The Similars (The Similars #1)(88)
Jane stops and looks Johnny in the eye. “I guess it’s time,” she says.
“Time for what?”
“For me to let you in on the secret that no one else at this school will ever tell you, but that you desperately need to hear.”
She’s got Johnny’s attention now. “I’m listening,” he says.
“Ezekiel Choate, Colin Chance, Bianca Kravitz, and Booker Ward all have one thing in common.” She pauses dramatically. “They are the biggest bunch of insecure babies I’ve ever met in my life.”
Johnny scowls. “Thanks. I thought you were going to share something useful.” He kicks at a rock with his scuffed sneaker.
“Don’t you get it? They are clueless. They’ve been polished like precious gems but have never left the vault, except to be paraded around by Mommy and Daddy. They don’t have any idea what it’s like to live. Not like you do.”
“Why? Because I grew up poor?” When Jane doesn’t respond, Johnny speaks for her. “That’s what you meant, isn’t it? My mother cleans houses for a living, Jane. Have you ever stopped to consider what that means to someone like Bianca Kravitz?”
“I think it’s noble,” Jane says softly.
“I detest that word, that tone. You’re really saying you pity her.” His next words are barely audible. “And me, by association.”
“I could never…”
“You absolutely could. Because you’re one of them.”
“Somehow I don’t think you mean that as a compliment,” Jane responds.
“It isn’t.”
The two are silent for a moment as neither one knows what to say. Johnny appears sad. Heartbroken, even. And Jane’s no better. I sense she’s on the verge—of crying? Walking away?
Then Johnny grabs Jane’s hand. But his voice isn’t sad, it’s full of passion. “You’re one of them, but you aren’t the same.”
“You just said…” I notice tears filling her eyes.
“You have empathy. Zeke and Bianca and the others don’t.”
“They care about you, Johnny,” says Jane. “You’re their friend, even if you won’t let yourself believe it.”
His voice is tight. “I believe I’m the friend they keep around to feel good about themselves. I’m their charity case. We all have our roles to play. I know what mine is.”
“Then what’s mine?”
Johnny drops Jane’s hands and stuffs his own into his pockets, not looking at her directly. “You know,” he mumbles.
“Sorry, Johnny New Boy. I don’t.”
“You’re the one they covet. The one those guys want to call their girl. The one Bianca wishes she were.”
“Please,” Jane answers, her voice ringing with laughter. “If they all like me so much, why am I alone?”
Johnny leans on the wall separating them from the woods and Dark Lake beyond. “Because you have your whole life ahead of you. Because you know you don’t have to choose any of them. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
Jane moves to stand next to him. Side by side in the moonlight, they breathe as one.
“Maybe I’ll move to the country, live in a shack, and teach kindergarten to a bunch of snot-nosed kids.”
“I could live in a shack.”
Jane laughs.
“But I could get us something better. Way better,” Johnny says, reveling in the fantasy.
Jane smiles. “Can you imagine what my family would say? If I left all this?” She indicates Darkwood, but I know she means more than the school, and so does Johnny. She’s referring to all that a Darkwood education affords beyond graduation. “They’d drag me kicking and screaming back to their penthouse on Park Avenue.”
Johnny stares off into the distance at Dark Lake. It’s shining like a black pearl.
“I wonder what they’d think of me.”
“Johnny…” She reaches out, but he jerks away.
“Don’t.”
“I was just going to say…”
“What you always say. That I’m as good as them. That this is my legacy, if…”
“It is, isn’t it? Darkwood was started by your ancestors…”
He spins on her, fire in his eyes.
“Ancestry only matters if you’re acknowledged in the family tree. My father got my mother pregnant, abandoned us, and left us destitute. Then he went on to have a real family. Albert is his son. Not me.”
“You are still his son.”
“Semantics, Jane. He’s never even spoken to me. That doesn’t exactly make him father of the year.”
“Well, he’s missing out. I think you’re brilliant. Zeke and the others don’t have an ounce of the scrap you have.”
“Good for me,” he snaps.
“It’s good for me too,” she says. “I’d be worried if the boy I was with didn’t live up to my expectations. Luckily, he’s got the number-one stratum.”
Johnny turns to her.
“But I have the number-one stratum?”
Jane smiles. “Exactly.”
*
We’re in a science lab. The equipment and white countertops all gleam like they’ve been wiped down with antiseptic spray. It only takes me a moment to recognize this as one of the abandoned research labs. Huddled in the corner are three figures.