“Face it, Logan. We’re a lot more alike than you want to think we are,” she interrupted. “Maybe you don’t really like those parties anymore than I do. You’re coming down on me for drinking, but just told me you thought you were going to have a lame time because you couldn’t drink. Are those people really your friends if you can only stomach them by drinking with them or sitting on the couch and making fun of them?”
Why did she always have to twist my words around and throw them back at me?
We didn’t speak much after that. Jo leaned her head against her window and closed her eyes. These silences often consumed us. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this particular one. When I pulled in front of the small, rundown house Jo was living at currently, she slowly lifted her head from the window. The house wasn’t much and I could understand how it would never feel like home. I could read it in the hesitant way her body moved to open the door. How could she ever have a home when she was passed from person to person?
I was pretty sure that much like me, she never knew what it meant to have a home. It didn’t matter I had lived with my uncle as long as I could remember; it would never feel like a home. He made sure it was that way.
Looking at her now, the way her once flushed cheeks had paled, the weariness that settled in her eyes as she looked at the chain-link fence that surrounded the house of the woman who was getting paid to raise her, I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to go back to my house.
“You want to keep driving?” I asked her as she opened the door.
Jo pulled the door shut, and that’s all the answer I needed.
Chapter 25
We really didn’t do much more driving around. We parked. Not that either of us had any intention of doing all the things teenagers did when they parked somewhere late at night, wondering if it was worth it considering how much trouble they were going to get in when their parents realized they weren’t home by curfew. I guess it depended on how far they could get with the girl they were parking with. First base? Second? Third?
Not that I ever had to worry about that. You actually had to have parents who cared to get in trouble.
Mostly, we sat quietly listening to music. We were pulled into a grocery store parking lot. If Jenna was with me, I’d suggest we go over to I-Hop, but I didn’t think Jo or I wanted to risk running into any of the Shepherd High students who frequented the place late nights during the weekend.
I had my I-pod plugged in. When Baba O’Riley by The WHO came on, Jo reached forward and turned up the sound. “You like The Who?” I asked. Jenna couldn’t stand listening to them. I was convinced my mother must have listened to them while I was in the womb because I couldn’t get enough of them.
“No. I only turn the music up when I don’t like a song,” Jo teased, a smile on her lips. She reached her hand forward, stopping in front of my chest, and pretended to turn me up.
“Very funny,” I said, louder than needed. Jo laughed again and shook her head.
“You know what I didn’t do tonight during my quest to feel like a real teenager?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I didn’t dance. That’s a staple of the whole drunk girl routine, right? To dance with no inhibitions? I was really striving to be as stereotypical as possible.”
I turned up the music even louder. “What are you waiting for, Jo? No time like the present,” I yelled over the noise that filled my car. I expected some smart remark in return, but Jo pushed open the passenger door and turned to me with a raised eyebrow.
Before I could make sense of what was happening, Jo was standing in the middle of the parking lot. Dancing. To The Who. The sounds of which crawled across the empty parking lot. Surrounding us. Protecting us.
This wasn’t the future where we fought to save existence.
This wasn’t the past where we learned how much of our lives had been touched by the things we didn’t yet understand.
It wasn’t Shepherd High were the balance between shifting and attempting to just get through without causing too many waves was getting harder and harder to keep.
Between the words of Baba O’Riley, this was just a world where we could be us.
I got out of the car and walked to the passenger side. We both left our doors open so the sound could go where it wanted. So, it could be free. As I leaned against the car and watched her dance, I wasn’t surprised by how good she was. She was good at everything. She was a beast of an athlete after all. Maybe it was the residual effects of the alcohol or because I had goaded her, but she danced with a freedom I hadn’t seen her body exhibit outside the track field. As her hips moved back and forth, her arms in the air, my smile grew. She began to playfully spin around when the song broke into its musical interlude, and her red curly hair looked a little like a fireball against the blackness of the night.