Snakebite Hearts & Bubblegum Smiles

It had taken two painful weeks to plow through the final days of school before classes let out for break. I invited the girls to sleep over before we left for Jersey bright and early the next morning. We would be taking my car, but Alex was still coming over with the rest of the guys to meet up so we could all leave together.

Just as the microwave’s timer went off, I pulled the steaming bag of popcorn out and emptied it into a bowl. We were having a Pirates of the Caribbean marathon and it was my turn to restock our snack supply.

“Brooke! If you’re not back in .2 seconds I am starting without you!” Lisa threatened from downstairs. I grabbed the popcorn bowl and hurried to the staircase.

“Yeah and if you do, you’re sleeping outside!” I nearly tripped over Jane, who was stretched out on the floor in a cocoon of blankets, when I got downstairs and plopped down next to her, setting the bowl down on my lap.

“You want to share?” Lisa nudged me with the remote.

“No, you offended me.”

“What?”

“I only share food with my friends who don’t try to play my favorite movie in my absence.” I shoved a small handful of popcorn into my mouth. “Jane wouldn’t do that,” I said. “Now would you, Jane?”

“Of course not,” she said in a mock serious tone.

“See?” I glanced at Lisa. She rolled her eyes as I offered the bowl to Jane.

“Can we just start the movie now?” Kara jumped in. “I need to see my Orlando!”

Lisa selected the Play option on the main menu page. We had made it a whole seven minutes, right up to the scene when Will first appears at the governor’s house to deliver a sword, before Kara began to swoon.

“Gahh! He’s so sexy.” She was nearly beside herself as she watched Orlando Bloom onscreen.

“Johnny Depp is way sexier than Orlando Bloom,” I argued, causing Kara to gasp in horror.

“How can you say that?” she asked, her eyes shifting briefly from the television to me.

I shrugged, laughing. “I guess I just have better taste than you.”

“I don’t know, I think Orlando’s pretty banging,” Jane said softly.

Kara shot her fists in the air and shouted, “Thank you! Finally someone with eyes and good judgment!”

Speaking of good judgment. “Jane, any guys at school catch your eye?” I asked. I knew she had a thing for Jack, but I couldn’t resist watching her face flush and the way she always fidgeted with the ends of her hair whenever he was brought up.

“Not nice.” She tossed popcorn at me.

“Aw, come on, Jane,” Lisa begged. “Who is it?”

“Yeah, give us the dirt,” Kara said, somehow managing to tear her eyes away from Orlando.

“Fine!” she groaned, rolling onto her back and covering her face with the blanket. She said something, but the blanket muffled it.

“Sorry what?” I said.

She said it again, this time loud enough for us all to hear. “JACK!”

Kara and Lisa squealed, hardly able to contain themselves. “Oh my God, does he know?” Kara asked, her attention completely off the movie now. Jane shook her head.

“You should tell him,” Lisa said. “Lord knows that boy needs a woman in his life. I can’t even remember the last time he had a girlfriend.”

Jane seemed to cringe at the term “girlfriend,” so I nudged her with my foot. “I think he likes you too. He’s always real smiley when you’re around.”

She smiled so big. “Really?”



I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ever felt so energized so early in the morning. The girls and I were loading my car with our bags and anything else we thought we might need on the road—like a 2 pound bag of strawberry Twizzlers and Lisa’s Backstreet Boys CD.

“Morning ladies!” I turned around and saw Rian with his head sticking out of the driver’s side window of Alex’s car. He got out and walked up the driveway to give Kara a good-morning-kiss. “Ready to go?” he asked, turning to the rest of us.

I nodded vigorously. “Let’s go!”

He laughed at me and said in a low voice to Kara, “Who put the firecrackers in her pants?”

“Heard that!”

Lisa, who had put on sunglasses to hide how tired she really looked, cleared her throat. “Where’s Alex?”

“He’s passed out in the backseat.” Rian pointed to the car. I could see a blob of brown hair pressed up against the glass.

“He let you drive?” Lisa asked, sounding shocked. The love and protective instinct that Alex had for his car was the equivalent of first-time parents and their newborn baby. He never let anyone behind the wheel. Rian just nodded, swirling Alex’s key ring around his index finger. “He must be delirious.”
Maybe it was my abnormally high level of energy this morning or me just being an asshole. Either way I got the bright idea to walk over to Alex and tap on the window until he slowly raised his head and glared up at me, his eyes narrow slits. “Wakey-wakey!” I said with a cheesy smile.

“Fuck off.” He turned on his other side so that his back was facing me. Behind him I could see Jack with his head resting against the other side door. Zack was awake in the passenger’s seat, watching Alex with an amused look on his face.

“That wasn’t very nice language, Alexander,” I said, frowning at him. Without turning around, he raised his left hand and gave me the middle finger salute, making Zack laugh from the front seat.



Rian’s uncle’s house was even more perfect than I had imagined. The second I walked in, I was enamored by the pretty pale yellow that covered the walls and the smell of ocean air coming in from the back of the house, which was sat right on the beach. Next to the staircase was a navy blue hall table with a decorative lamp and a miniature lighthouse statue sitting on top. Above that was a quilted welcome sign hanging in a wood frame. Stitched in script were the words, Welcome Friends. On the other side of the foyer was a white bench with two blue, flip-flop patterned pillows stuffed and fluffed to perfection at both ends.

“Ho-ly shit!” My bags bumped against my thighs as I ran down the hall and into the kitchen where I found a double screen door that led out to the deck. Everyone followed and stared in awe at the view.

Alex: “I kind of want to marry your uncle right now.”

Rian: “Then you would be my aunt, and I’m sorry, but that’s where I draw the line.”

Alex: “We could get a divorce. As long as I keep the house.”

Lisa: “Gold-digger!”

We decided that we should all pick out our rooms before we went to the beach, so everybody paired off. Kara took the master bedroom with Rian, Lisa and Alex took the guest room with the double bed, leaving Zack and Jack and Jane and me to pick between the two rooms that were left. Rian told us that they each had two sets of twin beds. We peeked inside the one on the left side of the hall that was closest to the staircase first. At the sight of pink quilted bedspreads, the matter of rooms was resolved shortly after.

Jane and I set our bags down in the Pink Room. It was decided that if I could have the bed by the window, Jane could have the top two drawers of our dresser so she wouldn’t have to crouch down every morning to get dressed; a small price to pay on my part. We unpacked our clothes and hung our nice things up in the closet, stuffing the rest into drawers once we started feeling lazy. By the time we were all settled, I could tell Jane was done for the day. She threw herself onto her bed and buried her face in the comforter.

“Jane tired!” she whined.

I hopped on next to her. “No! Come outside with me!” I begged. She shook her head and groaned.

“Jane need sleep!”

“Jane need to stop talking like a damn caveman,” I said and tried to get her up one last time. Making no progress, I left her to nap and went door to door, looking for someone to go to the beach with me.

It was late in the afternoon; a little too cool to bust out the bikinis, so Kara, Lisa, and I decided to go with sweatshirts and shorts instead. We were sitting on towels; our sunglasses were perched on top of our heads and we were watching the guys—minus Jack—toss a football around. As it turned out, he and Jane had something in common, the need to nap after short-distance travel. The low roar of the ocean was relaxing. I closed my eyes and felt myself start to sway, drifting off into a light snooze when someone suddenly screamed right in my ear and then something smacked hard against my head, sending my sunglasses flying into the sand.

“Brooke, are you okay?” I heard Lisa’s voice first. All I could feel was this throbbing pain in the side of my head. I pressed my palm against it, but it didn’t do much except add pressure.

“Nice throw, Alex!” I heard Rian say mockingly. I opened my eyes and saw the three of them running up to me. The ball had landed only a few feet away, so I grabbed it and slowly got to my feet with the help of Lisa and Kara.

“Lose something?” I said and tossed it back to Alex.

“I’m so sorry! The sun was in my eyes and it distorted my vision and—”

“Don’t you blame the sun for your inability to throw a football,” Lisa scolded him. She turned back to me. “Are you okay, B?”

“Yeah, no biggie. I just have a bump that feels like the size of a golf ball swelling on my head.” I tried to laugh it off, but it actually really hurt.

“That’s attractive,” Alex joked and Zack shoved him, making him lose his balance for a second. Although I did not condone violence, I shot Zack an appreciative smile.

“You should really put some ice on it,” Kara said. “Want me to take you inside?” she asked.

I shook me head, which made the throbbing worse. “That’s okay, I’ll go. Jane and Jack are probably up by now anyway,” I said, and after assuring everyone that I was fine, they finally let me go back to the house alone. I had just reached the bottom of the deck’s staircase when I heard someone running up behind me. When I turned around, I was surprised to see Alex jogging over.

“Just making sure you didn’t trip and hit your head again,” he said once he caught up to me, sounding slightly short of breath.

“Well thank goodness! I wasn’t sure how I was going to get up all these stairs by myself!” I said. “In fact, you did this to me. You should carry me up.”

“As you wish,” he said and before I could object, he scooped me up in his arms and threw me over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. He started up the stairs, making me head bob up and down. I winced as the pressure in my head intensified.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“I’m doing what you told me to do!”

“I wasn’t serious!” If anything, I would have expected him to hop on my back and have me haul him up to the house.

“Geez, I hit you with a football and you get mad at me. Then I try to nurse you back to health and you still get mad at me. You are one tough girl to please, Brooke Mitchell.”

When we got inside, Alex sat me down on the kitchen counter and went to the freezer to get some ice. There was no sign of Jack or Jane anywhere, so I figured they were still sleeping upstairs. I sat in silence and waited until Alex came back with an icepack wrapped in the dishtowel that had been hanging from the refrigerator door handle. He came up close and put one hand on my shoulder, gently pressing the icepack to my bump with the other. I winced at the cold and the soreness, biting my lip to keep from whimpering.

“You’re such a baby,” he said, laughing. “How does that feel?”

I put my hand over his, taking the icepack from him, and held it up myself. “It still feels like you hit me with a football.”