Read The Tragedy of Loving Jamie Clarke for Free Online

should call him and cancel before it’s too late. I’ll just tell him I came down with something.
    I shuffle over to the cordless phone that my parents insist on keeping even though no one uses a landline anymore, and begin to dial his number. Sign number one that I am a pathetic loser; Jamie gave me his number yesterday and I have already memorized it.
    Ding dong.
    Oh no, Jamie is here! Crap, crap, crap! I can’t do this! No, this is too much. Help!

 
     
     
     
    -6-
     
    Ding dong. Ding dong.
    Okay that’s twice in a row. Crap!
    I turn the triangle knob that my mother bought at a garage sale last week until the door clicks open.
    “Hey April,” Jamie says with a wide grin. “I was beginning to think you were ignoring me until I got the hint and left.”
    Caught!
    “I know I’m sorry I was listening to music and didn't hear the doorbell” I lie.
    “You look beautiful.” Jamie is looking at me like I’m a shiny dessert waiting for him to devour.
    I wonder if this is how cannibals look at their meals before chopping them up and throwing them into a stew. Cannibalism, seriously this is what I am thinking about? I am so glad mind reading isn’t actually a thing. I wish I could say that he is the only one looking like he wants to devour the other but he’s not. Why does he have to be so damn good looking? It is making it difficult for me to pretend like I’m not excited to see him.
    “Thank you,” I reply grabbing my purse off the coat rack that Grammy gave us for Christmas some years ago. “Shall we head out?”
    “You mean you’re not going to invite me in to meet your parents? Are you that embarrassed by me?” Jamie is clearly teasing me but the thought of him meeting my parents makes me queasy.
    I picture him walking into the living room and seeing the framed Yin-Yang poster hanging above the fireplace, the torn and stained pink couch and enough old furniture that makes it look like an antique store threw up, and him running outside screaming, “April’s a freak! April’s a freak!” And if that wouldn’t already send him running I am sure that my parents and their “we’re cool people,” act would. He’d walk in and my dad would quiz him on the latest baseball trivia, a hobby dad has taken up recently, and who knows if Jamie is even into baseball. Then, mom, of course, would break out the old family photo albums and show Jamie all of my most embarrassing pictures including the one of me from my fifth birthday where I decided it would be best celebrated completely naked. It would be the nail that seals my fate and I would forever be known as the girl who stripped when she was five.
    “They’re not home” I reply throwing my purse over my shoulder and joining Jamie on the front stoop.
    Jamie shrugs and nods for me to step outside. We make our way down the driveway and onto the sidewalk in front of my property.
    “So, Ms. Tour Guide, where to first?” Jamie asks.
    This is unbelievable! He asked me to show him around Perkins Harbor but I was too busy freaking out about whether this is a date or not and didn’t think to make a plan. I can take him to Gourmet Coffee and show him the one place most of our peers hang out at night, but then we run the risk of running into half of our junior class, including Liza, and I have no desire to do that. I already know what would happen if we ran into her; Jamie would be seduced by her and he’d forget about me and it won’t matter that she has a boyfriend because it never does. There’s always Flower Cave, we can grab their famous lobster rolls and run less of a risk of seeing our classmates. Or I can play it safe and take him to The Cove. There’s no way we’ll run into our classmates there, not at this hour anyway.
    Once Amber and I walked to The Cove after 7 o’clock p.m. just to see what life was like there at that hour and ran into a few of our teachers who paraded us around like trophies. When our classmates found out we had been hanging out