Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend. Louise Rozett

really the last thing I want to talk about.

      “So, did Jamie even say hi to you tonight?” Tracy asks.

      Actually, it’s the second-to-last thing I want to talk about.

      I shake my head without looking at her. She leans over to turn up the Feist album she’s been playing nonstop since I told her to get it, and she doesn’t ask me anything else.

      I’ve been lying on the trundle bed in Tracy’s room for more than an hour, trying every trick I know to fall asleep, when I hear it.

      At first I don’t even recognize the sound.

      And then I do. It’s my phone, vibrating.

      Somebody’s calling me.

      I look at the clock. It’s 1:00 a.m.

      I look at Tracy, who falls asleep in all of about three seconds and can sleep through anything. She’s passed out.

      I feel around to find my phone, which has vibrated itself off the rug and is now practically jumping up and down on the hardwood floor, probably waking up the entire house.

      As my hand closes around it, a familiar tightness creeps into my throat. My heart starts to skitter and skip beats, and my breathing gets shallow. Supposedly once a person recognizes the symptoms of a panic attack, she can sort of wrangle them and keep them under control. I haven’t mastered that fine art yet, but at least now a part of my brain stays rational as my airway tries to close, and instead of screaming, “Am I dying?” it can ask, “Why now?” which is apparently a much more constructive question.

      Caron would say—Oh, forget Caron. I’m tired of hearing her in my head all the time. I feel like she crawled in there and installed a whole bunch of automatic scripted responses to things. I don’t need her to tell me why I’m on the verge of a panic attack—I already know why. It’s because the only reason anybody ever calls anybody at 1:00 a.m. is if something is wrong. Terribly, hideously wrong.

      The phone is now vibrating in my fist and I know with every fiber of my being that this is the call about Peter that I’ve been expecting. Amanda probably crashed that stupid fancy convertible into a telephone pole and Peter got thrown from the car, smashed headfirst into a tree and is dead or paralyzed. Either that, or he overdosed on whatever stupid drugs she forced on him while they were at a party.

      All I know is, if Peter leaves me all by myself with Kathleen, I’ll never, ever forgive him.

      I try to take a deep breath, fail and then look at the phone. It doesn’t say Boston Mass General Hospital.

      It doesn’t say Mom.

      It says Jamie.

      I blink. I’m dreaming.

      It can’t be. Can it?

      “Hello?” I whisper, my voice scratchy and rough from lack of air.

      There’s a pause, and then, “Hey.”

      As soon as I hear his voice, I feel Jamie’s hands on my arms again. The warmth begins to travel up into my neck, across my face, under my hair. It drives away the tightness in my throat and my lungs, and everything seems to open up again, to take in the feeling that is now suffusing my entire body. “Hey,” I manage to say.

      “You okay, after what Hallis did?”

      “I…” I’m trying to sound as calm and normal as possible, but I’m embarrassed that he witnessed me getting pushed into the pool, mad that I haven’t heard from him and so happy to talk to him that I can barely even form a sentence. I don’t know where to start. What I should do is hang up on him. But I’ve been waiting for more than two months for this call.

      I need to know things.

      “Can you come down?” he asks.

      “Now? Wait—where?”

      “Outside.”

      “I’m not at home,” I say.

      “I know.”

      “You—How?”

      “Rose.”

      “I can’t just—”

      “Please.”

      Wow. I’ve never heard Jamie say please before. My stomach does a crazy little flip. It’s hard to say no to Jamie Forta. But saying no to him when he says please? I wonder if any girl in history has ever been able to do it. Even as I’m thinking that there’s no way he deserves to call me at 1:00 a.m. and have me get up and go outside simply because he wants to see me, I’m getting out of bed and putting on my wet shoes. I hate that he has this power over me.

      But it’s also sort of thrilling. Or…however you say it. Hot, I guess.

      Yup. It’s hot.

      Which I know is dumb.

      But I’m new to this whole hot thing, and I find it kind of irresistible.

      “Okay, I’ll try,” I say. But he’s gone, as if he knows that I’m already halfway out the door.

      What am I doing? I saw the way he came to Regina’s defense tonight. There’s definitely still something between Regina and Jamie, no matter what Anthony Parrina thinks or says. But he also came to my defense.

      I have to talk to him. To straighten things out once and for all.

      Yeah, because that’s how it works with Jamie Forta. All it takes is one conversation, and everything is suddenly super clear.

      Uh-huh.

      I know that I’ll have no problem getting out of Tracy’s room without waking her up, but I have no idea what it’s like to try to get past her parents. Tracy does it all the time, but I don’t know what her technique is. I guess if I get caught, I can just cry and say I’ve been sleepwalking ever since my dad died, and no one will even consider questioning my story.

      Dad didn’t tell the truth all the time—why should I?

      I take two steps and realize that I shouldn’t have put my shoes on yet. Not only are they loud on the wood floor but they’re so waterlogged that my feet squish around and make weird sucking noises. I take the shoes off and leave them on the floor, tiptoeing out into the hall.

      The front door is at the bottom of the staircase. I grab on to the banister and make my way down the steps, staying as far away from the center of each stair as possible, in case it’s squeaky. I make it down without a sound, only to be greeted by the site of a glowing green light next to the front door.

      The alarm system.

      Once upon a time, the code to the alarm was Tracy’s birthday—0729. But they could have changed it. And if I try to disarm the system with the wrong code, will it set off the alarm?

      When my phone vibrates in my hand again, it nearly gives me a heart attack. I silence it and look at the screen. It’s a text that says, “0729*.”

      I smile.

      Tracy’s not Jamie’s biggest fan—and I guess she doesn’t sleep as deeply as I thought—but she’s helping me anyway. I’m sure she didn’t even have to look out her window to know who called me.

      I punch in the code, step outside, make sure the door can’t lock behind me…and there he is. Across the street, leaning against the door of his green car, waiting for me.

      He’s beautiful.

      I am not.

      I’m barefoot in yoga pants and a T-shirt, also known as pajamas. I have no idea what my hair looks like, and I don’t have on any makeup because I undid all of Tracy’s expert work two hours ago with her expensive remover.

      So what? A voice in my head