IMAGINARY FRIEND
Jules was late. I should have expected it. He'd gone out with his friends.
I was supposed to be one of his friends, but no one else knew it, so of course I hadn't been invited to go along. That was how it had been since our freshman year when we'd been paired up to do an English assignment. We had a lot in common, and in private, we could talk for hours and never run out of things to say
In public, we barely spoke. No one knew Jules and I were friends except us.
I was used to it, but it was getting worse lately. At first, he'd at least said hi to me in halls. Once in a while he'd even sat with me at lunch. He'd been friendly to me in public, even if he hadn't wanted anyone to know we were actually friends.
Since July, though, when he'd started dating Marybeth, everything had changed. M.B., everyone called her. Cheerleader, on target to become captain of the squad next year when we would be seniors. Popular, walking down the hall flipping her wavy blonde hair-or straight blonde, depending on how she'd styled it that morning.
She faked friendly at me all the time. A bright little smile with a pleasant little, "Good morning, Trinity. How are you today?"
Every time I answered her with more than a hello, she turned into Queen Snark. "Oh, why aren't you feeling well? Oh, why didn't you do your homework? Why are you complaining about things when other people have it so much worse? You need to be more positive, Trin, or no one's going to like you."
I'd heard her spiel more times in the past two years than I could count, and I had every word memorized.
Jules had promised we would stay friends. He'd told me Marybeth didn't dislike me, she just didn't like some of the things I said. According to him, she wanted to be my friend and was trying to help me fit in.
According to him, Marybeth knew he and I were friends because he hadn't wanted to lie to her about me. They weren't exclusive, he'd said, so there wasn't any problem about him hanging out with me. But I wasn't so sure that had been a good idea, because in the two months since we'd started junior year, Marybeth's snark had gotten worse, and I'd caught some of her friends glaring at me in class and at lunch.
And Jules didn't talk to me at school anymore. Not even to say hello.
He still tried to make time to see me, at least. Sundays, usually, because Marybeth was the good girl who went to church with her mommy and daddy. Even though Jules had told me Marybeth had sucked him off on their second date and fucked him on their third.
I had no clue why he thought I wanted to know things like that. He claimed he was just being honest.
I looked at the clock. It was already three. Jules was supposed to have shown up at two, and my parents would be home in less than two hours.
Not that it mattered. Today, we wouldn't be doing anything I didn't want my parents to know about.
I shouldn't have been sitting at the living room window watching for his car. Seriously, who did that? Well, obviously I did. When Jules and I had first become friends, I'd been so shy I barely talked. Thanks to the shit that had happened to me in junior high, I'd walked hunched over and almost never looked anyone in the eye. If anyone spoke to me, I jumped.
If anyone touched me, I ran.
No more. I had to give Jules some credit. Thanks to him and to some of the other friends I'd made in a new town and new school, I stood up straight now. I talked when I had something to say. I was still kind of shy, but I wasn't afraid of people now. I knew I was worth something.
