Break(8)

“I’ve got to get to work,” I tell Naomi as Marten saunters off, shaking his head at my state. “Can you drive me?”


She smiles and looks over my shoulder. “Ask your girlfriend.”

I know who it is without turning around. I hear the clack of her red flats, and my jaw hurts from trying not to smile.

But ritual is ritual. I raise my voice and say, “Charlotte is not my girlfriend.”

“That is so mean.” Charlotte elbows me in the back. “I would never say you weren’t my girlfriend.”

I turn around. “Hello, not-girlfriend.”

“Hey, not-boyfriend. Need help?” She scoops my papers off the ground. What an angel.

“Thanks, babe.”

She hands me a pile of shit and I cram it in my backpack. I turn to Naomi. “I still need that ride.”

“Get Jesse.”

“He’s in practice until three thirty. And I’ve got a shift at three.”

“Call your mom.”

“Busy with Will.”

“Then ask your girlfriend.”

I shrug my shoulders to Charlotte, wearing my hopeful face.

She smiles and tips her ponytail over her shoulder. “Yeah, I can take you. Meetcha at my car?”

“Okay.”

Charlotte walks away, and I laugh at Naomi. “You thought she’d say no.”

“Fuck yeah, I did. Watch, she’s going to come in pregnant tomorrow. And you’re gonna be sweaty, and saying, ‘Oh, man,’ over and over again.”

“Relax, you. It’s a ride home, not a naked romp. You’re like a f*cking Desperate Housewife sometimes.”

She scrunches her mousy little face. “That ‘f*cking’ was so out of place.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got f*cking-rollover minutes. I’m full to burst, here. I can’t cuss at home, and I can’t cuss in front of Charlotte.”

“Sure. You won’t cuss in front of her, but you’ll bone her till she bleeds.”

“She’s a virgin. They bleed, Nom. Not that you’d know.”

“Fuck off.”

“We don’t bone.”

“You think about it.”

“Of course I think about it.” I blow air inside my wrist cast to quell an itch. “If I didn’t think about it, I’d need to be taken in for hormone testing.”

“You disgust me,” she says, and stomps away in those ugly-ass combat boots.

My Jesse-sense is tingling. Half the time it’s bullshit—okay, more than half the time—but I still don’t like to take chances. I take out my cell phone and hit 2 to speed dial him.

He doesn’t answer. I call back and he gets it on the second ring. “Hello?”

He’s out of breath, and his voice is muffled through half his hockey gear.

“What up, brother?” I say.

“I’m in practice, Jo.”

“Oh, right.” And I hang up. He’s fine.

Charlotte leans against her car. The iris she’s stuck into the base of her ponytail droops a little to the side.

Every day, she puts a fresh real flower in her hair. She wears her beauty like I wear my casts.

“Pop in,” she says, sliding into the driver’s seat.

I sit down beside her and prop my backpack on my lap. Some of the Tweety Bird trinkets and sheets of balled-up paper shower down from her dashboard onto me, but I don’t mind. “Thanks for this, babe.”

“No problem. Consider it thanks for not actually destroying my car this morning.”

I smile. “That was hilarious.”

“Hilariously scary. I thought I’d been hit by a meteor.” She starts the car. “Guess you can’t drive with the cast, yeah?”

“Well, I can. I just can’t steer so well.”

“Oh.”

“But I can drive, you know. On sidewalks and over pedestrians and stuff.”

She giggles, her dark pink lips drawing together over her teeth. We’ve bantered like this since sophomore year and she still always breaks.

But every time she holds out for longer and longer.

We didn’t start bantering exclusively until this September.

“So,” she says, and brushes a curl behind her ear. “So what really happened?”

“Oh, you mean—” I gesture over my wrecked body.

“Yeah.”

“Skateboard. Trying out this tricky jump with Naomi and—bam.”

Technically, none of this is a lie.

“Ouch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How many bones have you broken now?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

Ha, ha.

“It’s got to be, like, ten,” she says.

Puh.

“Man.” She flicks her eyes to me behind her fancy glasses. “You and your brother are just little medical disasters, aren’t you?” She frowns. “Or was that a faux pas?”

I smile to show her it’s okay and sit back in the car seat. “Nah. He’s way more disastrous than I am.”

“You think?”

“But, I mean . . . he’s been okay. He hasn’t had an ER visit this whole month.”