Emerson
(Then)
I slip out of the girls’ changing room, dragging my duffel behind me. It’s stuffed with my uniform, helmet, and pads, but I’m pretending it’s stuffed with Reid Walsh’s big, fat body and bigger, fatter, uglier head. I’m still fuming over what he just said and wishing that I’d hit him harder . . . and with the blade side of my skate too. It would have been an improvement, that’s for sure.
“Hey.”
I freeze. It’s Jake. What’s he still doing here? I was sure that everyone, including him, had left by now. I hid out in the girls’ locker rooms waiting, listening to the boys as they made their way out the building, laughing and joking as they went, slamming one another into lockers. After the door clanged shut for the last time and silence finally fell, I waited another full minute, counting off the seconds in my head, before slipping out into the hallway.
Clearly, I should have waited longer. Until next Tuesday even.
Jake’s gaze drops to the ground. He toes his sneaker along the linoleum, making it squeak, and then looks up at me, brushing his hair out of his eyes and giving me an awkward half smile. “I figured I’d wait for you,” he says.
He’s wearing his ice hockey jersey and holding his skates in his left hand. He has a sprinkle of freckles across his nose, and I focus on those because I can’t look him in the eye. Straightaway, I think about those man-made coral reefs we studied in science. They build them out of wire and then shoot a low-level electric current through them to encourage new coral growth. When the teacher explained it, I remember thinking that that was exactly how I felt whenever I was around Jake: like a low-level electric current was being zapped through me.
The first time I felt it, I was so appalled I ran away from him. Then I tried to avoid him. But that’s impossible. I mean, we live on the same street, go to the same school, and play on the same ice hockey team. And when we aren’t skating, we’re out in the woods with our friends or biking over the island, climbing trees, trampolining in Shay’s backyard, swimming off the beach, kayaking, or making stunt movies together. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing; the fact is, we do pretty much everything together.
There is no way of avoiding Jake, so I figured the only thing I could do was ignore the coral reef electrocution pulsing through my limbs and carry on as normal, hoping that one day it would just go away of its own accord—a bit like a stomach flu that’s run its course. But it didn’t. It hasn’t. And now everything’s ruined. Now Jake knows how I feel about him.
I’m such an idiot. I stare at the ground, silently cursing Reid Walsh with every swear word I know and simultaneously wishing for a sinkhole to open up and swallow me.
“You okay?” Jake asks as we walk toward the door.
“I’d be better if Reid Walsh had never been born,” I mutter, still not looking at him. What if he no longer wants to be friends?
Jake mumbles agreement. No one likes Reid or his brother, Rob, though most people aren’t stupid enough to say so within earshot of them. My mom says that when God was handing out brains, the Walsh brothers were at the very end of the line. Though they’d both pushed their way to the front of the line when the steroid-infused muscles were being handed out.
Jake and I start dragging our duffels toward the exit in silence. My face is burning hotter than the surface of the sun. What must he be thinking? If only Reid hadn’t said anything. If only I hadn’t reacted. It was stupid. It’s not like I haven’t heard it before. Jake and I have been teased about having crushes on each other since third grade. We’ve always ignored it. So why didn’t I ignore it this time? Why did I have to flip out like that?
I can’t stop hearing Reid’s voice in my head yelling, “You love Jake!” His fat face honking with laughter. The sniggering of the whole team is now playing on repeat as the soundtrack to my life.
I came at him like a tornado. He didn’t even have time to put his arms up to deflect me. My only regret is that Coach hauled me off him before I could get a second punch in.
Being the only girl on the team sucks. But today it sucked even more than usual. I blink away the tears before Jake can see them. I don’t need him thinking I’m even more pathetic than he must already.
We’ve reached the first set of doors. Jake holds them open for me. I accidentally bump against him as I walk through and get that stupid surge of butterflies in my stomach. I shoot them down with a spray of bullets. Why do I have to feel this way about Jake, of all people? I hold open the door for him in turn so that he can drag his bag through, and as I let the door swing shut behind us, Jake unexpectedly grabs for my hand.
I’m paralyzed with shock. Jake and I don’t hold hands. We don’t touch. Ever. Unless we’re clashing on the ice or playing thumb wars.
What is happening?
“Em,” he says before breaking off. He swallows, pressing his lips together. I notice a glimmering shard of pure terror in his eyes. I’ve only ever seen that look once before, when he threw himself down Toe Jam Hill Road on his BMX before realizing his brakes weren’t working.
Without warning, he darts forward, and before I know what is happening, his lips are mashing against mine.
I’m so startled I don’t do anything. I don’t even shut my eyes. I just stare at him. Up close, his freckles form a constellation. After a few seconds of nonaction on my part, Jake’s eyes fly open too, and now the two of us are staring at each other in alarm, our lips still smashed together.
It’s like a car crash.
My heart has joined my lungs and gone on strike, refusing to beat. And then, with a banging stutter, it starts again, exploding in my chest like a horse at a gallop.
I sense Jake about to pull away, extricate himself from the wreckage, and finally figure out that I should be doing something. I close my eyes in a hurry and part my lips, not even sure that that’s the right thing to do but hoping it’s enough. Jake hesitates for an excruciating beat and then the next thing we know, we’re kissing. Actually kissing, that is. Inexpertly, messily, tentatively, yet somehow . . . perfectly.
It’s my first kiss. I’m pretty sure Jake’s, too. And when we break apart, coming up for air like two free divers, we’re both so embarrassed and awkward that we just stand there for a few seconds in an epic, end-of-the-world-type silence, both of us contemplating the line we just crossed. It’s wider and deeper than the Grand Canyon and the Mariana Trench put together.
I stare down at our interlocked fingers, struck by the strangeness of seeing Jake’s hand holding mine—his hand as familiar as my own, both of us with bloody scrapes across our knuckles, doing something so unfamiliar. I’m not sure what comes next, so I look at him, feeling a flush spread across my face like an ice-pack burn. He’s grinning stupidly at me, and I have to resist the urge to shove him in the chest and tell him to stop it.
It’s then I notice the skates hanging from his other hand and remember I’ve left my own skates in the locker room. They’re still on the floor, where I flung them after the Reid Walsh incident.
“Oh no,” I say. “I forgot my skates.” Because, yes, that’s the best I can come up with after my best friend has kissed me for the first time and created a need for a whole new geographical feature to better metaphorically express the enormity of what has just happened.
Jake lets go of my hand, reluctantly it feels, and I start jogging back to the changing room.
“Want me to wait?” Jake calls out after me.
“No, don’t worry,” I say, spinning back around to face him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He’s still standing where I left him. “The usual place?” he asks, and there’s a hint of uncertainty in his voice that I’ve never heard before. Jake’s normally so confident it throws me to hear him sound so unsure.
I nod and start smiling. I must look like a total dork, but I can’t stop the nodding or the smiling. I push my shoulder against the door to the girls’ locker room, glancing back one last time and catching sight of Jake punching the air with his fist.