Page 3 of Jealous Guy

Jordan used those tissues, and a pack another girl gave him, to mop up as much of the water as he could. He crouched on his haunches as he cleaned, his movements deliberate and thoroughly unhurried.

As he worked, attention drifted from him to me. Eyes that had been fixed on him or Mr. Whitfield gradually found me and settled. I remember being dimly aware of the weight of my bag digging into my shoulder, and acutely aware of the terror-inducing loss of the one thing I craved more than anything else at the time: invisibility.

The moment dragged on for eons. More eyes landed on me and unspoken whispers formed question marks that floated up and popped all around me.

I tried for a laid-back smile, but my bottom lip did this weird twitchy thing, so I quickly aborted the mission and resorted to furious blushing instead. With every second that passed, I became more painfully aware of my physical failings. When I looked down, my legs seemed to stretch out for miles, way too long and skinny in my jeans, and my feet were absurdly big in my Docs. The faded band T-shirt I was wearing had seemed like a good idea when I left home. But as I stood in front of the class, an ode to awkwardness itself, I started to panic that someone would raise their hand and demand I rattle off a list of Guns N Roses songs as some kind of tariff for wearing the branded shirt.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the band. My mom and I listened to them all the time on road trips. It’s just that, right then, I couldn’t think of a single song by them. Not one. There were a ton of other things I could have been worrying about. Believe me, I knew that. It was just that my stupid brain decided to get stuck on that issue.

“Highway to Hell?” I thought frantically.

No. That was AC/DC

“Enter Sandman?” Jesus, no. That’s Metallica.

When Jordan took his seat at last, Mr. Whitfield became aware of my existence again, though he didn’t seem terribly excited about it. “Class, this is Orion Brent,” he droned. “He transferred here from New York. Make him feel welcome.”

No one reacted except to eye me a little more suspiciously than they already were.

My discomfort swelled to the point of oozing hotly out of my pores.

Eventually, Mr. Whitfield fixed his gaze on Jordan and smiled thinly. “Tell you what. Why don’t you show him around, Jordan?”

The way he said it made it clear it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a punishment, not a privilege.

Like everything else that has failed to faze Jordan since I met him, this “punishment” didn’t bother him either. He sauntered toward me, raising his chin and flashing a bright-white grin.

“Hey, bud. I’m Jordan,” he said, as if his antics hadn’t established that already.

Having attended four schools in three different states before our move to Maine, I was all too familiar with the ins and outs of first-day school tours. In my experience, they played out in exactly two ways. They were quick to the point of being a complete waste of time—this tended to be the case when the poor asshole tasked with conducting the tour wanted nothing more than to get back to his friends as fast as possible. Or, if the tour guide was lacking in the friend department, they were overly long and overly personal, leading to a tangled web of unwelcome alliance that could take weeks, if not months, to extract oneself from.

It was hard to say which option I dreaded more.

Based on the brief interaction I’d had with Jordan, I was confident the tour would be the shortest one I’d had yet. It was clear he was popular, so I knew the last thing he wanted was to be saddled with me for any longer than necessary. His lack of obvious displeasure when he was chosen to give me the tour was something of a mystery. I suspected it had more to do with him not wanting to give Mr. Whitfield the satisfaction than it had to do with me.

My shoes squeaked on vinyl tile as I scurried down the empty hallway, trying to keep up with Jordan’s much-longer strides.

Within minutes, it became clear that this tour was nothing like any other school tour I’d had. For one thing, Jordan had a lot to say, and none of it had to do with showing me where the gym was. “The seniors aren’t bad this year, but there’s this one guy, Trip Osborne, who’s a massive dick. Red hair, red face. You’ll know him when you see him. Avoid him, but don’t worry, the rest of them are pretty cool. The senior girls are really nice, so if you run into any trouble, chill with them ’til I find you.”

Find me? Why was he planning on finding me?

He gestured to a few concrete benches at the far end of the quad we were passing through. “This is where we sit before school starts, so come here until the bell rings. That reminds me, are you going to the hangout at Tara’s house this weekend?”

I had no idea who Tara was. “I, uh—”

He switched seamlessly to another subject as I fumbled my words. I quickly gleaned that he was one of those guys who frequently changed topics and talked about people I’d never met as if I knew them well. He smiled easily and often, and he clenched his fists in rage when he talked about hockey. The Vipers had been wiping the floor with his team, the Boston Blades, for a while, and it was causing him a great deal of personal anguish.

“It’s that fucking Decker-McGuire combo, man. They’re killing us. I thought we might be in with a chance when Luddy retired, but their new center, Miroslav, is even better. I swear to God, if they take home the Stanley again this year, I will not be okay.” He leaned in, putting his face a little closer to mine than I was comfortable with, and looked at me accusingly. That close, I could see a flicker of humor crinkle the corners of his eyes. “Tell me you’re not a Vipers fan, bud. For real.”

“I, no, I’m not a Vipers fan.” It was a half-truth. Or like, a three-quarter truth.

My mom and I lived in Seattle for a couple of years before we moved to New York, and I did have a soft spot for the Vipers. I thought they were great, but I’d been born in Tampa, so the Blackeyes would always be my team. “I support the Blackeyes.”

“Oh shit.” He threw himself against the wall dramatically, shoulders jerking as if he’d taken a bullet to the heart. The Blackeyes had annihilated the Blades the last time they played, and it was clearly a sore point for him. “The Blackeyes? The Blackeyes? That’s almost as bad.”

He dusted himself off and headed toward the stairs, shaking his head and chuckling softly. He kept talking, jumping from topic to topic until my mind felt like a blank screen with a million different windows open. He interspersed his commentary by asking questions about me. He asked about the places I’d lived, the music and games I liked. Every time my anxiety began dropping to a manageable level, he’d hit me with a question that was so personal, my deluded ass got confused and started thinking he might actually want to get to know me. When I would answer, he’d stop walking and turn to face me with such a penetrating gaze that I forgot what I was saying a couple of times.

We walked past several classrooms to get where we were going, but Jordan didn’t stop or point any of them out to me. Instead, he took me to an out-of-the-way supply closet and gestured to the door with aplomb. He checked to ensure no one was around, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Now, I’m doing you a solid here, bud, so don’t forget it, okay? I don’t tell many people about this place…but if there’s a girl you want to make out with, this is where you bring her. It’s always deserted, so there’s like no chance of getting busted.”