Here He Comes Again Read online

  Our personal spaces melded together.

  “It matters to me,” he whispered as his lips touched mine with such aching sweetness it brought tears to my eyes.

  Simon came swinging out of the building, bare-chested and practically dragging his knuckles like the traitor ape he’d become.

  “Jocelyn, I have to work in the morning, and you dirtied up my work shirt.” He tossed it at me, spraying bits of chocolate cake on the ground around us.

  I threw the shirt back at him. “Laundromat opens at six. Enjoy.”

  “I'll follow you home,” he threatened. “And I will stand in your room and sing the Barney song until you wash my damn shirt.”

  Nothing ever changed with these two. Same old stories and same old threats.

  “Call Mom. She’ll be tickled pink to wash your shirt, golden boy.” I hopped into my illegally parked car and punched the accelerator hard, tires squealing, bird flipping. As I drove away I couldn’t help wishing I’d never met Keaton Shaw. I checked the rearview mirror and my gaze landed on him standing in the street watching me leave, the uncertainty on his features making him appear younger. The view reminded me of a simpler time when Keaton was just a boy and I was just a girl. If only I’d skipped school that first day…

  Chapter 2

  Past October - Age 13

  Teenage panic drove me forward when my limbs begged me to stop looking. If I didn’t find Simon before he left, I knew for certain I would shrivel up and die. Already, I’d searched by his locker, at the school bus stop, in the gym, the basketball courts, and the baseball field. I ran toward the front steps of the school, elbowing and pushing to get to my brother. He ignored me in favor of little Miss School Spirit, Danielle Ranier.

  Simon stood a step lower than a taller boy I’d seen as I made my way from class to class throughout the day--the new kid causing all those dreamy sighs among my friends. I didn’t share in their enthusiastic discussions of the exact shade of his green eyes or the deeper than the other boys sound of his voice. To my way of thinking, the new boy fit in fine. Another kid in our stupid private school, where the dress code for the girls consisted of plaid skirts and plain white shirts while the boys wore khaki pants and polo’s--any color they wanted.

  I absolutely didn’t notice the midnight color of his hair or the grassy-green of his eyes. I couldn’t possibly have cared less that he stood taller than any boy in our class, either. Nope. None of those things mattered to me. Much.

  “Simon,” I said, jogging to catch him before he walked away. Danielle rolled her eyes but strolled through the crowd to her friends without another word to my brother. The one girl I wanted to stay as far away from my brother as possible was the only girl he wanted to spend time with. Just my luck.

  Simon whirled to face me. “What’s up?”

  “I need you to tell Mom I have detention today.” I put my hand on his shoulder, hanging my head. I’d searched for a while and needed to catch my breath.

  “Do you honestly have detention?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  He gave me his older-by-four-minutes look.

  “No.”

  “Then why would you want me to tell her you do? You’ll get grounded again.”

  My particular brand of logic never sat well with him. “So what?” Despite being my exact age, he refused to grow up, instead preferring to stay mommy’s little baby. “Please? I wanna go to Kelly’s.” I shouldn’t have had to explain it to him. Kelly Devlin had only been my best friend since kindergarten. Plus, her mom made our mom look like she attended the Adolf Hitler School of Parenting.

  “Why don’t you tell her you’re going to Kelly’s? She won’t say no.”

  “She doesn’t need to know where I am every minute. You be her obedient little pet if you want, but I don’t have to.” My hands fisted on my hips, my eyes daring him to go against me. It flat amused me that in all of our years Simon always bent to my will. No matter what kind of trouble I insisted on dragging him into.

  He smiled mildly, and I knew I'd won the battle.

  The new kid coughed, and Simon looked over his shoulder as though he remembered his friend standing next to him. “Hey, Keaton, this is my sister, Jocelyn.”

  Keaton stared at me through wide eyes like something disgusting hung from my nose. “Hi. I’m Keaton.”

  I laughed a little and nodded. “I know.”

  “You do?”

  He actually believed I cared enough to find out his name. I could tell by the arrogance in his tone and the way he straightened his body to stand taller. He towered three or four inches taller than Simon, which made him five or six inches taller than me. Too bad he fell into the Simon’s-dumb-friend category. Heavy emphasis on dumb.

  I nodded and glanced at Keaton, my face a mask of disinterest. “Yeah. Simon just told me who you are.” I turned back to my brother, rolling my eyes. “Anyway, tell her I have detention, okay?”

  I ran away, my plaid school skirt five inches shorter than everyone else’s and my shirt knotted at my ribcage. The uniform battle lasted three weeks and four detentions, but I used every spare minute of that time to read the handbook cover to cover. Nowhere in those well-worn pages did it specify how my button down should be worn or the length of my skirt. By next year, they would probably change the wording in their pathetic photocopied rulebook. But this year, I’d won the scrimmage. In May, I would graduate to the high school and any changes wouldn’t affect me. That tiny bit of information made me smile.

  “You’re gonna get grounded,” he called out as if those words would make me stop in my tracks, turn around, and run home like the little princess my mother wished she could mold me into.

  Mom and I fought daily since she married husband number three and moved him into our house. We’d been doing fine without any man in our lives, except Simon, yet she kept insisting on finding new ones, marrying them, and bringing them home to live with us. Ironically, she never married our real father, but tried to replace him with one fake daddy after another.

  We’d thus far been blessed with a pilot, whose merciful absence made his at home time a bit more bearable. A graphic designer who’d spent most of his time out of work, drinking, and spending my mother’s money on a boat that never set sail. Mom sold it immediately after the divorce. And now this guy, a corporate lawyer who usually sounded like he ate a dictionary for breakfast.

  This one, Alex Rogers, strolled in our house like he owned the place, younger and better looking than the others. Only a few tiny gray hairs sprouted at his temples, and his smile didn’t offend me with yellow teeth or bad breath. As a bonus, he made a lot more money. Better still, he used it willingly to try buying our affections. His checkbook balance made him much more likable, but my level of tolerance wavered depending on how my mother and I got along on any given day.

  He and Simon hunted, fished, and worked on an old car, which dripped oil on our garage floor. If Simon wanted to sell his soul and suck up to Alex and Mom, I’d give him my blessing, but I owned my own mind and I didn’t need either of them.

  I spent the afternoon at Kelly’s, and finally got around to walking home a little before dark. If I’d known my mother had spent her time waiting by sharpening her parental fangs, I would have walked a lot slower. Before I stepped my first foot in the yard, I noticed her sitting in the new white rocker on our wrap-around front porch. She appeared to be calm, swaying back and forth without a care in the world, but I recognized her behavior for its illusion of serenity. When my mother sat outside with the mosquitoes, it spelled trouble--usually for me.

  I hopped up the steps as though I hadn’t forced Simon to lie to her, then stayed out way past my dinner curfew.

  “I went to the school to pick you up,” she said.

  “I got out early and went for a wa--” Before I finished the sentence, her eyes closed, shaking her head. She knew. She always knew.

  “I talked to Miss Hannigan. She said you didn
’t have detention today.”

  Uh-oh. That presented an unexpected wrinkle. I gave myself a mental kick for forgetting about the ever unpredictable detention monitor. Seriously, one day she loved me, the next she thought Satan himself spawned me in a science lab Petrie dish.

  “Where were you?”

  “I didn’t feel like coming home and listening to you loving all over Simon and Alex.” I loved my brother with my whole heart, so I said his name with kindness, but I spit her husband’s name out with teenaged venom.

  “Jocelyn, what’s going on with you?”

  The pain in her eyes overwhelmed me and shame took hold, but I hid it behind a face of hatred. With my arms crossed over my chest, I stood petulantly, watching her with narrowed eyes and a hardline to my lips.

  “Where were you?” she asked again.

  “None of your business.” No one in the world could say it as nastily as I could. By the age of seven, I perfected the art of being ugly to my mother.

  “You are thirteen, Jocelyn. Everything you do is my business.”

  “No, Simon is your business, and your precious Alex is your business. Why don’t you go stick your nose in their lives and leave me alone?”

  “Young lady, your attitude sickens me,” she hissed, her gray eyes sparkling with anger waiting to be unleashed. Her fingers clenched and unclenched on the arms of the rocker.

  “Well, Mother, I guess we’re finally even then.” It didn’t matter what I said or how I said it. I rolled my eyes, already grounded before I ever spoke another word. “Your attitude pisses me off.”

  “Go to your room. I don’t want to see you until it’s time for school on Monday.” She plinked out the same tune every single day.

  My mother didn’t bellow. She got quiet, and in her silence, I knew danger posed an imminent threat. She, however, rarely got the last word with me. I finished our conversation with, “Fine by me. I’d rather not see you at all.”

  The screen door banged hard against the brick house as I stomped inside. Simon and Keaton sat on the floor in the sunken living room, their game machine pinging and ponging electronically as I flew past them, through the foyer, and down the hall to my room. I slammed the door, opened it, and slammed it again, then turned the music up as loud as it would go.

  My room had a television--courtesy of new dad--a stereo, and my own bathroom. Only after I'd made certain to annoy them to max capacity with the music, did I turn it down a bit and take a shower. New dad believed with his whole heart in the theory of ignore the bad and praise the good. Even though he never let my mother say anything about it, I knew I fried his nerves with the decibel level of the rap music he viciously hated.

  I sat on my bed in my bathrobe, towel drying my hair, when Simon snuck into my room.

  “I brought you a sandwich.” He handed me a plate with a ham and cheese on a hoagie and some chips.

  Keaton stood behind him, again watching me as though a third eyeball sprouted in the middle of my forehead. His eyes were wide, little shamrock pools of awesome, and his hair did that cool guy thing where it lazily flipped a couple of strands over his forehead. The slow smile, though, rooted me to my spot. He relaxed a little, and I couldn’t help but grin back. Wow. Keaton, when compared to Simon’s other friends, stood out. Hot.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I was going to wait until they went to bed and go raid the fridge.”

  Simon plopped down on the floor at the edge of my bed. “Are you grounded for the whole weekend?”

  I nodded. “They’re dumb. My room is on the first floor.” I’d climbed out of the window right around a hundred times. Little marks on the wall, where I kept track, confirmed the numbers. My mother slept so soundly I could have invited the entire cast of Cats over for a show without her ever knowing.

  Keaton leaned against the wall by the door, his arms crossing and uncrossing at random intervals. “Your room is really clean.”

  I nodded, my eyebrows wrinkling together. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “I just meant my little cousin’s room is always a mess. I thought girls…” His skin flushed, and he began a thorough investigation of his shoes. I rolled my eyes. Did all of Simon’s friends have to be lame? Oh well. Unless I wanted to hang out in my room alone the whole weekend, I would have to tolerate brain-dead Keaton tagging along. “You guys want to play cards or something?” Without Simon, my life would have been lonely.

  Simon nodded. “Sure, but not for money.”

  “I know. You still owe me, like, three hundred dollars.” I smacked him softly on his shoulder. “We’ll just play for fun.” I snatched an outfit from the closet, then dove into the bathroom to change.

  We spent the night playing poker and gin while Keaton told corny knock-knock jokes. Around seven, Mom woke up and told the boys to get out of my room and go to bed. It turned out Keaton annoyed me way less once he loosened up and quit staring at me.

  Mom got up for her Saturday shift at the beauty parlor. She owned seven scattered all over the state of Illinois, where she spent her Mondays through Saturdays cutting and coloring hair. Her open palm against the hard wood smacked the door open, and a crimson blush colored her skin when she discovered my punishment ended up being less of a punishment and more of an all-night party with the boys. By the next time I got grounded, she would figure out a way to make sure it never happened again. I’d have to be a little smarter next time.

  After a couple hours of sleep, I stretched, dressed, and skipped out to the kitchen. Alex sat at the table reading the newspaper, his morning coffee still steaming in its cup in front of him.

  “I thought your mom said you weren’t supposed to come out of your room until Monday.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She said she didn’t want to see me until Monday. She isn’t here. She can’t see me.” I’d learned long ago to take my punishments literally. My mother never balked when I pointed out her flawed wording. She did, however, correct the problem the next time. She always said if I put as much effort into my school work as I did in finding ways around her, I would be able to get into any college in the country after graduation.

  “Ah. Well, don’t worry. I won’t tell her.” He locked his lips and went back to crinkling his paper noisily as he read.

  “Alex, can I ask you a question?” I grabbed an apple out of the fruit bowl and took a big bite.

  He folded his paper in half and set it on the table in front of him. Then nodded and waited.

  Oh, this was going to be fun. “How old do you have to be to have sex?” I hopped up on the counter facing him, innocently awaiting his answer.

  His face turned bright red and his eyes widened, engulfing the rest of his face. “Um, well, uh, wouldn’t you rather talk to your mom about this?” He took a big drink of his coffee, then spit it across the table. “Hot!”

  I stifled a laugh. “No way. You know how she is.” I used his desire to be closer to me every opportunity I got. Even if it undermined his relationship with Mom. “It’s just, I met this boy and well, and I was wondering…you know, about sex and stuff.” I studied sex-education in health class, and the summer before, I let Lance Parker round second base. There was no way someone as proper as Alex even knew as much about sex as I did.

  “Um, well, okay.” He finished mopping up the spilled coffee with his newspaper before his chair grated along the floor as he stood and began pacing. He turned to look at me, rubbed a hand over his face, then went back to pacing.

  I bit the inside of my cheek in an effort to keep the grin off my face.

  “Well, Jocelyn…sometimes…I mean, all the time…it is important that before you have sex, you love the person you are being…having…it’s important that you love the person.” His face reddened, his hands shook, and I pictured his head spinning in a Poltergeist whirl.

  “Then, if I love him, it’s okay?” I knew what he meant, but the way I spun it gave me an inner chuckle. He’d left it wide open.

  He whirled around q
uickly. “No!”

  Gosh. That was loud.

  “I mean…you should love the person, yes. But you are still so very young to even know what love is.”

  According to him, someone still needed to hold my hand before I crossed the street. “Oh, no. I love him. I’m sure of it.” My lids popped open even wider, and my face wore a mask of innocence.

  Gulping for air, he continued. “Listen, Jocelyn, sex is complicated. And love is…” His eyebrows single-filed across his forehead. He searched for the right description. Honestly, for all of the words he knew, it took a long time to come up with one he liked. “Complicated, and it’s something only grownups do.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  I hid my smirk behind my apple.

  “Do you…” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I ask the boy’s name?”

  “It’s, um, it’s Keaton.” Could I help it if his name escaped my lips before any other came to mind?

  “Simon’s friend?” Every vein in his face and neck bulged.

  I stifled a laugh behind a cough.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “And you’re in love with him?”

  “Oh yeah. Truly, madly, deeply in love with Keaton.” Clutching my chest might have been a bit over the top.

  “And Keaton feels the same way?”

  Now his breath came in short puffs, and I glanced around hoping to spot a paper bag for him to breathe into. Alex didn’t have much time to plot his next plan of action. Keaton and Simon would be coming downstairs soon, which meant he had to decide whether to send Keaton home and make Simon mad or risk the sanctity of my virtue by letting Keaton stay.

  I watched him suffer for one more second, then threw in the towel. “Naw. I’m screwing with you. I wanted to see your face while you told me about sex.” Even having only met Keaton the day before, I could already tell he was too goody-two-shoes to be my type.

  His symptoms faded and his eyes flashed with anger. “Maybe you should go back to your room.”

  I shrugged, taking another big bite of my apple. “Okay.”