Chapter Three
When we arrived at Jason’s palatial home, cars lined the street and driveway, including Craig’s. He’d driven separately so he could escape early in case it turned out to be an “actor freakfest of sucky proportions.” We found a spot to park, got out and gave each other one final glance over. Quinn wore a black tutu-like skirt and nude high heels, a combo that made her long, athletic legs look endless. Hana had tried to wear one of her adorable-things-in-nature T-shirts but Quinn wouldn’t stand for it. Instead of the river-with-cute-jumping-fish shirt, she now wore a royal-blue short-sleeved sweater that for once showed off her ample boobs instead of hiding them under layers of cotton.
My original outfit had also been rejected, Quinn saying, “You need to show off that new yoga body.”
“Uh, I’ve only been doing yoga for the two weeks since school started,” I’d said.
“Well, you look stronger and glowier already. Own it.” She forced me to trade out my usual gray canvas shoes for shiny gold flats and had me put on her silky, cream-colored top that danced around my skin.
While Quinn tousled my hair and applied my makeup with her expert skills, Hana decided it would help if she assigned me a character for the night. “Tonight, you’re playing the part of Girl Who’s Got It All. I mean, be yourself, but only that witty, confident part of you who can actually talk to the cute boy, and not that weirdo part of you who sees a cute boy, mumbles something unintelligible and runs to her friends at her first chance. Got it?” Since I’d had a stick of eyeliner pointed at my eyeball, I couldn’t glare at her, but I liked my assignment. Tonight’s performance of Confident Girl will be played by Ellie Hartwood.
After checking that my blouse was hanging just so over my jeans, we headed up the driveway to Jason’s ginormous house.
Hana nudged Quinn and said, “So, which guy is on your hump-worthy list tonight?”
“Well, I certainly don’t like considering it that way,” Quinn said, trying to get away with not answering. She enjoyed flirting but never really stuck with a crush for very long. We remained silent, expectant. “C’est un mystère.” She punctuated the statement with a quick nod of her head.
We stopped and blocked her path, staring at her for an answer.
Finally, she broke. “Okay, I kind of think that Mark Weiss guy is cute. And he was so funny last night.”
“Yuck. Seriously?” Hana was never good at hiding her opinions, even when hiding them was the right thing to do.
“What? Mean.” She turned to me. “Is that what you think, too?”
Liberated by Hana’s response I tried to be honest. “You’re right, he is funny, and his smile could land him some toothpaste commercials, no doubt, but…he’s so bizarrely tan.”
“Yeah, he’s kinda the color of Cheetos.”
“You guys. He is not orange.” Quinn flung her hands up in the air.
Hana and I exchanged sidelong glances.
For a moment, Quinn was all the image of innocence and hurt, but she soon gave in. “Well, he is slightly…marigold-colored, but—”
All three of us burst out laughing.
“I still call dibs. If the Weisses don’t vacation in Florida anytime soon or have a tanning booth in their basement, I’m sure the color will wear off by Homecoming.”
“Ooh, she’s got plans,” Hana teased.
I elbowed Hana in the side. “So, how about you, Hana? Got your eye on anyone?”
She made an odd, quiet grunt.
“Is there someone?” Quinn asked.
Hana shook her head and frowned, avoiding eye contact. “Nah, these Porter guys aren’t for me.”
Something in the way she emphasized Porter guys made me wonder. “Okay, so no Porter guys for you. But is there someone you like?” I did a skip-jump to get in front of her and read her face. Oof. My knee twinged in the spot I’d tweaked this morning.
She shrugged, her head kind of bobbling between yes and no.
“You’re never rendered speechless. Who?”
“Yes, who? Do tell,” Quinn said as she took Hana by the shoulders and looked real close at her face, as if the boy’s name might be written there.
“Okay, okay. There is a guy—”
Quinn and I squealed in unison, our mouths opening like baby birds about to demand more.
“But.” Hana stomped her foot, her heel making a loud click against the brick. “And I’m serious here. For reasons I don’t want to go into, I’m asking, as your best friend, please do not press me on this. I’m hoping this uncomfortable emotion will just go away, but if it doesn’t I promise I will tell you soon. Okay?”
I put my hand over my mouth, trying to squelch my desire to ask a hundred more questions. This was so unlike her I was almost in shock. Quinn squirmed next to me. We were all silent for a long beat until I sighed and said, “Well, I’ve never been more curious in all my life. It’s pretty much all I’m going to think about for forever until you tell us.”
“A week,” Quinn said.
“What?” Hana asked.
“You have to tell us in at least a week, or our brains will explode. You understand.”
Hana nodded, and we continued up the long driveway bordered with inlaid bricks and motion-sensor lights. My belly did a flip thinking about my own crush, whom I was about to see in two seconds. Are he and Marissa together? Or is Craig right, and there isn’t anything between them?
As Quinn opened the front door, I gaped at the stained-glass panels refracting shimmers of colorful light. This house was a gazillion times different then our apartment, where the only thing shiny was the glitter stucco ceiling leftover from a tragic eighties remodel. I was luckier than 95 percent of the world’s population, but except for a handful of apartment-living kids in unincorporated Northglenn like Hana and me, everyone else in our school had huge houses. They were fancy-summer-camps and vacation-homes rich. And then there were neighborhoods like this one, with inconceivable amounts of money. I tried to shake it off—comparing up sucked.
This place was something else entirely. As if reading my mind, Hana said, “Yeah, I think the word for this is estate.”
From down the marble-floored hall a voice shouted, “The party’s out back!” We walked down the hall toward this mysterious “back.” Hana muttered, “They should offer a shuttle service. I’m getting shin splints.”
We stopped at a room filled with boys yelling at a video game on a TV so big it rivaled a movie theater. Some of them were wearing headsets that looked like half-helmets. Quinn, Hana, and I just stared at them and the screen where soldier types were killing monster types.
“We’ve made a huge mistake,” I whispered.
In another corner of the room, Craig was holding a guitar and Jason was talking and pointing to some other music equipment. I didn’t know what I thought about them being chummy. Oh, wait, yes, I did—I didn’t like it.
Jason looked up and walked over. “You made it. Hi.” He said this to all three of us, but his focus was on me, his eyes causing all sorts of spasms and palpitations in my organs.
“Hi.” I could think of no other words. Don’t I do improv? Why does it refuse to be a useful skill in real life?
“Took long enough,” Craig said. He looked at me, Quinn then Hana, and waved his hand around at us as he said, “You three look…nice. Effortful, but nice.” His eyes landed on Hana’s cleavage for a millisecond, which surprised me since our beach run-in with Marissa had made me think his resistance was stronger than the normal teenage male in the boob-gawking department.
“Something to drink?” Jason asked. He waved for us to follow him as he listed drink options too quickly for me to catch.
“I was about to bring these out back.” Jason started pulling large glass bottles of some fancy soda out of the fridge. Who knew pulling out bottles of soda could highlight a butt so nicely?
“Here,” Quinn stepped into the kitchen and reached for the bottles. “Hana, Craig, and I can take these outside for you.” She hoisted three of them into Craig’s arms, took the other four for her and Hana, and backed out of the kitchen. “We’ll see you outside.”
Jason pointed in the opposite direction from where we’d entered. “Just go down the hall then take a left through the library to the backyard.”
Hana mouthed to Quinn, “the library?” as they skittered away without me. Clearly, my friends had purposely abandoned me.
I smiled awkwardly at Jason.
He smiled handsomely back at me.
Think, Ellie, think. “Your line last night, ‘It smells like Fig Newtons and desperation,’ was brilliant, by the way.”
“Ha. Thanks, I don’t know where that came from.” He shifted his weight and crossed his arms over his chest. “I couldn’t stop laughing at your Little Miss Princess scene with Quinn.”
He remembers my character.
He thinks I’m funny.
“I have to ask. How did you keep your upper lip folded against your teeth the whole time?” He tried to mimic what I had done and looked so silly—flaring his nostrils trying to get his upper lip to stay folded under—that I laughed.
“The key is to get your teeth dry first. It works best when you’re severely dehydrated.” I tucked my upper lip under to show him.
He laughed. “That talent is going to get you far. Though, I hope you’re not severely dehydrated now. Do you want any of that sparkling stuff?”
I unfolded my lip. “Plain ol’ water would be great, thanks.”
He got a glass and turned to fill it in the refrigerator door. “Your brother is a talented guitar player.”
Stepbrother, I managed to not correct aloud. “So he tells me.” Not much better. “Do you play?”
“He used to,” a voice said from behind me.
“Ellie, this is my sister Olivia. She goes to Northwestern so she could stay at home,” Jason said with a warmth I wouldn’t have suspected from a younger brother. “Olivia, this is Ellie. She’s from Northglenn’s improv group.”
“Hello, Ellie. You must be good. Jason never invites the other improv groups over.” Olivia was rocking the sexy librarian look—black glasses, crisp clothes, tight bun and all. She shook my hand, hers petite and bony in mine. “Jason’s guitar playing was decent, but his singing, wow. ‘The voice of an angel,’ Mom would say. But he hasn’t done any of that in forever.” She gave him a faraway look.
Jason winced. “I wasn’t that good.”
“He was.” Olivia smiled, which made her eyes look just like Jason’s. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m off. Dad is in his office. I told him not to leave it until everyone is gone, so be good and don’t destroy the house, m’kay? Nice to meet you, Ellie.”
She clicked away in her shiny shoes. I hope there is some magical thing that happens automatically between high school and college that will make me look that confident and together by next year.
Jason led the way outside, and as we stepped out onto the brick patio, I let out a little gasp at the gorgeous gardens over the expanse of their yard.
“Did I mention Olivia is studying botany? She wants to eventually get a doctorate in pharmacognosy.”
“What’s that?”
“Basically, how plants can be turned into medicine. She’s obsessed with the idea of curing a rare disease, but I think she’s an artist at heart.” Jason gestured out to the gardens.
“She’s definitely that.” The yard was filled with winding stone paths, bonsai trees, intricate bushes, and flowers everywhere. “It’s amazing. Looks straight out of the Japanese gardens at the Chicago Botanic Garden.”
There were shrieks of laughter. Quinn, Hana, Craig, and the curly-haired guy from the Porter team, Owen, who had hosted the show, hovered over Quinn’s phone with bewildered looks on their faces.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Hana said.
Jason and I squeezed into the group and Quinn raised her phone up so we could see what they were watching. It was a Spanish music video that looked to be from the seventies, with upbeat music and trilling flutes. The lead singer sported a sparkly bellbottomed jumpsuit, and the chorus of singers and dancers behind him wore their own shiny jumpsuits with glittery stars stuck on their clothes and in their hair.
“Is that floating guy trying to dance like a bird? What’s with the star-spangled bikini lady?” Owen doubled over with laughter.
Jason and I started laughing, too.
“That is a mind-blowing fusion of Spanish music and Dutch fashion,” Jason said.
I pointed at the front man with the dark, feathery bouffant. “Craig, you look like the lead singer.”
“Eat a bag.”
“Omigosh, if we just feathered your hair and got you a gold jumpsuit, I could totally see it, Craig,” Quinn added.
“Does anyone know what they’re singing about?” I asked.
“Una paloma blanca,” Hana said. “A white dove.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, “he’s singing, ‘No one can take my freedom, I fly free over the mountain top. No one can take my power, I’m just a bird in the sky.’” He translated as the group of dancers, after several attempts, lifted one guy over their heads and flew him around as he flapped his arms like wings.
Owen was crying he was laughing so hard now. “We should…” He took his glasses off and wiped his eyes. “We should parody this as a sketch for the Comedy Hub contest.”
“My family could totally help make the costumes,” Quinn said.
“And Craig can be our lead Spaniard.” Hana elbowed Craig in the side.
“Aw, hell no,” Craig said.
Owen and Jason pointed to each other. Owen said, “You speak Spanish,” at the same time Jason said, “You’re taller.”
“Anyway, I don’t think this can be parodied, it’s already too ridiculous as is,” Jason said.
“This has to be done. Even if we just straight up recreate it. The modern world needs to see this,” Owen said as the whole chorus of singers and dancers flocked around bending their knees and flapping their arms. “Would you all really be up for doing this with us?” He looked directly at Quinn as he asked this, like she was a real-life goddess. I wondered if he stood a chance with her against Marigold-Mark.
Hana, Quinn, and I looked at each other and were in instant agreement. “Definitely,” Quinn answered for all of us, as I got giddy imagining the weeks ahead hanging out with Jason to rehearse this spectacle.
“Okay, let’s do it then,” Jason said. “Craig, do you think you’d be able to recreate this music track with your equipment?”
Craig gave a solid nod, which in his native Neanderthal translated to, “Yeah, sure.”
My giddy feeling diminished as the vision of the weeks ahead changed into hanging out with Jason…and my annoying stepbrother.
The other members of Spontaneous Combustion were by a patio table with snacks. Quinn, Hana, Owen, and Craig headed over to join them, which meant Jason and I were left alone again.
Music started playing over the outdoor speakers, and I jumped at the noise.
Jason yelled over the music. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, that just surprised me. I’m intrigued to see if we can pull off this Spanish seventies dove number.”
“I know. Any chance you play the flute?”
The music got even louder.
“No, but I’m told I’m quite talented at pretend-playing the flute,” I said with mock pride.
“Excellent.” He smiled. “Hey, you guys should do another Mash-Up, too. We just had a group cancel on us for the next one, if you’re free.”
“I’ll check, but I’m sure they’re up for it. It was great to play for so many people—we never get crowds like that at Northglenn.”
We listened to the loud thumping music.
I took a sip of water.
“Not to sound—” The bass beat garbled up Jason’s words.
“What? Sorry, I missed that.”
“Do you want to walk over there where it’s quieter?” Jason lightly grabbed my elbow to lead me to the other end of the house where we walked up a few stairs to the deck. All the parts of my body that weren’t my elbow were jealous.
“What were you saying?” I asked when we stopped. I set my water glass on one of the flat wooden rails.
“I was just saying, not to sound cheesy, but that scene we had together last night was…I don’t know…that level of being in sync, it was cool. I’ve never done something like that before.”
I decided to be honest, since he was. “Same. It was practically an out-of-body experience, but not, because I was completely in it, you know?” I turned to him. Dangerous move, considering those eyes of his.
“Exactly,” he said in a way that sent sparks dominoing along my limbs.
We looked around the yard as if there were something important we had to find out there.
“So, is Marissa here?” Subtle.
He looked confused. “Marissa?”
“Yeah, the girl you were with at the beach?”
“Ah right, Mark’s girlfriend.”
“Mark’s girlfriend? I thought you two were together.”
He laughed. “No girlfriends for me. Those two have been together forever. There she is, with Mark.” He pointed across the yard to an area of patio couches that surrounded a fire pit.
Marissa and Mark were on the couches wrapped in each other’s arms, and Quinn was there, too, looking mighty cozy with Owen. What a difference two minutes could make.
Waiting to get control over my giant smile, I absently ran my finger along an engraved pattern in the deck rail.
“I love this detail on the rail,” I said, tracing the smooth loops in the wood.
His voice got quiet. “My dad loves it, too. It means a lot to him.”
“The railing? Why?”
Jason looked out at the darkness of the yard. He glided his finger along the pattern in the rail like I had.
“My mom commissioned the project after she got really sick.”
My stomach sank. “I’m so sorry. Is she okay?”
“She wanted a nice place to sit outside that was higher up so she could see all of her and Olivia’s gardens while she recovered. But she didn’t get to enjoy it for very long. She passed away last year.”
I didn’t know why I got so emotional about a person I’d never met, but tears welled in my eyes.
What do you say? What are you supposed to say?
“My dad had this detail added to the railing after she was gone, as kind of a memorial to my mom. The engraving looks like a flower pattern, but if you look closely, it’s her name—Linda May—written over and over again along the entire rail. After it was finished, I found my dad holding on to the railing later that night, crying. I hadn’t seen him like that since she died.”
We both stared silently at the carving. Hugging my arms across my body, I tried to speak, but Jason started first.
“Sorry, that was probably way too much. I don’t usually talk about my mom with people.” He laughed uneasily. “When you mentioned the engraving, it just came out.”
“No, no. I’m so sorry, Jason,” I said, looking up, finally finding my words. “You seem to be doing… I don’t know. I guess people learn how to act strong, but—”
“It’s been over a year now, and I’m doing better. Last year I was a total mess. Now I’m only an occasional mess.”
I nodded. C’mon words. Here he was spilling his life to me, and all I could do was nod.
“Hey, that’s a good reason for not wanting a girlfriend for the last year, right?” He lifted his hands to the side and let out another awkward laugh.
My stomach sank another inch. When he said “no girlfriends for me,” he didn’t mean “at the moment,” he meant it as a policy. Got it. “It makes sense considering all you’ve been through.”
“I didn’t think I could do improv again, either, but it helps.” Jason crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring me. “It’s nice to escape and be someone else for a while.”
“I get that escaping part. I love that about improv.” I paused. “I don’t know what to say, Jason, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. Man, I’m sorry I went into all that.”
“Don’t be sorry. I just wish I could put all your heartache into a big bag and take it to the beach with me for a day so you could have a break from it.”
“That’s nice. I like that.” The smile came back to his face. He looked at me for a while before continuing. “And the other good part of doing improv is I got to meet you, right?” His voice was soft as he reached out like he was about to touch my arm.
He doesn’t want to have a girlfriend, but he’s glad he got to meet me? What does that mean?
Jason’s face changed, and he coughed a little, his arm continuing past mine and pointing behind me. “Well, it’s not a beach, but there’s a nice fire going out there. Sound good?”
I nodded and headed toward the others. Before stepping down off the deck, I remembered my drink on the rail. As I turned back to get it, I was stopped by the wall of Jason’s torso, his chest rising and falling beneath my palms and his thin T-shirt. Maybe he won’t notice if I stay here forever.
But as I stepped to steady myself, my left foot slipped from the deck to the step below, landing with a forceful jolt. There was a horrific snap as my leg crumpled beneath me. So much pain. A guttural cry pushed itself out of me as I tumbled down the stairs, my head smacking against something hard before my body landed with a thud on the earth.