Crush

He paced faster and ran his hands through his hair, scratching his scalp furiously to release a tingling shower of anxiety down his back.

6

Tuesdays were always quiet at the bookstore. Usually Jonathan liked it when the place wasn’t busy, but tonight the time just seemed to drag. Everything was pretty well stocked and shelved and the few customers roaming through the store apparently knew what they were looking for, because he’d only had one older woman ask him to look up a title: Clive Barker’s Abarat. They were sold out.

David was acting strange, adding to the night’s unease.

On break they sat at the back of the cafe. David guzzled his coffee and barely said a word. Jonathan knew his friend was distracted, but he also seemed frustrated, like he’d lost his wallet and was trying to figure out where he’d left it.

“What’s up with you?” Jonathan asked.

“Mmmm…,” David hummed, looking into his nearly empty cup. “Nothing. Just tired.”

“Up all night planning world domination?”

“No,” David said. “Just had some things to take care of. Didn’t sleep much.”

Jonathan debated telling David about his own sleepless night. He didn’t have a clue how he would explain the shadowy thing in his window. There was no way to without sounding like a total loon, so he kept his mouth shut.

“How was school?” David asked, still looking in his cup.

“Good,” Jonathan said. And it was true.

Toby the Scab didn’t show up for classes (Tia Graves probably wore him out last night), so Jonathan was spared a locker hug. It was actually kind of funny seeing Ox and Cade in the halls. They saw Jonathan coming, whispered to each other, shrugged. It was like they couldn’t figure out what to do to their smaller classmate without Toby’s direction. Jonathan found himself grateful for their limited imaginations.

“Did you see Kirsty?” David asked. Now he peered up from his dwindling coffee supply.

“Barely,” Jonathan said. “We said ‘hey’ before class, but I didn’t see her the rest of the day.”

“Really?” David asked.

His friend sounded cold and annoyed, as if he thought Jonathan was lying to him. What the hell?

“Yeah,” Jonathan said, cautiously. “Really. What’s going on, man?”

“Nothing. You’re paranoid.”

David again looked up at him, or rather past him. For a second David’s eyes lit up, then the spark in them was snuffed out. They went cold.

“Your girlfriend is here,” he said.

Jonathan turned, expecting to see Emma O’Neil stepping onto the mezzanine. Instead, he saw Kirsty Sabine, walking toward the table. She wore the long beige coat and tight black jeans with a plain white sweatshirt. Her hair was brushed smooth and pulled back into a neat ponytail. She smiled and lifted her hand in a low wave.

Jonathan nodded and said, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Kirsty said.

It was when Jonathan turned to introduce a pouting David to Kirsty that he understood his friend was totally jealous. He was really into Kirsty, and it pissed him off that Jonathan had spent time with her, even though it was totally random. Crap!

“Kirsty, this is my friend, David.”

“Hey,” David said. “What’s up?”

“Just shopping.”

The silence that followed, filled with turmoil and discomfort, weighed a few tons, and all of them rested on Jonathan’s shoulders like a couple of marble gargoyles. He looked at Kirsty and then back at David, then back at Kirsty, who looked totally confused and suddenly a little embarrassed.

“Do you need some help finding a book?” Jonathan asked. When he heard his own voice, it sounded full-on rude, so he quickly added, “Or do you want to hang here and have some coffee with us? We’re only on break for another five minutes, but…”

“Coffee sounds good,” Kirsty said.

“I’ll get it,” Jonathan said. “We get a discount.”

“Thanks. Black is fine.”

With that, Jonathan walked away, and the gargoyles shifted a bit on his shoulders, felt slightly less heavy. Maybe David and Kirsty would hit it off or David might discover he wasn’t really interested in her. Jonathan had to do something. David was his only friend, and there was no way he was going to sacrifice that, especially not for a girl he barely knew. Even if he were attracted to her, even if she were Emma O’Neil hot, David was a bud, and you didn’t screw a bud over.

Jonathan felt better by the time he got Kirsty’s coffee, which was actually free because Myrna, the cafe cashier, was a burnout and didn’t want to calculate the discount and make change. He saw David and Kirsty talking. David was smiling. That was good. Very good.

He put Kirsty’s coffee on the table. She thanked him.

“So what are you guys talking about?” he asked.

“David was just telling me how you two met.”

“Oh man, don’t tell her that,” Jonathan said.

“I have to,” David explained. “The wheels are already turning and can’t be stopped. It’s a momentum thing.”

“It’s an ass thing.”

“Perhaps we should let Kirsty decide.”

“I want to hear it,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “Unless you’ll be totally pissed?”

“Not totally,” Jonathan said.

“Well then,” David announced, “like I said, it was early in the school year, and Jonny Boy here had just transferred in. Back then, all of the cool kids used to go to this place called Coffee. Perky’s wasn’t open yet, and the place was just a few blocks from the school. In front of Coffee, there was this kind of patio with half a dozen tables, and the Specials—that’s what the popular kids call themselves—well, they used to take over that area, and it became this orgy of coffee and cell phones and WiFi, like an office for kids whose job it was to be dickheads. Every day the Specials sent Naomi Mattis ahead to kind of reserve the area.”

“I totally forgot about Naomi,” Jonathan said. “God, she was their full-on slave. Whatever happened to her?”

“She’s at Melling now,” David said. “She had about a million dollars’ worth of makeover done, and the last operation, which was some kind of chin implant, went wrong. This all happened before I transferred, but people told me she looked totally Resident Evil there for about three months. Everybody slammed on her, but then when her face got fixed, she was excruciatingly hot. So she put together her own group of Specials, and the nightmare continues.”

“So superficial,” Kirsty said. “Why do people have to make each other so miserable?”

“Because if people were happy,” David said, “advertising wouldn’t work.”

“Kids would be jerks without advertising,” Jonathan put in.

“True,” David agreed, arching his eyebrows, giving his round face a strange, surprised expression. “But they now have a hundred new things to be jerks about. Clothes, palm devices, televisions, hair-cuts, cell phones—even water. If you don’t have the latest, you’re a loser and therefore a target. Advertisers know it. They want us to be unhappy so we’ll buy their crap. It’s totally documented. But I digress from my story.”

“Our break is just about over,” Jonathan said.

“He thinks he’s going to be spared,” David said right to Kirsty.

She laughed.

“Anyway, the Specials were gathered at Coffee, another typical day for the rich and popular, when who should appear on the sacred patio?”