Chapter 12: A Confession

Wednesday, August 4, 1982

I spent the day trying to get back into the evidence-sorting grind. Less than two weeks to go until school was in session. Still so much to do. We’d have a Debate tournament in just over a month, if our schedule was like last year’s. I was nominally ready — I’d already won a tournament, after all — but I didn’t feel ready. Not with all of the evidence we’d added, much less the piles we’d get when the others got back.

That and more computer practice. I had plans this Saturday. I hoped they’d work out. We would see. I was playing a slow, long-term game there. It’d be interesting — and maybe life-changing — to see if I could make it work.

My phone rang a bit before five. I figured it might well be Jasmine.

“Hi!”

The voice on the other end wasn’t Jasmine. And it wasn’t happy.

“H ... hello, Steve.” Jessica sounded down. Depressed. Her voice was a trifle hoarse.

“Jessica? What’s wrong?”

“I ... we ... we need to ... I need to ... gah!” She put the phone down and I heard a bang, then an “Oww!” Then she picked it up. “Dammit. We need to talk. I need to talk, I mean. Not the we kind. This isn’t about us. Just me.”

“I ... okay. You know I’ll help.”

“I do. I ... I really do. Um. Okay. Look. You can’t pick me up. I might chicken out, plus ... I can’t deal with the ride. I just...” She put the phone down and I heard her say, “Oh, dammit, Jessica Lively, pull yourself together!”

She picked back up. “You heard that.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m fucked up. I might chicken out. If I do it’s okay. You have to let me. Anyway. I need a quiet dinner place where we won’t be bothered and where absolutely no one in the gossip mill will show up.”

“I ... let me think.”

I pondered for a few minutes, then got it. I gave her the place.

She laughed. “Oh, fuck, yes. No one would be caught dead there. Good call. Five-thirty.”

“Five-thirty.”

“I ... fuck it. Again. You know I love you.”

“And you know I can’t say that back, except that I love you as a very good friend.”

“I know ... which makes me love you more. I’m trying to love you as a very good friend. I think I’m making progress.”

“I need to go if I’m going to get there.”

“Me, too. Bye, Steve.”

“Bye, Jessica.”

I quickly dressed, trying to guess what was up. Whatever it was, it was bad. That Jessica wasn’t the Jessica everyone knew. That was probably as close to the real Jessica as anyone had heard in a long time. Whatever it was ... she needed a friend.

And she had one.

I caught Mom on the way out. “Um, Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“I know I said I’d be here for dinner, but ... a friend needs me. I think it’s fairly urgent.”

“Jasmine?” she said, with a hint of a smirk. Interesting.

“No, not Jasmine, and this is really friend stuff, I’m certain.”

She nodded. “Okay. Jasmine would have been fine, too. That’s how we mean things to be. But if your friend needs you, of course you need to go help.”

“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

We exchanged a warm hug, then I headed out.

I pulled up to the mall just before five-thirty. And by ‘the mall,’ I do not mean the mall I always mean. No, this was Northwest Mall, which had a somewhat decent Chinese buffet. I knew this because I’d gone there a couple of times to check it out.

Northwest Mall is slightly closer to my house than the real ‘the mall’ — Memorial City Mall. If it’d been a good place to shop, I’d have biked there more often, when I was biking to the mall. Jane’s office was near it, too. So, if we’d liked it, we’d have ventured over there after meetings occasionally.

It ... wasn’t. Oh, in 1982 it was ... sorta ... mostly ... fine. What was wrong was little things. Some broken tile here, never fixed. A fountain there that hadn’t worked in a couple of years. Some paint damage, unpatched. Marks on the walls, never painted over. A few more empty storefronts than normal.

It was slowly declining, and you just felt that after a bit. Memorial City was slowly improving; Northwest was slowly fading.

No one in Jessica’s circle would ever go there. Why would they? Memorial City was closer for most of them, and not much further for the few that lived as far east as I did, right on the eastern edge of Memorial’s zoning. And everyone else was at Memorial City. The stores you knew were there. And it wasn’t just a tiny bit of a downer.

When I saw Jessica a lot of things went through my mind. Using my karate skills against another human being again was high among them.

She looked down. I mean, both, she was physically looking down, and she looked down. Her hair was out of place, she’d clearly been crying in the car, and — worst of all — her left eye had a big, nasty bruise. Black, yellowing at the edges. No matter what story she told, that was a punch. I’d seen them before.

She looked up, saw me, saw something, and blurted out, “I can’t do this!” before turning to run.

She’d gotten about three steps before my arms wrapped around her from behind. She struggled for just a few seconds, then wriggled around in my arms, facing me, and started to really cry.

What could I do? I just held her.

That lasted maybe five minutes. She was coughing before she could stop crying. Once she finally stopped, she blurted out, “I’m sorry!”

“What in the world are you sorry for?”

“I ... dumping this on you. Crying. Running. All of it.”

“Jessica...”

She looked up to me.

“Just ... try to calm down a little. Let’s get some food and you can tell me what you need to tell me.”

She nodded, and let me guide her towards the restaurant. Before we were halfway there, her hand found mine.

Inside, an older Chinese woman welcomed us, then stopped mid-sentence and stared at Jessica’s eye. Then she glared at me.

Jessica looked up at the hesitation and, being Jessica — enough, at least — read the situation instantly. “It wasn’t him. I promise.”

“Ran into a door?” the woman said, nearly snarling.

“No. It’s what you think. Just not him. He wasn’t involved, wasn’t even in the same city.”

She huffed. “Fine.” She looked to me. “I am sorry.”

I smiled softly. “I’d rather you guessed wrong than ignored what you shouldn’t.”

She managed a little chuckle. “I am too ... nosy. But you are right.”

She seated us in a quiet corner. Given that there were fewer than ten customers in a fairly large restaurant, every corner was quiet, but we had our own, anyway.

Jessica said, “I ... should eat. Before.”

“That’s fine.”

I went with her to the buffet. She picked about twice as much food as I would have expected. She must have seen me noticing that. “I haven’t been able to eat. Mom claims to believe it’s a cheer injury. She doesn’t. Dad will believe what Mom says she believes. I can’t deal with them at the dinner table, anyway.”

I nodded. “Take care of yourself. Please.”

She blushed again. “That’s what I’m best at, right? Jessica, always taking care of herself.”

We’d finished picking out food, so we headed back to our table.

“If you’re trying to imply that you’re selfish...”

“Oh, no. I’m saying with conviction that I’m selfish.”

I shrugged. “Nearly everyone’s selfish sometimes. You’re not malicious or uncaring.”

“Yeah ... I’d like to think that.”

I paused. “Okay ... how did we get here? I’m certain you didn’t smack your own eye.”

She giggled a little, then blushed. Then giggled a bit more, which turned into a chuckle, then laughter. She was on her way to full-blown hysterical laughing, mixed with crying, when I moved over to hug her. I spotted the proprietor moving to check on us. I gave her a little nod. She gave a dramatic-looking sigh and headed back to the front.

Jessica got herself together a minute later. “I ... I’m ... sorry. I’m...”

“Don’t be sorry. I think maybe you needed that.”

“It’s just ... I’ve ... the idea that I ... you know. It’s absurd. I’ve been so ... wound up.”

I started to move my plate over, but she stopped me. “No, sit across from me. It’s easier if I can look at you, I think.”

I nodded and scooted back around. After a few minutes, I said, “Are you going to tell me how that happened?”

She sighed. “That, or run to my car. That’s ... still an option.” She paused, tapped her finger on the table. “I think I’ve been leading up to this. It’s just ... I’d have excused myself. I almost did this time. But ... well. Now I’ve crossed a line, at least a little. I’d planned to just wait until it was better, but ... today, I decided I couldn’t.”

“It’s yours to tell or not, of course. I won’t push you. I can’t pretend to not know...”

“I’ll tell. I think. It’s complicated. Okay, no, it’s simple ... fuck. Strike that, it’s just a mess. I screwed up a while back and it’s come back to bite me in the ass. Or, well, smack me in the face.” She laughed a bit, too close to the edge of hysteria.

“Tell me your way. No pressure, no urgency.”

She sighed. “Thanks. Okay ... fine ... I’m going to start at the start. And the start is ... it’s two years ago. I almost told you this before. I wanted to tell you this before. It’s ... I got scared. Scared you wouldn’t like me, after. Which is dumb, but ... dammit, Steve, I never expected to care, you know?” She looked over, crying. “I never expected this to hurt. Jessica fucking Lively doesn’t fucking care. She doesn’t lose her heart to a guy. She doesn’t hurt. I started believing my own hype.”

I almost went to hug her again, then realized that would be the wrong thing. I didn’t need her falling for me even harder, and that was a real risk here. Instead, I took both of her hands across the table and gave them a gentle squeeze.

She calmed down after a minute, then laughed a bit weakly. “At least I did that in front of the one person I can trust to not mock me for it.”

I just gave her hands a squeeze.

“Okay. Deep breaths. Two years ago ... you know the story a bit, from Sheila. Cute girl does well in junior high cheer and gymnastics. Common enough story. I mean, yeah, I won the genetic lottery and I’m a bit more cute than the average cute cheerleader, but I’m no supermodel or anything.”

I could seriously debate that with her. If she went for a movie-star career and had the right PR people and stylists and all of that, she’d be on those ‘Ten Most Beautiful People’ lists, no question. Looking her usual self, she’d be a shoo-in for Miss Texas. She knew it, too — that was likely a bit of false modesty. Or a story she told herself.

“Anyway ... well, that’s what I wanted. Cheer. Gymnastics. I liked being normal, I liked school, and weird books, and kissing practice with Sheila, and ... a lot of things. Normal things. But...”

She hesitated quite a while on that. I squeezed her hands after a bit, and asked, gently, “But?”

“But ... the genetic lottery, right? You know a few versions of me. There used to just be the one. A bit driven, focused, blah blah blah, but ... normal.”

“Smart. Not just smarter than your average bear, but really smart.”

She blushed, just a trifle. “Yeah. That’s obvious, where you are.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t do ... this ... the ‘Jessica Lively’ thing ... if I wasn’t.”

I nodded at that.

“Anyway ... I’d just turned fourteen. I knew I had a place on Memorial’s team. I even knew it was varsity. That was probably a big damn mistake, telling me. It’s one reason I was pushy about not telling Sam Myers. She’d probably be fine, but ... I wasn’t.”

I nodded again, and squeezed her hands.

“I guess that sounds like my ego ran away with me. Sheila thinks that.”

“I don’t think she thinks anything quite that simple, but ... yeah. Something like that.”

“That’s not it. Oh, it looks like that, and to everyone else it just barely made a ripple. No one but Sheila knew me well enough for it to be more than just normal growing-up and puberty and all that.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding.

“Puberty factors into it. Bluntly ... girls... this girl ... gets horny. Yeah, I know, that’s fantasy material for most of the boys at Memorial. Hell, probably a bunch of the teachers. I’d never dated. Of course I’d never dated! I was just barely fourteen.”

“Few parents are okay with fourteen-year-olds dating. Mine weren’t, though I managed anyway. It was a slow process.”

She sighed. “Yeah. Well, that summer ... there was this guy. Oh, my God, was he handsome, and charming, and big and strong and ... well. Fourteen-year-old girl. He was romantic; flowers, hearts, all of that. We worked out at the same gym, and he made a great workout partner. After a while, I found out he was on the Memorial football team. Varsity. Starter. Almost a lock for a college scholarship.”

“And this guy that had it all was interested in you.”

“Yeah. Oh, it sounds dumb now. It was dumb then. Boys had started tripping over themselves around me a year or more earlier, the ones that hit puberty earlier. But this was different. This was a junior. Almost grown up! And he really liked me and wanted to talk for hours and ... I was in love.”

I sighed and squeezed her hands. She hadn’t eaten much of anything, lost in the story. I let go of one hand. “Eat, a little. It’s okay if you talk while eating. I know you need to.”

“I ... thanks. Thanks for watching out for me.”

She started nibbling as she talked.

“It got to where he gave me rides sometimes, to or from working out. I’m sure Mom had reservations, but I get what I want. Always did. Almost always still do.” She gave me a look at that. “We started ... dating. Oh, no one said that, but we were. It got back to the other cheerleaders. Of course it did! My stock went up. Little fourteen-year-old me, never even set foot in Memorial, and I’m dating a starter. I was already better than half of them. Leadership had me on the fast track. I was flying high.”

I waited. She waited. I waited some more. She sighed. “You’re supposed to say ‘and?’”

“I was being patient and letting you talk.”

She sighed again. “Even when...” She stopped and shook her head. “Not the time for that.”

I gave her a second. “Okay. And?”

“And ... you know where this story goes. One day we didn’t go straight home, we parked. And we kissed. And, let me tell you, it was amazing! First kiss, second kiss, third kiss, and a bunch more. Making out. All that.”