Collide, p.14
Collide, page 14
Emery wanted to practice driving. Russell had his license already, and Emery wanted Hazard there for encouragement—which Emery definitely needed after he drove his mom’s car into the little ditch off Fern Street, where all the lower-end houses were and the roads were usually empty. The ditch wasn’t even that deep, but Emery panicked, and Russell had to switch seats with him quickly while Hazard fell down laughing in the back seat. He couldn’t help it, even when Emery glowered at him and Russell drove them out of the small dip between road and trashy yard. The car was fine. Emery’s pride was not.
Jesse could play the piano. He didn’t like to show people, but he showed Hazard once, down the hall in his Elite Street house in his dad’s study where the piano was. It was strange to see somebody like Jesse Logan Wesley sitting behind a piano creating numinous music out of silence, but ultimately touching.
Once at a party after they went to a room to make out in private, Hazard accidentally put Jesse’s shirt on. It was dark. He couldn’t see. Jesse laughed at him. Jesse’s shirt actually fit nicely, not exactly the right size but not too big at all, and it smelled good and it was warm. Hazard didn’t want to switch back. Jesse didn’t make him. After that, sometimes they switched shirts on purpose just to see if anyone noticed. Felix and Lexie and Brianna did, of course. Some people looked confused. Jesse and Hazard thought it was hilarious.
Lexie worked at Cold Stone Creamery. When they stopped to see her, she gave them free ice cream, even though she wasn’t supposed to. It was cold out, but the ice cream was good. Hazard liked getting coffee-flavored ice cream with crumbled pecans. Jesse liked chocolate in a waffle cone.
A guy Hazard knew from freshman English came up to him one afternoon outside school while Hazard waited for Jesse to find his car keys, and he looked at Hazard with the most injured expression on his face and said, “I thought you were my friend.”
Hazard was totally confused. The old classmate left, frowning, and Jesse had to remind Hazard that a week ago, at a party, he’d blown up and berated the guy over a casual insult or two.
“It was really fucking creative—you’re hella crazy when you’re drunk, do you know that? And you hit him on the ear,” Jesse explained, motioning with a jangle of car keys.
Hazard couldn’t shake the guilt all afternoon.
The Seattle gang invited them up to party in Bellingham with other friends, and Hazard played his first game of beer pong. There was also a keg, which a group of lesbians with PETA stickers ran. The sights between Seattle and Bellingham were breathtaking, mountain highway and tulip fields. They blasted music as they drove back, smelling like smoke and yelling at Jesse to drive safely because two drinks were still two drinks, and Hazard thought it was amazing how “All That I’ve Got” still seemed to feel relevant.
In early November, Jesse’s car broke down. His battery needed to be replaced. He texted Hazard while he waited for the tow truck, long, colorful, ranting texts. Like everything else, Jesse’s dad covered all the costs. Jesse’s car was running fine again by the end of the week.
Miley Baker asked Hazard out after a party, and Jesse thought it was hilarious. “Go,” he insisted. “When was the last time someone asked you out? Go.”
Hazard went to the Bethany Town Center mall with her. They wandered around from store to store, and it was kind of awkward, kind of stiff. Hazard didn’t really know what to do. He thought about dating Olivia for a few weeks, then about how much he hated Jesse and Felix for (cruelly) convincing him to do this, and then he just tried to make Miley laugh, but that was sort of hard to do. They hugged good-bye when her dad picked her up. She didn’t call him or anything. Hazard was embarrassed but kind of glad.
Emery took drama. Now and then he asked Hazard for his honest opinion about this monologue or that interpretation, and Hazard loved the fact that Emery asked him and not Russell.
There was a party at the beach by Port Orchard, the smell of cold wet sand and icy water, the November chill even through a sweater. It was mostly laid-back. There was a handful of people Hazard didn’t recognize, but that was okay. They drank, sitting together on the cold beach. They had a casual wrestling match that Lexie won. Jesse let Lexie have a cigarette or two, and then everybody wanted to see Hazard have a cigarette, so he smoked one for them. He lay on Felix’s blanket on gravelly sand, next to Brianna. She pointed out constellations to him while everyone else played drinking games. Hazard put his arm through one sleeve of his coat and let Brianna use the other, and they huddled together in the middle part. Eventually, they all decided it was too cold, so they just went home.
Hazard agreed to go with Emery, Russell, and Lily to the mall. It was actually fun. Russell bought lunch.
Hazard officially met Jesse’s parents. They weren’t uncaring at all, just a little distracted. Hazard hoped he wasn’t a charity case to them with as nice as they acted. Jesse’s dad liked to talk about his job. Hazard saw that Jesse looked like his mom, slim and pretty with the same straight nose and smoothly angled face. Jesse’s parents thought Hazard was a very good boy, which Jesse scoffed at, and Hazard had to explain his unique name one more time before they decided it was normal enough. They weren’t involved often, so even after meeting them, it still felt like he was sneaking around most of the time.
Jesse and Felix showed Hazard how they got their tattoos. Felix’s aunt was a nurse and had the means to notarize parental signatures—even forged ones—and it also helped that the tattoo artist knew Jesse’s Seattle friend, Max, pretty well. They also got discounts on piercings because of this connection, and that was why they took Hazard to the shop.
The shop was called Temple Art, playing sanctimoniously off the idea that the body was God’s temple. The tattoo artist Jesse knew was really nice. The shop smelled a little bit like mold and a lot like fresh burning incense, but it looked like a professional place. Jesse paid for Hazard to get a barbell in his left brow, just like him. They all agreed it made him look less cute and much more badass.
When his mom saw it, however, she didn’t talk to him for an entire week.
“YOU’RE gonna get someone pregnant one day,” Jesse teased, the same way he teased about the photo Felix took when Hazard wasn’t paying attention, messy dark hair and laughter on his face, the one Hazard hated and everyone else loved. Hazard knew by the way Jesse grinned that he was drunk, and Lexie agreed with his declaration with a snort and a laugh.
“No, I’m not,” Hazard argued, scowling over his drink. “I only have sex with one person, you know.”
“Oh, yeah!” Jesse and Lexie howled with laughter, both well aware of who that one person was: Jesse.
Hazard blushed. He didn’t think it was that funny.
“You need a blue bracelet,” Lexie announced.
Hazard’s jaw dropped. “I am not getting blue.”
Jesse gasped, struck by an idea. “No, you need glittery blue,” he said.
“Yes!”
“No,” Hazard said, blushing hotly. He snickered because he was tipsy, but he was sincerely adamant about not having any kind of blue sex bracelet. Blue meant he’d give blow jobs. Glittery blue meant he was willing to have sex that way. Which was all true, after all, just not something he wanted to advertise.
They were in the corner of Ashton’s living room, trying to have a conversation over loud voices and music somebody wouldn’t turn down a little. Jesse snapped one of Lexie’s bracelets, and Lexie started babbling about hypothetically, if Hazard was drunk enough, he’d never know whom he had sex with, but Hazard didn’t believe that. He never didn’t know. He was perfectly aware of whom he went home with and who undid his pants, but it was still scary to think about party sex. He was lucky, he guessed, to have someone like Jesse who shielded him from everything else.
The cops were called on that party, right after they left. They passed the police car on their way down the street, and even though they felt bad for Ashton, they were still relieved.
Hazard remembered that conversation—about getting somebody pregnant—when he sat in the nurse’s office near the end of November and waited, sick to his stomach, for her to get off the phone so he could ask her the difference between a cold sore, a canker sore, and some kind of STD.
Like the poster near the nurse’s bulletin board proclaimed, the sore in his mouth turned out to just be a canker sore. The nurse said it was probably from stress, which created an imbalance in his system, and Hazard knew it was somehow connected to his exhausting extracurricular activities. There were effects, he knew, and he felt them—hangovers and lack of appetite and a general feeling of blah during the day.
He was more than relieved to know it wasn’t anything serious, but he still had to sit through a brief stern speech, well-rehearsed and appreciated, about how the virus that created cold sores was the same virus that created some genital warts, and it was as simple as sharing ChapStick with someone who was having a flare-up to catch the virus yourself. Hazard gawked up at her, terrified and thinking about how many things he shared with other people that involved spit—drinks, forks, suckers, kisses. He did not want to think about STDs, not at all.
Hazard was absolutely miserable by the time he hurried back to Chemistry, but at least he just had a canker sore. He texted Jesse, but Jesse didn’t seem to really care. He was probably irritated that Hazard interrupted his nap in study hall. That was his period to sleep, and if he didn’t sleep, he usually got some kind of detention for goofing off with friends. Hazard hoped for the former.
ON THANKSGIVING, Hazard’s mom wanted to see her brother, so they stayed the long weekend in Seattle. Hazard’s aunt and uncle lived in Ravenna, a classy neighborhood where a lot of university graduates and professors lived. The adults drank blackberry wine and sat around in his uncle’s dining room eating deviled eggs, artichokes, and prosciutto. His uncle was a director at the university medical center, and his house was almost as frighteningly clean as theirs. Hazard’s mom loved it. Hazard was stuck with his cousin Zoe most of the weekend, which was sort of frustrating at times. On the giant TV in his uncle’s media room, they watched Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Fear Factor, then played video games.
While they all sat around an impressive Thanksgiving dinner, Hazard thought about Emery, and Jesse, and everything he had—and he knew exactly what he was thankful for.
Chapter 9
December
JESSE on Nyquil was a lot nicer than Jesse off Nyquil. He was goofy and smiled a lot more, but the deep congested cough the flu left him with for two weeks was definitely not worth a clumsy drugged Jesse who came out of class looking disheveled and high, saying, “Danger! I just had a bitchin’ nap. If Mr. Lewis passed out pillows and blankets, I’d confuse US History with my bed. That’s how easy it is to fall asleep in there.”
On cold and flu medicine, Jesse talked forever. Hazard sat on Jesse’s bedroom floor watching Fuse, knowing that being in such close proximity to Jesse meant he was going to get sick too. They laughed about what would happen if Jesse had a twin sister, if she’d be hot and if Hazard would crush on her.
“I like it when you laugh like that,” Jesse mumbled, cocooned in his blanket. Hazard blushed. Jesse smirked, a drugged little smirk. “I like that too,” he added, referring to Hazard’s look of chagrin.
Hazard blushed again and turned up the volume on the TV. They decided that the world was not ready for two Jesses, and from that point on Jesse got really loopy. He ranted about dumb things, and Hazard sat on his floor, biting back smiles and glancing between Jesse’s old beaten-up Fender (covered in stickers), his overflowing bookshelf, and the TV surrounded by hard-core posters. Jesse could have been a hoarder in another life, for all the carefully organized mess in his room.
Jesse fell asleep quickly after that. It was kind of adorable.
Thankfully, after another week, Jesse was getting better, but by then Hazard was sick too. That was what happened to friends who made out a lot. They shared flus. Hazard had a croupy cough for the same week or so, but it cleared up with a lot of cold and flu medicine. Emery teased him lovingly because it made his voice scratchy for a few days.
“It’s like you’re going through puberty all over again,” Emery snickered when Hazard’s words squeaked or rasped. Jesse and everyone else laughed too, probably thinking the same thing. Hazard felt fine otherwise, after all, and he definitely felt good enough to go to Emery’s birthday party on December 2.
Everyone had MySpace now, and it was a lot of fun to stay up late leaving dumb messages back and forth on each other’s pages. People from parties found Hazard sometimes. He was afraid to accept their friend requests. Felix liked to post pictures that he’d taken of them all. Lexie was good at HTML and helped them each make their profiles more badass. Once, Hazard stayed up for hours commenting whole songs line by line back and forth with Emery. They did “Pop” and other songs they remembered from when they were little. Russell called them both fags, so Emery made “Pop” his profile music for a while.
The December air was freezing, but there was no good party one night, and everybody wanted to go out. Hazard went with Jesse, Felix, Lexie, and the rest of the crew to put stickers on streetlamps and stop signs, and then they went to the park across from the Catholic school. It was decorated for Christmas, big red velvet bows on the lampposts and wreaths on the bathroom doors. The Catholic school was decorated too. Hazard sat on the edge of the playground watching Lexie and Brianna swing. Jesse sat next to him, smoking a cigarette. He let Hazard lean on him.
Everybody laughed at Hazard because he was stunned when Felix confessed he and Ashton were together.
“You didn’t know?” Lexie simpered. “Seriously, Hazard, you didn’t know?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t think about it—”
Felix demanded to know if it was that obvious, and Hazard wondered what they all thought about him and Jesse.
Eventually, it got far too cold even with coats and gloves. Jesse migrated to the empty bathrooms. Hazard went with him, and they made faces at each other in the dirty mirrors there. There was a crack in one that Hazard touched curiously, and a sliver of glass fell down.
“Seven years of bad luck,” Jesse admonished.
Lexie and Brianna joined them, even though it was the boys’ bathroom. Felix and Ashton were sharing body heat in the slide, with tongue and wandering hands involved. Jesse started reading the tagging on the bathroom wall. Hazard could see his breath. Finally they all huddled together there in the bathrooms, sitting against the wall and listening to the sounds of nighttime, waiting for Felix and Ashton to finish up so they could go home. It was late. It was dark and it was cold, and the park was empty.
A car drove up through the park and stopped near the bathrooms. Hazard and Brianna saw it first, as they peeked out of the bathroom door. A suspicious-looking guy got out alone, scowling at the world in general. He glanced at them from his parked car. Lexie suggested that maybe he was meeting someone there for a drug deal.
“Okay,” Jesse grunted, straightening up and shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s time to go.”
They blasted the new Nickelback song “Animals” as they all went home.
FOR the first two weeks of December, Caelyn Westberg scared Hazard to death.
She was a senior. She seemed kind of half-cocked, wearing a little too much eyeliner and tight shirts even though she didn’t really have anything to show off. She had layered brown hair and green eyes, and like a lot of other girls, she wanted Jesse.
She went to all the same parties they did. She said something funny that Hazard didn’t get but Jesse sure as hell did, and he thought she was hilarious. Caelyn had a tendency to wait until Jesse was past buzzed and Hazard wasn’t by him, and then she sat and tossed back beer with him like she actually belonged there at his side. She even snapped one of his bracelets. He didn’t act on it.
Hazard knew she did it on purpose. He felt like all her saccharine glances and subtle smirks were directed at him, because she knew she had to get past Hazard to get to Jesse. It made Hazard sick. It made him sick when she flashed everyone one night, as if it would really help her in her cause. Jesse howled with laughter at it. He told Caelyn she had balls. He was drunk, of course. Caelyn was too, and she was flattered.
Hazard was jealous. He was furious. He was afraid. Everyone knew that Hazard was Jesse’s favorite, and he wasn’t going to tolerate anyone else trying to take his place.
He confronted Jesse the next time he spent the night, sitting cross-legged on Jesse’s bedroom floor in a T-shirt and boxers while the hours crept past midnight and Jesse played video games.
“You know, crushes are supposed to last only four weeks or something like that,” Hazard said.
Jesse snorted. “Dammit, and here I thought you’d leave me alone one day—”
“So don’t get too involved with Caelyn.”
The heat in the house kicked on, a low soughing in the vents. Jesse looked sideways at Hazard from where he lay on his bed. “Are you jealous?” he asked, sounding totally shocked. Hazard knew him well enough to see that he wasn’t feigning surprise.
Hazard swallowed, chest tight, and voiced his first fear. “It’s because she’s a girl, isn’t it?”
Jesse coughed, glaring at Hazard as if to say, Wait one minute, I’m not done with you yet. Then he grabbed his pillow and chucked it at Hazard. “You’re a girl!”
Hazard caught the pillow and held onto it, hoping Jesse couldn’t see how troubled he really was. “Why would someone like you be with me because you want to? It’s just another way to get off, right?”
“No, that’s not it at all. Where is this even coming from?”
“Caelyn Westberg!”
“Oh, yeah? Holy shit, Danger, I don’t like her at all. She kind of bugs me.” Jesse looked incredulous. “You’re jealous!”
“No.” Hazard threw the pillow back, hitting the game controller out of Jesse’s hand. Jesse was startled. “I just know that I’m lucky to have you,” Hazard explained, jaw tightening. He felt the same sick vulnerable sensation he got when he thought about Emery being around Russell, and he couldn’t explain why. It hurt. He felt lonely. “Everyone wants you. You could get with anyone but you get with me, and I don’t want anyone taking that away from me!”
Jesse could play the piano. He didn’t like to show people, but he showed Hazard once, down the hall in his Elite Street house in his dad’s study where the piano was. It was strange to see somebody like Jesse Logan Wesley sitting behind a piano creating numinous music out of silence, but ultimately touching.
Once at a party after they went to a room to make out in private, Hazard accidentally put Jesse’s shirt on. It was dark. He couldn’t see. Jesse laughed at him. Jesse’s shirt actually fit nicely, not exactly the right size but not too big at all, and it smelled good and it was warm. Hazard didn’t want to switch back. Jesse didn’t make him. After that, sometimes they switched shirts on purpose just to see if anyone noticed. Felix and Lexie and Brianna did, of course. Some people looked confused. Jesse and Hazard thought it was hilarious.
Lexie worked at Cold Stone Creamery. When they stopped to see her, she gave them free ice cream, even though she wasn’t supposed to. It was cold out, but the ice cream was good. Hazard liked getting coffee-flavored ice cream with crumbled pecans. Jesse liked chocolate in a waffle cone.
A guy Hazard knew from freshman English came up to him one afternoon outside school while Hazard waited for Jesse to find his car keys, and he looked at Hazard with the most injured expression on his face and said, “I thought you were my friend.”
Hazard was totally confused. The old classmate left, frowning, and Jesse had to remind Hazard that a week ago, at a party, he’d blown up and berated the guy over a casual insult or two.
“It was really fucking creative—you’re hella crazy when you’re drunk, do you know that? And you hit him on the ear,” Jesse explained, motioning with a jangle of car keys.
Hazard couldn’t shake the guilt all afternoon.
The Seattle gang invited them up to party in Bellingham with other friends, and Hazard played his first game of beer pong. There was also a keg, which a group of lesbians with PETA stickers ran. The sights between Seattle and Bellingham were breathtaking, mountain highway and tulip fields. They blasted music as they drove back, smelling like smoke and yelling at Jesse to drive safely because two drinks were still two drinks, and Hazard thought it was amazing how “All That I’ve Got” still seemed to feel relevant.
In early November, Jesse’s car broke down. His battery needed to be replaced. He texted Hazard while he waited for the tow truck, long, colorful, ranting texts. Like everything else, Jesse’s dad covered all the costs. Jesse’s car was running fine again by the end of the week.
Miley Baker asked Hazard out after a party, and Jesse thought it was hilarious. “Go,” he insisted. “When was the last time someone asked you out? Go.”
Hazard went to the Bethany Town Center mall with her. They wandered around from store to store, and it was kind of awkward, kind of stiff. Hazard didn’t really know what to do. He thought about dating Olivia for a few weeks, then about how much he hated Jesse and Felix for (cruelly) convincing him to do this, and then he just tried to make Miley laugh, but that was sort of hard to do. They hugged good-bye when her dad picked her up. She didn’t call him or anything. Hazard was embarrassed but kind of glad.
Emery took drama. Now and then he asked Hazard for his honest opinion about this monologue or that interpretation, and Hazard loved the fact that Emery asked him and not Russell.
There was a party at the beach by Port Orchard, the smell of cold wet sand and icy water, the November chill even through a sweater. It was mostly laid-back. There was a handful of people Hazard didn’t recognize, but that was okay. They drank, sitting together on the cold beach. They had a casual wrestling match that Lexie won. Jesse let Lexie have a cigarette or two, and then everybody wanted to see Hazard have a cigarette, so he smoked one for them. He lay on Felix’s blanket on gravelly sand, next to Brianna. She pointed out constellations to him while everyone else played drinking games. Hazard put his arm through one sleeve of his coat and let Brianna use the other, and they huddled together in the middle part. Eventually, they all decided it was too cold, so they just went home.
Hazard agreed to go with Emery, Russell, and Lily to the mall. It was actually fun. Russell bought lunch.
Hazard officially met Jesse’s parents. They weren’t uncaring at all, just a little distracted. Hazard hoped he wasn’t a charity case to them with as nice as they acted. Jesse’s dad liked to talk about his job. Hazard saw that Jesse looked like his mom, slim and pretty with the same straight nose and smoothly angled face. Jesse’s parents thought Hazard was a very good boy, which Jesse scoffed at, and Hazard had to explain his unique name one more time before they decided it was normal enough. They weren’t involved often, so even after meeting them, it still felt like he was sneaking around most of the time.
Jesse and Felix showed Hazard how they got their tattoos. Felix’s aunt was a nurse and had the means to notarize parental signatures—even forged ones—and it also helped that the tattoo artist knew Jesse’s Seattle friend, Max, pretty well. They also got discounts on piercings because of this connection, and that was why they took Hazard to the shop.
The shop was called Temple Art, playing sanctimoniously off the idea that the body was God’s temple. The tattoo artist Jesse knew was really nice. The shop smelled a little bit like mold and a lot like fresh burning incense, but it looked like a professional place. Jesse paid for Hazard to get a barbell in his left brow, just like him. They all agreed it made him look less cute and much more badass.
When his mom saw it, however, she didn’t talk to him for an entire week.
“YOU’RE gonna get someone pregnant one day,” Jesse teased, the same way he teased about the photo Felix took when Hazard wasn’t paying attention, messy dark hair and laughter on his face, the one Hazard hated and everyone else loved. Hazard knew by the way Jesse grinned that he was drunk, and Lexie agreed with his declaration with a snort and a laugh.
“No, I’m not,” Hazard argued, scowling over his drink. “I only have sex with one person, you know.”
“Oh, yeah!” Jesse and Lexie howled with laughter, both well aware of who that one person was: Jesse.
Hazard blushed. He didn’t think it was that funny.
“You need a blue bracelet,” Lexie announced.
Hazard’s jaw dropped. “I am not getting blue.”
Jesse gasped, struck by an idea. “No, you need glittery blue,” he said.
“Yes!”
“No,” Hazard said, blushing hotly. He snickered because he was tipsy, but he was sincerely adamant about not having any kind of blue sex bracelet. Blue meant he’d give blow jobs. Glittery blue meant he was willing to have sex that way. Which was all true, after all, just not something he wanted to advertise.
They were in the corner of Ashton’s living room, trying to have a conversation over loud voices and music somebody wouldn’t turn down a little. Jesse snapped one of Lexie’s bracelets, and Lexie started babbling about hypothetically, if Hazard was drunk enough, he’d never know whom he had sex with, but Hazard didn’t believe that. He never didn’t know. He was perfectly aware of whom he went home with and who undid his pants, but it was still scary to think about party sex. He was lucky, he guessed, to have someone like Jesse who shielded him from everything else.
The cops were called on that party, right after they left. They passed the police car on their way down the street, and even though they felt bad for Ashton, they were still relieved.
Hazard remembered that conversation—about getting somebody pregnant—when he sat in the nurse’s office near the end of November and waited, sick to his stomach, for her to get off the phone so he could ask her the difference between a cold sore, a canker sore, and some kind of STD.
Like the poster near the nurse’s bulletin board proclaimed, the sore in his mouth turned out to just be a canker sore. The nurse said it was probably from stress, which created an imbalance in his system, and Hazard knew it was somehow connected to his exhausting extracurricular activities. There were effects, he knew, and he felt them—hangovers and lack of appetite and a general feeling of blah during the day.
He was more than relieved to know it wasn’t anything serious, but he still had to sit through a brief stern speech, well-rehearsed and appreciated, about how the virus that created cold sores was the same virus that created some genital warts, and it was as simple as sharing ChapStick with someone who was having a flare-up to catch the virus yourself. Hazard gawked up at her, terrified and thinking about how many things he shared with other people that involved spit—drinks, forks, suckers, kisses. He did not want to think about STDs, not at all.
Hazard was absolutely miserable by the time he hurried back to Chemistry, but at least he just had a canker sore. He texted Jesse, but Jesse didn’t seem to really care. He was probably irritated that Hazard interrupted his nap in study hall. That was his period to sleep, and if he didn’t sleep, he usually got some kind of detention for goofing off with friends. Hazard hoped for the former.
ON THANKSGIVING, Hazard’s mom wanted to see her brother, so they stayed the long weekend in Seattle. Hazard’s aunt and uncle lived in Ravenna, a classy neighborhood where a lot of university graduates and professors lived. The adults drank blackberry wine and sat around in his uncle’s dining room eating deviled eggs, artichokes, and prosciutto. His uncle was a director at the university medical center, and his house was almost as frighteningly clean as theirs. Hazard’s mom loved it. Hazard was stuck with his cousin Zoe most of the weekend, which was sort of frustrating at times. On the giant TV in his uncle’s media room, they watched Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Fear Factor, then played video games.
While they all sat around an impressive Thanksgiving dinner, Hazard thought about Emery, and Jesse, and everything he had—and he knew exactly what he was thankful for.
Chapter 9
December
JESSE on Nyquil was a lot nicer than Jesse off Nyquil. He was goofy and smiled a lot more, but the deep congested cough the flu left him with for two weeks was definitely not worth a clumsy drugged Jesse who came out of class looking disheveled and high, saying, “Danger! I just had a bitchin’ nap. If Mr. Lewis passed out pillows and blankets, I’d confuse US History with my bed. That’s how easy it is to fall asleep in there.”
On cold and flu medicine, Jesse talked forever. Hazard sat on Jesse’s bedroom floor watching Fuse, knowing that being in such close proximity to Jesse meant he was going to get sick too. They laughed about what would happen if Jesse had a twin sister, if she’d be hot and if Hazard would crush on her.
“I like it when you laugh like that,” Jesse mumbled, cocooned in his blanket. Hazard blushed. Jesse smirked, a drugged little smirk. “I like that too,” he added, referring to Hazard’s look of chagrin.
Hazard blushed again and turned up the volume on the TV. They decided that the world was not ready for two Jesses, and from that point on Jesse got really loopy. He ranted about dumb things, and Hazard sat on his floor, biting back smiles and glancing between Jesse’s old beaten-up Fender (covered in stickers), his overflowing bookshelf, and the TV surrounded by hard-core posters. Jesse could have been a hoarder in another life, for all the carefully organized mess in his room.
Jesse fell asleep quickly after that. It was kind of adorable.
Thankfully, after another week, Jesse was getting better, but by then Hazard was sick too. That was what happened to friends who made out a lot. They shared flus. Hazard had a croupy cough for the same week or so, but it cleared up with a lot of cold and flu medicine. Emery teased him lovingly because it made his voice scratchy for a few days.
“It’s like you’re going through puberty all over again,” Emery snickered when Hazard’s words squeaked or rasped. Jesse and everyone else laughed too, probably thinking the same thing. Hazard felt fine otherwise, after all, and he definitely felt good enough to go to Emery’s birthday party on December 2.
Everyone had MySpace now, and it was a lot of fun to stay up late leaving dumb messages back and forth on each other’s pages. People from parties found Hazard sometimes. He was afraid to accept their friend requests. Felix liked to post pictures that he’d taken of them all. Lexie was good at HTML and helped them each make their profiles more badass. Once, Hazard stayed up for hours commenting whole songs line by line back and forth with Emery. They did “Pop” and other songs they remembered from when they were little. Russell called them both fags, so Emery made “Pop” his profile music for a while.
The December air was freezing, but there was no good party one night, and everybody wanted to go out. Hazard went with Jesse, Felix, Lexie, and the rest of the crew to put stickers on streetlamps and stop signs, and then they went to the park across from the Catholic school. It was decorated for Christmas, big red velvet bows on the lampposts and wreaths on the bathroom doors. The Catholic school was decorated too. Hazard sat on the edge of the playground watching Lexie and Brianna swing. Jesse sat next to him, smoking a cigarette. He let Hazard lean on him.
Everybody laughed at Hazard because he was stunned when Felix confessed he and Ashton were together.
“You didn’t know?” Lexie simpered. “Seriously, Hazard, you didn’t know?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t think about it—”
Felix demanded to know if it was that obvious, and Hazard wondered what they all thought about him and Jesse.
Eventually, it got far too cold even with coats and gloves. Jesse migrated to the empty bathrooms. Hazard went with him, and they made faces at each other in the dirty mirrors there. There was a crack in one that Hazard touched curiously, and a sliver of glass fell down.
“Seven years of bad luck,” Jesse admonished.
Lexie and Brianna joined them, even though it was the boys’ bathroom. Felix and Ashton were sharing body heat in the slide, with tongue and wandering hands involved. Jesse started reading the tagging on the bathroom wall. Hazard could see his breath. Finally they all huddled together there in the bathrooms, sitting against the wall and listening to the sounds of nighttime, waiting for Felix and Ashton to finish up so they could go home. It was late. It was dark and it was cold, and the park was empty.
A car drove up through the park and stopped near the bathrooms. Hazard and Brianna saw it first, as they peeked out of the bathroom door. A suspicious-looking guy got out alone, scowling at the world in general. He glanced at them from his parked car. Lexie suggested that maybe he was meeting someone there for a drug deal.
“Okay,” Jesse grunted, straightening up and shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s time to go.”
They blasted the new Nickelback song “Animals” as they all went home.
FOR the first two weeks of December, Caelyn Westberg scared Hazard to death.
She was a senior. She seemed kind of half-cocked, wearing a little too much eyeliner and tight shirts even though she didn’t really have anything to show off. She had layered brown hair and green eyes, and like a lot of other girls, she wanted Jesse.
She went to all the same parties they did. She said something funny that Hazard didn’t get but Jesse sure as hell did, and he thought she was hilarious. Caelyn had a tendency to wait until Jesse was past buzzed and Hazard wasn’t by him, and then she sat and tossed back beer with him like she actually belonged there at his side. She even snapped one of his bracelets. He didn’t act on it.
Hazard knew she did it on purpose. He felt like all her saccharine glances and subtle smirks were directed at him, because she knew she had to get past Hazard to get to Jesse. It made Hazard sick. It made him sick when she flashed everyone one night, as if it would really help her in her cause. Jesse howled with laughter at it. He told Caelyn she had balls. He was drunk, of course. Caelyn was too, and she was flattered.
Hazard was jealous. He was furious. He was afraid. Everyone knew that Hazard was Jesse’s favorite, and he wasn’t going to tolerate anyone else trying to take his place.
He confronted Jesse the next time he spent the night, sitting cross-legged on Jesse’s bedroom floor in a T-shirt and boxers while the hours crept past midnight and Jesse played video games.
“You know, crushes are supposed to last only four weeks or something like that,” Hazard said.
Jesse snorted. “Dammit, and here I thought you’d leave me alone one day—”
“So don’t get too involved with Caelyn.”
The heat in the house kicked on, a low soughing in the vents. Jesse looked sideways at Hazard from where he lay on his bed. “Are you jealous?” he asked, sounding totally shocked. Hazard knew him well enough to see that he wasn’t feigning surprise.
Hazard swallowed, chest tight, and voiced his first fear. “It’s because she’s a girl, isn’t it?”
Jesse coughed, glaring at Hazard as if to say, Wait one minute, I’m not done with you yet. Then he grabbed his pillow and chucked it at Hazard. “You’re a girl!”
Hazard caught the pillow and held onto it, hoping Jesse couldn’t see how troubled he really was. “Why would someone like you be with me because you want to? It’s just another way to get off, right?”
“No, that’s not it at all. Where is this even coming from?”
“Caelyn Westberg!”
“Oh, yeah? Holy shit, Danger, I don’t like her at all. She kind of bugs me.” Jesse looked incredulous. “You’re jealous!”
“No.” Hazard threw the pillow back, hitting the game controller out of Jesse’s hand. Jesse was startled. “I just know that I’m lucky to have you,” Hazard explained, jaw tightening. He felt the same sick vulnerable sensation he got when he thought about Emery being around Russell, and he couldn’t explain why. It hurt. He felt lonely. “Everyone wants you. You could get with anyone but you get with me, and I don’t want anyone taking that away from me!”
