Just Friends Read online

  Contents

  Josh Is Reminded of a Song

  Fixations Not Fantasies

  Josh’s New Year’s Resolutions Never Last Long, Either

  Now He Knows Why It’s Called a Bull Session

  Josh Manages to Go Almost the Entire Morning without Thinking of Jenevieve Capistrano

  Mrs Minamoto Adds “Agent of Fate” to Her Many Skills and Talents

  The Ball Continues to Roll

  Girls Are Full of Surprises

  One Thing Leads to Another, as Things Do

  Friends

  Zugzwanged

  They All Asked About You

  Never Make Your Move Too Soon

  Talk of the Town

  Opportunity Lost

  Autumn Blues

  Better to Try and Fail

  When Simon Meets Josh

  Hope Is ILL

  Hope Dies

  Unhappy New Year

  Life Goes On

  Close Encounters of the Third Kind

  The Resurrection of Hope

  To Do or Not to Do

  The Trouble with Hope

  Some of These Days

  For the bluesmen, remembered and forgotten

  Josh Is Reminded of a Song

  The first time Josh sees her a song he has heard only as background music pops into his head. The song is: “I Saw Her Standing There”. In fact, she isn’t standing, she’s sitting by the window in his language arts class, talking to Tilda Kopel, who is at the desk next to hers. She and Tilda seem to be friends, but Josh has never seen her before so she must have moved to Parsons Falls over the summer. “I Saw Her Standing There”. Of all the songs in all the world. He doesn’t even like the Beatles – and he thinks it’s a dumb song – but that’s what he hears when he sees her. This is what he means about life being ironic; it gets you every time. Mercifully, his heart doesn’t go boom the way it does in the lyrics. All it does is stumble a little. On this day, the start of a new school year, she is wearing an electric-blue top, green skinny jeans and a gauzy silver scarf wound through her hair, some of which is pink. She smiles – not at him, at Tilda – and he feels as if he’s been struck by lightning, only without being killed or permanently scarred. He stops so short at the sight of her that the boy behind walks into him. Only Mr Burleigh’s desk prevents Josh from falling flat on his face. Talk about making an entrance. Everyone notices him, though not, of course, in a way that is good. Especially since Mr Burleigh notices him most of all.

  “And who might you be?” Mr Burleigh is known for his death-ray looks and scalpel-like sarcasm. That and his general irascibility.

  Josh tells him.

  “Josh Shine.” Mr Burleigh’s eyebrows draw together like a bolt. “Your reputation precedes you, Mr Shine. Much as rats preceded the plague.”

  He can only wonder which reputation. Would Mr Burleigh have heard about his run-in with the head of the math department – when Josh, the department’s star student, told Mr Lattery his solution was wrong and got detention for insubordination, even though he was right? His petition for more vegetarian options than pizza in the lunchroom? The failed campaign he led last year to donate the money earmarked for the Christmas dance to the food bank? His considerable skill at chess?

  Mr Burleigh doesn’t smile: he smirks. “Didn’t you cause an explosion in the science lab last spring?”

  “That was someone else.” It was true that Josh was there – and that he was marched through the school to the principal’s office like a prisoner of war (minus the handcuffs and bag over his head) – but he’d been counting down not blowing up. “And it was an accident.”

  The new girl by the window isn’t the only one who laughs, but she is the only one whose laughter sounds the way warm fudge syrup tastes.

  Embarrassed and possibly injured, Josh collapses into the nearest seat. She is pretty. Not stop-breathing gorgeous, but there’s something about her. And he is definitely attracted. He has, however, no aspirations. This girl isn’t in his league. The fact that she is already tight with Tilda Kopel – born to be Prom Queen if not Queen of the Universe – makes that pretty clear. Tilda Kopel doesn’t hang out with the lower orders; she’s not in the “in” crowd, she is the “in” crowd. If Josh fainted on the sidewalk in front of Tilda, she wouldn’t step over him, she’d step on him. Possibly laughing. They’ve been in school together since first grade, but she’s never given any indication that she can see him, unless he’s done something to embarrass himself. In eighth grade they were put in the same group for a history project and she never once spoke to him. Not even when she was asking a question she knew he would be the one to answer. Not even when he spoke to her. Josh has never asked anyone out, but if he ever does he won’t pick a pal of Tilda Kopel’s, he’ll pick someone from the same species as him.

  Fixations Not Fantasies

  Her name is Jenevieve Capistrano – though, as she told Mr Burleigh on that first morning with a melt-that-block-of-steel smile, her friends call her Jena.

  At this particular moment, Josh, who is not her friend and has little chance of ever being one, is standing on a metal step stool at the bathroom sink, looking at himself in the mirror. Trying to see himself as Jenevieve Capistrano would see him – if she saw him, which seems unlikely. Since he’s shorter than just about everyone else, when she does look his way her eyes probably go straight to the person behind him. He needs the stool so his chin isn’t lost below the bottom of the glass.

  He thinks about her a lot. Not constantly. He has more to occupy his mind than Jenevieve Capistrano. But often. As if she’s stuck in his brain and can’t get out. This happens to him all the time with songs. He hears a song for the first time and it’s so good that he can’t stop thinking about it. If he can, he’ll sit down right away and start working out the music on his guitar. He’ll fall asleep with it running through his head, and wake up with it still going. If he hears it playing, he’ll stop to listen till it’s over. When he was little he’d refuse to leave places if a song he liked was on the radio or the sound system. It drove his parents crazy. People were always asking what was wrong with that boy, standing in the doorway with his coat and hat on, rapt as if being spoken to by God. But that kind of thing has never happened with a girl. Not until now. No matter where he is – at school, in town, at home – part of him is looking out for her. She might be around that corner… She might step through that door… She might be in that coffee bar having a cappuccino… He’s like a smoke alarm waiting for the toast to burn. He’ll be on his computer, or eating his supper, or hanging out with his friends and suddenly realize that he has no idea what’s going on because he’s thinking about Jenevieve Capistrano. Where does she live? Does she like cats? Has she ever heard of Robert Johnson?

  The light over the sink is bright enough that he can see every mark, every scar, every bump and every stray hair on his face, which does nothing to improve his appearance. Airbrushing would improve his appearance. Or someone else’s face. Nonetheless, he doesn’t slouch, but raises his chin and sticks out his chest. He looks exactly as he always looks, only holding his breath so as not to fog the glass. “Get real, Shine,” he advises himself. “What Jenevieve Capistrano would see if she ever looked at you is a geek.” Not someone cool and desirable, but a short, skinny boy who wears wire-rimmed glasses and his hair longer than that of guys who aren’t aspiring blues musicians. His mother says he has an interesting face, which translated into non-mother speak means that though he isn’t exactly ugly, he’s kind of funny-looking. Misshapen ears. Bump in his nose. Caterpillar eyebrows trying to crawl towards each other to meet. More a dinghy than a dreamboat.

  He sticks his tongue out at himself. What’s wrong with him, obsessing about a girl he doesn’t even know? Because that’
s what he’s doing, he’s obsessing. Fixating. He’s not fantasizing, thank God – not imagining her appearing in his room naked or anything like that. He doesn’t even imagine kissing her. He just can’t stop thinking about her, that’s all. And he’s wrong, it’s not like the first time he heard a song he loved and went around singing it under his breath for a week. It’s more like last Christmas when he heard that dumb chipmunk song on the radio and it stayed with him till New Year’s. Do they even make hula hoops any more?

  “You know what,” he says in a tough-guy voice, looking himself in the eyes as well as he can through two layers of glass, “you’re as stupid as a Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.”

  According to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one of Josh’s favourite books, the Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts of Traal are the most stupid creatures in the universe. Josh stares at the mirror, thinking about Jena Capistrano. It’s possible that he’s stupider.

  “This isn’t your brain making you act like this,” Josh tells his reflection, “it’s your age.” Hormones. Apart from what he knows about human development from advanced biology, he has surreptitiously read up on adolescence in his mother’s magazines. Unlike your average textbook, the magazines give a lot of useful anecdotal information about teenagers and how they behave and why. Unfortunately, this didn’t offer him as much consolation or hope as he would have liked. It’s good to know that other people suffer in the same way, but it doesn’t make him suffer less. It doesn’t make anything any better or more bearable. Indeed, if the biologists and advice columnists of the nation are to be believed, there isn’t anything that would. Hormones are a force unto themselves. They’re like the barbarian hordes that sacked Rome; they just take over and trample on everything in their path. Josh was counting on a growth spurt during puberty – possibly accompanied by muscles, broad shoulders and a voice like B. B. King’s – which was what the magazines said could happen, but all he got was acne, hair and, it seems, mental instability.

  “It’s not even like she’s really that special.” He gives himself an ironic smile. “I mean, she’s cute – and she seems pretty smart and nice and everything, but so is Charley Patton.” And Charley Patton, being a cat, can jump from the floor to Josh’s shoulder, which isn’t a talent likely to be shared by Jenevieve Capistrano. Josh sighs. Still staring at himself, he starts talking to Jenevieve Capistrano. “Looking at it rationally, it’s actually inexplicable. No offence, but you are just another girl on a planet full of girls. And let’s be honest here. There’s a very strong probability that I wouldn’t like you if I actually got to know you. You are really pally with Tilda Kopel, and she and I aren’t exactly twin souls.” If Tilda has a twin soul it’s probably in Hell. “All I ever hear Tilda talk about are clothes and make-up and stuff like that. She’s a gossip. And she’s really full of herself. You’d think every other girl who ever lived was just God practising to make her.” There’s a knock on the bathroom door that Josh doesn’t hear. “For all I know, you’re probably so boring you could put a whole football team to sleep in the middle of a game. And so what if you’re cute?” He doesn’t hear the doorknob rattle, either, or his mother call his name with a certain amount of concern. “Lots of girls are cute. There must be millions of girls in the world who are cute, and the odds are that the majority of them are cuter than you. Way cuter. Besides, being cute doesn’t make you a good person. For all I know you’re not half as nice as you seem. You’re just cute and you have a great smile because you take good care of your tee—”

  “Josh? Josh?” Now his mother is banging on the door. Urgently. “Josh! Who are you talking to in there?”

  A girl I don’t know, who isn’t here. Who else?

  “No one, Mom. I was just practising a speech for school.”

  “Oh. A speech.” She sounds relieved. She was probably figuring that on top of tragically losing his father at such a young age, her only child was now losing his mind. “I was getting a little worried. You’ve been in there quite a while.”

  “I was just coming out.” With one last look in the mirror, he steps off the stool, and lands on Charley Patton, who was resting behind him. Charley Patton howls. It’s the kind of howl that once echoed through dense, primordial forests on dark, Neanderthal nights. Josh jumps into the air and crashes into the shelf where his mother keeps her make-up.

  “Josh? Josh! What happened? What’s going on in there? Are you all right?”

  He picks up a handful of tubes and pots.

  From behind the toilet bowl, Charley hisses.

  “I’m terrific,” says Josh.

  It has to be some kind of miracle that so many people actually survive adolescence.

  Josh’s New Year’s Resolutions Never Last Long, Either

  Josh is resolved. Determined as a superhero sworn to rid the city of crime and evil mischief. He can’t go on like this, he is going to banish Jenevieve Capistrano from his mind. She is just another attractive girl; just another cute grain of sand on a very large beach. It is in this mood that he strides into school like a captain boarding his ship. I am in command.

  Captain Shine’s command lasts less than a minute. She is standing in the main foyer, talking to some girls who aren’t Tilda Kopel but could be if Tilda left town. She’s not just another pretty face, she stands out like a diamond in a bag of marbles.

  She smiles. As always, it isn’t at him; as always, it makes him think that the world might be a better place than he knows it is. Josh comes to a dead stop. It may be that the girls are all about to go their separate ways. If they do, if Jenevieve, on her own, walks past him, then he might have a chance to say something to her. If he were taller and belonged to the right set and looked more like a movie star than a near-sighted bushbaby, he could simply walk up to her and welcome her to Parsons Falls. Hi, you’re new here. Let me know if you need someone to show you around. But he isn’t and he doesn’t, so he needs some vague but viable excuse in order to approach her. A question about their language arts homework. A comment about Mr Burleigh. A Hey, did you drop this pen? Anything to get the ball rolling. Part of him makes a pained face and groans. So far his attempts to roll the ball have all ended up in the gutter.

  The first time he got up the nerve to speak to her he was making his way to history and she was strolling down the hall with Tilda and another Miss Wonderful Teenager with teeth like hospital tiles and the confidence of a megalomaniac. Tilda was talking (she’s always talking, odds are she talked in the womb). Josh’s stomach clenched and his heart impersonated a hammer, but he forced himself to look at Jena and give her his best this-is-a-friendly-town smile. She was looking straight ahead of her, which was where he was, but she didn’t smile back. As they passed he said, “Hi.” Not loudly. He was so afraid of shouting or squeaking with nerves that it came out as no more than a whisper. She didn’t hear him. Or if she did hear some unintelligible mumble she decided to ignore it. Don’t encourage the hoi polloi.

  The second time, as in his daydreams (and many movies), he turned a corner and practically walked into her. She was leaning against a locker, looking bored. Her evil twin was nowhere in sight, so he guessed that it was Tilda’s locker and Jenevieve was waiting for her. He was so surprised to catch her alone that he didn’t think. He just stopped in front of her and blurted out, “I guess you must get a lot of bird jokes, huh?” She blinked, surprised or possibly startled – as if she hadn’t known he could talk. And then she smiled the way you would if a crazy person came up to you in the street and said he was from Alpha Centauri and needed five dollars to get home. “Bird jokes? I don’t know what you mean.” And who could blame her? What’s wrong with him? No, really – what is wrong with him? You just don’t walk up to someone you’ve never spoken to and start babbling about some obscure song that last charted in the 1950s. He might as well have asked her what time it was in Burkina Faso. He definitely wasn’t going to explain about the swallows returning to Capistrano. He couldn’t. He was struck dumb with embarrassment. Mumbli
ng, “Sorry”, and never meaning it more, he turned so quickly that the only reason he didn’t plough into anybody was because he walked straight into the bank of lockers.

  After that fiasco, he would have had trouble shouting “Fire!” if he’d seen the flames rising behind her. The only words he’s said directly to Jena since those first two botched attempts were “Hey, I’m sorry.” Three times. The first when he somehow managed to step on her; then when he knocked her books out of her arms; and finally when he bent down suddenly to pick up his pen and she practically fell over him. He may kill her long before he gets to speak to her.

  He’d like to write a song about her, get her out of his system that way. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that rhymes with Jenevieve. Give me leave… No reprieve… Wipe your nose upon my sleeve. And even less that rhymes with Jena. I’m gonna penna song to Jena. Christ. Next time he gets fixated on someone he’s going to take his lead from Huddie Ledbetter and make it someone with a name like Irene.

  Now He Knows Why It’s Called a Bull Session

  It’s a Saturday night. Most Saturday nights Josh hangs out with Carver and Sal at one of their homes to watch obscure movies or play games. Carver Jefferson and Armando “Sal” Salcedo are two of his closest friends. Carver lives in the house behind Josh’s, and they’ve been inseparable for as long as either can remember. They met Sal in middle school and immediately became three. Carver is the scientist, Josh the musician and Sal the next Wes Anderson or, possibly, Martin Scorsese. Each is something of a misfit in school, but they suit each other well. In eighth grade there was a discussion in Mr Juniper’s science class about the possibility of life on other planets and, if there were life, was it possible that extraterrestrials ever visited the Earth. In this discussion Sal, Carver and Josh – possibly influenced by their love of Star Trek – all said yes, and the rest of the class said no. “We’re like the Three Musketeers,” said Sal. “More like the Three Mouseketeers,” said Josh. Everyone else called them the Pod Squad – though, mercifully, few people remember that now.