Chapter 18

Andrew

The party is in full swing when I notice she is there.

Gina comes from the kitchen looking annoyed, a bottle of water clutched in her hand as she tries to maneuver around dancing bodies with her cumbersome plastered leg and crutches.

I have Becky, another blonde cheerleader, pressing her tits up against my chest.

I’m not really interested in Becky. She is a well-known prick tease, likes to be able to turn guys down after getting them all riled up just so she can be like, “Guys are only after one thing!”

~No way~ I thought to myself.

~

~

I watch Gina as I have been doing all week. As usual, she is all alone; the bitchy blondes seem to make it a habit to drop her as soon as they get to a party.

Her dark green dress almost matches the green of her cast perfectly, making the redness of her hair stand out even more. The scarlet lipstick has her lips looking even more pouty than normal.

I am torn from my daydream about having those pouty lips wrapped around me by Macy announcing she has something to say.

To a backdrop of Limp Bizkit, she proceeds to do a fucking show and tell about Gina. I am frozen to the spot initially, watching as Gina slowly breaks down.

As Macy makes a really fucking shitty comment about Gina’s mom killing herself, I shake myself and tell her to shut the fuck up.

I see Drew striding toward the kitchen and grabbing Jake, who got really fucking stoned this afternoon, to try and relax enough to actually talk to his Instagram crush.

Gina is pale, shaking, with tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks. Macy turns another card showing a photo of a young guy, blonde chin-length hair poking out the sides of a backward snapback.

She starts talking some shit about Gina ruining his life, and as I get to the music and switch it off, Jake reaches her, face like thunder. He grabs the cards from her hands and rips them all in half.

He cups her roughly by the cheeks, making her lips squish together.

“Just shut the fuck up, Macy. You have no ~fucking~ clue what you’re talking about.”

She stumbles a little when he releases her, eyes glossy.

He spins around, scanning the room before locking eyes with me. “Where is she?”

I look around the room. Gina isn’t there. We both run out the open front door, murmurs starting up between our classmates behind us.

Gina is halfway down the driveway. No idea how she’s managed to move so fast on those fucking crutches. Jake runs up to her and wraps his arms around her small frame.

She immediately buries her face in his chest, heart-wrenching sobs echoing in the stillness of the night. Jake looks up at me, pained.

“I promised her she wouldn’t get hurt again.” His voice breaks, and he tightens his grip on her, his hand on the back of her head, his voice muffled by her hair. “I fucking promised.”

I run a distracted hand through my hair. Behind me, Drew and PJ appear, both looking worried.

“Dude. Is she okay? I’m chucking everyone out.” PJ shakes his head. “That was so fucked up.”

I produce my keys from my back pocket and hold them up at Jake, tipping my head toward my Jeep. He nods and scoops Gina up bridal style. We drive to their house in silence. Well, kinda.

Gina is quietly sobbing into Jake’s shoulder still. He somberly says goodbye and scoops her back into his arms. I quickly get out to open the front door for them.

Their two dads are in the hallway almost immediately, Gina’s dad quickly snatching her from Jake’s arms.

He buries his face in her hair, making her cry harder again as her arms snake tightly around his neck.

Jake’s dad slings an arm around Jake’s shoulders, ruffling his hair and pulling him in for a side hug. I quietly retreat from the house, leaving them to look after her.

***

Jake and Gina are absent from school for the whole week. Jake is ghosting me hard, occasionally answering my texts with one-word replies, and declining my calls.

The hot topic at school is the party. Macy and Robyn are acting like they fucking saved us from some heinous dictator or something.

~No way, I thought to myself. You just ruined a good party with your jealous bullshit.~

~

~

Katy has completely stopped talking to them, going so far as to quit the cheer squad. I was dubious about her, to begin with, but PJ assures us she had no idea they were planning anything.

She has been trying to call and text Gina but says there’s been no response, and the phone goes straight to voicemail, so she thinks Gina has turned it off.

I decide to pay it back and get all of the week’s assignments for both Gina and Jake, taking time to copy all of my notes from class for Gina as she did for me the other week.

I skip football practice and drive to their house.

After the second time I ring the bell, a miserable-looking Jake opens the door.

“Hey.” I shift my weight between my feet uncomfortably. “I…uh…I thought you guys might…well probably won’t…”

Jake chuckles, his green eyes lighting up a little. “Dude. You know you’re kinda cute when you’re nervous.”

I roll my eyes, shoving his shoulder gently. He flashes a genuine smile and steps back to let me in.

“She’s upstairs.” He leans back against the handrail, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “I think she’d appreciate seeing someone else’s face besides mine.” He smirks.

Nervously, I hesitate outside her bedroom door. I can hear the faint rumble of Tom Waits from the other side. ~Didn’t think anyone else my age actually listened to this~.

~

~

“Jake! You can only come back in here if you promise to keep your thieving hands off my candy.” I smile and push her door open. Gina is lying on her bed, surrounded by bags of candy.

Her unusual eyes, one blue, one green, meet my chocolate brown ones from behind her black plastic spectacles. “Oh. It’s you,” she says in surprise.

“I thought I’d repay you.” I wave the stack of notes at her. She smiles a little and points for me to put them on her desk.

I set them down, sit on the end of her bed, and look at her. The skin around her eyes is still a little red, and her face is pale. Her long hair is twisted up on top of her head.

She’s wearing an oversized hoodie and Batman logo shorts. Her green plastered leg is stretched out in front of her, painted toenails to match.

“How are you doing?”

She shrugs, and her eyes start to go glossy with fresh tears. I pluck a bag of jellybeans off the bed and toss them between my hands.

“Drew would be in absolute heaven in this room right now.” Gina snorts, surreptitiously wiping a tear from her cheek.

“I’ve never known a boy with such a sweet tooth as Drew.” She smiles a little.

I settle back a little more, leaning against the wall and toeing off my boots.

“You know we went on a date, him and me?” Her eyes flick up to mine again, and I nod. “He’s great…” She trails off, twisting her hands together.

“So, how come you didn’t go out again?” I grilled Drew already about their date, much to Jake’s amusement and Drew’s puzzlement.

He said there just wasn’t that kind of spark between them, but now I suspect it has more to do with the boy from the photo Macy had.

Gina clears her throat and pulls the sleeves of her hoodie down over her hands.

“Jake really never told you anything about me, huh?”

I shake my head. “Come on, for the last few years, I thought his best friend was some dude called George.”

She half-smiles.

“All I know is you guys are like brother and sister, and he hated the fact you all lived so far from each other.”

“Um…all that she said was true.” Gina’s voice is practically a whisper. “When I was thirteen, my mom killed herself by stepping out in front of a train in rush hour. I was there.”

She pauses, swallowing down hard. “I…uh…I saw it all. It was like it was in slow motion.” She shudders. “Afterward, my dad, he really wasn’t coping too good. I didn’t help.”

A tear escapes and winds its way down her cheek. “I kinda went off the rails, dragged Jake off with me too. Partying with a slightly older crowd. Weekends drinking and smoking.

“There was this guy, Parker…Jake had told me not to go…but he was always so nice to me…he was the cute skater boy all the girls wanted…I said no…” She looks up at me.

“The first couple of times he did it, he was real apologetic. Blamed it on the beer, the weed. Then one night, he kept giving me drinks.

“I could barely walk…I couldn’t stop him when he pulled my shorts down…his f-friends…they…”

~Fuck me.~

~

Gina closes her eyes for a moment. “Jake found me but not before they had finished. He blames himself for not being there. My dad tried to press charges, but Parker’s dad had connections, and he managed to get off.”

She falls silent.

~So that was why Jake was so quick to sucker-punch me when I said I had her passed out drunk in my bed.~

~

I jump as Jake speaks up behind me. “The fucker spread it round everywhere that she was a slut who was begging for it.” His eyes flash with anger.

“For two years, I had to endure his shit, but then he went to college and got done for slipping date rape drugs into some girl’s drink.

“Hope he’s enjoying getting ass fucked in jail by some huge guy he has to call Daddy.”

Gina giggles, wiping her tears away.

I reach over and take Gina’s hand.

“I’m so sorry that shit happened to you. I don’t know where the fuck Macy found out about all that, but don’t let it stop you from holding your head up high when you walk back into school.

“You’ve proven you’re a survivor by being able to move on with your life.”

She squeezes my hand and mouths thank you.

***

Monday morning, I pull up outside Jake and Gina’s house and beep my horn. Jake bounds down the drive and into my passenger seat, grin on his face.

“She’s back, baby!” He excitedly bounces in his seat.

“Wha…?” I catch sight of Gina walking out the front door. Her hair is in a high ponytail, her glasses are on, and even from here, I can see she’s not plastered in makeup like usual. Her skin looks luminous.

She’s wearing cut-off jean shorts and a pale blue Hook Ups T-shirt layered over a white long-sleeved tee, battered forest green Vans on her available foot, and backpack slung over one shoulder.

~She looks hot as fuck.~

~

I stutter out a hello. She pulls herself into the back seat with a shy smile.

On the drive to school, I can barely concentrate on the road. My eyes keep wandering back to the rearview mirror to look at Gina.

Jake annoyingly keeps catching me do it and is grinning so wide I’m positive his cheeks are gonna start cramping soon.

I’m obviously not the only one who thinks Gina looks good today. Drew does an actual double-take when we walk up to them.

Jake keeps his arm around her protectively until the bell rings, and she forcibly has to pull out from underneath it.

I sit down on the desk next to her, staring down Craig as he tries to get me to move out of what is historically his seat.

With a huff, he finally sits where I normally sit, and Gina looks at me with a raised eyebrow. I smile widely back at her, and she shakes her head with a smile.

Sitting next to her in all our classes, I really notice for the first time that she sits in the back far corner every time.

As soon as she unpacks all her things, she discretely slides in a headphone to her one ear.

How she manages to make such decent notes and always answer correctly when called on while listening to music, I don’t know. ~Maybe she is smarter than me~.

We walk to lunch together, which pulls a few looks. Usually, we were bitching at each other. As we stand in line for food, Macy and Robyn walk past.

“I see you’ve retreated back to the land of dressing like a dyke, huh, Gina?” Macy titters.

“Oh, why don’t you just fuck off and work on your collection of STDs, Macy,” Jake says tiredly, grabbing Gina’s hand and pulling her out of the queue. Macy scowls, her face turning red.

“Why did you do it?” I ask genuinely.

Her face twists into a smirk. “Because she’s always acted like she’s so much better than us.”

“And when we found out how much she’d changed herself to fit in, it was just too funny.” Robyn flips her hair over her shoulder with an unattractive snort.

When I get over to where my friends are sitting, PJ and Drew are arguing, as usual, about some shit, and Jake and Gina are huddled together whispering.

I sit down opposite them and smile, setting down the extra slice of pizza I’d snagged in front of Gina.

“So what’cha talkin’ about?”