Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend

Jamie doesn’t budge. It occurs to me that someone who has just finished community service probably can’t afford to get into trouble again. I should get between them, like Jamie did for me last year with Regina. But based on the way Anthony just grabbed her, I’d say the presence of a girl between him and the person he wants to punch isn’t much of a deterrent. So instead I just blurt out the first thing I can think of.

“Conrad, your shirt is staining your pants.”

Everyone turns to look at me as Conrad looks down at his pants. The red is now more of a general pink wash than individual streaks. “How symbolic,” he says.

“Tracy and I can drive you home if you want to get those in the wash before they’re ruined.”

The wash? I’m talking about washing pants right now? What is wrong with me?

He snorts. “You are the reason this all got so fucked up in the first place,” he says, waving in disgust at Regina, Jamie and Anthony. “I’d rather walk.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Anthony says, looking at Conrad. “What are you talkin’ about? Who’s the reason everything got so fucked up?”

Conrad gestures to me with his chin. “Her.”

Anthony points at me, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. “This is Forta’s little freshman? The girl who went screamin’ to the principal?”

He looks like he can’t figure out whether to laugh or punch me. In my head, I’m telling him that I’m actually a sophomore now, which, if you pass your classes, is what happens after you’ve been a freshman, generally speaking. But in reality, I’m totally embarrassed and freaked out. It never occurred to me that someday I’d be face-to-face with West Union’s hell-on-ice star hockey player and would have to answer for getting him thrown out of the prom after he went to all the trouble of taking off his skates and putting on a tuxedo.

I wonder if Jamie will come to my defense if Anthony decides to kill me here and now.

“Matt just passed out,” Tracy says as she comes around the corner of the house with our bags. She takes one look at Conrad’s now-pink pants and visibly cringes. “Were those Marc Jacobs?” Then she looks up at his face. “Are you okay?”

I don’t realize I’m expecting Conrad to smile at Tracy gratefully and thank her for asking until he glares at her like she’s an idiot. “Do I look like I’m okay?” he asks.

I want to tell him that I know how it feels to be targeted. But I know it’s not the same thing. I kissed someone I shouldn’t have kissed. Conrad, on the other hand, was just being himself at a team party—a team that he’s supposedly a member of.

“Is somebody going to drive you home?” Tracy asks.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” he snaps.

“Probably because no one wants to fish you out of the pool again,” she says.

“Well, I’m not getting in a car with either one of them,” he replies, referring to Jamie and Anthony, who are still standing face-to-face with about an inch of space between them.

It is simultaneously totally hot to see Jamie like this—is that weird?—totally depressing to know that it’s not me he’s defending and totally awful to think that the school year hasn’t even started and already Jamie is in a situation that could land him in serious trouble.

“Fine. I’ll drive you home,” Tracy says. No one moves. Tracy looks around at our cozy little group and then back at Jamie. She raises her eyebrows in surprise and possibly approval of the new-and-improved version—Jamie 2.0, I bet she’s going to say later—that she didn’t notice by the pool because she was too busy yelling. Without taking her eyes off him, she asks, “You coming with me, Rose, or…?”

Jamie turns away from Anthony and makes eye contact with me for the second time tonight—or rather, for the second time since June. I can’t read anything in his expression to give me a single clue about where I stand with him.

What else is new.

“Uh…” I eloquently begin.

Jamie looks at Regina and says, “You call me if you need me.” He gives Anthony another long, hard stare, and Anthony bares his teeth in what’s supposed to be a grin. Jamie heads down the driveway. Regina watches Jamie go, a flicker of desperation in her eyes as if she wants nothing more than to go with him. Anthony grabs the case of beer at his feet, slings his arm over her shoulders and drags both the beer and Regina back to the party.

Jamie gets in his car, slams the door hard enough to set off the alarm on the SUV he’s parked in front of, and takes off down the street.

I watch his taillights get smaller and smaller.

The first time I rode in Jamie’s old, green car was when he drove me home on the third day of school last year. He did it only because Peter had asked him to look out for me, but I didn’t know that at the time and I thought maybe, just maybe, Jamie Forta might think I was cute or something. It was kind of a terrifying prospect. I babbled like an idiot the whole time.

When I realized Jamie knew where I lived without me having to tell him, my stomach dropped out like I was on a roller coaster. Sitting close to him made me so nervous I couldn’t put a sentence together, but I still managed to memorize every detail I could about that ride. The car smelled like rain. The hood had been polished with something shiny and when the sun hit it, the glare was so bright it hurt my eyes. The seats and the floor were clean enough to eat off. It was clear that Jamie loved his car.

Now that I think about it, I bet Jamie cares more about that car than most of the people in his life.

Possibly more than all of the people in his life.

But definitely more than me.

“I already said I’m not getting in a car with her.”

Conrad, standing next to the red Prius that Tracy’s dad got her for her sixteenth birthday in July, points at me. Tracy rolls her eyes and leans into the backseat, clearing away some junk. Tracy wouldn’t appreciate my calling her magazines junk, but they’ve been stomped on and sat on, and pages have been torn out and folded over and marked up, so they’re junk in my book. Last year was all about Teen Vogue and Lucky, but this year Trace is reading Vogue and Elle, with the occasional InStyle thrown in, “because not everyone gets couture.”

Thanks to my trusty PSAT app, I surreptitiously learned that couture means custom-made, high-fashion clothes. I have to admit that there are some occasional topic-specific gaps in my vocabulary. My dad—Mr. Vocabulary himself—would not have been pleased. But the fact that I have a PSAT app on my phone would have gone a long way toward redeeming me in his eyes, I’m sure.

“Conrad,” Tracy says as she extricates herself from the backseat to move her magazines into the trunk, “Rose ended up in the pool for you. So maybe try a little gratitude. Sit,” she commands, pointing to the mostly clean backseat and dropping several torn-up GQs in the process. “Love your shoes, by the way. Stuff paper towels in them when you get home so they dry in the right shape. They’re Gucci, right? And those pants are Marc Jacobs, aren’t they?”

Conrad doesn’t miss a beat. “Stop talking about my clothes. You’re making me self-conscious.”

Tracy looks shocked, like she can’t conceive of a world in which Conrad wouldn’t want to talk about fashion. I think this is actually less about stereotyping and more about Tracy forgetting that not everyone cares as deeply and passionately about fashion as she does. Whatever she’s into takes over her entire worldview. She was like that with cheerleading last year. And Matt, unfortunately.

Getting dumped by Matt after she lost her virginity to him was the best thing that ever happened to Tracy. Well, okay, not the best thing. Actually, it was terrible. But as soon as she was forced to accept what a loser Matt had become, she realized she was spending too much time worrying about what he—and everyone else—thought of her. She vowed never to do that again, and she hasn’t looked back since. Her obsession with fashion isn’t just about magazines and being pretty. Tracy wants to be a designer someday, or an editor at a fashion magazine, or a…something. According to her, her education has already started. She reads every fashion magazine she can get her hands on, follows about twenty different blogs, and spends more hours on Lookbook than most gamers spend playing Call of Duty 17, or whatever number they’re up to.

I envy her. She found her thing and is already figuring out how to do it.

Actually, if I think about it, I’m not that far behind her—at least not in terms of knowing what my thing is. I just have to…start doing it.

When I was thinking of auditioning for Damn Yankees, I sang in front of the mirror and discovered that I look like a giant freak. When my mom’s shrink, Caron, asked why I hadn’t auditioned after I’d said I was going to, I just shrugged. Then she declared that I’m depressed.

Brilliant, right? But Ms. Shrinky-Dink had a point. I was excited about auditioning. And I was disappointed—in myself—when I chickened out. So I’m going to that Anything Goes audition, even if I look like the world’s weirdest weirdo when I sing.

“What are you doing with all this shit?” Conrad says, looking down at the issues of GQ that Tracy dropped.

“I like fashion,” Tracy answers, sounding a little peeved as she grabs the magazines and puts them on top of her pile. She dumps the magazines in her trunk and takes out the blanket from the monstrous roadside emergency kit that her dad bought for the car—there are enough supplies in there to survive simultaneous natural disasters. “Here,” she says, handing it to him.

Conrad wraps the blanket around himself and with one more nasty look at me, slides into the backseat. Tracy slams the trunk shut and gets into the driver’s seat. I barely have my seat belt on over my wet towel when Conrad starts in.

“So was it guilt that made you pull me off the bottom of the pool?”

Tracy eyes Conrad in her rearview mirror. “If anyone should feel guilty, it’s your sister. She was the psychotic maniac last year.”

“That’s not what I heard,” he mutters.

“Two sides to every story,” I reply.

“All right, let’s hear your side. How did someone like you manage to steal my sister’s boyfriend?”