“He was in my future on Monday, I just didn’t remember it. It’s not that he isn’t in my future….”
“Then it’s probably because he’ll do something bad to you. You’re blocking him.” Jamie sets down her nail polish and looks at me seriously. “London, you should stay away from that guy.”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean something that bad,” I say, wanting to defend Luke. “I mean, he’s not going to kill me or anything.”
“How do you know?” Jamie asks.
“I just know!” I say, not really just knowing. But logically, I remember way into the future, so I assume that I won’t be murdered anytime soon.
“Okay, okay!” Jamie playfully shouts, holding up her palms in surrender. “I just think maybe you should aim a little higher.”
I don’t answer, for fear of what’s coming next. I brace myself for the conversation that my note this morning told me we’d have here tonight.
“Take Ted, for example,” Jamie begins. She means her detention monitor, who also happens to be the Driver’s Education teacher. Who also happens to be married.
“What about him?” I groan.
“Hey, that’s not nice,” Jamie says with a babyish frown.
“He’s married, Jamie,” I say without looking at her.
I try to avoid remembering holding Jamie’s hand at the side of her hospital bed after a bottle of pills doesn’t work, but trying not to think of the memory only makes it burrow itself into my brain.
“He’s unhappily married, and he’s a really great guy.” Jamie defends Mr. Rice as I defended Luke. I can’t help but think of her own unhappy marriage to come, of stories of her parents’ unhappy marriage that may have influenced her in some way.
It reminds me of a note I read this morning from last week.
“Hey, how’s your dad?” I ask casually. Jamie and I will spend a college spring break at his house in L.A. “Didn’t you visit him recently?”
She gives me a funny look. “Why are you acting like you know him? You’ve never even met him.”
“Oh, sorry,” I say. “Anyway, how was the trip?”
Jamie eyes me skeptically and applies some polish. “We already talked about this. The trip was fine. He’s fine. His lame new wife is still lame.”
“I wonder if my dad has a lame new wife,” I say under my breath.
I tighten the cap on the potent red polish. “Do you have any black? My nails are chipped,” I say, surveying the damage.
“Red on the bottom and black on the top, huh? Very school-spirited of you,” Jamie comments as she digs through a basket of tiny glass bottles in every color. She finds black and tosses it my way. Still, she’s focused.
“What’s with the dad talk all of a sudden?” Jamie asks, but doesn’t let me answer. “They’re gone. End of story. Anyway, stop trying to change the subject. I’m serious about Ted. He’s really great.”
“Uh-huh,” I murmur as I paint.
“He asked me to meet him after school on Monday,” she says, as if it’s the most natural thing on earth. I stop painting midnail.
“Jamie, seriously, you can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She laughs like it’s a game. She can’t see what this fling will do to her down the line, but I can.
“Why not? I’ll tell you why not.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening,” she says, but she picks up a bottle of hot-pink polish and goes to work on her toes.