Page 9 of Finding Jack
She shrugged then drummed her fingers on the table for a minute. I refused to let her know it was bugging me. Suddenly the drumming stopped. “What do you mean Jack won’t do any more Photoshops? How do you know?”
“He said he wouldn’t.”
She hopped up and hobbled over to plunk down on the other side of the sofa. I moved my feet so she wouldn’t sit on them. “You talked to him?”
“I sent him an IM. He was really nice about it.”
“If he said he wouldn’t make any more then why did I get the silent treatment anyway?”
“I wanted to make you say it.”
“You’re the worst.” She pulled the magazine down so it lay in my lap. “Pay attention to me. Let’s talk about Jack. Did he say anything else?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the kind of thing you know or don’t know.”
I tugged at the magazine but she wouldn’t let it go. “He sent me another IM.”
“What did it say?”
I jerked the magazine back and leafed through it. “I don’t know. I haven’t read it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t care?” I wish I hadn’t ended that as a question. I hadn’t meant to.
She rested her chin on her knees and studied me as closely as she had her toenail polish. I didn’t like it so much. The staring. Her toes were cute. “Interesting,” she murmured. “Maybe not checking his message is making it more important than it actually is. It’s like…like Harry Potter! When he’s not supposed to look in that whatchamacallit mirror, but the harder he fights it the more he wants to.”
“The Mirror of Erised, and that’s not exactly how it went.”
“Nerd.”
“You know that’s not an insult, right?”
“You know you’re just being a coward by not looking at his message, right?”
I threw up my hands. “I will do anything to shut you up right now.” I climbed off the sofa and grabbed my gym bag, digging through it until I found my phone. With my best you-are-so-ridiculous side eye at Ranée, I opened the message.
And gasped.
Chapter 5
The message was from Jack, all right. It was another picture, but he’d Photoshopped himself again, this time astride a gray dappled unicorn on a beach, his long hair streaming in the breeze, the sky behind him filled with kites. He was wearing linen pants and no shirt, and he had a fake barbed wire tattoo around his bicep. But the best part was the crown of flowers he wore. He’d captioned it, “I AM MANLY, NOT GIRLY.”
I laughed. And kept laughing.
“Let me see.” Ranée snatched the phone from my hand. “Oh, now this is some of his best work yet. Can you really say no to that?” She handed my phone back. “I mean, compared to—"
I could tell by the look in her eye that it was going to be some kind of anti-Paul remark, so I held up my hand. “Enough. I can’t even tell you how old that’s getting.”
She shrugged. “Thank goodness Paul won’t see those DMs.”
“Why are you saying it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m hiding something.”
