Cracked Up To Be

The thing about crying in Lerner's was once I started, I couldn't stop. I didn't even mean it or really feel it, but I couldn't stop. I could waste time analyzing that, but I won't. It got me out of the essay and it's getting me a dog. That's all that matters.

"The moment got away from me, I guess," I say.

But Grey wants more than that, like last time, and even though I'm kind of bored, like last time, I don't want to overextend myself. I need that energy to take pictures with Jake after the bell.

Fridays are turning out to be a major pain in the ass.

I shrug. "Maybe it was because it felt too much like... before?"

"You mentioned that last Friday, things feeling like before," Grey says. She opens her Parker notebook. "It seemed to be a good thing then. What's changed?"

I stare at the inspirational poster tacked to the wall behind her head. Something about not giving up. Lame.

"I had a lot of responsibilities," I say. "I was thinking about it. I was captain of the cheerleading squad, I was a straight A-plus student and, let's be honest, I was popular. All of that takes a lot of work. I did some stupid things and lost it all, but that also meant I got rid of all those responsibilities and you know what? I liked life a lot better. Before, I was suffocating. So, lately, I've been trying for the homework thing, because I want to graduate, but that essay... every time I sat down to write it, I just couldn't because--"

"You felt suffocated," Grey finishes.

She's so smart. I mean, I'm so smart. She's so predictable.

"Yeah."

"Well, I sympathize, Parker, but we can't make many more allowances for you. As it stands, we've--"

"I wasn't asking," I say, laughing a little. "I mean, it's not like I cried in Lerner's on purpose."

Shit. It comes out of my mouth wrong, like I did cry on purpose, which I did, but Grey's obviously not supposed to know that. And of course she catches it.

Her face darkens.

"Ms. Grey!" I bring my hand to my mouth and try to sound scandalized, to diffuse the situation. "You don't think I did it on purpose, do you?"

But that comes out of my mouth wrong, too.

"You just don't learn, do you, Parker?" She closes her notebook and glares at me. "You run everyone around in circles--"

"I run everyone around in circles?"

"You do."

"I do?"

"Stop that." She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. "You want everyone to think your problem is what happened over the summer--"

"No, that's what everyone wants to think--"

"But it is your problem!" She puts her glasses back on. "You manipulate. You make it your excuse and that's exactly how you push it away."

The party starts at eight, but I show up early so Chris and I can have sex. Another year at St. Peter's is almost behind us and we've already slept together eight times. This will be the ninth and there's going to be a lot more sex in our future.

We go to his bedroom. The speakers are mounted against his window and he turns on some sweet- sounding music really low and he kisses me and I kiss him back and then, I don't know, I kind of seize up.

"What's wrong?"

"That doesn't even make any sense," I tell Grey.

It's the last thing I tell her. We sit in silence until the bell rings. I feel like I should be furious with her, and I might be, but more than that, I'm annoyed. I have to remind myself she wasn't there and she doesn't know a damn thing so I can't really blame her for making half-assed assertions once a week. I just wish she wouldn't.

When I get out, Jake's waiting for me at the door.

"I've got the camera," he says.

"Great."

We head outside.

I can't believe he goes on my stupid bus and I didn't even notice. "You can sit where you normally sit," I tell him.

"Don't worry; I was going to," he replies. "So do you have any idea--"

"Yeah, I have an idea: please stop talking."

We climb on the bus. I take my usual seat at the front and he heads for the middle. I rest my head against the window and close my eyes. I don't mean to, but I fall asleep, and fifteen minutes later Jake's shaking my shoulder and looking pretty irritated. All through art he pestered me, "Where are we going? What are we taking pictures of..."

"I think this is your stop," he says sarcastically.

I rub my eyes. "Yeah."

We inch up the aisle and step onto the street. I can see my house from here, but I don't want to go through the hassle of introducing Jake to my parents because they'd interpret it all wrong and it'd give them false hope and, like I said before, I don't do that.

"We'll go this way." I point in the opposite direction. "If we go down this street, turn left and walk through the park there's this kind of wooded area. Beyond that, there's a ravine. We could probably get some really good pictures there."

"We're not going to your house first?"

"I don't want you to know where I live."

He laughs. "Like I give a damn. But sure, let's go to the ravine."

We walk. I don't know if I should be nice to him or if this technically makes him my guest because we're near where I live and he has no idea where we are.

"So you and Chris really hit it off, huh?"

I keep my voice light and conversational, but Jake still seems to weigh every word like he's trying to figure out which one of them is poisoned.

"He's cool," he says after a while. "I mean, he didn't treat me like a new kid, you know? We hang."

"He and Becky are going out--you know Becky, right? Becky Halprin? She's captain of the cheerleading squad. Anyway, they had a date last Friday and they're having another one this weekend, I think."

"Yeah, Saturday," Jake says. "It's not really a date, though. A couple of us are going to go shoot some pool at Finn's, wherever that is."

"Finn Walters?"

"Yeah, you know him?"

"Yeah. He's on the chess team. He's, like, this superintellectual and yet still cool." It could be all the blow he deals in the boys' washrooms. "So it's a night thing, right? When are you going? Around eight?"

"Chris says he'll pick me up at--" He stops. "Why? Are you fishing for an invite or something? Because you're not going to get one from me."

"I've got better things to do with a Saturday night, but thanks."

"Like what?"

"Like not hanging out with you?"

"Walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did."

We laugh. And then we realize we're laughing together and then we stop and then it gets awkward. I don't do awkward well, at least mutual awkwardness, so I snap my fingers to make the feeling go away. And then I can't stop.

Even after Jake points it out.

"That's really annoying," he says.

So I kick it up a notch just to bug him and I keep it up until my fingers start to hurt.

We trek through the park and enter the woods beyond it. They're not like the woods by Chris's house. They're a little denser, a little easier to get lost in, but I'm not worried. I like them. Nothing bad happened here and it makes the air less polluted, somehow. It doesn't make me want to throw up.

"It's really great out here," I say without thinking. "There's nothing--"

I shut my mouth.

"What?" Jake asks.

"Nothing. We'll get good pictures out here, that's all."

He reaches into his book bag and pulls out his digital camera.

"But not here--it's a little farther in. Give me that." I hold out my hand and he steps back, clutching the camera to his chest. "Oh, come on, Jake. I'm not going to steal or break it. I may not respect people, but I do respect their property."

He groans and hands it to me.

"I must be crazy."

"You're right; you are."

I take it and run and the look on his face is so great.

"Parker!"

He has no choice but to chase after me, and I have a hell of a lead. I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears and the air is cold and sharp in my lungs and I like that. I get to the ravine ages before him, scale the nearest tree--which is also the biggest and the oldest--and wriggle my way along the thickest branch out.

The one that hovers directly above the thirty-foot drop.

When Jake finally catches up to me, I'm dangling from a pretty precarious angle, nearly upside down, and it probably looks terrifying from where he's standing.

But it will be so worth this shot.

"Are you trying to kill yourself?" he yells, panting.

I keep my leg muscles tight around the branch so I don't, you know, die.

"If I was trying to kill myself, I'd make sure you weren't here."

"Parker, get down from there. You're making me nervous--"

"Pansy."

"Fuck off."

A little more...

The branch makes a few disconcerting creaking noises, but I'm going to pretend it's not giving out under my weight. I hold the camera up to my eye, the view through the lens making me slightly dizzy, and get a good focus on the ravine. The edges of either side of it creep up the corners of the frame.

Jake's either holding his breath or wetting himself.

Got it.

I right myself, snake backward and hold the camera out. "Catch!"

"Parker, no--"

I let it go. It seems to fall in slow motion. Jake catches it like I knew he would and he starts swearing at me like I knew he would. When he's finished, he turns the camera on and checks out the shot.

"Decent," he mutters. "But you're lucky I caught my camera."

The branch I'm on protests a little more. I stand very, very carefully and maneuver my way to a branch on the opposite side. It's tricky.