Jelly Janna 2

Hope lay in her bed, feeling empty and drained. Her parents had been fighting again, screaming at each other. When they fought like that, Hope’s heart felt like it was sinking into her stomach, and all the energy just seemed to drain out of her. She had just laid in her bed, listening to the muffled shouting, silently crying until she had no tears left in her. Finally the shouting had stopped, but Hope found herself unable to sleep, so she just lay there, clutching her pillow to her chest, staring up at the ceiling, thinking of nothing.

Suddenly her phone lit up. Hope grabbed it. There was only one person who would be texting her this late. It was Janna. Just seeing her face on the screen made Hope smile. Janna had always been there for her, always been there to take her away from her parents, always there to cheer her up when she was feeling down. Hope didn’t care if she was a little weird, or a little destructive. Just being with her made her happy.

Hope swiped the screen of the cellphone to see what Janna had to say.

Janna: omg omg omg
Hope: what
Janna: I dont know what I just did
Hope: u ok?
Janna: Im fine
Janna: can u talk?
Hope: Sure
Hope: brt

Hope got out of bed and put on a coat. “Talking” always meant face to face with Janna, when she asked like that. And they always met in the same place when it was this late at night.

* * * * * * * * * *

The normal meeting spot was a small hardscrabble clearing, right next to a cactus that looked like a dick. Janna had chosen this spot as special exactly because the cactus looked like a dick, in fact. It was immature in some ways, but the cactus really did look ridiculously cocklike. At some point they had dragged some cement blocks over and made a little fire pit. Janna was sitting on a rock, poking at a small fire in the pit when Hope walked up. Hope couldn’t help but smile when she saw Janna. There was something enchanting about her, something about the way the shadows played on her face, that made her look mysterious and gorgeous.

“Hey man,” Janna said in a hoarse voice. She had either been crying or smoking. Smoking, from the smell of her. Hope sat down next to her.

“What happened.”

Janna smiled miserably. “I...uh...well. I tried to sabotage Marco’s date, I guess. It didn’t go so well. Star actually stopped me. I’m just glad Marco didn’t find out what I did.” She sniffled.

“Oh my god, Janna, what happened to your hands?” Hope cried, noticing the bandages.

“Oh...that’s nothing,” she replied as Hope tenderly examined her hands. “I got angry...and I guess I punched a tree for a bit? It’s not really a big deal-”

Hope did her best to hide how upset she was. She hated when her friend hurt herself.

“But anyway….that’s the thing. Marco found me in the woods and patched me up...and I, uh...kissed him.”

“You what?” Hope blinked. “I don’t understand, wasn’t he just on a date with Jackie?”

“Yeah, but I guess you could say I, uh...caught him by surprise?” Janna gave a guilty smile and shrugged.

Hope did admire her friend for her bravery, and even envied her her impulsiveness a bit. Still, though. “Wow, so uh...how did he take it?”

Janna’s smile slipped from her face. “I probably weirded him out forever,” she whispered. Hope noticed that she was shaking – even next to the fire, it was getting pretty chilly out. “He thinks I’m a freak, I’m sure. I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know why -” she was beginning to panic, her voice going high and wavery.

Hope pulled her friend close to her, resting Janna’s head against her chest. She could feel her friend’s eyelashes fluttering against her, trying to blink back tears. “It’s okay, Janna,” she murmured. “I’m sure he doesn’t think any of that. Well, maybe he thinks you’re a little weird. But this is Marco we’re talking about, he’s a little weird himself.”

Janna laughed, and wrapped her arms around her friend. Hope felt her heart leap in her chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to talk to him again,” Janna said, squeezing. “I mean...I’m sure I will. I just have to….uh, well….hmmm...”

Hope cut her off. Sometimes, she was a bit jealous of Marco. She wished that she could be the one to make Janna as happy and nervous as he seemed to be able to. But what she cared about much more was that her friend might be happy. “I could talk to him, maybe?”

“What would you say?”

Hope shrugged. “Hmm...I dunno, I guess...I could just play down the whole kiss thing? I’ll ask him if he wants to go to the movies with us, maybe with Star? Just something to get you guys talking again. The longer you wait to talk to him, the weirder the kiss is going to seem.”

“That could work,” Janna mused. “Dang Hope, you’re a smart cookie.” She looked up at her friend and smiled, and then frowned. “Are...are you okay? You look, uh...tired.”

Hope shrugged and squeezed Janna again. “It’s nothing.”

“Your parents were fighting again, weren’t they?”

Hope said nothing, but the tired, shaking sigh she gave told Janna everything she needed to know.

“You want to stay at my place tonight?”

“I don’t want to be a bother-”

Janna gave a harsh laugh. “It wouldn’t be a bother. My parents still haven’t fixed the heat, and you know my room’s drafty. It gets cold on nights like this. C’mon, come keep me warm. I’ll give you some of my pyjamas.”

“Noooo, no, I don’t want to impose-”

“Hope,” Janna said flatly, “come on. You’re not imposing. I want you there.”

Hope’s heart soared. She loved the idea of feeling wanted, the idea that someone actually wanted her there, and Janna always made her feel like that. “Oh, fine,” she laughed.

Janna snickered. “There we go. That’s right, get that ass in my bed.”

Hope yelped as Janna slapped her bottom, and then laughed and helped her put out the fire.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
At lunch the next day, Marco had thought about sitting with Jackie. He didn’t want to seem too clingy or desperate, but he also didn’t want to seem like he was avoiding her. What made him decide not to was the fact that Janna was, as always, sitting with her, laughing at something Hope had said. When she saw him, she gave him an odd look, almost like she was nervous, and then winked at him. Marco rolled his eyes and went to sit with Star.

He hadn’t gotten halfway through his meal, however, when Hope approached them, an odd smile on her face.

Marco frowned. Hope seemed normal enough, and they had talked sometimes before, but she was friends with Janna, and he was wary about her.

Hope, for her part, found herself wondering what exactly it was about Marco that Janna found so appealing. Hope had hung out with him on occasion before, back when he had been friends with Janna, but he didn’t really seem her type. What was it about this boy that made her best friend so nervous, so head over heels in love? Oh well, that was a question for another time. Right now she had a mission.

“Hey guys,” she said, reaching into her purse. “I was just wondering, I had some extra movie tickets for this afternoon, and when I thought about it, I figured that it was probably the sort of movie Star would like. So I was wondering, do you guys want to come to the movies with us after school?”

“What’s the movie?” asked Star.

“Crogorr: The Brutal Legend.”

Star’s eyes lit up and glazed over. Marco knew that movie, it was a cheesy barbarian fantasy film. Fun, but dumb. But when Star had seen the previews, she had gotten a very….excited look on her face. She was a bit obvious in her attraction to the oiled abs of the main lead and the brutal monster-murder he engaged in. “Oh my god, I WANTED to see that!” cried Star.

“See, I figured you’d like it!”

“Wait, you said ‘us’. Who else is coming?” asked Marco.

“Oh, it would be Janna and me,” Hope replied, giving him an innocent smile.

Marco balked, but was suddenly unsure how to protest. He was a little weirded out by the fact that Janna had kissed him, but realized that, in all the excitement from his date with Jackie, he hadn’t actually told anyone about it. “I...I don’t know,” he muttered.

“Aw, come on Marco! This movie looks so good!” Star cried. She was practically drooling.

“Oh, what is it? Has Janna been messing with you lately?” Hope giggled. “She said she didn’t know if you’d want to go because she’d been teasing you pretty hard. She doesn’t mean it, you know. She just likes messing with you. It’s all in good fun!”

Marco mulled this over. Maybe he had been taking the kiss too seriously. It was Janna, after all. She had probably just done it to mess with him. She was impulsive, she just saw a way to freak him out and took it. Not like she took that kind of thing seriously, obviously. “I guess...ah sure, why not. I could go for a dumb movie.”

“Great! We’ll meet you guys at the theater after school. It starts at 4. Don’t be late!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Star spent most of the rest of the day fantasizing about Crogorr, not paying all that much attention in class. However, eventually, she did begin to think about who they were going to the movie with. Janna. Janna, who had just told her how she was in love with Marco, and had tried to sabotage his date with Jackie.

What should she do? She had never actually told Marco about what Janna had done. That had seemed too cruel to her, in a way. But now, she was clearly up to something. Inviting them to a movie the day after all that?

Or WAS she up to something? Janna was always so hard to read. Her sly smiles, manic grins, mocking laughs. It was hard to tell when she was being serious. The only time Star had ever seen her be serious, in fact, was when she confessed about Marco.

And now that she thought about it, Marco had seemed kind of reluctant when Hope bought Janna up. She and Marco were walking to the movie theater when she resolved to talk to him about it. After all, he was her bestie, right? She really should let him know that Janna was up to no good. It’s not like she had to tell him EVERYTHING Janna had done, either. As long as he was warned in advance -

An ear-splitting roar shook Star down to her bones. She gasped and looked up.

There, on a humongous fifty-foot screen mounted above the theater on which previews played, stood Crogorr the Brutal. Every oiled inch of him. Wearing an indecently tiny loincloth, and carrying a sword wrought from the bones of his enemies.

Star felt butterflies in her stomach as the giant Crogorr swung his sword and beheaded three dragons at once, set fire to a peasant’s hut, and grabbed a beautiful woman who screamed as he kissed her but then slowly surrendered. Star was still a bit vague on the concept of human movies, and though that in some way Crogorr was a documentary. She found herself reaching out towards the screen, and found it difficult to snatch her hand back.

“CROGORR THE BRUTAL: IN THEATERS NOW,” boomed the advertisement. “AND THIS WEEK ONLY: WATCH CROGORR THE BRUTAL LEGEND IN 3D, AND SEE THE PREVIEW FOR CROGORR’S NEXT ADVENTURE, CROGORR: BURNING BLOOD!”

Star’s mouth dropped open. Crogorr’s NEXT adventure?

All thoughts of talking to Marco about Janna fled her mind as she grabbed his wrist. “Marco come on, we gotta get in there, we can’t miss the previews!”

“But we were supposed to wait for Janna and Hope -”

“THEY’LL MEET US IN THERE MARCO, C’MON, LET’S GOOOOO!”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Marco settled down in his seat, sipping his soda. Star was fidgeting and squirming in her seat, breathing quickly and panting a little bit as she watched the preview of Crogorr murdering the Troll-king or something. She really did get a little too worked up about these movies.

The movie was so loud that he didn’t even notice when someone sat down next to him. He glanced over to be startled by Janna’s dark eyes gleaming at him in the dark.

“Hey, Marco.” Janna’s smile was mysterious, a bit mocking.

“Oh. Hey, Janna,” he replied, a bit suspiciously. Next to her, Hope smiled and waved.

 Janna gave an odd, sad little smile in response to his tone. “Star really seems to be enjoying herself.”

Marco glanced over at Star. She was staring up at the screen in rapture, muttering under her breath. “Do it, Crogorr. Do it. Yeah. That’s right, murder him. Oh my god, you’re such a man.”

“Yeah, I think she has a bit of a crush on Crogoorr.”

“Who wouldn’t? Look at those abs. I’d let him raid my village, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Marco said skeptically.

Janna felt her heart plummet into her stomach at his short, unenthusiastic responses, but she couldn’t let that be it. “Aw, come on now, Marco, aren’t you excited? You used to love these kinds of movies.”

“No, I mean, yeah, the movie looks like it will be pretty cool,” Marco replied, non-commitedly.

“You’re not sore that I kissed you, are you? What, did I steal your kiss virginity or something?”

Marco hadn’t expected her to bring up the subject, and was caught without anything to say in response to that.

“Oh my god, I did, didn’t I? Did I get your first kiss?”

Janna had dropped her voice to almost a whisper, low enough so that only Marco could hear. Without noticing, he matched her volume. “Well, I mean, on the lips-”

Janna laughed. “Lip-kisses are the only ones that really count. Besides, I was just messing with you. You’ve gotten a kiss before.”

Marco was a bit nonplussed. “I have?”

“Yeah,” Janna said. Marco didn’t notice just how sad she sounded.“Don’t you remember? We kissed when we were kids. We were curious what it was like after seeing out parents do it.”

“OH, oh yeah. Well I mean, that doesn’t really count. We were just kids.”

“Still, a guy like you, I’m surprised you haven’t had any since that. I thought for sure you’d be pulling in lots of girls. Girls really go for your whole girly-man vibe nowadays.”

Next to her, Hope slapped her head as Marco tensed up. Janna really was hopeless when it came to boys. She just teased and teased and teased. And the more nervous she got, the more viciously she teased. Hope knew there was an art to talking to a boy you liked, a way to play to their ego, to build up their pride. Marco was a tough mark – the smarter the boy, the more likely they were to see through your banter, and Marco was very smart – but Janna was really screwing it up. She gently nudged her friend in the ribs.

“I mean...uh...so anyway, how did your date with Jackie go?”

Marco glanced at Janna. “Actually...I wanted to ask you about that. Did she say anything to you about how it went?”

Janna gave an odd little smile. “You really charmed her, Marco. Jackie really likes you. I knew once you loosened up you could be a charmer.” Without thinking, she laid her hand on his arm.

Marco glanced down at it. “Oh yeah, your hands,” he said, remembering suddenly. “How are they doing? Did you put some disinfectant on them?”

“Don’t worry so much about me, Marco, sheesh.”

Marco shrugged. “Alright. Just don’t come crawling back to me the next time you break your hands punching a tree because the boy you like filled you with teenage angst.”

Janna was shocked by this banter for a moment, then laughed delightedly. “Well, you know, at least I didn’t wait ten years to make my move on him.”

“Oh no? How long did you wait?”

“Well actually, I’ve been making my moves on him for years, but he’s too much of an idiot to notice.”

Marco sat back, tapping his chin. “So this is someone I’d know, huh?”

“Don’t think too hard, Marco,” Janna deadpanned. “You’re never going to figure it out.”

“Is it Ferguson?”

“Jesus CHRIST,” Janna muttered.

“SHUT UP THE MOVIE IS STARTING, YOU BE QUIET FOR CROGORR,” hissed Star.

Though they settled in to watch the movie at first, Marco soon found himself snickering at Janna’s commentary throughout. By the end of the movie, she had him laughing out loud, wiping tears from his eyes as Star glared at him.

* * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * *

After the movie, the four went out for milkshakes, sitting at a stone table next to the small shake shack, watching the sun retreat behind the horizon.

“This was fun!” said Hope, nursing her strawberry shake. “We should hang out more often.”

Marco leaned back, sipping his chocolate shake, as Janna watched him with twinkling eyes. “Yeah. I used to hang out with you guys more often back in the day, didn’t I? It’s been a while.”

Janna coughed on her shake, chocolate as well, and gave a weird, shaking sigh. “Yeah, it has been a while,” she murmured. “I have to...uh...go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, I have to go too,” said Hope, following her, and leaving Star and Marco alone.

“Well, this whole thing went better than I expected it to,” Marco said.

Star, who had been cruising off of dirty fantasies about Crogorr for the past couple of hours, suddenly remembered what she had wanted to talk to Marco about before the movie. “Oh?” she asked, innocently. “Why didn’t you expect it to go well?”

“Well...I was a little suspicious of Janna, I guess.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well, I didn’t tell you this...honestly, I had kind of forgotten. But the other night, on my way back from the date with Jackie, I stumbled across Janna, and she….uh...well, she kind of kissed me?”

Star slurped at her vanilla shake. “Reallllllllllly.”

“Yeah, I was surprised, too. I guess she was just messing with me though, you know? Like I don’t think she meant anything by it, I think she was just kind of doing it to mess with me. It’s not like she likes me or anything.”

Star remained silent, slurping conspicuously at her shake. “Mmm-hmmmmmm.”

“Honestly, Star, I kind of worry about Janna sometimes. She told me about this boy she likes and I think it’s kind of driving her crazy. Her hands….she had been punching a tree and they were so messed up, it was bad. We used to be friends, and she was always kind of self-destructive. I think she needs someone to look after her.”

Star set her shake down on the table. “You know what, Marco? I think I have to go to the bathroom too.”

Marco watched as Star walked off, sipping calmly from his milkshake. “I know they’re talking about me,” he said to no one in particular. “I’m not even mad.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Are you okay?” Hope asked Janna, as they stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Janna was busy scrawling a dick on it in sharpie.

“Yeah. I mean, I’m actually really happy. This worked out really well. I guess….I dunno. It hurts to hear him talk about how we used to hang out like he barely remembers it, I guess. I dunno. It’s whatever.” Janna added a pair of angry eyes and a mouth full of fangs to the dick and snickered.

Suddenly, the door to the bathroom flung open. Hope and Janna watched with wide eyes as Star stomped over to them.

“Oh hey, Janna,” Star said, examining her drawing. “Nice cactus. Hope, do you mind if I have a word in private with Janna?”

“Well, actually-”

“Thaaaaaaaaaaaanks,” said Star, magically ushering her out of the bathroom inside a pink bubble with her wand.

“What’s this about, Star?” Janna asked.

“You KISSED Marco!”

Janna was silent, her eyes downcast.

“After all that drama yesterday, after you told me you wouldn’t ruin their date, you kissed him!”

“Well...it was after their date. It didn’t really ruin it.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Janna gave a crooked smile. “What does it matter to you? You don’t have to take Jackie’s side right away, you know? Give me a chance. Don’t I get to fight for him?”

Star was taken aback by this. “But...I’m not going to let you do any funny business-”

“Who are you to get to decide what’s funny business or not? I’m going to fight for him the way I want to.”

“Nothing like sabotaging dates, Janna!”

Janna gave a hoarse laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t do anything like that again.”

Star stared at the other girl, exasperated. “Janna, listen, I like you. But...I just don’t want you to mess with Marco’s head, alright? I know you do that a lot. Marco’s my best friend, and -”

“He was my friend first.” Janna turned back to the mirror and began adding a fountain to the top of the cactus. Star stared at her, anger rising, until she noticed a discreet tear sliding down Janna’s cheek that the other girl quickly wiped away.

“Janna...”

But Janna wasn’t listening. She swept past Star and out of the bathroom.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, Hope had returned to the table, where Marco still sat, sipping his milkshake.

After a few moments, she turned to him. “Hey Marco. Have you ever had someone who you really liked, but someone else made them happy, so you just tried to help them get with that person, because you just want them to be happy more than anything?”

Marco considered this for a moment. “Well,” he said, “The way I see it is you can’t really tell just how happy someone will be with someone else. Maybe they’ll be just as happy, or more happy, with you. So the least you can do is try, you know? Might as well give it a shot, rather than just shooting yourself in the foot by making sure they get together with someone else.”

Hope sipped her milkshake and nodded thoughtfully. “You know, maybe you’re right, Marco. Maybe you’re right.”