“God, you scared me,” I grumbled, shoving my History book into my book bag.
“So are you gonna be at home tonight or not?” He had one of his hands on my locker door, and he swung it back and forth, just enough to make it squeak.
“Of course I’m gonna be there. I live there.” I continued fiddling around with something in my bag, but mostly I was trying to look busy.
“I meant, are you gonna hang out with Jack?” His tone was icy, and I didn’t understand what he found so offensive about me being with Jack. Even if he was having some kind of jealousy, shouldn’t he be trying to cover it up better?
“Yeah, probably,” I shrugged.
We hadn’t actually talked yet, but Jack had said that he would see me today, and I didn’t have any reason to doubt him. Well, except for the fact that he was hiding something major.
“So are you guys like dating or what?” Milo asked, dripping with angry sarcasm.
“No. It’s not like that.” I slung my bag over my shoulder, and he just narrowed his eyes at me.
Suddenly, it pissed me off that I had to explain myself to him. We weren’t dating, but it shouldn’t matter to him anyway. It wasn’t my fault that Jack’s abnormal attractiveness had made his sexual orientation even more confusing. If he had told me he was having issues with it, I wouldn’t have brought Jack around.
“Whatever,” Milo muttered.
“What exactly are you accusing me of?” I slammed my locker door shut. He let his hands fall to the sides, looking startled. “Even if I am dating Jack, so what? I can do that. There’s nothing wrong with being friends with him or dating him or whatever it is I decide to do with him. He’s a nice guy and it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”
“Whatever you say,” Milo said, but he wasn’t as confident or angry.
“Milo, this is stupid.” I readjusted the strap over my shoulder and looked at him softly. “I get it, okay? I saw the way that you looked at Jack.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He flushed and averted his eyes, shifting uncomfortably.
Outing him in the middle of the hall at school probably wasn’t the best idea, but I just couldn’t take his indifference to me anymore. He normally told me everything, and it looked like he wasn’t going to talk to me about this unless I got the ball rolling.
“It’s okay.” I lowered my voice so other people wouldn’t overhear. “If you’re gay. It’s okay. I understand.”
“You don’t understand anything!” Milo shouted.
When he looked up at me, tears filled his eyes, and I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I couldn’t force him to come to terms with anything, and if he wasn’t ready to talk about it with me, I should’ve respected that.
“Milo-” I started to say something, but I didn’t really have anything to follow it up.
He didn’t wait around for it anyway. He just turned and stormed off down the hall, leaving me alone to think about what an ass I was.
When I got on the bus after school, he made sure to sit on the opposite side. On the way to our house from the bus stop, he jogged on ahead of me. I tried to hurry and catch up, but by the time I made it inside, he’d already slammed the door to his bedroom.
He must’ve been really upset if he risked the wrath of our mother just to show me how angry he was. I sighed and flopped on the couch, wondering how he had managed to put up with me for so long.
I had made it through two full episodes of Judge Judy while lying sprawled out on the couch without any word from Jack or Milo, and I was starting to think that maybe the whole world had ostracized me. The only time that Jane had talked to me all day was during lunch, and then it was just a list of how much she drank and who she had sex with over the break.
I just wanted to curl up on the couch and completely give up on life, but then I heard the familiar ring of “Time Warp” and I quickly snatched up my phone.
Are you done with school yet? Jack text messaged, making me wonder how long it had been since he went to school.
Yeah. I’ve been done for like two hours. Why? I replied.
Good. Ready to hang out? He hadn’t really answered my question, but hey, what’s new?
Yeah. Sure. What did you have in mind? I messaged him.
I’ll pick you up in 15.
And that was that. My clothes from school were fine (I’d gone with jeans, a long shirt, and a cute little black vest), but most of my makeup had worn off, so I rushed to the bathroom to reapply and run a brush through my hair.
I started heading towards the front door, but decided against it. Exhaling nervously, I knocked on Milo’s door.
“Milo?” I said cautiously. He didn’t respond, but I continued anyway. “I know you’re mad at me, and I don’t blame you. I did a stupid, stupid thing. But um…” I sighed, and tried to figure out what I wanted to say. “You can talk to me if you want to. But I just thought I’d let you know that I’m going to go hang out with Jack. But you can call me if you want to. Okay?”
He still didn’t answer, but I waited a minute just to be sure. Then since I’d already spent too much time getting ready, I hurried out to meet Jack.
I stepped outside, feeling like the worst sister in the world, just in time to see Jack pull up. I trudged over to the red Lamborghini and fell into the seat heavily.
The Ramones blared out the speakers, and he turned them down quickly, looking at me with a mischievous grin. Even though my sour mood had to be obvious, he was oblivious to it, so it soon faded away.
“What?” I asked. He bit his lip, as if he couldn’t decide whether to tell me or not. “What’s going on?”
“I think that its time you met my family.” He sounded wildly excited by the idea, but also a tad nervous. Whatever made him nervous tended to terrify me, so I gulped. “No, it’s a good thing. Yeah.” Then he nodded, more to himself than me. “Yeah. It’s good.”
- 7 -
He had thrown the car into gear, and we were flying down the street and turning on the highway before I could even really protest, not that I would’ve anyway. Meeting families was usually my least favorite thing in the world, but a family that spawned Jack intrigued me.
“After what happened last night, I think it’s time,” Jack explained, but I had no idea what his family could possibly have to do with a rabid dog. Unless his family were dog breeders or something.