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“Well . . . it is a lot to get used to. What inspired you to do it?”
“I don’t know. I needed a change.”
She put down her whisk. She was making Cherries Jubilee, our family’s traditional Christmas Eve dessert, and the tang of the mushed-up cherries made my eyes prickle.
“Did it by any chance have to do with what happened at Charlie’s party last Saturday?” she asked.
Heat rose to my cheeks. “I don’t know what you mean.” I blinked. “Anyway, how do you know what happened at Charlie’s party?”
“Well, sweetie, you’ve cried yourself to sleep almost every night—”
“No, I haven’t.”
“And of course, you’ve been on the phone with either Dorrie or Tegan pretty much twenty-four/seven.”
“You’ve been listening to my calls?” I cried. “You eavesdropped on your own daughter?!”
“It’s hardly ‘eavesdropping’ if you have no choice.”
I gaped at her. She pretended to be so motherly in her Christmas apron, making Cherries Jubilee from an old family recipe, when really she was . . . she was . . .
Well, I didn’t know what she was, just that it was wrong and bad and evil to listen in on other people’s conversations.
“And don’t say ‘twenty-four/seven,’” I said. “You’re too old to say ‘twenty-four/seven.’”
Mom laughed, which pissed me off more, especially since she then suppressed her amusement and regarded me in that Mom-way of, She’s a teenager, poor thing. She’s bound to go through heartache.
“Oh, Addie,” she said. “Were you punishing yourself, sweetie?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “That is so not the right thing to say to someone about her new haircut!” And then I’d fled to my room to bawl in private.
Twenty-four hours later, I was still in my room. I’d come out for Cherries Jubilee last night and for the opening of presents this morning, but I hadn’t enjoyed it. I certainly hadn’t been filled with the joy and magic of Christmas. In fact, I wasn’t sure I believed in the joy and magic of Christmas anymore.
I rolled over and grabbed my iPod from my bedside table. I selected my “Gray Day” playlist, which was made up of every single melancholy song that ever existed, and hit play. My iPenguin gloomily flapped her wings as “Fools in Love” hummed from her plastic body.
Then I returned to the main menu and scrolled through until I reached “Photos.” I knew I was entering dangerous territory, but I didn’t care. I highlighted the album I wanted and punched the button to open it.
The first picture to come up was the very first picture I ever took of Jeb, snapped sneakily using my cell phone a little over a year ago. It had been snowing that day, too, and in the picture, there were snowflakes caught in Jeb’s dark hair. He was wearing a denim jacket even though it was freezing, and I remember wondering if maybe he and his mom didn’t have much money. I’d heard that the two of them had moved to Gracetown from the Cherokee Reservation, which was about a hundred miles from here. I thought that was cool. He seemed so exotic.
Anyway, Jeb and I had sophomore English together, and he was heart-stoppingly hot with his jet-black ponytail and smoky eyes. He was also wa-a-a-ay serious, which was a new concept for me, since I had a tendency to be a big ol’ spaz. Every day, he bent over his desk and took notes while I snuck peeks at him, marveling at how shiny his hair was and how his cheekbones were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. But he was reserved to the point of possible aloofness, even when I was my bubbliest self.
When I discussed this extremely problematic issue with Dorrie and Tegan, Dorrie suggested that maybe Jeb felt uncomfortable in this tiny mountain town where everyone was real Southern, real Christian, and real white.
“There’s nothing wrong with any of those things,” I said defensively, being all three.
“I know,” Dorrie said. “I’m just saying that possibly the guy feels like an outsider. Possibly.” As one of two—count ’em, two—Jewish kids in the entire high school, I suppose she knew what she was talking about.
Well, that got me wondering if maybe Jeb did feel like an outsider. Could that be why he ate lunch with Nathan Krugle, who was definitely an outsider with his all–Star Trek, all-the-time T-shirt collection? Could that be why, in the mornings before the school was unlocked, Jeb leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets instead of joining the rest of us and dishing about American Idol? Could that be why he didn’t succumb to my charms in English, because he felt too uncomfortable to open up?
The more I thought about it, the more I worried. Nobody should feel like an outsider in their own school—especially not someone as adorable as Jeb, and especially since we, his fellow classmates, were all so nice.
Well, at least me and Dorrie and Tegan and our other friends. We were very nice. The stoners weren’t so nice. They were rude. And not Nathan Krugle, as Nathan was a bitter person who held grudges. I wasn’t all that psyched about what crazy ideas Nathan might be planting in Jeb’s head, to be honest.
And then, one day as I was obsessing over all of this for the thousandth time, I shifted from worried to huffy, because really. Why was Jeb choosing to spend time with Nathan Krugle over me?
So that day in class, I jabbed him with my pen and said, “For heaven’s sake, Jeb. Would you just smile?”
He jumped, knocking his book to the floor, and I felt terrible. I thought, Smooth, Addie, why don’t you blow a bugle in his ear next time?
But then his lips quirked up, and amusement flickered in his eyes. Something else, too—something that made my heart beat faster. A flush reddened his face, and he bent down quickly to pick up his book.
Oh, I realized with a pang. He’s just shy.
Leaning against my pillow, I gazed at the picture of Jeb on my iPod until the sting of it grew too strong.
I punched the center button, and the next picture popped up. It was of the Great Hollyhock Blitzkrieg, which took place last Christmas Eve, only a couple of weeks after I told Jeb to smile, for heaven’s sake. Since Christmas Eve was one of those days that lasted forever, with all the waiting and finger drumming for Christmas itself, a group of us had tromped to Hollyhock Park in order to get out of our houses for a while. I made one of the guys call Jeb, and miraculously, he agreed to come with us.
We ended up having a snowball fight, boys against girls, and it was awesome. Dorrie, Tegan, and I made a snow fort and set up a snowball-distribution system that involved Tegan packing, me stacking, and Dorrie pummeling our enemies with dead-on accuracy. We dominated the guys until Jeb cut around behind us and tackled me, using his body to drive me into our snowball pile. Snow went up my nose, and it hurt like heck, but I was too exhilarated to care. I rolled over, laughing, and his face was right there, inches from mine.
