Bite Your Tongue

3:30 P.M.
Korinne;;

“Shit,” I said to myself. “I am so going to flunk out of school.”

A seemingly unconquerable mess of books and papers stared back at me out of the crowded confines of my locker. As I attempted to cram everything into my backpack, I tried my best not to think about how much this weekend was going to suck. It had only been a little over a week since school started, and I already I was practically drowning in homework. I didn’t know if it was because junior year was supposed to be the hardest out of all the high school years, or if it was because my skipping a grade had rendered me unable to cope with the increased workload, but either way, if I didn’t spend the next two days doing homework and studying nonstop, I was screwed.

I’d just managed to fit everything into my backpack, and was debating over whether or not to take my Spanish book as well so I could study for the vocab quiz next week, when I got the feeling that I was being watched. I peered around my locker door to see Jimmy standing on the other side, looking cheerful.

“Hey! Happy Friday!”

“Yeah, happy Friday.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just have a lot of homework, that’s all.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed for a second, but then his face took on a hopeful expression. “Well…do you have to do it all tonight?”

“Um…no, not really. Why?”

He grinned. “Because I was planning on inviting myself over.”

“Okay,” I said, laughing. “Sure. I could probably use some relaxation time anyway.”

“Awesome.”

I shut my locker, and we set off down the hallway.

“Do you want me to carry that for you?” Jimmy asked, looking at my backpack.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

I shrugged and slipped the bag off of my shoulders. “Careful. It’s heavy.”

“I think I can handle it,” he said, rolling his eyes. He took the backpack from me and nearly dropped it. “Christ!”

“Yes?” said a familiar voice.

Johnny appeared next to us, with Matt and Stevie not too far behind. Jimmy gave Johnny a playful shove.

“Get out of here, short shit.”

Johnny gave him the finger and sauntered off. Matt and Stevie waved on their way by.

“Shit,” Jimmy continued, grimacing as he pulled my backpack onto his shouldler. “What do you have in here? Rocks? Dead bodies?”

“Nope. Just books.”

We continued on to the parking lot, which was thankfully a lot less crowded than it normally was after school. I sent Elias a text telling him that Jimmy was driving me home, so he wouldn’t worry when I wasn’t waiting for him and Maddie, and followed Jimmy to his car. The ride home was short and uneventful, as was our entrance to the house. When we got inside, Jimmy dumped our backpacks onto the floor and headed straight for the kitchen. I took off my shoes and followed him.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, once he heard me join him. His head was stuck inside he refrigerator.

“Kind of.”

“Good. I’m making grilled cheese!” He tossed a package of cheddar cheese onto the counter, placed a tomato next to it, and went in search of bread.

“You know how to make grilled cheese?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“I can make Poptarts and Pizza Rolls. Oh, and cereal. But that’s about it.”

“Well, we’ll have to fix that.”

After he’d located all the necessary ingredients, he talked me through the steps to create what he called the ‘Perfect Grilled Cheese Sandwich’. This involved the use of the broiler, a component of our oven that I hadn’t even known existed. The end result was a crispy sandwich with cheese and bits of warm tomato oozing out of the sides. It was delicious, and I told him so as we settled onto the couch, trying to find something to watch on TV.

“Yeah, well, making grilled cheese is only one of the awesome skills I possess,” he responded, licking cheese off of his fingers.

“Is it possible for you to say something and have it not sound dirty?”

“Hey, you’re the one jumping to dirty conclusions over there. I was merely referring to my other skills, like…uh…”

“Chemistry?” I teased.

“Shut up!” He laughed. “It’s not my fault our school has a miserable failure of a scheduling office!”

Despite his senior status, the school had been unable to take him out of AP Chemistry, due to there not being a spot in any other class he could take, and had informed him that he would just have to deal with it. Everyone, Jimmy included, thought it was hilarious, especially since he’d barely passed regular Chemistry last year. But he’d said that as long as he passed all of his other classes, he’d graduate, so he spent most of his AP Chemistry class practicing drum beats on his desk and annoying the living shit out of his classmates and the teacher.

“So,” I said, once we’d stopped laughing at his misfortune. “Any big, exciting plans for the weekend?”

“Nope. Just some band stuff to take care of. What about you? Anything besides homework?”

“No. School is taking over my life.”

“Huh. I guess I’ll have to distract you pretty thoroughly tonight, then.”

“What?”

“I meant by keeping you company and watching TV. God, Korinne, is sex all you think about?”

My face grew hot. “I wasn’t—I mean—you—”

He chuckled and reached for the remote control.

“I’m kidding.”

“Oh, you suck.”

After making sure that I wasn’t really mad at him, Jimmy pulled up the channel guide on the TV and began looking over our entertainment options. He scrolled through the guide for a bit, and then we both gasped as we saw things we wanted to watch.

“Spongebob!”

“Harry Potter!”

We looked at each other.

“I have the remote,” Jimmy said threateningly.

“But…I haven’t seen the second Harry Potter movie in forever!”

“It’s always on TV.”

“So is Spongebob!”

“Come on. You like Spongebob.”

“Yeah, but…okay, fine.” I really didn’t want to get into an argument over this. “Let’s watch Spongebob.”

He changed the channel victoriously. But after watching Spongebob try to steal Patrick’s secret box for a few minutes, I felt Jimmy’s eyes on me, and when I turned to look at him, he sighed.

“What?”

“I feel like a dick.”

“Why?” I asked, frowning.

“Because I’m in your house, dictating what TV shows we’re watching.”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Yes, it does.” He reached for the remote. “We’re watching Harry Potter.”

“We don’t have to, Jimmy. I’m fine watching Spongebob.”

“Yeah, but when you saw that Harry Potter was on, you looked like you were about to wet yourself, you were so happy. And I like seeing you happy, so we’ll watch it.”

I smiled and gave him a tight hug. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He wrapped an arm around me, keeping me close to him, and then we began to watch the movie.

Though the Harry Potter movies were probably my favorite movies on the entire planet, it didn’t take long for me to become distracted by something else. No matter how many times I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter, I was still worried about the fact that I didn’t know if Jimmy and I were officially dating or not. I was annoyed by how much it bothered me, but at the same time, I couldn’t help wondering. Not knowing was driving me crazy. I needed to know where we stood. I needed that sense of solidarity to assure me that my fears of him just up and leaving were silly. But most importantly, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to get hurt again.

Before I lost my nerve, I decided to ask.

“Jimmy?”

“Hm?”

“Are we dating? Like…officially?”

He turned to look at me, his face unnaturally devoid of its usual playfulness.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “…Do you want to be dating?”

“Well…yeah. I mean, if you want to.”

“Okay, then.” He smiled. “We’re officially dating.”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I titled my head up and kissed him. He responded enthusiastically, his arm tightening around me. Soon he started using his tongue, causing my heart to skip a beat or two, and then I rose up on my knees and wrapped my arms around his neck, yearning for more. He seized my hips and pulled me onto his lap, his hands sliding under my shirt to rest on my back. And we resumed kissing with a renewed ferocity. I completely lost track of time. The only things that existed for me were Jimmy’s warm hands on my skin, his lips on mine.

So I nearly jumped out of my skin when the front door opened, jolting me back into reality.

“Korinne? Where are you? What do you want for dinner?” Elias’s voice called.

“Please say Chinese!” Maddie’s voice added.

I pulled away from Jimmy. His chest was heaving beneath my own. My heart was pounding, my lips were numb, and all I wanted to do was kiss him again, but the sound of footsteps approaching the living room forced me to think logically. I quickly stood up, trying to ignore the fact that my legs felt like they were made out of some sort of melted substance, and fixed my shirt, which I knew had ridden up way past where it should have been.

Elias walked into the room before I could fix my hair. He looked from me to Jimmy, who now had a pillow on his lap, for some reason.

“What are you doing?”

“Watching TV,” I said quickly.

He raised an eyebrow. “Then why are you standing way over there? And why does Jimmy have a pillow on his lap?”

“I was, um…going to get the remote!” I grabbed the device off of the couch’s arm. Then I glanced at Jimmy, and as I did, I suddenly realized why the pillow was there. Heat rushed to my cheeks.

At that moment, Maddie walked in, inspecting the scene. I hoped that she’d distract Elias, but instead, she made things worse.

“Somebody’s got an erection,” she sang.

Jimmy gave a nervous laugh.

“Um…so, dinner? Chinese sounds good,” he said.

“Yep. Sounds good,” I agreed.

Elias stared at us for a few seconds before smirking and shaking his head.

“Right, well…I’ll just go get the menu. You two, um…get yourselves in order.”

He left, taking Maddie with him. I glanced at Jimmy, who immediately excused himself to go to the bathroom. Grimacing, I fixed m hair and headed into the kitchen, feeling like I’d just embarrassed myself into the next century.

+++

6:15 P.M.

“So,” Maddie said, biting into her egg roll. “How’s school?”

I stared at my plate. A mound of shrimp fried rice, a small bowl of egg drop soup, and a spoonful of lemon chicken that I’d stolen from Elias stared back at me as I tried to come up with an answer that didn’t make me sound completely miserable.

“It’s okay,” I said eventually. Every assignment I get feels like a sharp hit to the side of the head, but yeah, school’s okay.

“It gets better senior year, trust me. Especially when you’re the official yearbook photographer and have an amazing boyfriend.”

Elias’s face flushed. He quickly began shoving large amounts of pork lo mein into his mouth.

“Holy shit, you made him blush!”

“I did?”

“Shut up!” Elias exclaimed.

“I’ve never seen him blush. Wow, Maddie.”

She smiled. “I feel special.”

“You guys make me sick,” Jimmy said. I glared at him until he added “In a good way, of course.”

Maddie then attempted to regale us with an estimate of how many pictures she’d taken so far and how many she expected to have taken before they started putting the yearbook together, and though I tried my best to be polite and listen, I couldn’t really concentrate. Maddie’s question about school seemed to have grabbed hold of my worry from earlier in the day and dragged it out of the corner of my mind it’d been hiding in while I’d been distracted by Jimmy. I hated myself for spending time relaxing instead of studying. I knew I’d been working hard all week and that I deserved a few hours of chill time, but that didn’t stop me from feeling like a failure.

I was quiet all throughout the rest of dinner, and I guessed that Jimmy noticed, because as we were rinsing off our plates and putting them into the dishwasher, he placed a hand on my arm and asked me if everything was okay.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Are you sure? You look upset. Is it…I mean, I know things got kind of intense back there on the couch, but…i didn’t mean to freak you out, or anything—”

“It’s not that. That was…I didn’t have a problem with that.”

He looked relieved.

“I’m just worried about school.”

“Why? It’s just school.”

It’s not just school, it’s my entire fucking future! I wanted to shout.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said instead. “I just don’t think I’m going to be able to get everything done.”

“You will. And even if you don’t, missing an assignment or two won’t make you fail the class.”

“True.” He had a point, but it didn’t really make me feel any better. I told him it did, though, just so he wouldn’t worry. And when he believed me, maybe I should have been bothered by that. Maybe it should have been a sign—a sign of what, I didn’t know. But, deep down, I had the feeling that if I’d had the same conversation with a certain someone else, I would have felt differently.

Jimmy left about half an hour later, after a phone call from his mom in which she very loudly informed him that he needed to come home and clean his room. He’d argued for a minute before conceding to her wishes, giving me a goodbye kiss, and departing, mumbling unpleasant things about his mom as he went. Elias invited me to watch a movie with him and Maddie, but I declined and headed upstairs to take a shower. I went to bed shortly after, determined to get a bunch of sleep, get up early, and get a head start on my homework.

My plan backfired, however. I simply could not get to sleep. It seemed like every time I really wanted or needed to sleep, my brain was just like “Ha, no,” and kept me awake until ridiculous hours. I tried deep breathing techniques, I tried clenching all of my muscles and relaxing them one by one, I tried counting backwards from one hundred. Nothing worked. Eventually, I gave up, and decided to go downstairs and join Elias and Maddie in watching their movie—as long as they were still watching it and hadn’t moved on to another activity. But then my eyes fell on the clock, which told me that it was now one-thirty in the morning, and I groaned inwardly.

Fuck.

I got out of bed anyway. Besides my breathing and the hum of what I guessed was the refrigerator, the house was absolutely silent. I found it oddly refreshing, and, wide awake, I decided to take advantage of the late hour. I went over to my backpack and grabbed a few books at random before going downstairs. There, I slipped my feet into a pair of flip-flops, took my jacket from where it lay on the back of the couch, and went outside. I carefully made my way down the rocky path to the beach, and when I got to the bottom, I took off my shoes and stood there for a moment, reveling in the feeling of the sand underneath my feet and the smell of the salty sea air.

I soon found a spot near the water where copious amounts of moonlight illuminated the sand, and I sat down there, placing my books in a semicircle around me. My choices were The Scarlet Letter, a book I had to read for AP English, my Chemistry textbook, and my math textbook. Sighing, I reached for my math book, since that assignment was bound to be the hardest. I opened to the page upon which I’d placed a few sheets of paper and a pencil in order to do my homework, and attempted to make a dent in the large number of problems I had to complete.

It only took about ten minutes for me to get frustrated. I had my notes from class, I remembered the teacher showing us how to work the different types of problems, but for some reason, I couldn’t do it. Most of the problems were exactly like the examples in terms of format, but when it came to figuring out the steps to get to the answer, the degree of difficulty seemed to be multiplied by several trillion. I didn’t understand why it was so hard to figure out the area of the shaded part of some stupid shape. And this was review, for crying out loud! I should have been breezing through it. Instead, after twenty minutes, I was still staring at the first set of problems.

I tossed the pencil away and put my head in my hands. If I couldn’t handle the first few weeks of school, a few weeks of mostly review, then how the hell was I supposed to get through the rest of the year? It just didn’t seem possible. I’d thought that I could adjust to being a grade ahead, but this was torture. And I didn’t think I could handle it.

Suddenly it felt as if the weight of the world was crashing down upon me. My concerns about school crashed into my irritation with Jimmy for not understanding how seriously I took my education, which snowballed into the anger and hurt and everything else I’d been feeling lately about the Brian and Zoe situation, and before I knew it I was crying. And not just crying, but full-on, gasping, hiccuping, I-Think-I-Might-Puke sobbing. I laid down and curled myself into a ball, knowing and not caring that I was getting sand in my hair and on my jacket, and kept bawling.

I laid there for a while—a long while, or at least that’s what it felt like—so completely immersed in my misery that nothing else existed. I couldn’t feel the scratch of the sand beneath my skin, or the slight chill to the air. I was practically dead to the world. Which was why, when I heard a voice behind me, that I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

“Korinne?”

I yelped and whirled around, my heart leaping into my throat. Standing several feet away, holding a cup and looking concerned, was Brian.

“Fucking hell, Brian! I thought you were a serial killer!”

He gave a small smile. “Sorry. I’ll be sure to wear my ‘Not A Serial Killer’ bell next time.”

There was a moment of silence, during which I attempted to wipe away the evidence of my tears. He noticed, though, and before I could make myself look completely normal again, he walked over to join me on the sand.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “And don’t say nothing, because if it was nothing, you wouldn’t be out here crying in the middle of the night.”

I tried my best not to start crying again, but he was being so nice, and I just couldn’t take it.

“I’m a failure,” I said. My vision blurred with tears, and I didn’t bother to hold them back. “I’m going to fail every single one of my classes and never graduate and—”

“Korinne, it’s been two weeks,” he interrupted gently.

“I know! Exactly! I can’t even handle the first fucking two weeks of school! There’s no way I’ll be able to manage a whole year!”

He looked at me for a long moment. Then, shockingly, he set his cup down, moved over, and pulled me into his arms.

“Listen to me,” said. “You are not a failure. You skipped a grade; give yourself a break.”

“But—”

“I know you can do this, Korinne. If anyone can handle something like this, it’s you. And I’m not just saying that.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

I looked up at him to see that his face held nothing but certainty. He brushed a tear off of my cheek with his thumb, and that simple touch meant more to me than anything I’d ever felt. I was suddenly struck by how much I missed him. Some part of me wanted to knot my fingers in his hair and kiss him, harder than I’d ever kissed anyone in my entire life, but for some reason, that seemed unnecessary, like I didn’t need to be kissing him to feel close to him. This—him just holding me—was enough.

“Thanks,” I said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.

“No problem.”

“So…why are you out here?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh.” My eyes fell on the cup next to him, full of some sort of steaming liquid. “What’s in the cup?”

“Hot chocolate. It usually helps me get to sleep,” he said, grabbing it. He held it out to me. “Want some? I’m probably not going to drink it anyway.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Hesitantly, I took the cup from him. I waited for him to change his mind and snatch it back, or something, but he didn’t, so I took a sip. Warm chocolate-y goodness exploded across my tongue. It tasted so good that I drained nearly half of the cup before starting to feel like a complete fatty. I put the cup down, and put my head back on his shoulder.

I probably should have spent more time thinking about why his words of comfort, his touch, felt so much better to me than anything Jimmy had ever done. I probably should have thought more about how I’d stopped thinking about pretty much everything the second Brian had touched me, yet even after making out with Jimmy, I was still stressed. But for the first time that day, I was truly content, so I simply relaxed, focusing on the heat of Brian’s body next to mine and the white-yellow streaks of light in which the crescent moon above was bathing us.