were spread out in front of him. Every few seconds, Aly would catch a glimpse of Jared’s face whenever Christopher leaned to the side.

She inclined her ear, keeping herself hidden as she subjected herself to their hushed words.

“Oh man,” Christopher said through suppressed, envious laughter. “In her parents’ bed? Dude, that is messed up.”



Jared chuckled as if the whole conversation was absurd. Aly saw him press his hands to his face, then drop them to his lap with a one-sided shrug. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. It was weird, anyway… . I don’t even like her.”



“She’s hot, though,” Christopher pointed out.

Suggestive laughter fell from Jared’s mouth. “That she is.”



Those knots tightened in her stomach, and she was sure she was going to be sick.

“What about you and Samantha?” Jared asked, resituating himself as he pulled a textbook to his lap. “That girl is wound up so tight I don’t know how you’re ever going to undo that.”



Christopher shook his head, his shaggy black hair brushing over his shoulders. “Nah… Samantha is cool. She wants to wait until she turns sixteen… six weeks.” He laughed almost as if he were embarrassed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I like her a lot. I mean, like, a lot.”



Christopher lowered his head, and Aly caught sight of Jared’s curious expression.

“Yeah?” he asked, completely without ridicule.

“Yeah.”



“That’s cool, man. I want that someday.” Then Jared cracked a smile, wide and cocky. “Just not when I’m sixteen.”



Christopher crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at his head. “Fuck you.” He laughed, unrestrained. “You just can’t stand it that I have to drive your sorry ass around all the time and I have an awesome girlfriend.”



“Hey, man, two weeks and I’m free.” Jared looked up with a grin.

“Yeah, and I bet the second you get that car your parents are giving you, you’ll have Kylie in the backseat.”



Aly felt sad, a sadness she didn’t know how to deal with. It was as if this disease crawled over her flesh, pressing down, seeping in, taking hold. She wanted to scrape the feeling from her skin, purge it from her mind.

She wasn’t one of those girls. She’d never been able to understand the packs of girls gathered around one another in the bathroom while one girl cried because the boy she liked didn’t like her back. Inevitably, she liked a different boy the next week and suddenly the world was right.