I click my locker shut and squeeze my eyes closed, pressing my forehead against the cool metal. My breath is caught in my throat. All I can see in my head is that smile of his, the same smile that I fell for last year. My heart is pounding when I open my eyes again. I stare after Jaden as he walks away, disappearing down the hallway. His stride is slow but confident. The nape of his neck is smooth and neat where his hair smoothly tapers off, and I find my gaze drifting from his broad shoulders down the curve of his spine where his T-shirt clings a little too tightly to his torso, hinting at his toned physique. And then he turns the corner and he is gone, almost as quickly as he had appeared. The hallway is empty again and my shoulders sink with relief.
Because once upon a time, when Jaden Hunter smiled that crooked smile of his at me, I smiled back.
3
The fifteen-minute walk home from school is especially bad today, not only because of the amount of textbooks I’m lugging along with me, but because I can’t focus. I have already been aggressively flicked off by an elderly man for stepping out into the road without looking—apparently I am so distracted by the Hunters that I am now a walking hazard.
Dani’s emotionless stare last night, and today Jaden’s crooked smile . . . I can’t shake the thought of them. They are two people I was once close with. They were my friends, and Jaden was even more than that. A year ago, I was falling in love with him. From the very moment he’d grinned at me across the hallway after he’d kissed me for the first time the night before, I felt it. I don’t know why I ever thought that shutting that feeling out would be easy if I tried hard enough. I don’t know why I believed I could actually stay away from the Hunters, that I could push them out of my life entirely. Because I can’t, and maybe it’s time I stopped trying. I still think about the way Jaden smiled that morning and how my heart almost burst straight out of my chest. I still think about the way his lips felt against mine, and I still think about what it would be like to feel that again, just one more time.
Jaden and I were just like every other wannabe-couple back in sophomore year. There was nothing remarkable about the way Jaden and I came to like each other. Our story was just as simple as everyone else’s. We knew each other from sharing some classes and we enjoyed each other’s company. I thought he was sweet but cool, hilarious but also serious, and I knew I liked him more than a friend the day I noticed myself feeling giddy whenever I saw him. We had started hanging out together outside of school more often, just the two of us, until gradually, over the course of last summer, our friendship grew until we were no longer just friends. It was simple in the sense that it developed naturally over the months, and I enjoyed every moment I spent with him, and I can still remember that first time he kissed me in my bedroom as he was helping me with my homework, and I was ready to talk to him about what was going to happen next. I was ready to take it to the next level. I was ready to be with him. But all of that changed last August when I got a call from Will one morning and the first thing he asked was, “Have you heard?”
Jaden and I never spoke again after that day. The Hunter twins missed the first six months of junior year and when they returned, I couldn’t bear to look at them. I didn’t know what to say or how to act around them anymore, and I hated thinking about the Hunters because it made me nauseous. All I could ever wonder was whether they were coping or not, and if they were, then how? I know just how heartbreaking grief can be.
I’m breathing heavily as I turn into my quiet cul-de-sac and my pace quickens, desperate to get home and clear my head. The moment I unlock my front door and step foot inside, I throw my bag halfway down the hall. The house is quiet, dull and cold. Dad works long, erratic shifts, so he most likely won’t be home until 7PM at the earliest, and Mom’ll be home around 4PM from her own shift at our local dentistry. She does the reception work there a couple days a week. Years ago she worked at a local preschool, but not anymore. She never went back.
With both of them at work, it means I’ve got the house to myself for a couple of hours until I start my own shift at 5PM over at The Summit, an entertainment complex over on the very outskirts of Windsor. Most of the time I like my job there and I’ve had it for just over a year now. I need to save up for my own car. And for college. Ugh.
The kitchen hasn’t been cleaned up since breakfast, so before I sit down and do anything else, I clear the table and haphazardly stack everything into the dishwasher in a matter of minutes. I am a pro by now at keeping the house in order, though not by choice. When I have time to spare, like right now, I do make an effort to tidy up, because if I don’t then who else is going to? Dad is forever working, and Mom isn’t in the right state of mind at the moment. She hasn’t been for a while now, so it’s much easier just to relieve the pressure on her by helping out whenever I can. Sometimes I wonder if she ever asks herself how the laundry folded itself or how the dishes cleaned themselves, or if she just doesn’t even notice at all, because she never acknowledges it. I have been doing it for so many years that I do it without thinking now. I vacuum the hall quickly before I finally collapse onto the couch with my Spanish homework and a box of strawberries, which I pick at for a while as my attention drifts back and forth between my homework and the TV.
I like having the house to myself. It means Mom’s out doing something, and when she’s out doing something, she’s not moping around here with a glass of wine in her hand. That’s only something she can do behind closed doors.
I focus on my homework and wait until after 3:30PM to give Will a chance to get home before I call him. Holden’s at practice, but even if he wasn’t, I doubt he’d answer my call. He’s one of those people who solely believes in texting and nothing more, so he’s never any use when I have gossip that’s too good to spill over a text message or a rant that’s too explosive to type. Will, however, answers right on the second ring.
“I was just about to call you,” he says immediately upon answering. “I was driving home and I realized . . . You still haven’t told me the color of your dress.”
“What?” I say with a mouthful of strawberry, pausing the TV.
“Homecoming,” he clarifies. “My bow tie. What color should it be?”
Ah, right. It’s homecoming next weekend and although Holden is hyped up for the game on the Friday night, Will and I care more about the dance the following evening. We always go together, whereas Holden usually asks whichever girl he’s got the hots for at the time. I think this year he’s taking a girl from the marching band. I swallow and tell Will, “Blue.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Dark blue,” I answer and I picture my dress in my room, hung at the very far end of my closet, protected by its plastic packaging. It’s chiffon and knee-length, with a whole lot of silver diamante finishing around the bodice. Mom didn’t like it at first when I brought it home. It revealed too much, she said in disdain as I flounced down the hall wearing it, but I figured it was the wine talking. “Cobalt blue or something.”
“Cobalt blue?” Will repeats. He’s quiet for a second, and then he asks, “So . . . which is it then?”
“Um.” I blink a few times and quickly snap out of the daze I’m in, shaking my head at myself before I confirm, “Cobalt.”
“Got it,” Will says, but then pauses yet again. “Are you okay? You sound a little . . . off.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I reassure him—though I’m not, really. I have been distracted the entire day, more so than usual.
“Okay,” Will says. “What were you calling for?”
When he asks me this, I realize I don’t have an answer to give him other than I was bored of writing down paragraphs in Spanish and I was tired of the drama on Jerry Springer and I was sick of picturing Jaden Hunter’s smile in my head all over again. It’s all I thought about when I walked home, it’s all I thought about while cleaning up the house, it’s all I’m still thinking about. Jaden Hunter and his damn smile. I don’t know how he manages to smile, after everything. I don?
??t know how he can even bring himself to, but he always does. He smiles as he runs out onto the field at football games. He smiles when his friends joke around at lunch. He smiles when he sees me even though he doesn’t have a reason to.
“Nothing,” is what I tell Will.
It’s just after 4:30PM when Mom finally arrives home from work and I’m sitting waiting for her in the kitchen, ready for my own shift. The red polo shirt I have to wear isn’t the most attractive uniform in the world, given that I don’t suit the color, but it could be worse. I could work somewhere where they make you wear a silly cap. I’ve got fresh makeup on too, half a bottle of perfume sprayed over me, and I’ve also tied my hair up into a high ponytail just in case I get put on the restaurant shift tonight. I prefer working the laser tag because I can’t deal with bussing tables, but I do it if I absolutely have to because I need the money. That’s why I’m cross-trained and work five shifts a week.
“Here you go,” Mom says as she tosses me her car keys while entering the kitchen. I swiftly catch them with one hand but I remain seated, watching as she slips off her cardigan and brews up a pot of coffee. “Do you want some before you go?”
I shake my head and study her slow movements as the smell of coffee fills the kitchen. She opens up the refrigerator to examine what’s there. Then she checks the freezer, then the cupboards, then she heaves a sigh. “Do you think your dad will mind if I tell him we’re having takeout?”
“No,” I lie. Mom’s actually a good cook and can make a killer lasagna that we all love, but sometimes she just doesn’t have the energy. When she suggests takeout, it usually means she’s struggling to get through the day.
“Okay, then I’m ordering takeout,” she says, then turns back to the coffee pot, pouring herself a cup while she stares absent-mindedly out onto our small backyard. The lawn is patchy and overgrown because Dad doesn’t have the time to tend to it anymore.
Enclosing my fist around Mom’s car keys, I get to my feet. I can’t stick around to talk to her otherwise I’ll be late. “I’ll be back at eleven,” I say, grabbing my jacket from the back of the kitchen chair. Mom doesn’t say anything more to me, but just as I’m stepping outside onto the porch, I hear the splash of her coffee against the sink as she pours it down the drain, and disappointment fills me because I know exactly what she’ll be replacing it with. But I can’t run back and argue with her, so instead I shut the front door as quickly as I can and pretend that I didn’t hear anything. Dad does that too, he ignores the things he doesn’t want to deal with most of the time, so I’ve learned from him.
Mom’s old Prius is parked on the driveway and I slide into the driver’s seat, reversing out onto our quiet little cul-de-sac. Windsor is a small town, but its 20,000 residents are spread out across small neighborhoods on the outskirts of town. The Summit is a fifteen-minute drive along open roads and through expansive fields. There is nothing to see other than an endless roll of green into the distance, but I do enjoy the drive to work when it’s still light out, mostly because on a clear day there’s a view of the Rocky Mountains way off in the distance, a backdrop throughout the state that makes Colorado that little bit more special.
I park Mom’s car at the back of The Summit’s parking lot and clock myself in just before 5PM, then I hunt down my supervisor, Lynsey, who has me slotted in to work behind the counter at the bowling alley. Weekday nights are usually much quieter than the weekend, but tonight a large group of kids turns up as part of a birthday party, so it’s manic.
I’m standing spraying the line of shoes along my counter with odor remover—my chin pressed to my chest, covering my mouth with my shirt to avoid the stench—when someone taps their hand against the counter to get my attention.
“Size twelve,” he jokes, and I recognize his voice immediately, mostly from the cocky, obnoxious tone.
I drop my shirt from my mouth and turn to look at him. He’s leaning against the counter with his hip, a smug smirk on his lips as he waits for my reaction.
“Oh. Hey Darren,” I say, giving him a casual smile as I begin gathering up the line of shoes next to him and placing them back into their shelves on the wall behind me. I like Darren, I do. We are on good terms with one another, but sometimes I just don’t have the energy to deal with him. I don’t find his carefree attitude as attractive as I once did, and he can be a little overbearing sometimes. “What are you doing back in town?”
“Who doesn’t love a trip back to little old Windsor?” he says with what I’m picking up on as sarcasm, his grin wide. He leans over the counter, edging in closer to me in an attempt to gain my full attention, rather than only half of it. “And,” he says, “I wanted to see you. I figured there’d be a chance you’d be here.”
“Yep, I’m always here,” I joke with a quick roll of my eyes, slotting the final pair of bowling shoes into their shelf, and I slowly turn back around to face him. I press my hands to the edge of the counter and look up at him. “You can’t just drop in on me while I’m working, you know . . . ”
“I just miss you, Kenz, that’s all,” Darren admits quietly, and he seems disappointed that his surprise appearance isn’t appreciated on my end. Why does he insist on popping up like this without any warning? It’s awkward and I’m not sure exactly sure what to say, so I turn back to organizing shoes.
Earlier this year, Darren and I were dating. We had been for over six months. He was a freshman at Colorado State and I was a high school junior, and I loved his confidence and the dimple in his left cheek and the good morning texts he made sure to send each day. He’s an arrogant jerk most of the time, but never to me, and my parents even let me spend the weekends with him over in his tiny dorm room on campus in Fort Collins. I loved hanging out with Darren, and we laughed a lot when we were together, and I liked that being with him made it easier to stay away from Jaden. I had something else to focus on other than my own guilt. But after six months of being with him, it dawned on me that I was only wasting Darren’s time. I wasn’t in love with him the same way he was in love with me, and I couldn’t be. There, in the back of my mind, were my feelings for Jaden. Darren didn’t look like Jaden, he didn’t laugh like Jaden. Every moment I was with him, I kept imagining what it would be like with Jaden instead. So, back in May, I broke up with Darren because it was best for both of us. He just hasn’t reached that conclusion himself yet.
“Darren,” I say with a firm edge to my voice, nodding to the couple waiting behind him and offering him an apologetic frown, “can we not do this right now? I have people waiting.”
With his shoulders slumped and his lips turned down, Darren sighs and steps to the side, but I’m dismayed to notice out of the corner of my eye that he doesn’t actually leave. Instead, he waits until I’ve fixed the couple up with their bowling shoes, and I’ve barely had time to wipe the professional smile off my face when he steps back in front of me the moment they walk away.
“Kenz,” he says again, this time more firmly, more desperately. “I’m serious. I miss you. I really fucking do.” He tilts his head down, staring at my hands, and he whispers, “We were good together. You know we were.”
I shrug. We were good together, but only sometimes. There were times when he was too clingy, too obsessive, to the point where I couldn’t bear it anymore. I couldn’t give him all of my time and I couldn’t give him all of my heart, so it just wasn’t meant to be. “I’m sorry, Darren.”
Darren groans under his breath and runs his hand through his hair, then steps back from the counter and quickly looks up at me one final time. There’s a slight crook in his nose from when he broke it during a fist fight many years ago when he was still in high school, and I used to find it cute when I was trying to convince myself that I loved him.
“I’m not going to stop trying,” he states in a hushed voice, leaning back across the counter toward me, closing the safe distance that separates us. He looks deep into my eyes, his face only inches from mine, giving me a tight smile. Then, he turns around a
nd walks away, disappearing across the bowling alley.
Darren may not stop trying, but I really, really wish that he would.
4
It’s late Thursday evening when Mom taps gently on my bedroom door, opening it anyway before I’ve even answered her knock, and she peers around the door with a worn, weary expression on her face that makes her look ten years older. She’s nervous. I can tell by the way she doesn’t step inside my room, by the way she uses the door as a shield to hide her shame when she parts her lips and says, “Kenzie, I need you to do me a big favor.”
It’s almost 11:30PM and I’m sprawled out over my bed, lying on my stomach, my laptop in front of me. I’m in a pair of sweats and a tank top, my hair thrown up into a bun that tilts over to one side, and I already know that what Mom is about to ask of me will require a change of clothes, makeup and an A+ in acting.
“I need you . . . ” she murmurs, rubbing nervously at her temple, “I need you to go to the store.”
There it is, I think. I knew she was going to say that as soon as she knocked on the door. If Dad wasn’t out on an emergency plumbing job, I know she wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask me, but without his concerned glances to make her feel guilty she’s bolder than usual.
“Mom . . . ” My voice is quiet and I trail off slowly, silently pleading with her not to make me do this again. I want to say no to her, I want to refuse to go. But she’s my mom, so I know that, really, I can’t. I don’t have the mental strength to fight with her over this.