Page 11 of Notice Me, Jameson Hart
“Personal items?” DeShawn snorts. “Just say condoms, man.”
“My brother’s worse,” Carlos chimes in. “He found a box tucked in the corner of our dad’s closet. Now he thinks he’s some kind of expert on women.”
A strangled noise escapes me that sounds somewhere between a cough and a dying seal.
“You okay there, Kevin?” Matthew asks, genuinely concerned.
I nod, unable to form words. I grab the dust rag and wipe down a pristine side table as the guys continue talking about their snooping siblings, and for some, their snooping parents.
Eventually, the conversation shifts to football. Something about defensive formations and the new plays Coach Potter wants them to memorize. I tune it out, focusing instead on making myself as invisible as possible. I’ve gotten good at this—becoming part of the furniture when the house fills with my brothers’ friends. If there were an Olympic event for blending into the background, I’d medal every time.
Robbie and Adam belong to this world. They speak its language fluently. Their conversations are a battering ram of inside jokes, team gossip, and crude stories that get funnier, apparently, the louder they’re told. I barely keep up. Sometimes I memorize what they say so that I can Google terms later.Cover two defense. Snap count. Zone blitz.
I don’t try to chime in, not even when one of the players whose name I can never remember asks me a question. My attempts at conversation are usually met with blank stares or polite smiles. Once, I made a reference toMaybe Happy Ending,and it fell so flat that even the glass giraffe on the mantle was embarrassed for me.
A few hours later, when I think I’ve reached maximum invisibility, Tyler leans over the armrest and grins at Adam. “Did you hear? Jameson Hart is no longer grounded. Now, we can all hang out again.”
My head snaps up at the mention of Jameson Hart’s name.
I know that name.Everyoneknows that name.
CHAPTER 4
who’s that guy?
Jameson Micah Hart.
Born on the Fourth of July, which makes him the most American person in Arcadia by default. He’s six-foot-three of grade-A, corn-fed athletic perfection. And while Adam may be the quarterback, it’s Jameson who dominates the football field. He’s such a force to be reckoned with that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’d been assembled in a lab by scientists tasked with creating the ideal wide receiver.
The stats speak for themselves. Last season: 1,247 receiving yards, sixteen touchdowns, and exactly zero dropped passes that mattered. The ones that didn’t, witnesses testified that a bird flew directly into his face at the moment of impact.
His hair is bleached to the exact shade of summer wheat, courtesy of too many hours in the sun and possibly a bottle of Sun-In he’ll never admit to using. His smile could sell toothpaste to a dentist. His laugh makes teachers forget they assigned homework. And when he walks down the hallway, freshmen spontaneously develop crushes they won’t understand for another three years.
He drives a beat-up Honda that is somehow cooler than any luxury car in the student lot. He volunteers at the animalshelter, where puppies line up to be held in his giant hands. His Instagram is filled with workout videos that are shared by the official Arcadia Knights account. Each one garners thousands of views from people who claim they’re watching for the “football tips.”
He’s the guy who gets voted Homecoming King as a sophomore, breaking a twenty-year tradition. The guy who helps the janitor clean up after pep rallies without being asked. The guy whose mere presence at a party guarantees it won’t get busted because even cops respect him too much to ruin his fun. In other words, Jameson Hart is perfect with a capital P.
The first timeJameson Hart came to my attention was during English class freshman year. Ms. Petrowski had assigned oral reports on literary greats, and most of us did ours with the enthusiasm of sloths. But when Jameson stood up to present his report on William Shakespeare, the earth tilted on its axis, and I was the only one who noticed.
He walked slowly to the front of the class with a stack of index cards, his usual swagger replaced by something I’d never seen before. Uncertainty. Those nimble hands of his that caught footballs on the gridiron shook as he arranged his notes at the podium.
“So, um…William Shakespeare—” His voice cracked on the last syllable. He cleared his throat and tried again. “William Shakespeare was born in 1564.”
I leaned forward in my seat, enraptured with the boy standing in front of me. His right foot tapped against thelinoleum floor in a nervous rhythm that I was certain matched his quickening pulse.
“He wrote”—Jameson licked his lips. Once. Twice. Three times—“thirty-seven plays. Or thirty-eight. Scholars debate—” The index card slipped from his fingers and fluttered to the floor.
Nobody batted an eye. They were all too busy staring at their phones or writing notes to each other. Not even Ms. Petrowski pretended to care. Her eyes were on her fingernails being sharpened with a nail file.
Jameson bent down and struggled to retrieve the index card from the sticky ground. I was fascinated. The golden boy had tarnish.
When he finally managed to stand back up, his face was flushed. And not in the attractive way, from exertion after a game, but the blotchy red of genuine embarrassment. His tongue darted out again to wet his lips.
“Sorry,” he said to no one in particular. “Where was I? Oh, right. Plays.” He gripped the edges of the podium until his knuckles turned white. “Romeo and Juliet is probably his most famous tragedy.” He stopped, checked his cards, then continued in a more mechanical tone. “It was written between 1594 and 1596.”
The foot-tapping intensified as he continued his fifteen-minute oral presentation. I took in everything, from his Adam’s apple bobbing and the sheen of sweat on his forehead, to his left hand tugging at his collar as he finished.
“In conclusion, Shakespeare remains relevant because his themes are universal. Love, jealousy, ambition—these things don’t change.
