Dedication by Emma McLaughlin Page A

shoves.
    “Sam?” JenniferTwo extends an invitation and to a round of mock girlish “Saaaaaams” he gets into the backseat, bright pink stains spreading over his freckled skin.
    “So gay,” JenniferTwo tosses under her breath to my snorting seatmates.
    “Seat belts or we aren’t going anywhere,” Dad orders. A bead of sweat slides down my chest. Oh my God, please. Please Dad, let’s just run the risk, live on the wild side, chance it. So much better than ordering these guys around—traction, losing limbs, dying—all tiny prices to pay for being able to show up at school on Monday and not hear about you being a total—
    But everyone clicks their belts without attitude and I’m jolted by the reminder of their behind-the-scenes lives, with parents who insist on socks and bedtimes and finishing milk.
    Dad pulls onto the highway and the boys talk about the Appetite for Destruction album, currently banished to the glove compartment—“Sorry, our cassette player’s busted, isn’t it, Dad?” Overcome, Sam finally whips his Walkman out of his jacket and plays it on 10, all of us leaning to hear the tinny echo dancing out the padded earphones atop the grumble of the Sandinistas. Straining to listen, Jake is at last still and his body solidly borders mine from heel to shoulder. Touching. The feeling of his shoulder, arm, thigh and calf. Just suddenly right here, next to me. Weird. Completely weird. As weird as touching the TV screen and feeling warm skin on Kirk Cameron’s face would be.
    “Take me down,” the guys cry out together while Laura and I sit in frozen anticipation of what the afternoon holds. Vibrations move through my arm as Jake starts nodding his head to the beat and soon Jake and Sam are air-guitaring as Benjy drums the back of Laura’s seat, his hands and feet working in synchronicity.
    “I figure if I pick up another shift after school, I’ll have enough saved for the drum kit by the end of next summer,” Benjy says in rhythm, his head slamming back and forth.
    “Our band’s gonna rule,” Sam declares, “Just like GNR.”
    Jake takes a deep breath and then blasts Axl’s chorus into Sam’s face.
    Benjy and Sam join in, shouting the response. Dad turns up the volume on the dashboard.
    “Anybody found a bassist yet?” Jake asks the car.
    “Um,” Laura swivels from the passenger seat, peering around the headrest. “Todd Rawley plays for Mrs. Beazley in choir sometimes?”
    “Jake, you should check that out,” Sam says. I see Laura blush from the taken suggestion as she swivels back, sinking into her coat. Having nothing to offer I just let myself be rocked by Jake’s motion as I look down at the scuff mark left on my thigh and replay his first word to me, searching for some deeper, encoded message.

    But it doesn’t happen until we’re in the theater, as we collectively squirm to our right to gain at least an armrest’s distance from JenniferTwo kissing Sam like it’s the next thing on her To-Do List—that I feel this thing take root in my stomach, this rubber band thing as Jake Sharpe comes back from the concession stand. A twinge tells me to turn around and, sure enough, he has just walked in the doors at the top of the dark aisle. The band tightens as his narrow silhouette approaches. Then, when he slides past I tuck my legs up on my chair and our eyes meet, stray kernels tumbling onto my lap—and it is taut between us. Loosening again as he plunks himself at the other end next to Benjy, who lunges for the tub of popcorn. I slide my hand to the center of my chest while staring up at the screen. This thing is different from living down Jake Sharpe, different from avoiding Jake Sharpe, even different from knowing Jake Sharpe thinks about what I look like. This new Jake Sharpe thing is happening inside me, all the way at the core.
    People shriek, Laura dives her head into my shoulder, but I watch unflinching, my mind not connecting to the images—the old man grabbing his