And So It Goes by Judy Colella (books for 9th graders .TXT) 📖

whacking myself in the face with the handle, not so much.

Autumn had started putting the trees to sleep early this year, murdering all the foliage far too soon for my taste. I mean, sure, the colors were nice, but because the weather had turned October-cold in September, they weren’t as vibrant. The colors, that is.

Changing from my school overalls to my sloppy, paint-spattered weekend overalls, and putting a blue plaid flannel shirt on under it instead of the tight pink one I’d been kissed in…ack! Why did I think about that? Blech! Freaking Jacob!

I shuddered, changed into lace-up ankle boots so leaf crumbs wouldn’t infest my socks, went downstairs, grabbed my denim jacket, and went out into the yard. The only good thing about all this was…never mind. Nothing was good about all this.

Did Jacob W. really like me? How was this possible? I couldn’t stand the oversexed toad, and wished with great fervor (another awesome word I absolutely love) that this week had never happened. And it wasn’t even over! Tomorrow I’d have to face him and the rest of my class, deal with the knowing glances, the self-important whispered gossip, the…I was sounding like a bad romance novel and told myself to be quiet and rake.

I raked. First, I made a winding pathway around the trees, exposing grass that hadn’t yet gone brown, and then crisscrossed the paths to make leaf islands. Then I made fluffy piles out of each one.

“What am I – Martha Stewart? Fluffy piles, Shasta?” Yes, I was talking to myself out loud.

Scrape, scrape, rake, rake. Snort. Cough. Never snort when you’re raking leaves. There’s some kind of leaf-dander floating around and it gets right up your nose and down your throat. ’Course, if you live in say, Florida or Hawaii, you honestly don’t give a crap about that because you have palm trees that don’t shed, right? What am I talking about? I have no idea. Dang. Getting kissed like that must have rattled something loose in my poor wee brain.

“Need some help?”

I shrieked and jumped at the same time. Jacob. What was he doing here? “What are you doing here?”

“Watching you. You’re cute when you rake leaves.”

“Oh, like you see me doing this all the time, do you?”

“Wel…well, no. I guess I meant that you look cute raking leaves. There. Is that better?”

“Yes, but I’m not. Now go away, please.”

Standing on the sidewalk that ran alongside one edge of our property, hands in his pockets, weight on one hip, he looked like he was posing for a magazine. How annoying.

“Fine. Just answer one question.”

“If it involves anything to do with kissing, I’d rather eat a rat’s eyeball.”

He gaped at me for a second, but then gave his head a quick shake. “Er, no. My question is…okay. All I want to know…”

“Spit it out, Jacob. I have work to do. Leaves to abuse. Speak up.”

“Okay. Why don’t you like me?”

That was it? Was this a trick question? “Because you like yourself enough for both of us. You may go now.”

“I do? I’m not sure what you mean.”

I nodded and went back to the pile I’d been working on. “Think about it for a while. You’ll figure it out.”

And that was it. He left, and eventually I finished my chore and went inside to clean up.

Not until we were eating dinner did my mom hear what I’d said when I’d gotten home from school. She was been slopping green beans onto her plate from the serving bowl when she stopped, put the bowl down and gave me what cliché fiends call a piercing look.

“Did you say a boy kissed you in the cafeteria?”

“Very good, mom. It only took you, what, three hours to get that?”

“Don’t be rude,” said the boyfriend whose fault it was that she hadn’t registered what I’d said earlier.

“Rude. Right. Not going there, Wade. But yes, mom. The freaking football quarterback, Jacob Wainwright, grabbed me and kissed me on the mouth. In the cafeteria. In front of God and everyone. Although if God was watching, too, He probably did some guffawing. Okay?”

“Do you like him?”

“God?”

“Wise-ass. Jacob.”

“Nope. Can’t stand him.”

“Then why did he kiss you?” Wade grinned like a deviant and waggled his eyebrows at me. To this day, he doesn’t know how close he came to learning what it was like to try getting mashed potatoes out of your hair.

“Because for some reason, he likes me, or so he claims. I still don’t believe that.”

Surprised mother stare. “Why not?”

Et tu, mom? “I just don’t. He didn’t seem to know I was even a student at the school before this week, and now he suddenly likes me enough to risk being put on the sexual predator list? I think he’s doing it on a dare or something.”

“Is there someone else you like instead?” Wade’s eyebrows got busy again. What a doofus.

“No. Not at the moment. I did kinda liked that guy Steven last year, but he was more interested in cave painting than me, so I gave up.”

Wade’s brows, no doubt mortified at their behavior, made a regular kind of frown. “Cave painting? What are you talking about?”

“He wants to be an archaeologist or something, or study ancient cultures. Maybe both. Whatever.” I shrugged and took a bite out of my chicken wing. Mom fried them, then slathered them in sweet and sour sauce and baked them. Yummy stuff.

“She was heartbroken,” said the chicken-wing wizard to Mr. Crazybrows.

Chew, chew, swallow. “Was not.”

“Then why did you stay in your room after school every day for a week after breaking up with him?”

“I have no idea. Is there any more corn?”

“Here.” Wade passed the bowl.

Okay. Fess-up time. This guy Steven was, in that book of mine, gorgeous. He was also brilliant, funny, and an incredible kisser, among other…be quiet. Anyway, halfway through our junior year, he saw some movie with Antonio Banderas about the guy who discovered the cave paintings in…Italy? Portugal? One of those Latiny countries. It got Steve thinking he hadn’t been serious enough about his goals.

Next thing I knew, he was unavailable. Always running off to lectures, exhibitions about cavemen or something, stuff like that. Didn’t take a genius to figure out his interests had shifted and that I was no longer the center of his geeky, sixteen-year-old universe. Grrr. And yes, it hurt. A lot.

He wasn’t in any of my classes this year, so we never spoke. Freakin’ Steven. Freakin’ Jacob. Freakin’ guys…

By the time the day finally decided to be over and I was snuggling into bed, Gina had called to talk about Jacob, but I shut that one down in a hurry. So she’d texted. Five times. I wanted to inject her fingers with that stuff the dentist puts in your gums so he can drill without you screaming in agony and punching him in the face. Wow. Sorry. The whole Jacob thing has me way more upset than I realized!

I fell asleep dreading the morning and hoping I’d wake up with malaria or something. I didn’t (no kidding), and the dark grey skies leering at me through the window beside my bed were like a warning for a dire day to come.

Wait. Can a day be considered “dire?” I suppose, especially if there are Jacobs in it somewhere. And Lacys. And Wades. And yuck. Speaking of yuck, I wonder if people ever eat steamed crabs for breakfast.

On my way to the bus, I took a brief detour into the garage to glare at my useless car. “Still not working, I suppose, eh?”

No answer. Thank goodness – I mean, who wants to start the day with an evil, talking car? Not me. Nosiree. I’m babbling. Chalk up another one to fear and loathing. Crap.

Gina was doing pretty much the same thing she’d been doing on every bus ride: playing some idiotic game on her tablet. As I’d staggered toward my seat (the bus driver hadn’t bothered to wait for me to get there before taking off), I’d gotten a few stares from the others, something that almost never happened, and I nearly had to wrestle myself to the ground to keep myself from saying something ridiculous to make them stop. Why did my car have to break down?

Brutal. Now that’s a word dramatic novel-writers love to use, and for that reason I avoid using it pretty much all the time. But exceptions do exist, and today was going to be one of them. The bus was about three blocks or so from the school – I had been as distracted as Gina so neither of us had been talking – when the driver shouted something I never expected to hear from him, you know, being a professional and all. A second later, those of us who weren’t grabbing the top of the seat in front of us, or like, everybody, went flying – literally – accompanied by the horrifying sound of shattering glass and crunching metal, and a whole lot of screaming.

Since the bus driver was the only one who had a seat belt, he didn’t go anywhere. Ours was one of those buses that had a hood, which is probably what saved him from getting smushed, and since almost no one ever sat in the front seats, nobody went through the windshield. However, lots of us ended up scrunched between seats far away from the ones we’d been in, and the screams became groans and crying.

Brutal.

I found out later that some idiot on a cell phone in an SUV that should have been classified as an assault vehicle had cut in front of the bus and stopped suddenly about ten feet in front of the red light ahead of us. Brilliant move.

Me and my backpack (what?) were in a weird position on top of someone in the narrow space between seats, but I wasn’t sure how close to the front I’d landed. My shoulder hurt, but nothing else did.

“Get off me!”

“Trying…” I pried myself off the other student, not at all offended by the way my removal of self was demanded. If this guy was anywhere near as freaked out as I was, he had every right to sound like that.

After a small struggle, I managed to get up onto the seat, swing my legs over into the aisle, and stand up. Other kids were getting up, too, some of them with blood on their faces, a few clutching arms or cradling shoulders in one hand. One guy was on the floor in the aisle a few feet past me, curled up and holding his ankle, moaning.

Then I remembered Gina. Where was she? Stepping over legs and around a few more recumbent (breathing) bodies, I searched for my friend. When I found her, she was hunched over on the floor between seats, her back against the wall under the window.

“Gina? You okay?”

She raised her head, and I saw tears making wavy streaks through the blood pouring from her nose. “M-my tablet…”

Her tablet. She had a bloody nose, possibly even broken, a bunch of bruises on her hands, and she was crying about the smashed tablet between them. Incredible.

“Never mind your stupid tablet – you’re hurt!” I put out a hand. “See if you can stand up.”

Sirens. Lots and lots of sirens getting closer and louder. I was unable at that point to tell how long it had been between when the accident happened and the sirens becoming audible, but I suspected it had been only a few minutes.

The crying and cursing also got louder, followed by the bus driver shouting for everyone to stay calm.

Right, dude. You get a seatbelt and you’re okay, the rest of us are messed up because we don’t get seatbelts, and you have the nerve to tell us to stay calm? Besides, we aren’t calm to start with, so how can we “stay” that way? What a jerk…yeah, that’s probably not fair, but I wasn’t feeling generous at the moment. Shock must have been setting in, my best friend was bleeding, my