“What?” His eyes widen. “You call me out in front of everyone and you’re asking me what?”
“Call you out?” I shove my finger into his face. “I saw you with Martha.”
“I heard what you said about Trash Can Girl and I let it slide,” he shouts. “And as for your sister, we were talking. Just talking. God, your family is right. You are majorly messed up. I don’t pretend to know what happened the night of the accident, but you’ve changed, and I’m sick and tired of carrying you because of it.”
He’s stating my worst fears. I didn’t want to change. But it’s all changed and hanging with Stella, it was supposed to help. “I haven’t changed.”
“Yeah. You have.” He pauses. “Accusing me of going after your sister. Your sudden fascination with Trash Can Girl.”
I move closer, my chest bumping his. “Her name is Stella.”
“She lives with a stripper in the Section 8 housing on the other side of town. She dyes her hair purple and wears the same damn clothes every day. Girls like her don’t give a crap what I say.”
“You’re wrong,” I tell him.
“On what?” he says. “That she gives a damn about anyone or that she’s a stripper-in-training?”
I tower over him and Cooper appears to get smaller.
“What the hell?” Cooper’s eyes dart across my face. “Are you going to throw our friendship away over a freak?”
Anger becomes white-hot acid in my bloodstream. My fingers close into a fist and my voice drops to a new level. “Say it again and find out.”
“Jonah!” Stella’s voice jerks me away from my showdown with Cooper.
Cooper steps back with his hands in the air. “Decide which way you’re going on this. I know you’ve been hanging out with her and I’ve been patient, but here’s the truth. You’ve changed and she’s the new factor. Think about what you’re giving up, Jonah. I’ve been your friend for years and she’s...” My one-time best friend scrutinizes Stella like she belongs in a dumpster. “Decide soon.”
Cooper retreats back into the cafeteria. Leaning against the windows, Stella presses her folder to her chest. She’s almost as pale as James Cohen was the night I held his hand.
“I’m not worth this,” she says in a small voice.
My eyebrows furrow. “Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not. He’s right about me. I’m trash.”
“You’re not.”
The edges of the folder bend as she grips it tighter. “You don’ la’s t know anything about me.”
The anger boils over and I ram my fist into a nearby locker. Pain slices through my knuckles. Stella flinches and I immediately wish I could take the action back. But I’m mad. Mad at Cooper and mad at Stella. She’s right. I know nothing when it comes to her. “Then tell me. Tell me who you are.”
“You won’t like me anymore.”
“Stella, I like you. All the rest of it, it’s just the stuff that came before.”
“So you don’t need to know it.”
“I do if it makes you feel like you aren’t worth that fight with Cooper.”
Her lips flatten into a thin line. “Once we do this, there’s no going back. It’ll end what we have now. By the end of today, you could be running back to Cooper and begging his forgiveness.”
Going back, it’s what I craved those first few times I visited James Cohen’s grave. But in meeting Stella, I found a way forward. I don’t want what’s between us to end, and the one thing I’m learning is that there’s no going back. “Or I could choose you. Bring it, Stella. Give me your worst.”
16
Stella
So maybe Mrs. Collins isn’t the Antichrist. With one phone call to his parents, she released Jonah from school so I could, in his words, give him my worst. It’s my debut trip in his Charger and it’s also my inaugural ride in a car built this decade.
If deep down I’m honest with myself, it’s also the first time I’ve been so alone with a boy that I like as more than a friend. A boy who I dream at night of kissing.
Besides a few directions from me like “turn here” or “merge onto the interstate,” we’ve stayed silent. The only noise is the hum of the radio in the background. I run my hand over the material of the passenger seat and inhale that new-to-me car smell. It’s not the car ride I’m trying to cement into my memory; it’s every detail of being with Jonah.
He grips the wheel with his left hand and rests his right one on the console, palm up. If I wanted I could easily lay my hand in his.
For the past couple of weeks, Jonah and I have lived in a bubble—a twisted sort of bubble, but it was ours. Seeing him argue with his friend over me...I should have cut Jonah loose then. We belong to different worlds, and it’s time he returned to his and I accepted mine.
Now that he’s admitted what happened the night of the accident, maybe Jonah can find the strength to move on...without me.
But I didn’t cut him loose and it’s because when he works out whatever is going on with him and the accident and he returns to his real life, I hope Jonah will become a little bit better a person. Not laughing at Cooper’s cruel jokes isn’t enough. I want him to remember this—to remember me—and to forever be the guy who doesn’t allow anyone to talk trash.
Showing him this is the only way to teach that lesson, to give him that memory.
The tree line along the road thins out and the elementary school pops into view. In front of the half-circle driveway is a trailer I’m very familiar with.
“Over there.” I point and I can feel Jonah’s heavy stare before he pulls into the lot and parks.
“I tell you to give me your worst and you drag me out to volunteer. You’re right. I hate you. I had no idea I was friends with such an awful human being.”
“Ha. Ha.” But my sarcasm comes off flat. I rub my palms along my jeans and step out of the car. At the door to the school, children bob and weave in the line. I remember that feeling, being so thrilled over something new that I’d have to lean way far to the left or right or even stand on my tiptoes because seeing it reinforced the excitement.
We stand next to the trailer and Jonah rocks on his feet. “What exactly are we supposed to do?”
“You and me?”
“Yeah.”
I dig two shoe scales out of a box by the door and hand him one. “We change lives.”