I tried to smile at him but the muscles of my face twitched nervously. I bit my lip. Jonathon waved his spoon at me in a salute and dug in. I brought the ice cream up to my lips but couldn’t bring myself to taste it. I put down the spoon.
“Not hungry?” Jonathon asked with his mouth full of ice cream.
I shook my head and played with the spoon. I cleared my throat. “What’s going on?”
Jonathon waved his spoon at me. “Nothing much. Just a lot of packing. What are you up to?”
I shrugged. “SAT stuff. You know how it is.”
Jonathon smiled sympathetically and took another bite of ice cream. “That sucks,” he said.
I nodded and watched the edges of my ice cream scoop slowly melt. “I don’t know why I’m even bothering to take them.”
Jonathon turned to me. “Do you need help? I have some friends who can make it easy on you. It’s not that expensive.”
I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t want any more help. I can’t do it that way.”
Jonathon rolled his eyes. “What way? Come on, Mina. Don’t be naïve. You really think every kid in the room is taking their own tests?”
I didn’t respond. Jonathon knew how to make me feel like a goody-goody who had no sense of the world. When he had offered to get me answers for tests or even break into the school’s computer, I had refused. It was one thing to lie to Uhmma, but I couldn’t face cheating my teachers and the school. I couldn’t go that far.
“It’s not like those standardized tests are fair or really a measure of intelligence. It’s all a way of keeping the classes separated. Upholding the institution of hypocrisy we call academia,” Jonathon said.
I played with my spoon and let him rant. Jonathon considered himself a rebel of sorts, trying to undermine the system, cheating the makers of the SAT by taking tests for people who could pay. Jonathon could justify anything. When really he just hated all the expectations his mother heaped on him, too. Going to Stanford, becoming a doctor. And while superficially he played the ideal son, underneath, he did everything he could to resist the system. For all of Mrs. Kim’s bragging, she wasn’t too far from the truth. Jonathon was a computer whiz and a brain. He just didn’t like to think of himself that way.
I changed the subject. “You going to Grace’s birthday party?” Grace had a beach party every year for her birthday. I hadn’t heard from Grace since the last time we had fought at church. She had tried to get me to talk to Jonathon. Make up. I had told her to mind her own business. I missed talking to her.
“Yeah. You want me to pick you up?”
I shook my head.
“ ’Cause it’s not a problem. How about I pick you up from work after you close. I’m sure your mom will be fine.”
“It’s okay. I can’t go,” I lied.
Jonathon snorted and scraped the last spoonful of ice cream from his bowl. “Is it that you can’t go, or that you don’t want to go? Or maybe you do want to go, but just not with me.”
“Stop it, Jonathon.” I took a deep breath, tried to keep down the familiar feeling of being overwhelmed and reasoned into doing something.
“Why can’t I just hang out with you? You know, we did a lot of that before you got all weird and moody.”
I scowled at him. “What are you talking about?” I said.
“I’m just saying that you’re acting strange. Even Grace thinks that you’ve changed.”
He was turning all my friends against me. Even Grace. I pushed the ice cream away from me. I stood up to leave. I wasn’t going to sit here and let him play games with me. He could do whatever the hell he wanted to do.
Jonathon reached out and grabbed my arm. “Wait, Mina. Don’t be like that. Can’t we talk without getting into a fight?”
I wrestled my arm away.
“Mina, please stay.” He stood up and hugged me to him. “I’m sorry.”
I stood in his embrace, my eyes closed, wishing we could really return to being friends again. I felt his lips on my neck.
“Stop it.” I tried to step out of his arms.
He tightened his grip around me.
I grabbed one of his fingers, bending it back.
“Damn it.” He let go of me. He held on to his finger and yelled, “You know, Mina, every time I try to be nice to you, help you out, you start acting like some freak.”
“That’s because you always want something in return. I just wanted help,” I yelled back.
Jonathon grimaced. “You didn’t want help. You wanted me to lie for you. You wanted me to figure out how to forge your report card.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.” I shook my head. “I didn’t ask you,” I said weakly.
Jonathon looked away. “And I didn’t ask you to fool around with me. You did that on your own.”
I reached out, placed a hand on the counter to steady myself. What had begun as two friends talking, then kissing, had spiraled into something else. At first, I didn’t mind being with Jonathon. At first, it had been kind of fun. As though we were conspirators in a heist, trying to figure out all the angles and fooling around in between. Only, he started wanting more.
I silently cried, You knew I didn’t have a choice. You knew there was no one else I could have turned to. You knew. I bowed my head and let my tears fall to the floor.
Jonathon turned to me. “I just wanted you to like me. And for a while I thought you did. I
