Randy

"Darned rain," I muttered, leaning back against the headrest of my bed and turning my head to glare at the rivulets of water decorating my bedroom window. It seemed like all it did anymore was rain. I was starting to feel like *I* was the one living in London, England and not Christie Winchell, one of Jana's best friends.

Jana. I'd promised myself that I was going to quit thinking about her. Ever since our official 'breaking up experiment' began last night, I'd been hanging around my room, brooding over the whole thing. To make it clear right off the bat, I never wanted to break up with Jana. This whole dumb experiment is completely *her* idea... I don't care what she says, breaking up and dating other people isn't going to change how I feel about her. How can she really expect me to just up and start dating other girls? You have to at least sort of be attracted to someone to ask them out and I can't think of one girl at school besides Jana who fits that bill. I guess you could say that ever since Jana and I started dating, I've really been a one-girl guy. I definitely have friends who are girls but I just can't imagine *dating* any of them. And now that's what I was supposed to do... for a whole month until the date Jana and I have planned where we'll get together and discuss our results. In other words, see if we still like each other as much as we thought we did and if we're 'meant to be'.

A whole month. I flopped foward onto my stomach so that I was closer to my window and stared at the rain, not really seeing any of it, just silently thinking how the weather really did match my mood. It was almost like it was crying for me, something I had been upset enough to do, but hadn't done. Yet. That's why I had to keep my mind on other subjects. The more I thought about Jana and how much I missed her already and how I would only be able to *see* her for four whole weeks, the more depressed I got and ultimately, the closer to tears. I buried my head in my arms, folded in front of me. I wasn't going to cry though. I wouldn't let myself. I was stronger than that. It was just a *breakup* for pete's sake. Half the guys at school went through them, sometimes several times a week. And none of them ever got *nearly* upset enough to cry. But then, none of them had ever dated Jana either.

A sudden knock at the door made me nearly jump out of my skin.

"Honey? Can I come in?" My mom's voice came from the other side of the door.

I sat up quickly and took a deep breath, hoping nothing in my appearance would give away how upset I was. Ha.

"Sure, mom."

The door opened slowly, and my mom's smiling face peeked around the corner.

"Hi, sweetie. I won't bother you if you really want to be alone, but you've been up here all day and I just wondered if something was wrong. You haven't even been down to the basement yet to play videogames, which is really unusual. Are you feeling ok?"

I started to nod my head, but stopped. My mom was one of the closest people to me in the world, and I knew she'd be able to see right through whatever I made up. And anyway, how could I expect to keep the fact that Jana and I had broken up a secret for a whole month? Not a chance.

"Mom," I said hesitently, picking my words carefully as I tried to figure out the best way to break the news, "when a girl wants to break up with somebody, and the reason she gives is really dumb, and the person she's breaking up with doesn't want to break up, should that person just go along with it or do whatever he can to change the girl's mind?"

My mom's expression went from puzzled-and-slightly-amused to sympathetic in about two seconds.

"Oh my," she said, coming over to the bed and sitting next to me. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

I swallowed and looked down at the bedspread.

"Jana and I broke up." Saying it out loud was like cutting my heart.

My mom put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze.

"Oh, honey. I'm so sorry. I know how much you like her. I had a feeling something along that line was bothering you since you seemed so quiet when you came home last night from her house..." She paused a minute, then added, "What was her reason for wanting to break up? You two didn't have a fight did you? It didn't seem like you two having any problems lately."

I sighed and then told her the whole story, Jana coming up with some wacky experiment about us needing to date other people and pressing the issue even though she knew how I was against it until finally I gave in last night before leaving her house.

"But I know how I feel about her and dating other people isn't going to change anything!" I insisted as I wrapped up my speech.

"Well, it seems a little bit strange to me, too, Randy, but it might just be an excuse- you know how you like to have your own space sometimes, maybe Jana just feels like that right now."

"Then why doesn't she just say that? If she wants to cut back, why doesn't she just say so? Why does that mean we have to break up?" I argued.

My mom was silent for a moment. "I know you're hurt and confused right now and I wish I could make everything better for you. But I can't. And if Jana is really sure it's what she wants to do, then you have no choice to go along with it." She stood up and ruffled my hair. "But if you want to know my opinion, I'm betting it won't be a week before she changes her mind. Then everything will be back to normal."

I frowned and crossed my arms over my chest.

"I guess- hope- you're right, but I'll tell you one thing. I'm not going to date anybody else. I don't care how bad she wants this experiment to work, but there is no one I can even think of that I like well enough to ask out. And she can break up with me if she wants, but she can't tell me what to do. So there."

My mom shook her head with a laugh and left the room.

I sat there for a while after she had gone, turning everything she had said over in my mind. Could that possibly be the reason why Jana wanted to break up? She needed space? I thought that was pretty dumb, but girls can have some really weird ideas sometimes, so I guess it was possible. Or what if... I streched back out on my back again and frowned. What if she had fallen for some other boy in the class? I closed my eyes and thought back over every time I had seen Jana during the last week in school, out of school, in Bumpers... had she been looking around for someone? Mentioning some guy's name a lot? I couldn't think of anything. Then I tried to remember if I had heard another guy in the locker room talking about Jana. Was there someone who had a crush on her that she had found out about and then decided she wanted to go with? The thought made my heart feel like it was being squeezed. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there was some guy- or a lot of guys- that had a crush on Jana. She was the sweetest, prettiest, most sincere girl in school. I could remember back in sixth grade when Curtis Trowbridge had had it bad for her. The memory made me smile in spite of myself. Curtis was a real nice kid, but he was kind of on the nerdy side and definitely not Jana's type. I was sure he wasn't the reason she had broken up with me- mainly because he has a steady girlfriend, Whitney Larkin. Who could it be? If there even was somebody. I hoped there wasn't. I would die if at the end of the experiment she told me she wanted to break up for good because she'd met someone totally great. I looked at my window again, feeling more depressed than ever. Thing was, I'd already been through all those thoughts before, wondering if there was some other, deeper reason why she wanted to break up. And I never could decide if there was really evidence for any of them... and never sure if I was purposely missing something important because I didn't want to admit it to myself.

"Randy! Dinner!" My mom called up the stairs.

"Coming!" I called back, grateful for an excuse to get my mind onto something else. Besides, I suddenly realized, I was starved. Like my mom had said, I hadn't been downstairs since breakfast, which was *very* unusual.

"I really must be losing it," I muttered as I slid off the bed and walked over to my bedroom door. Halfway, something made me stop and slowly walk over to my bookshelf in the corner instead. The bookshelf is pretty long, and on the top shelf, I have all my sports awards and pictures of my best friends in frames. I had quite a few with Scott Daly, Mark Peters (they're my best guy friends), and me, but the one in the center of all the little stand-up frames was a picture of Jana and me. I have a lot of pictures of Jana, and even several of the two of us together, but this one was one of my very favorites. It was from earlier in the fall, taken by my mom one of the times Jana was over to study. If I remembered right, the weather hadn't gotten very cold yet which is why we were sitting on the back porch steps, looking over one of our assignments together. Right before she snapped the picture, my mom had called "smile!" and we'd both turned around just as there was the flash. Naturally, I look completely dorky with this dumb suprised look on my face, but Jana actually *is* smiling and I love it because it's so natural, not one of those 'fakey' smiles people sometimes put on for pictures. And the way the afternoon sunshine is making her hair glow... it just reminds me of an angel. I looked at the picture a moment longer until it got blurry. Then I quickly turned and raced out of my room and down the steps. A whole month.

I was never going to make it.