only laughed. But then he went back to staring straight ahead, and his expression went somber.
“I don’t want you to think that I’m completely egotistical, cause I’m not.
I’m just realistic.”
“You’re talking about the way all the girls look at you?” I interjected. That was probably rude, but I was just too excited that he was going to explain it to me.
“Yeah,” Jack said sheepishly. “Everyone kind of… reacts to me a certain way. And you don’t. It’s refreshing. So… that’s what I’m doing here. With you.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I waved my hands at him, feeling a massive twinge of disappointment. “What about the way other people react to you? Why do they do that?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shifted slightly, and I knew he was lying. He knew exactly what was going on, but he wasn’t going to tell me.
“Jack!” I pouted. “That’s not fair!”
“See?” Jack smiled. “This is refreshing. Do you know how many other people argue with me, about anything?”
“If you think this is refreshing, just wait.” I tried to glower at him, but his smile was just too damn infectious.
“Come on,” Jack started walking towards the car again. “You’re gonna freeze to death.”
“Jack!” I protested, but hurried after him. “What is it? Is it something in the way you smell that I’m just not getting?” He got a look of total surprise and made a clicking sound with his tongue. “What?”
“Well, yeah, that’s actually pretty much it,” Jack admitted. He unlocked his car and then walked around to the other side, still looking a little stunned. I hopped into the car and he continued, “It’s a pheromone, or something like that.”
“So, wait. Is that a medical condition or something?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jack nodded, as if that answer was sufficient enough.
“What kind of medical condition?” I pressed, totally oblivious to the fact that that kind of information was really personal. Really, I’m not usually this forward or nosy. There was just something about Jack that made me lose any sense of formality.
“A rare one,” Jack replied flippantly and started the car.
“Well, why don’t I react to it?” I felt terribly perplexed by this whole thing, and then I started to wonder if maybe there was something very wrong with me.
Everyone reacted to him, except for me. Maybe I had a seriously botched sense of smell or a brain tumor or something equally horrible. “The pheromones or whatever?”
“That is a very good question.” Jack pulled out of the parking lot, slipping easily into an opening in the traffic.
“You don’t actually know why, do you?” I asked. “You don’t know why I’m different then everyone else.”
“I do not,” Jack admitted, then looked over at me. “But look, Alice, I don’t want you to get hung up on this thing. It’s too hard to explain and… for our purposes, it doesn’t even matter at all.”
“What purposes?” I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn’t feel nervous or even suspicious of him really, but it seemed like the right thing to do.
“In order for this friendship to work, you’re just going to have to accept that there are certain things that I’m not gonna tell you,” Jack said firmly. “I’m not trying to be a dick about this but that’s just the way it is.”
“And what if I can’t accept that?” Okay, as soon as he said that I’d have to accept things, I knew that I would. Grudgingly, I would follow whatever conditions he put on our friendship.
“Then we can’t hang out anymore.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, but I could hear the sadness in his voice.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I grumbled, but I was already relenting.
“Why can’t you just tell me things!”
“I can’t tell you why I can’t tell!” He said it like it meant something, like I would go, oh yeah, I get it now.
“This is gonna frustrate me to no end,” I sighed. I was sulking, but that only made him smile.
“I know.” He was still smiling, but he sounded regretful. “Okay. I’ll drop you off and then you can take some time to think about things and decide if hanging out with me seems worth it. And then, if you still wanna hang out, you can text me. Okay?”
“Okay.” I tried to sound as dejected and pouty as possible, hoping that would change his mind somehow and he would divulge all his classified information to me. But I think we both knew that I didn’t actually need time to think. Whether I liked it or not, I was going to have to settle for his restrictions.
When he dropped me off, I was still trying to look deeply offended, but Jack completely saw through it. He laughed and said he’d see me soon, then sped off down the street. I stood outside my apartment building for a few minutes, trying to imagine what he could possibly be hiding from me. Weird government experiment? CIA? Werewolf? Nothing really seemed to fit.
I tried to make a mental checklist of what I knew about Jack. He claimed to have some kind of medical condition (a rare on) that made everyone in love with him. Even though he didn’t look like it, he was probably stronger than anyone I had ever met. His skin was devoid of any real temperature, or at least a human one. He was positively entrancing to everyone else, and while I didn’t feel that way about him, I couldn’t help but want to be with him. And for some very peculiar reason, he seemed to feel the same way.
After the concert (and a brief interrogation from Milo), I laid awake in my bed for hours upon hours running a million different theories about Jack. My most promising one was that he was a celebrity of some kind pulling some ridiculous Hannah Montana lifestyle. That would explain why everyone else was attracted to him, and he probably had a personal trainer, thus explaining his uncanny strength. And, obviously, if he was going for some kind of secret hidden identity, then he couldn’t tell me. That still didn’t explain why everyone else would recognize him but me, or why he’d want to live incognito. But at least it was a theory.
Since I had been up until the wee hours of the morning trying to figure Jack out, and I didn’t have school, I fully intended to spend the entire day sleeping, curled up in the soft comfort of my down blankets. Unfortunately, my Jane embargo fell through. Or rather, burst through my bedroom door, destroying any chance of sleep with a heart-pounding adrenaline rush awake.
“What the hell is going on?” Jane hissed after she’d thrown open my bedroom door so hard that the door handle would leave a mark in the plaster.
I jumped up with a start, tangled up in a mass of blankets and sleep induced confusion. I could barely focus my eyes on the blurry vision of Jane, standing in my doorway, with her hands on her hips glaring down at me. Milo cowered behind her, muttering things about how she needed to keep it down or Mom would completely freak out. Whenever Jane was around, Milo acted like a puppy about to pee on the floor, and it drove me nuts.
“What are you talking about?” I mumbled groggily. I flopped back down in bed, trying to remember the dream that Jane had unceremoniously ripped me from.
“You know what.” Her lips curled back into some kind of sneer and she carefully stepped her Prada heels over my dirty clothes strewn about my room.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the alarm clock telling me it was 11:13 am, and I grimaced. It wasn’t even noon yet, and Jane was in heels and red lipstick. She was made for a world entirely different than the one I existed in.
“I really don’t,” I yawned and pulled the covers up over me more.
“Why haven’t you answered my zillions of text messages or phone calls?”
Apparently, Jane thought it was the perfect time to argue, and she yanked my covers off of me, forcing me to talk to her.
“Because there were zillions of them,” I retorted and grudgingly sat up.
“Ugh,” Jane groaned. She sat down on the bed next to me in a terrific huff and exhaled dramatically. “There wouldn’t have been so many if you just answered me.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“Well?” Jane looked at me.
Her expression had softened and she’d apparently forgiven me, which was pretty amazing actually. There was only one Cardinal Sin for her, and that was ignoring her, which I had somehow managed to do for almost two
