"Best Friends"

Chapter One

Seventh period of Friday came at went, at last, and I am not-at-all surprised to see the gaggle of girls around my locker. Not just the usual group of Allie and Marie and Syndy, but the expanded group of Sandra and Jules and Sara. That means only one thing….

“Candi!” they call out almost in unison.

I shift my textbooks to throw my hand up. “Hey!”

Glancing around them, I start looking for Jonah. We weren’t able to convince the radno’s that surround our lockers to switch, (so we could be side-by-side as nature intended), so now we share my locker given its convenience. Where is he?

“Looking for your twin?” Syndy asks.

I nod then start twisting the lock. “With Drama seventh he usually gets out early and is waiting for me.”

“True,” Marie needlessly confirms.

I shrug. “So… what’s with,” and I sort of throw a wide glance to everyone.

Jules looks at Sara who looks at Sandra who looks at Allie. “Well,” Allie stars. “We all sort of realized that, well, a pool party at Jonah’s house….”

“Means, that… well,” Sara stars giggling, “his brother is going to be there, isn’t he?”

Clark has never missed a birthday… not since I could remember, anyway. Jonah and I always have a joined birthday even though he was born the night before the morning I was - a ten hour difference.

“I guess, yeah.” I hold my locker door open and try to stand on my toes to see Jonah.

Being the average American height of five-four has its drawbacks…. (Because even if it was the average height for women, it sure doesn’t feel like it. Not when half the girls in school wear heels and the other half are tall enough to be lead members of sports teams.) Finally, I hear a familiar holler down the hall and the girls part way for Jonah.

“Hey, my ladies!” he smiles while sliding his books into the locker.

“Hey Jonah!” they respond in unison.

He is everybody’s #GayBestfriend and he loves it. Slamming the locker shut, he then leans against it. Though he’s posed the same way I’ve seen Clark, it just doesn’t have the same vibe. Thinner, shorter, more flamboyant, and very talkative, he is quite the opposite of his older sibling.

No, Clark Jonathan – who everyone but me calls C.J. – is classically popular… straight A’s, star football player (who had to give up being captain because his band took priority), never had a girlfriend… he has this habit of an intense stare where you know he’s listening to everything even if he never comments, and of course, with the hookah and the vintage Datsun (the 1978 matte black two-seater he brought back to life himself and never lets anyone sit in the passenger seat, not even Jonah) there is almost a bad-boy vibe about him. He just is this entity that floats around school, being friends with just about everyone and having everyone who could possibly attracted to him, attracted to him.

Even me.

Not that I would tell anyone that! But I’d be stupid to deny it.

“Earth to Candi,” Jonah’s hand waves in front of me.

I blink a couple times, “Yeah?”

“Ready to go?”

I nod and take a step forward. “See you girls tomorrow?”

A stream of ‘yes’s and ‘of courses’ and giggling to follow and I throw a hand up in farewell. Jonah and I take the path of least resistance to the parking lot and then start the awkward trek to the back – bobbing and weaving through the stop-and-go-and-stop traffic – to where his brother’s other car is under the shade of the trees.

Leaning against the back, boot against the bumper, one hand holds his phone loosely, his thumb actively scrolling. His dirty blond hair looks like he’s been pushing it to the side in frustration and his darker brows are pulled together in concentration.

“Hey Clark,” I shove my hip against his lifted knee on my way to the back seat.

His blue eyes drift my direction as he takes the falling foot in stride and walks behind me. “Hey, Candice,” he says rather pointedly with a smirk.

I call him Clark which he hates, he calls me Candice which I pretend to hate. Therefore, I roll my eyes and clamber into the seat behind him. I’d learned early on that if I sit behind Jonah, I will stare too much at our driver, and if I sit in the middle Clark would glare at me too much through the rearview mirror. Safely behind him, I could see Jonah more clearly anyway.

Clark won’t pull out till we’re all buckled, so Jonah fights against the strap to turn to me. “Did you see all the people who marked ‘yes’ on f*******:?”

I pick through my school bag to find my leftover stash of Tootsie Rolls. “For tomorrow?”

“Obvi.”

Out of the corner of my eye I can see in the mirror where Clark rolling his eyes. Looking back to Jonah I nod, “Yeah! Almost everyone.”

“And you said a fifteenth birthday wasn’t a big deal.” Jonah mimics Carlotta, “They lav me, they lav me!”

Snorting, with laugher, I lean back in a heap. Trying to steady my breathing a little, my eyes catch Clarks in the mirror again. He has a real smile on his face for once, not just a smirk. Broad lips, cheeks raised, his dimples showing. Feeling a heat in my cheeks, I become increasingly focused on unwrapping another Tootsie Roll.

“So, what time did you want me over tomorrow?” my eyes barely peek to the passenger seat.

“You’re not spending the night?”

Jonah’s mouth closes and he stares at his brother. Running the words through my head again, finally I look up at him. “Ah,” I tuck some wild strands behind my ear. “Well, I could…?”

Focused back on the road, on making the tight turn into the you-wouldn’t-know-it-was-there-unless-you-were-told entrance to our neighborhood, Clark doesn’t respond. I look at Jonah, my heart racing. Jonah shrugs and mouths ‘I don’t know’.

Parked, Clark doesn’t look at me even though he reaches in front of me to get his backpack. “You always do, that’s all,” and he gets out of the car, slamming the door shut. He waits for Jonah and me to pass into the house before he locks the car and closes the garage door.

“Did you want to sleep over?” Jonah asks after his brother’s bedroom door slams.

I shrug. “I just thought, maybe your father wanted tonight.”

He stares into the open fridge for a while. “My brother’s right…,” he says after a little too-long. “You’ve stayed over, like, every year. Did you want to run home and pack a bag?”

The Wilson’s never did want to talk about the loss of Katie… the wife, their mom, my pseudo-aunt. I had only learned about the cancer from my own mom and Jonah – as close as we are – never said a word about it, not even after she passed. It had actually been Clark who’d talked to me about it, when I found him sitting alone, feet in the pool in the middle of the night. I guess I am the feminine presence in this house now.

“Sure!” I say with a little too much perk. I try again. “I’ll be back in a few, yeah?”

He nods but doesn’t look up. “Door’s always open.”

I take my bag because I don’t need the threat of homework this weekend and head towards the backdoor. Through the door, across the patio, down the little hill, then I am on home property and have to do a mirror image to get into my house. No one’s home, of course, except for Hades who instantly starts meowing for me from the stairs. I meow back as I toss my school bag behind the kitchen table and pull open the cupboard for kitten food.

“Baybee!” I call while shaking the plastic bag.

I hear soft thuds as he scampers down the wood staircase and can already hear his purrs when he gets to the far side of the table. “Hey mushka,” I reach down behind his ears.

Purring and purring, his tail curling around his hip, I sit down on the floor while he eats. Seeing the text stream from the girls group chat, I can’t even scroll back far enough without my phone glitching. It seems the same as it always is, though, gushing about Clark and the prospect of the party.

Hades goes for the water now, getting little droplets up his nose. Clark explained that he drank like a dog, though I don’t know how Hades could have learned that. After we found out about the Bi-Polar, Mom started doing a ton of ton of research and decided I needed an Emotional Support Animal. Which just threw everyone for a loop because of her allergies; ESAs tend to be dogs, though sometimes cats… and she is highly allergic to both. But then, there he was waiting for me the day before school started - a little purebred wrinkle-bean of a kitten.

Clark used to tease that he looks little a little demon or a rat or an ugly dog, which resulted in me swatting at him. But when I started (sometimes literally) crying to Jonah about how much I loved my new kitten and it bothered me when people called Hades bad names, Clark hasn’t teased since. He may be annoying, he may be overprotective, he may even be mean, but he’s knows my boundaries and doesn’t cross them. He’s thoughtful like that.

And think of the devil….

You coming back any time soon?

Yeah. I just had to check on Hades.

Why don’t you bring him over?

Or I can take the checking-on him duty.

You know, so you can enjoy your birthday and all.

My eyebrows rise.

Really?

Unless you don’t want me too.

My heart quickens its pace.

Come over

And I can show you the ropes?

Be there in ten.

*

Sitting on the floor of her bedroom, Hades is curled in my lap, my fingers mooche his suede skin softly and I keep my eyes on Candice. She’s packing a floral messenger bag with stuff for tonight’s stay, the party tomorrow, and the night after that. (She always brings the same sleepwear - blue rose print pants and a Star Wars shirt that had the phases of the Moon with the Death Star. She’s just f*****g cute like that. She likes what she likes and doesn’t care. She is more popular than I am, even as a Sophomore - so open and honest and nice… so beautiful, inside and out.)

I notice she’d changed clothes since she’d left my house. I can’t help but wonder if it had been right away or because I was coming over. I’d like to think the latter, but maybe that is reaching. She generally very modest with her choices, even if it clings to her body. But now, as she is bent over her bag on her computer chair, her cleavage is perfectly shown with a soft green, v-neck tee. Tight jeans cup her a*s, grip her thighs, and show off her calf muscles. She’d even pulled out her white-marble print ankle boots, even though we’d only be traveling across the yard. Good sign? Good sign.

“So…” I offer casually.

It takes a minute for her train of thought to stop and for her to look up. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re coming over tonight.”

Her chest does that shallow flutter as her cheeks pinken. “Oh?”

I look back to Hades, “You’ve always come over for your birthday. It’s a good tradition… I think it makes Jonah sort of forget who’s not there.”

She eases a breath, “Right. Makes sense.”

Just do it, Clark, grow a pair, I think harshly. “But I do have something I need you to do.”

Candice tucks a few curls behind her ear. “And what’s that, Clark?”

I smirk, “Well, Candice, midnight tonight I need you on the roof.”

Her eyes slowly lift and her hands land on her hips. “Why?”

It’s not like I haven’t asked her to meet me there before… though usually it’s after she’s already texted me that she needs to talk. So, I shrug. “Just be there,” and I lift Hades off my lap carefully.

After he makes his way to the little house with the heating pad bottom behind me, I stand and lean against the door. I unabashedly continue to watch Candice as she moves through her room - her course of action seeming chaotic to me but making clear sense to her.

Then I can tell, for whatever reason, she’s stalling.

“Ready?”

A long blink and then she straightens. “Yep.”

When she walks by me, I slip the bag strap off her shoulder and toss it over my head. She stops and her brows come together. “I can carry it, it’s okay.”

I shrug and walk down the hall. I make a silly expression and say, “But don’t I just look fabulous with it?”

She giggles, then snorts. Exactly what I wanted. And in the way her nose wrinkles up, I can’t help but smile. When she tries to steady her breathing, her hand spreads against her chest. She lets off a little happy hum of a sigh as she looks up at me. I can’t help but look into her twinkling green eyes. I have not been this close to her in a long time, but the familiar flecks of gold show themselves.

“Clark?”

She is really so close to me. I swallow hard. “Candice?”

“So…”

“Mhm?”

But then she c***s a brow and pokes my chest, “What’s my birthday present?”

Taking in a deep breath, I lean back to pivot and start down the hall. “You’ll have to wait until midnight, Lady Candice.”

“Well, alright Sir Clark. I’ll be there,” and she starts down the stairs before me.