Chapter Forty-Seven

**

“You gonna stick by me?”

“Maybe…”

**

“Hey!” Jamie said to me the next day in the parking lot before school.

“Hi…” I replied, slowly. Yeah, okay, so it didn’t seem like she was actually the psychotic bitch I’d thought she was. It’d almost been fun, working on that dumb project with her and Miguel. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she didn’t know anything about cars…hell, that was an understatement! But I still didn’t know if I could trust her.

“What’s up?” I asked when she didn’t say anything for a few minutes.

“Well…umm…”

“Lemme guess,” I groaned. “You think Dom is the hottest thing on earth and you want to know everything there is to know about him…”

“Dom?” she cried, interrupting me.

“Not Dom?”

“No!” she laughed. “He kinda looks like a rat, don’t you think?”

“A rat? Okay…” I muttered, wondering what drugs she was on and what the hell else she could possibly want. “What, then?”

“Well…I was kind of wondering about that guy…”

“Leon?”

“No…” she said slowly.

“Hector?”

“Not him…”

“Not…Miguel?”

“No!” she exclaimed, jerking her head up and finally looking at me.

“Okay,” I muttered to myself. “What other guy is there? Have to warn you, I don‘t know much about anybody at school except for Miguel… Someone in our English class? Or in Loz’s class maybe? You aren‘t lusting after Loz are you? The man is like fifty…”

“No!” Jamie shrieked. “That is just…disgusting! And no one from school…”

“Who the hell are you talking about, then?” I wondered, thinking aloud. “Not Dom, not Leon, not Hector, not Miguel… Unless you met someone when Vince took you out yesterday… Weird, he didn’t say anything about seeing anyone… He didn’t race with you in the car, did he? If he did anything stupid, just let me know, and I‘ll kick the shit out of him for you.”

Jamie didn’t say anything, just looked back down at her feet.

“Oh my fucking God!” I yelled, not quite believing what I was thinking. “You’re… You mean… Vince! You like Vince? You like Vince! Oh my fucking God!”

I didn’t say anything else, waiting for her to tell me I was wrong…but she didn’t.

“Really?” I asked, after a few minutes of silence. “Vince?” I couldn’t stop laughing. Just the thought of someone digging Vince…it was too much.

“Yeah…” Jamie said eventually. “I… He’s not… Are you two…?”

“What?!?”

“Well…” she said slowly, “I figured, you know, when you didn’t mention him…that, well…maybe the two of you had something going on…”

“I ought to beat the shit out of you just for thinking that,” I said, gasping for breath.

“Oh…sorry,” she said after a few minutes. “So…what’s wrong with Vince? He married? Gay? What?”

“No, he’s not married,” I laughed. “And definitely not gay… He’s just… Well, he’s just Vince!”

“He’s hot!” Jamie said, blushing.

“Oh God…” I moaned. “I’m just going to pretend I never heard you say that…”

“So…” she went on, “does he have a girlfriend?”

“Vince? A girlfriend?” I sputtered. “Vince never has a girlfriend. Vince has girls that he fucks. Not girlfriends.”

“Oh…” she said, actually sounding disappointed. “So…he never like…stays with the same girl? At all?”

I finally managed to stop laughing as I thought about her question. “Lemme see…there was this one girl, when Vince was a freshman, I guess? Jenny, I think her name was… Anyways, Vince was crazy about her. They were together for a long time, almost the whole year...” I trailed off, remembering what Vince had been like back then.

“What happened?”

“Well…I guess Jenny just decided Vince wasn’t good enough for her one day. She started dating this other guy…some jock on the basketball team. But she didn’t tell V she wanted to break up…she just went behind his back and started cheating on him. Oh…there was a huge fight when Vince found out what was going on… Vince and Dom against the whole basketball team. I remember they almost got expelled… It was pretty bad. And Jenny told him all kinds of shit…like she’d never really cared about him at all, he was just a distraction while she was waiting for something better to come along. Really fucked Vince up…he was depressed for months after that. Barely talked to anyone, not even Dom. When he finally got out of it, he was different. I mean…not completely different or anything… But, when it came to girls, yeah. Stayed with a chick just until she’d fuck him, then he was on to someone else. He was a total slut. Still is, really. Not as much since he‘s been home, but…”

“Since he’s been home?” Jamie echoed, interrupting me.

I couldn’t really believe I was just telling Jamie all this shit about Vince. I mean, I barely knew her. But, I could tell she was into Vince…she actually liked him. And I guess some part of me decided that it was about time he got over Jenny and stayed with one chick for longer than a week. Plus, if I found someone for Vince, it’d mean less girls coming around the house thinking Dom was up for grabs…

“What…was he abducted by aliens or something?” she went on. “Spent the last five years living in the jungles of South America with some pygmy tribe? On the road with the circus? In a cave somewhere, maybe?”

“What?” I asked, laughing to myself a little. “Nah…he got into some trouble after Dom got arrested. Spent the last few years in juvie, just got out in August.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a few minutes before continuing. “So…what’d he do?”

“Eh…nothing big… Got wasted one night, went out and boosted a car, completely wrecked it. Crashed into a storefront, wrecked that too… Really shouldn‘t have been away for as long as he was, but his step-dad‘s a cop, and just a complete dick. Decided Vince needed to be taught a lesson, or some shit like that.”

Jamie didn’t say anything after that, and we just stood there in silence again. It was kind of weird, though. I mean…it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, like you’d expect with a virtual stranger. It was comfortable, like we’d known each other since kindergarten or something.

“Hey,” I said after a few minutes, “Dom’s having kind of a party Saturday night…Vince’ll be there. You wanna go?”

“Uhm…sure, that sounds great,” she said slowly. “The only thing is… Well, my parents are really strict. They don’t let me stay out after like ten. So…I’d have to spend the night or something.”

“God,” I thought to myself. “This had better be worth it.” I just don’t do slumber parties.

“Uhm…okay, we can do that,” I said, reaching up to brush a piece of hair away from my face.

“And…well…they’d have to like…meet someone, or talk to them at least…they’re very big on knowing the adult in charge of things… Maybe your mom could stop by my house sometime this week and talk to my mom? Just like…reassure her?”

“Heh,” I laughed. “Yeah, if your mom wanted to talk to a crack whore… And if I’d spoken to my mom at all in the past year… What about Leon? He’s pretty good at looking responsible…”

“Uhm…how old is he again?”

“Twenty,” I answered, after thinking for a second or two. “He’ll be twenty-one in May…”

“Okay… No offense or anything, but I don’t think they’d be impressed.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that…” I muttered. “Lemme think… I guess I could ask my aunt to do it… But she’s pretty busy with work, I don’t know if she’d have time. Plus, she wouldn’t lie to your mom… Not like she’d just offer information, but…she wouldn’t try to hide that I stay with Leon. She’s proud of him, you know? Proud of all of us, actually. And once she got started talking about Leon, she’d start talking about the rest of us… And then your mom would figure out that the only ‘adult supervision’ I get on a regular basis is from the guys and Mia. And I’m sure that would go over great.”

“Oh, I’m sure…” she laughed.

“Yeah, I can see it now. There’s Dom, who’s not only my b - my ex-boyfriend but would also still be in jail if he hadn’t of gotten out early… Vince, who just got out of juvie and doesn’t even really have a job or anything… You know, Leon’s the only one of them who’s never been in jail…and that’s only because he’s never gotten caught at anything so far… And Mia, well… she’s a ‘good’ girl, but she’s still only nineteen… They’d prolly think of her as a kid… Damn, but I never realized how hard it is to have parents who actually give a shit about what you do!”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jamie sighed, leaning her head against her hands. “God, my life sucks.”

“Okay,” I said, ignoring her self-pity. “What if I came over to your place a few times after school this week…today and Wednesday, maybe? We’re not too busy at the garage, they should be able to manage without me for a couple days. And then, we can have Mia call and pretend like she’s older… Or just say she’s the adult in charge…they might not even ask how old she is, right? People always think she’s older than she really is. Well, least until they see her drive…”

“You know…” Jamie said slowly, finally lifting her head up off of her arms, “that just might work…”