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He stares at me. I stare at him. He’s saying the right things, but I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive him. “How do I know you aren’t playing me for some big senior prank that you’ll sit around and laugh about when you’re a bald, fat forty-year-old loser? I’m Trash Can Girl and you’re Jonah Jacobson, best friend of the great Cooper Higgins.”
Jonah twirls the rose in his hand and a redness forms along his neck. “I like you, Stella. There are times Cooper’s been a real friend to me, but he’s been an ass to you and I don’t expect you to see him as anything else.”
I huff out a surge of air and Jonah continues, “I can’t ask you to trust me but I can ask you to let me earn your trust. If you want me to tell Cooper we’re friends, I will. You can sit next to me at lunch—”
I slice my hand over my throat to cut off that awful idea. “I got it. You’ll publicly announce that we share a strange fascination with cemeteries.”
Jonah shrugs, unable to look at me. “It’s more than that.”
A tremor courses through me at the word more and I close my eyes. More belongs in the realm of fantasy.
The bell rings and I open my eyes to see Jonah holding the rose out to me. “Whatever terms or conditions, they’re yours, but I want you to be my friend.”
When I make no effort to move or talk, Jonah places the flower on the shelf. “If you take it I know you’re still my friend, and if it’s still here by the end of today I know I’ve destroyed the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.”
With that, Jonah turns and walks away.
Jonah
In American Lit, my pencil taps repeatedly against the top of my desk until Cooper turns around and slams it to a stop. “What is your deal?”
I yank the pencil out from under his palm. “Nothing.”
“Maybe if we got you laid, it would help.”
I glare and Cooper shakes his head as he returns to his conversation with a junior caught in his snare. Another minute ticks off the clock. Stella’s usually early. Not late. If she were going to take that rose, she’d do it now. She’s an all-or-nothing type of girl.
I’m on the edge of my seat, waiting, wondering, praying...I don’t want Stella out of my life. She’s beautiful and she’s funny and—I spot her shoes first. My heart swells to my throat and with a quick glance up, I run a hand through my hair in victory.
The release of nervous adrenaline causes the need to yell, clap my hands and hug her, but the sly look she sends me as she heads to the back corner says she’d decimate me into miniscule pieces if I did.
Stella owns the rose in a way only she would—pinned into that purple hair.
Stella
I’m early by twenty minutes. That’s what happens when Joss drinks Red Bull during the last hour of her shift and is shaking from a caffeine high.
Sitting cross-legged in the waiting area of the front office, I finish filling in the purple strip of the rainbow I’ve created on my left hand. Satisfied with the multicolored arch, I click the top back into place and toss it back into the bucket of other markers I swiped from the secretary’s desk. It’s not one of my better creations, but it will be enough to distract the guidance counselor from over-questioning my decision to drop from the college prep track to the co-op track.
A knock on the window behind me makes me glance over my shoulder. In the hallway, Jonah stands all hot with his hat on backwards and brown hair pushed back away from his forehead. He tips his chin down the hall and I know what he wants.
I nod and try to quench the warm fuzzies in my stomach when he grins at me.
The two of us belong in totally different universes, but for the past couple of weeks, we’ve been denying the space-time continuum and meeting at the cemetery. At school we coast by with an occasional glance. Sometimes a slight spoken word to confirm plans. But he stays in h
is world and I stay in mine. I have to admit, I like it that way.
Except at moments like this.
I stand and the school’s receptionist notices. “I need to use the restroom. Can you tell the counselor I’ll be back in a second?”
“Sure.”
I leave my folder, notebook, and pen there and practically skip out the door to weave through the students hanging in the main hallway until the first bell rings. Jonah found this spot, off a hallway that’s off the hallway—a nook that is most often empty. An area that’s away from prying eyes and the outside world. That’s where we go and talk.
Rounding the second corner, my breath catches in my chest. Jonah’s leaning with his back against the wall in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt spread taut across his muscles. We’re friends, I guess. Just friends.
I affirm my barrette’s in place and when my fingers slide against the silky petals of the fake rose, I continue forward. “What’s up?”
