I.

Can’t

Breathe.

My Vera Bradley tote bag hit the floor as I looked around my room in shock.  I kept a close hold on my pillow, not that the pillow in itself was that important to me but the pillow case was covered with a picture of Orlando Bloom.  Shirtless.  You can find almost anything on Ebay.  You just got to know where to look.

“Did your boyfriend leave you?” My brother Justin asked sarcastically as he dropped my suitcase by the door and sauntered off to his room across the hall.  I didn’t even bother with making a face at him.  I was trying to catch my breath.

“Jenna.”  My mom came up behind me and placed her arm on my shoulder.  “Do you like it?”

I looked at the fresh lime green paint on the walls.  I looked at the new pink and yellow quilt and the pile of coordinating pillows on my bed.  I looked at the bright pink bean bag chair behind a curtain of….beads?  At least my computer and my desk had been spared the attack of Peptol Bismal.

“Where’s all my Orlando stuff?” I asked.  I think I was suffering from shock.  The entire room looked liked something off of Trading Spaces.  I was definitely having trouble breathing.

“It’s all right here sweetheart.”  My mom was always calling everyone sweetheart or darling or honey.  I didn’t feel like being her sweetheart.  I didn’t feel sweet at all.  I felt…violated.  I had only been gone for a week and she had come in and redecorated my room.  Wasn’t I entitled to an opinion on the subject?  Shouldn’t I have a say on what went on my walls?  It had taken me forever to get everything the way I wanted it.  I had the posters fixed so that the last thing I saw when I fell asleep at night was Orlando.  I could even look in the mirror at my vanity and see him looking back at me.  Smiling at me with his sexy smile and his dark brown eyes and those cheekbones….

My mom opened the door to my walk-in closet to show me a stack of posters and pictures lying on the floor.

“Ahhh!” I screamed.  “Are they stuck together?”  I ran to my closet to rescue my treasures.

“I promise I was very careful,” my mom said in her patient voice.  I hated her patient voice.  It always meant that I was about to hear something that I didn’t like.

“However,” she continued.  I braced myself for what was coming.  “Since your walls look so nice I would appreciated it if you didn’t mark them up with tape and tacks.  After all we paid a lot of money to have this done for you.  As a surprise.  You’re going to be fourteen soon.  Don’t you think your room should look like it belongs to a freshman in high school?”

Wow!  The full barrel.  She had got me with the money guilt and the coming maturity issue all in one shot.  My mom had never really approved of what she thought was an unhealthy obsession with Orlando Bloom.  She just didn’t understand.  He was special.  He was different that the rest of those guys that girls had crushes on like Justin Timberlake and Chad Michael Murray.  I could see it in his eyes.  He was waiting for me.  To grow up.  To be his special….love.  Forever.

I had only been in the door for five minutes and I already had my mom pissed off at me.  I had better tread lightly as my dad liked to say.

“Would it be okay if I hung them in here?” I asked in what I hoped was a humble voice.  Sometimes my mom had problems with my voice tones. 

“Sure.”

“Mom?” I asked.

She looked at me expectantly.

“The room looks nice.  I really like it.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “You’re dad had to run to the office and we’re gong to go out to eat as soon as he gets back.  Bring your laundry down so I can get started on it.”

“Okay.” 

She still wasn’t happy with me but at least I had done the right thing. There would be no lecture later about expressing gratitude for the sacrifices my parents made and being a responsible young adult and stuff like that.

I waited until she was gone before I made a dive for my cell phone.  I fell into the bright pink bean bag as I pushed speed dial button number four.  Number one was the house of course, number two my mom’s cell, number three my dad’s and four belonged to my best friend.  My brother Justin was number five, in case I needed a ride or something like that.

“Jess!” I moaned in my best dramatic voice when she answered her cell.  Jessica Gilbert was my best friend.  Or she had been since sixth grade when we both realized that our computer skills teacher was insane.  Her family had just moved to town and my friends from elementary school had all been placed on a different teaching team than me since I was what the teachers considered Academically Gifted.  Basically what it meant was that everyone in the AG classes had more homework that everyone else.  In seventh and eighth grade we had both made the volleyball team and we were both trying out for the JV team at our High School next week.  I was a striker since I had grown about eight inches between seventh and eighth grade.  Jess was a setter.  We worked well together.

“Jenn!” she said.  “What’s wrong?”

“Are you home yet?”  I had just spent a week with Jess’s family at a cabin they had rented on the lake.  It had been boring.  No internet, no DVD player and no cute guys over the age of twelve.  Jess’s little brother, Hunter, had future cuteness potential.  He’d have to give up being a pest however.  And grow a foot or two.  He had bought a friend with him also and they had spent their week catching frogs and snakes to scare us with.  We had retaliated by stealing their clothes when they were skinny dipping.  They said we just did it because we wanted to see their…thingies…

Gross.

“We just got home.  Jenn,” She sounded like she was out of breath.  “The new neighbors moved in while we were gone.”

“And?”  I waited patiently.  I knew my news was much more important than something trivial like new neighbors.

“Mrs. Gladden said they have a son our age.”  Mrs. Gladden was Jess’s neighbor on the other side.  She had been old ever since I knew her and used to baby sit for Jess and Hunter while their parents were at work.  Jess had declared herself too old to be baby sat in seventh grade but Mrs. Gladden still kept Hunter until last summer when he turned eleven.  Now she just fed their cat and got the mail while they were on vacation.  In return Hunter got to cut her grass and eat all the homemade chocolate chip cookies that he wanted.

I waited for Jessica’s announcement.

“A cute son.”

“According to your nosy neighbor?” I said.  “The one who thinks Harrison Ford is a hottie?”

“Yeah,” Jess laughed.  “He was kind of hot in Star Wars.”

“That movie is ancient!”  I laughed with her as I looked around my room.  It still seemed foreign and I wondered if my stash of Starburst had survived my mom’s purge. 

“So, have you seen him yet?” I asked as I played with the beads that hung from the ceiling.  They hit against each other with a clacking sound as they swayed back and forth.

“No.  She said he’s trying out for the football team and that he’s running all the time.  What is that noise?”

“Beads.  They hang from the ceiling,” I explained.

My brother Justin played football.  Varsity.  He was going to be a junior but he had been on varsity since halfway through the season of his freshman year.  He was a defensive end and already had colleges looking at him.  My dad sure was proud of him.  He was president of the Athletic Boosters and always stopped by the school on his way home from work to watch practices and talk football with the rest of the dads.  It was expected by him that I would make the volleyball team also.  Carry on the tradition he said.  Jess and I had both spent a week at the coach’s volleyball camp and we had played AAU last spring.  I think our chances were pretty good.

I had more important things than volleyball on my mind at the moment.  Like Orlando.

“Beads?  What beads?” Jess asked.

“The pink and green beads that form some sort of curtain I guess around this pink bean bag chair.  My mom redecorated my room.”

“A pink bean bag?  Awesome.  I think.  What’s the rest of it look like?”

“It’s al bright green and pink with a new quilt with big squares on it.”  Now for the critical life changing announcement.  “Jess.  She took down all my posters.”  I waited for my words to sink in.

“Omigosh.”   Jess always ran her words together when she got excited.  I never had any trouble understanding her but sometimes my mom and dad did.  I usually had to translate for her.

I also knew that Jess would understand.  One wall of her room looked like a shrine to Tom Welling.  You know, the guy who plays Clark Kent on Smallville?  He wasn’t much of a publicity hound and pics of him were kind of hard to come by.  Plus he was married which was kind of gross, I guess, for Jess.

Ew.  What if Orlando got married?  He was kind of serious about that Kate Bosworth.  Oh well, it’s not like I really expected him to wait around while I grew up.  Just as long as he was available when I did get there. Anyway…

Jess also had a wall devoted to Daniel Radcliffe, the Harry Potter guy.  We had sat through the third movie at least five times.  He was pretty cute, but he wasn’t Orlando.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.  I could hear noises in the background.

“She said I could hang them in my closet.”

“You never get to see him!” Jess exclaimed, somewhat breathlessly.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Changing clothes.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Dad told Hunter to cut the grass and I’m going to do the trimming,” she explained.

“Oh.” 

What she really meant was that she was going to hang out in the front yard and wait for the new neighbor to come by. 

“So do you want to go see it?” I asked.

“You’re mom isn’t going to let you see an R-rated movie.”

“She doesn’t have to know.”  We had already discussed this several times at the lake.

“You mean sneak in?”

“Yes.”  She knew that’s what I meant.  Why was she playing dumb?

“My dad would kill me.”

“Come on,” I urged.  “We’ll just tell them we’re going to see Harry Potter again.”

“Wouldn’t you rather see Spiderman 2”

Tobey MacGuire was kind of cute.  Especially in those scenes where he took off his shirt.

“No.”  The decision was made.  It had been made a long time ago when Orlando had been cast as Paris.  I had even forced myself to read the Iliad.  And that was after I had read Lord Of the Rings and The Simarillion.  My dad thought I was a genius or something since I had even walked to the library and checked those books outs.  It’s not like Justin would have driven me.  He wouldn’t be caught dead near a library unless there was a cute girl involved.

“I’ve got to see Troy.”

“Ohmigosh,” Jess interrupted me.  “Igottagocallyoulaterbye.”

She hung up on me!

Over some random guy.

I wonder what he looks like.