Every Part of Me

Jessica didn’t know what they were doing here. But when John had shown up on her doorstep, duffel bag in hand, she hadn’t questioned his reasoning.

They had made it farther than she had ever gone in her lame attempts to escape home. Past the park, past the library, down the road, in the parking lot of a closed gas station, they sat on the hood of Mr. Dorian’s car. John had just recently finished his driver’s education course and had slipped the keys from his father’s nightstand before anyone had gone to bed that night.

Jessica was fully willing to admit that being in the passenger seat with him in the driver’s wasn’t the safest thing she had taken part in. But she would be even quicker to lay down, on her life, that she wasn’t about to let John run away from home by himself.

Somewhere along their line of short conversations, their nods of recognition in the halls had turned into shy smiles of hello. It was something that even John didn’t want to get rid of. So he had stopped by the girl’s house on his way into blinding freedom and Jessica, equally desperate, had let him.

Jessica didn’t speak a word in the parking lot. They passed a bottle of Pepsi between each other and stared at the cloudy sky where the stars should have been shining.

More than anything Jessica wanted to ask John what he was thinking about, what had set him off, what he had in the bag, and if he meant to bring her all the way with him. She guessed that it would be no problem with her to drop everything and follow John to the end of the Earth if that’s where he meant to go.

She doubted they would make it that far, but a simple coastline would suffice for their teenage minds.

Jessica thought that maybe it was the questions that had pushed John out his front door. She had been getting them too. Her parents had recently started to relax the rule involving parental supervision. This gave Jessica and her friends time to talk. Skylar had been the first to ask about Jonathan Dorian. Jessica had replied she didn’t know what Skylar meant. He was just John.

Jessica didn’t know how teenage boys worked or how their parents functioned, but if her son had started to spend time with the girl a street over she would have had questions of some nature.

John handed her the fizzling drink and she held the bottle in her hands. It was still cold and the feeling bit into her skin until her fingers were colder than the tip of her nose.

John hadn't spoken a word. Even when Jessica opened the front door for him, he had stood their silently, watching her with eyes that knew her choice the moment they saw her face. Then he had walked back down the porch steps and Jessica didn’t even have time to grab a jacket before she had to follow him down the driveway and across the street.

Now, sitting silently for at least two hours, Jessica wondered if he would ever talk again, played with the idea of just sleeping here, on the hood of a stolen car and waiting for the sun to come up. But no matter how many questions made their way through her mind, Jessica didn’t open her mouth or even twitch in a way that showed John she had them.

Because Jessica now thought she knew John just as he had known her when she was fourteen. Jessica needed to be pushed, needed the questions and the prods. John needed nothing. He needed silence just as much as he needed someone to be silent with him.

So Jessica didn’t speak a word.

Next to her, John slipped one hand over the neck of the Pepsi bottle she still held and used his other to gently pry her fingers away. Jessica let him take it and watched as he slid down the hood of the car. His shoes made no sound as the hit the cracked pavement.

John offered his hand and Jessica took it.

John picked up the bag he had dropped on the ground, shoved it in the backseat, and pressed the keys into Jessica’s hand. She let him kiss her cheek and move to the passenger side.

Then Jessica wordlessly slipped into the driver’s seat and, using her memory of time spent in the car with her father, drove John home.