Two-way Street

123 Days Before the Trip, 12:23 p.m.

“No,” Jocelyn says, taking a sip of her chocolate milk and regarding me over the cafeteria table. “That’s not going to happen.”

“What isn’t?” I ask, trying to sound innocent. I’ve just finished telling Jocelyn about my night with Jordan, and she’s acting like it’s this huge, bad idea. Which it probably is. But only if I like him. Which I don’t.

“You are not going to start pining away for Jordan Richman,” she says. “I won’t let it happen.”

“I’m not pining away for him!” I say. I open up the packet of blue cheese dressing that came with my salad and pour it over the lettuce on my plate. I’m not even really that hungry, but I need something to keep myself busy, so that I don’t betray the way I’m feeling, which is that I may have a crush on Jordan. Which is insane. Because Jocelyn is right. That’s just ridiculous.

“Good,” Jocelyn says, looking satisfied. She takes another sip of her soda, then reaches over and grabs a cucumber off my salad. She pops it into her mouth. “But it is a little weird that he called you like that.” She frowns. “Although it’s even weirder that he didn’t try anything.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Well, it’s just that if a guy calls you late at night like that, usually it means he wants something physical. So for him not to try anything is kind of weird, you know?”

“Unless he thought he wanted to hook up with me, and then when he sobered up, he found me repulsive and decided not to.”

“Was he drinking?”

“Not really.”

Jocelyn rolls her eyes. “Then that makes no sense. Anyway, why are we still talking about this?”

“I have no idea.” Because I can’t stop thinking about him, and was a little disappointed when he didn’t call me yesterday. Okay, even I can see that’s pretty ridiculous. I mean, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s not even a guy I’m dating. So to be disappointed that he didn’t call me on Sunday is just stupid. I think I should chalk it up to a random thing, one of those freak occurrences that no one can really explain. Like crop circles. Or that lady who got hit by a foul ball at a Yankees game, and then when she went to get it checked out, it turned out they found a tumor, and if she hadn’t gotten it checked out, she would have died.

“Good,” Jocelyn says, sounding satisfied.

“But…” I say slowly, twirling a piece of lettuce around on my fork.

“But what?” Jocelyn screeches. “There are no buts!” She grabs my hand and stops me from twirling. “Honey, no,” she instructs. “He’s bad news. He’s not right for you.”

“I know,” I say. “You’re right. Definitely.” I frown. The thing is, when we were hanging out, he did seem right for me. Nothing like I really thought he was. But maybe that’s just a ploy, something he does to make girls want him. It makes sense when you think about it—he must be doing something to get all these girls to fall in love with him. It must have to do with sweet-talking them and making them think he’s a good guy. But I will not fall for that. I will be strong and not give into his psychotic, mind game–playing ways.

“Don’t talk to him anymore,” Jocelyn says. “Don’t look at him, don’t call him, don’t online stalk him.”

“I won’t,” I say, not mentioning the fact that I checked his MySpace profile about three hundred times yesterday, and was secretly very pleased to see that Madison Allesio left him a comment, which he never replied to.

“I mean it, Courtney,” she says. “Don’t go getting all psychotic over something that’s not even a thing.”

“You’re totally right,” I say. And she is. Getting all worked up over some guy who is definitely not a thing is really stupid. Especially since I’m already all worked up over Lloyd, who is also not a thing, and is even hooking up with the girl he met at Connor’s party. Unlike Jordan, Lloyd did call me yesterday, to tell me about how he felt up Olivia in the backseat of his car. Things in my love life are not going well.

“Besides, what about Lloyd?” Jocelyn asks, like she’s reading my mind. She picks a cherry tomato off my plate and puts it in her mouth. I wordlessly hand her my fork, and she spears a forkful of my salad. Jocelyn is one of those people who is always trying to lose weight by not eating and then makes up for it by eating off everyone else’s plate.

“He’s hooking up with Olivia.”

“Lame,” Jocelyn says, rolling her eyes. “I give it a couple weeks.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I say. Madison Allesio goes walking by, flanked on both sides by girls from her cheerleading squad. I swallow hard.

“I have a scandal going on,” Jocelyn announces.

“Oh, God,” I say. “Do I even want to know?”

“Yes,” Jocelyn says. “You want to know.” She bites her lip. “But you can’t get mad at me for not telling you sooner.” Jocelyn likes to sit on her scandals. As in, she likes to wait a few days before telling anyone what’s going on. Last year when she broke up with Kevin Scott, who she’d been dating for two years, she didn’t tell me for a week. I just thought they were in a big fight, since I didn’t see them hanging around each other in school. I’ve learned not to take it too personally. It’s just how she is.

“I won’t,” I say. I wonder if the fact that Jordan Richman called me out of nowhere on the same night I was supposed to tell Lloyd I wanted him is some kind of sign. That Jordan and I are supposed to be together. Or that Lloyd and I aren’t. Or that I really am supposed to be with Lloyd. That last one makes no sense, though, because why would Lloyd hooking up with Olivia mean he and I are supposed to be together? This is why believing in signs is never a good idea. They’re so damn confusing.

“Okay,” she says. “You know how on Saturday night you tried calling me really late, but I didn’t answer?”

“Yes,” I say. Unlike Jocelyn, I like to dissect and analyze any drama I’m involved in immediately. As soon as I got home from hanging out with Jordan on Saturday night, I called her.

“And you know how I didn’t answer?” she says.

“Yes.”

“And you know how I didn’t call you back until four in the morning?”

“Yes,” I say.

“And you know how you said you were sleeping, but we talked anyway, because—”

“Jocelyn! Yes, I know, I was there, now spill.”

“Well,” she says slowly. She twirls a strand of her light brown hair around her finger. “It was because I was hooking up with someone.”

“Really?” I say. “Was it Mark?”

“No,” she says.

I wait. Silence.

“Okay,” I say. “Are you going to tell me who it was?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Jocelyn!”

“It’s embarrassing!” she says. She pulls my plate closer to her and takes another bite of my salad.

“Why?” I say. “I mean, how bad can it be?”

“It’s pretty bad,” she says, sounding pained.

“It can’t be as bad as the Blake Letkowski debacle,” I say. Blake Letkowski is this kid who I ended up making out with last year when we were working together on a science project. He was bad, bad news. He smoked, he drank, he made racist comments…but I loved kissing him. Whoever Jocelyn hooked up with cannot be as bad as Blake Letkowski.

Silence. “Jocelyn?”

“Yeah?”

“Is it?” I pull my math book out of the messenger bag by my feet, hoping feigning nonchalance will get her to spill.

“Is it what?” she asks, frowning.

“Is it better than the Blake Letkowski debacle?”

“Yes. Definitely better.”

“Better meaning more of a scandal, or better meaning it isn’t as bad?” I say.

“I guess that depends on how you look at it,” Jocelyn says slowly. She takes a sip of her chocolate milk. Jocelyn always drinks chocolate milk at lunch. Special, low-carb chocolate milk in single-serving containers that she buys before school each morning at the Mobil on the corner.

“What do you mean?” I say. You’d think I’d be getting bored of this conversation, since she’s so obviously jerking me around, but surprisingly, I’m not. I want to know who she hooked up with.

“I mean, do you think it’s good that I’ve hooked up with someone worse than Blake Letkowski, or are you going to be sympathetic?”

“So whoever it is, IS worse than Blake.”

“Courtney!”

“WHAT?”

She takes a deep breath. “Never mind, I’m not telling you.”

“Fine.” I pretend to be engrossed in my math problem. After a few seconds, I can tell she’s getting antsy, but I break first. “Just tell me!”

“No!”

“I’ll find out.”

“No one will find out.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“What if he tells someone?”

“He won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we both said we wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Oh, okay, cause that always works out. Guys who say they won’t tell anyone you hooked up always keep their mouths shut.” She’s silent. “But whatever,” I say, shrugging and turning back to my math book. “If you don’t want to tell your best friend in the whole world who you hooked up with, well, then…” I trail off.

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,” she says. “It’s just that I don’t want to be judged.”

“When have I ever judged you?” I say, rolling my eyes. “I am the least judgmental person ever.”

“Well,” she says, looking thoughtful. She takes another bite of salad. “When I joined newspaper last year because Dan Carlio was on the paper, you kind of judged me.”

“That was different,” I say. “He was brainwashing you.” At the end of junior year, Jocelyn got wrapped up in this ridiculous guy who was one of those activist, literary types. He was always trying to use the school newspaper to further his political beliefs. Jocelyn started skipping school to go to environmental protests and almost lost her credits because of all the time she missed. Plus Dan was really creepy, and he referred to Jocelyn as his “little soldier.” Weird.

“He was not!” Jocelyn says. She’s horrified.

“Jocelyn, he made you join the Green Party.”

“So?”

“So, do you even know what the Green Party is?”

“It has to do with Ralph Nader,” she says, proud of herself.

“Whatever.”

Silence.

“So tell me.”

“Okay.”

“Waiting.”

“You can’t laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t say anything.”

“I won’t.”

“B. J. Cartwright.”

Silence.

“Say something!” she shrieks.

“You told me not to!” I say. “So I wasn’t.” B. J. Cartwright. Yikes. That’s…“disturbing” is really the only word I can come up with, but I can’t tell Jocelyn that. Because I told her I wouldn’t judge. Besides, Jocelyn takes attacks on people she’s hooking up with as a personal attack on herself. So if I were to say to her, “Wow, Jocelyn, that’s disturbing,” she would take it as meaning, “Wow, Jocelyn, you are disturbed.” Which may or may not be true, but still.

“Well, by not saying anything, you’re saying a lot.”

I think carefully. “Well,” I say slowly. “Why don’t you tell me how it happened?”

“Okay,” she says eagerly. She pushes the empty salad plate away from her. “Well, you know how I was trying to flirt with Mark, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, B. J. was hanging out sort of near him, and we started talking.”

I try to figure out how I can ask her if this was before or after B. J. clamped onto my leg like some kind of dog in heat, without actually saying, “Hey, Jocelyn, was this before or after B. J. clamped onto my leg like some kind of dog in heat?”

“So we started talking, and then later he called me and invited me to go to Jeremy’s party, and then…I don’t know, really. We ended up back at his house.” She stops. “Making out,” she adds, in case I missed it.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “So what now?”

“Duh,” she says. “Now I avoid him.”

“Good plan.” Pause. “Why, again?”

“Because, hello, it’s B. J. Cartwright! Although,” she says thoughtfully, “he was a really good kisser.”

Ewww.

The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch, and we throw our trays away and head down the hall, me to AP Bio, her to Creative Writing.

“Now,” she says, as we stop at her locker on the way. “We’re clear on this whole Jordan thing, right?” She twirls the dial to the right.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Don’t try to talk to him or anything like that,” she says. “Ignore him. He’s bad news, Courtney.”

“Totally,” I say. “But what if he says hi to me first?”

“No,” she says. “Well, if he says hi first, you can say hi to him. But that’s all.” She grabs me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eye, like I’m going off to do battle. “Clear?”

“Totally clear.”