“What is life?” She asked the question then threw her hands up in the air. She hated dumb. Stupid. Idiocy. Needy. All of it.
“What now?” Cameryn peered over the top of her phone and stared. “Jericho? What?”
But Jericho was lost again, spinning her hands around and had no idea she was doing it.
Its not that she was evil. Well, not totally. She felt great guilt if a heart was broken and it was her fault. Mark Stinson. Now she dumped him in a shameful manner – text message. Two years ago and she still felt very embarrassed about it. Cody Reese. She told him she loved him, then later that night found herself saying the same thing to another boy, the name slipping her mind right now and that is why she felt such shame. She did the right thing, and told Cody she was not ready for the commitment and that she was terrified of her own words. No, she did not mention the cheating aspect, but details are not needed when guilt is genuine.
But the others, now they were not her fault.
Chris… something. He was in her class at school and when she complained last Valentines day she had no one to bring her flowers, well, a huge delivery arrived the next day and half the school knew about it. She didn’t even know his name and suddenly half the school was smirking at her and some creeper boy? That is not good for the reputation at all. She called him out in class that very day. He ran out in tears.
He did not come back to school for three days.
He wrote a note to her. Not even an email, but a note like it was 1987 or something. She made a show of crumpling it up but she tossed it in her bag. She would read it later.
“Oh, Brody is messaging me.” She finally answered Cameryn’s question, and a part of her realized it had been a few minutes. This was just so stupid. But Cameryn had already forgotten the question.
“What?”
“Brody is messaging me.” Cameryn nodded and gave her a blank stare over her phone, then went back to whatever she was doing.
Jericho was going to explain, but Cameryn was cruel sometimes, and she would not understand the problem anyway. So she turned away from her friend and stared back down at the screen.
Just a month ago Cooper Ben accused her of being a huge tease and yelled at her in the hallway. What kind of last name is Ben anyway? Tease? What had she ever promised him? She made the mistake of being nice once again.
This happened a lot. She tried to retrace her steps with Cooper. He gave her some money at lunch one day when she was complaining about starving. She was. But he thought that was a proposal somehow and tried to sit with her the next day.
But this Brody was something else. She almost liked him. It would just never work. They didn’t have the same friends.
She did like talking to him. Well, messaging anyway, they never talked much, not even on the phone.
But there is no way she could have made him think she liked him. She was going to ask Cameryn for advice, but she would tell her to get over it and let the drama go.
Her eyes went instead to her desk. Tucked away was a letter from weeks back. Chris something’s letter. She was not going to ask anyone his name, and she sure was not going to look online. She almost cried when she read it, more in anger than in sadness. In the desk right there a note asked her if she enjoyed “stringing people along”? He asked if she had like a bracelet she put a charm on for every life she took and ruined.
Who wears charm bracelets?
And now Brody. He told her that he was going to kill himself. That “she took his life away from him.” Like what is life? What did she do? She looked again at the desk. Why did she keep that note?
She knew. Because boys are stupid sometimes, and that note is a reminder. She half smiled and shut her laptop. She stared at her wrist and wondered if a charm bracelet would look good on her.
She knew it would.
She threw a pillow at Cameryn. “Hey, lets go.”
“Where?”
“There is always somewhere.” She smacked Cameryn on the way out and they giggled as they headed to somewhere together. “You ever wear bracelets?”
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