Текст книги "He's So Not Worth It"

Автор книги: Kieran Scott

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As I walked into the condo that night, mentally rehearsing my arguments for staying in Orchard Hill, I started to wonder if I was emotionally deficient in some way. Was I really going to let the fact that Jake Graydon was staying here make my decision for me? He’d basically lied to me for months. He’d let me babble on about how much I missed my dad and ramble pathetically about how I had no idea where he was, and the whole time Jake had known. He’d known exactly where I could find my father, and he hadn’t told me. When I thought about the number of times he could have just said something, the number of times I’d made a fool out of myself in front of him, it made me want to break something.I slammed the door behind me so hard the old fashioned knocker on the outside of it—the one the designers had added to give the newly built condos that old-school Orchard Hill charm—swung and banged back against it. I took a breath and thought about Jake. Really thought about him. I thought about that thing he’d said on the night of Shannen’s party, before the birthday girl had sent my world crumbling down around me.“Yours,” he’d said. “From now on.”My knees, right there in the tiny hallway of my overly warm condo, went weak. It was like I could feel his breath on my neck. The perfect words still prickling in my ear. So, I guess there it was. That was why I wanted to stay. I wanted to see if what he’d said that night actually meant anything to him. I wanted to find out if I could get past those months of secrecy. I wanted to know if he was worth forgiving.“Ally?”“Hey, Mom.”My mother walked over from the living room and stood at the end of the hall, between me and the kitchen. I moved past her and dropped my bag on the table. She was wearing a white polo-shirt-style dress and no shoes. The second school ended every year, my mom sported nothing but sundresses until September rolled around again.“Did you eat at the mall?” she asked, opening the refrigerator. “I was just going to make some dinner.”Before I could answer, the phone rang. My mother froze for a moment, staring into the fridge. I saw her knuckles turn white as she gripped the handle tighter. Then she took out a plate of raw chicken cutlets and placed it carefully, almost deliberately, on the counter. As if it took all the power within her not to hurl it at the wall.“Are you gonna get that?” I asked, sensing that I shouldn’t go near the phone.“Nope.”“Aren’t you even going to check the caller ID?”“I know who it is,” she said, removing the cling wrap from the dish and balling it up.On the third ring, I walked to the phone. It was my dad.“He’s called every two hours all day,” my mother said as she tossed the cling wrap into the garbage and let the lid slam. “And I swear, Ally, if you ask me why I’m not picking up for him, I might scream, so please just let it go.”My face stung at being admonished for something I hadn’t done. But I had been about to do it, so I said nothing.My mom blew out a breath, leaned back against the counter, and smiled at me tightly. “So. Food?”“I’m not really hungry now, but if you make extra I’ll eat it later.” I swallowed my ten thousand dad-related questions and glanced into the deserted living room. There was a packed suitcase on the floor. Just seeing it made me feel hollow inside. She was really going. The question was, was she going to make me go with her? “No Gray? No Quinn?”She took out the grill pan and placed it on the stove. “I thought it should be just us tonight. Since I’m leaving tomorrow.”I froze. Did she just say “I’m leaving?”“Wait . . . I thought you said you hadn’t talked to Dad.”She rested her hands on the counter for a moment, then turned to face me, running her thumb along the back of one of the chairs. “I wanted to make sure this is what you really want first.”My throat tightened. What I really wanted was for her to stay home with me. For her to pick up the phone the next time my father called. For him to explain everything away, and for it all to go back to the way it used to be. For us to be a family.“I know you don’t want to be around your old crowd this summer, Ally,” she said. “But you won’t necessarily have to see them.”“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “Come on, Mom. You have to remember what it’s like down there.”What it was like when all the Cresties were on LBI was one giant, two-month-long slumber party. All the families had houses on the same stretch of private beach in Harvey Cedars. Every night there were cocktail parties and barbecues and swimming in the ocean and boating in the bay. Every night people crashed at random houses, or passed out on someone’s boat. On weekends, one or two of the dads showed up at whatever house had claimed the most people from the night before, toting bags of bagels and elephant ears and steaming cups of coffee. You couldn’t not hang out with everyone. They were in your face every minute of every hour of every day.Which used to be really fun. But now it sounded like the worst form of torture. Every year, it all culminated with the Kirkpatricks’ end-of-summer brouhaha—an elaborately themed event that often raged on for three days. Yeah. I couldn’t wait for that.“Yes,” she said. “I do.”She looked disappointed. Hurt.“Why don’t we both stay home?” I suggested hopefully. “We could get a membership at the town pool, see movies, go shopping. . . .”The word hung in the air. Shopping hadn’t been much of a pastime for us the last couple of years. And the pool membership was probably expensive. But maybe I could help pay for it. And then Gray would be three hours away, and my dad—and Jake—would be just five minutes up the street.“That is not an option,” my mother said, turning back to the stove.“But, Mom—”“Ally, Gray invited us to the shore, and I’ve already accepted,” she said, twisting the knob to turn the gas on under the grill pan. “I’ve prepared him for the fact that you might not come, which was difficult enough for him to hear, but—”“Why?” I asked. “Why does he care whether or not I’m there?”“Because he cares about you,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.Well, I don’t give a crap about him, I thought, but didn’t say. As boyfriends went, if my mother had to have one, Gray was all right. But now my dad was back and all I wanted was for Gray Nathanson to go away.“He’s very disappointed that you might not come, but he understands,” my mother continued, dropping slices of chicken into the pan, where they sizzled and spat.“Understands what?” I asked, irked. What did I care whether or not Gray understood me? Why did she care whether or not he did?“That you haven’t seen your father in two years. That you want to reconnect with him.”“What about you? Don’t you want to reconnect with him?” I demanded.My mother half groaned, half sighed as she turned on the water in the sink to wash her hands. “We’re not talking about that right now, Ally.”“Why not? I thought we could talk about anything,” I said, sounding both pathetic and annoyed.She turned the water off with a bang and grabbed a towel. “Not this.”I got up from the table, my sudden anger so fierce it wouldn’t let me sit still. How could she keep shutting me down like this? Didn’t she understand that I wanted to talk about my dad? That I had to? Why was she being so selfish? I turned toward my room, envisioning a good door slamming and some quality time with my iPod, but my mom stopped me in my tracks.“Wait.”I didn’t turn around. I needed to hear what she had to say first.“Fine. If it means that much to you, you can stay with him,” she said quietly. “I mean, if that’s what you really want to do.”I hesitated. For a moment I scarcely believed that she’d actually agreed. But then it sank in, and nervous flutters filled my chest. Staying meant being near Jake. It meant giving him a chance. And my dad a chance too.But there was something else. An odd shiver of nervousness crept over my shoulders. As I turned to look at my mother, I suddenly realized it also meant being away from her after two and a half years straight of being there for each other every day, through everything. I was seventeen years old, and the idea of being without her scared me.But going down the shore with her and Gray and Quinn like one big happy family, and being thrown together with Chloe, Shannen, Faith, and Hammond every single day . . . that idea horrified me.“Yeah,” I said, somehow managing to look her in the eye. “That’s what I want to do.”

Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Wednesday, June 30Location: Jump, Java, and Wail!Cover: Eating a chocolate chip muffin. Actually, that’s not a cover. I just love them so.Observations:9:35 a.m.: Subject Jake Graydon peeks through the front window. Keeps walking. Uniform: light blue, short-sleeved button-down; pressed dark khaki shorts; mandals. (Query: What’s he doing up this early on a summer day? According to records, the earliest Jake-spotting last summer before he left for the shore was 11:55 a.m.)9:37 a.m.: Subject Jake Graydon walks by again.9:38 a.m.: Subject Jake is back. He takes a breath as if for courage, and yanks open the door. The bell ring seems to startle him, even though he must have heard it fourteen million times before.9:39 a.m.: Subject Jake approaches counter. BCC’s favorite alt-rocker wannabe, Chase Delia, awaits. Talk about polar opposites. This should be fun.

“Hey, man. What can I get ya?”The scruffy dude behind the register at Jump, Java, and Wail! stopped rubbing the counter with his grimy cloth. His red hair stuck out around his head like a lion’s mane. His eyes were rimmed with purple eyeliner. He pressed both fists into the countertop and leaned toward me. There were letters tattooed across his fingers, but they were upside down and I couldn’t read them. His brown apron had a white smear across it. The pimple on his chin looked set to pop. He smelled like Southern Comfort and coffee.What the hell was I doing here?“Um . . . you hiring?” I mumbled.The guy pulled back. Like he was surprised. He ran the gross cloth through his hands a couple of times while backing away from me. Almost like he thought I was gonna jump him or something.“Hang on a sec,” he said.I spent the entire fifteen seconds he was gone holding onto the counter’s edge with both hands. Otherwise, I was gonna bolt. When he came back out, the world kind of tilted in front of me. Because he came back out with Ally Ryan’s dad.“Hello! What can I do for you?” he asked cheerily.He didn’t recognize me. Which meant I could breathe again. He was wearing a brown and gold JUMP IF YOU LOVE COFFEE! T-shirt and a big-ass smile. Like he was the greeter at Great Adventure and not stuck in some crappy local coffee place.What was he doing here, anyway?“Um, yeah . . . I . . . I’m looking for a job? For the summer?” I said.I sounded like a tool. Lion dude laughed under his breath and shook his head. Luckily, a couple of customers came in to distract him, because if he kept laughing at me right now, I was gonna have to walk around the counter and dead leg him.Mr. Ryan smiled. “Come with me.”He walked down the counter, grabbing a piece of paper from a drawer on the way, and gestured at the small round table in the back corner. The one no one ever sat at because what’s the point of hanging out at Jump if you’re not gonna hang with all your friends and people watch from the huge window up front?“Have a seat.”I did. He sat across from me. My back was to the door. He smiled at me expectantly. I was starting to feel hot.“I’m Chris Ryan,” he said, offering his hand.“Jake,” I said as we shook. I cleared my throat. “Jake Graydon.”“Ever been on a job interview before, Jake?” he asked.Was it that obvious? “No, sir.”He chuckled. “While I appreciate the sentiment, you don’t need to call me sir. Mr. Ryan’s fine, and maybe if we get to know each other better, Chris.”“Okay,” I said. I’d had adults tell me to call them by their first names before, but I never really thought they meant it, so I’d never actually done it.He put the paper in front of me and turned it around with his fingertips. Then he added a pen from his pocket. It was an application. “Why don’t you just fill out the first section?” “All right.” I cleared my throat and started writing. I paused when I came to the part asking for my address. Which was his old address.“So . . . never had a job before?” he asked.“I used to cut lawns in middle school,” I told him.Fuck it. What was I gonna do, lie about where I lived? I wrote down my address.“Well, that’s something,” he said.I finished up with the basic info and handed back his pen. He picked up the application and I averted my eyes. There was nothing to look at but the brick wall. On it was an artsy, framed poster of a coffee cup, with three wavy lines of steam rising up from it.“You live at number two Vista View Lane?” he asked.My eyes were now on the table as I nodded. “Yes, sir. I mean, Mr. Ryan.”“That’s my—I mean . . . I used to live there,” he said.I nodded again. Looked him in the eye. “Yeah, I mean, yes. I know.”His eyebrows came together. “You do?”“I know Ally?” I said. God, I sounded like English was my second language.“Oh!” His body relaxed. “How do you know her?”My throat was so dry there were armadillos crawling across it. “Um, we’re friends. From school. She was my backslapper for soccer.”“You play soccer? That’s great,” he said. He double-clicked the pen, then made a note on my application. “It’s good to get involved in school activities. Keeps you out of trouble.”“I swim, too. And play lacrosse,” I said.He leaned back in his chair, clicking the pen again, and grinned like we were suddenly old friends. So he still didn’t remember me. He had no clue that I’d been there that night when Shannen had made that stupid video of him. “Jake Graydon . . . I don’t think she’s mentioned you.”My stomach sank. Great. Just great. That was so what I needed to hear right then.“But we’re not here to talk about Ally,” he said. Another pen click. He rested his forearms against the edge of the table, hovering over my almost-blank application. “We’re here to talk about you.”The bell over the door rang and a bunch of loud people entered. Loud, young voices. Like people I might know. I didn’t turn around.“If you want to work here, Jake, you’re going to have to be willing to work odd hours,” he said. He turned the application over and I saw that there was a spot to check off which days you could work. “The place is open from five a.m. to midnight every day, so your shifts will be all over the place. How does that sit with you?”“It sits fine,” I said.But there was no way I was ever coming in here at five a.m. Up front there was a huge group laugh. My neck was on fire. What if someone recognized me sitting here with the manager and an application? Did I really want to work here, where I’d be seeing people from school all the time?This morning, when my mother had asked me where I was going to apply, Jump, Java, and Wail! just came out of my mouth. Because I hadn’t thought about it at all. Because I had hoped she was going to change her mind. But then, as I was walking down Orchard Avenue, I realized that there was nowhere better. I didn’t fold my own shirts, so I wasn’t about to fold them at the Gap all summer. The deli was out, because mayonnaise-based salads make me hurl. And the library? Uh, no. And then, I was here.“Any days you can’t work?” he asked.“Nope,” I said. “Oh, except I’m gonna be taking a class at BCC in a couple of weeks. I’m not sure which days it meets yet.”“A college class over the summer, huh?” His eyes lit up, and I realized he thought I was taking it voluntarily. He made another note. “That’s good.”“Yeah,” I said. Did I really come off as someone who wanted to study over the summer? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.“I need someone who’ll be responsible, show up on time, and not mess around with their friends when they come in.”“I wouldn’t do that, Mr. Ryan,” I said.Mostly because if anyone I knew came in here, I’d be hiding in the back.“And you can’t be twittering and texting and all that, either,” Mr. Ryan said. “This is a place of business. We have fun here, don’t get me wrong, but we all have to respect each other, and that means respecting the job.”“Yes, sir,” I said with a nod.But what the hell was he talking about? The place sold nothing but coffee and muffins. It wasn’t the Pentagon.The bells above the door rang again. Mr. Ryan looked up and did a double take, and then his jaw went slack. I turned around, just in time to see Mrs. Stein, Todd and Trevor’s mom, spot Mr. Ryan. Her skin turned gray.“What the—?” she blurted.Mr. Ryan shoved himself to his feet as she stormed over. She clutched the strap of her purse for dear life with both hands.“Sarah. Hello! I—”“Hello? Is that all you’ve got to say to me? What are you even doing here?”I’d never seen the twins’ mom so pissed. Not even the time they’d used the hood of her car as a skate ramp. I sat there and sort of stared at the sides of their legs, my heart pounding. Everyone in the place was staring at us.“I’m sorry, Sarah, but can we do this another time?” Mr. Ryan said in a professional voice. “I’m in the middle of—”“What? You’re not just going to blow me off. Not after all this time! Do you realize my family lost their home because of what you did?”From the corner of my eye, I could see people whispering behind their hands. A few kids from school were texting. Otherwise, the place was silent.“I didn’t know that. And I’m very sorry. But you must realize I did nothing malicious,” Mr. Ryan explained. “It was all a horrible mistake. My family was affected by it too.”“You can’t just gamble with people’s livelihoods, Christopher!” Mrs. Stein blurted. “With people’s lives!”Mr. Ryan put his hand on her arm. “I understand why you’re so upset, Sarah. If you’d like to wait for me in my office, you can shout at me all you want. . . .”She glanced at the door behind the counter, which he was now steering her toward. For the first time, she noticed what he was wearing too. “Your office? You . . . you work here?”“At the moment, yes,” he said.She snorted a laugh and shook her hair back. “Thanks anyway. I think I’ve done all the shouting I need to do. But you can bet I won’t be coming back in here anytime soon.”Her eyes flicked to me for the first time, and I did the only thing I could think to do. I raised a hand weakly and smiled. “Hi, Mrs. Stein.”“Jake,” she said, appearing confused. Then she turned around and flounced back out to the street.Mr. Ryan blew out a sigh as he sat. Gradually, the life returned to the coffee shop. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”“That . . . that’s okay,” I said.“There are some people in this town who are not very happy with me,” he said, his eyes going distant as he looked down at my application. I felt sort of sorry for him right then. The guy had just made a mistake. Yeah, that mistake meant millions of dollars for a lot of people, but . . . it was still a mistake. “Anyway, where were we?” He glanced over the page. “Ah. Right. So . . . tell me why you think I should hire you, considering you have no experience,” he said. He held the pen over a bottom section labeled “notes.” His hand was shaking.I stared at him for a second. Was he kidding? What kind of experience did a person need to pour coffee?“Um, well . . . I’m here because I want to prove to my parents that I can be responsible,” I improvised. Because telling him my mom made me come here so I could prove to college admissions boards that I was responsible probably wouldn’t sound too good. “I don’t want to be just another one of those rich kids who has everything handed to him,” I said. “That’s not me.”The pen didn’t move. He narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t buying it. He was about five seconds away from calling my bluff and booting my ass to the curb.But then, he smiled. “Good answer.” He stood up and offered his hand. “You’re hired.”“Really?” I asked, standing as well. I realized my palms were sweating and I rubbed them on my chino shorts before shaking his hand. “Thanks.”He gripped my hand tightly and didn’t let go. “I’m taking a chance on you, Jake. Don’t let me down.”Dude. The guy sounded like something out of an army movie. It was coffee. As in, crushed beans and water. Lighten up.“I won’t, sir,” I said, trying to sound grave. He gave me a look. But not an admonishing look. More like, Dude. Get with the program. “I mean, Mr. Ryan.”“Good. You can start tomorrow. Eleven a.m. work for you?” he said.Eleven was a little early, but I guess it could have been five. “Sure.”“Good.”He finally released my hand and slapped me on the shoulder. He looked past me toward the door, then out the window, up to the right. I wondered if he was waiting for Mrs. Stein to come back with a posse or something.“Sorry,” he said. “I’m actually just waiting for Ally to show up.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m hoping to talk to her mother when she drops her off, but they’re late.”I couldn’t breathe. “Ally’s coming here? Now?”“She’s supposed to be, yeah,” he said. “I was going to take my fifteen to hopefully chat with her mom and then help her carry her stuff over to my apartment, but if tradition holds, it’s about to get seriously busy in here. I’d rather not leave during a rush.”I barely heard the last part. I was too busy shaking my head to get all the Ally-related information to fall into place, to make sense.“Carry her stuff?” I said.“Yeah. Ally’s staying with me for the summer,” he told me. “I got an apartment across the street. Hey . . . maybe you could help her bring her stuff over. As a kind of favor to your new boss?”My face burned. “Uh, yeah. Sure. I could do that.”Ally was staying with her dad for the summer. In walking distance to Jump, Java, and Wail! Where I was going to be working. She was not going down to LBI. She was not going to be three hours away. Instead, she was going to be right across the street and we were going to be thrown together all the time. She’d come visit her dad at work, I’d give her free coffee. Sooner or later she’d have to talk to me. She’d have to forgive me.This was the best day ever. Thank God my mom had grounded me.