Disclaimer: That '70s Show copyright The Carsey-Werner Company, LLC and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC.

CHAPTER TWELVE
WISHING FOR IMPOSSIBLE

Jackie had blown out the last candle in the parlor. She'd brought her jar of folded-up resentments to her bedroom. And she'd sent Steven away, not just from her house but her life.

He didn't argue. Didn't betray any pain. Didn't proclaim love because he had none to proclaim.

"Idiot," she whispered and slid her finger down the jar. The darkness of her room, of night, hid the jar's contents, but their words were inscribed on her ribs. They composed a list of grievances that kept her heart trapped.

She'd planned to burn them, the pieces of paper they were written on. But complaints about her parents' absences had transformed into longing for Steven. These became regrets about Michael, and her mind iced-over when his name oozed from her pen. She was supposed to be over him, but falling out of love was an on-going process.

"Goddamn moron," she said, but the insult thickened her throat. Calling herself names wasn't cleansing, and putting her feelings on paper hadn't produced any solutions. It only tangled her problems into an indecipherable snarl of despair.

The jar would remain on her dresser as a monument and a reminder. She had to remember her weakness. No fire could consume the truth, that expecting a return on her investment from the people she loved was futile.

A thud outside her room made her shoulders jump. Her mom's laughter followed, and a male voice responded in a lilting tone. Another one-night stand. Another secret Jackie and Martina had to keep.

She sank to the carpet and lay on her back. Her hands swept over the carpet's thick pile as her eyes gazed into nothing. Her mom sounded drunk. That had to be why Dad stayed away so often. Or, maybe, Mom drank herself stupid because of Dad's longer, more frequent business trips.

Whatever the answer was, it wouldn't change anything. Jackie had no influence over anyone who mattered to her. No influence at all.

Hyde sat hunched on his cot, twirling the pendant he'd won at Funland. He wasn't built for making wishes. The shooting star spinning above his knee couldn't grant any either, but he found himself wishing anyway.

Light glinted off the silver pendant. It was as bright as the joy on Jackie's face when he'd given the pendant to her. He shut one eye and rubbed the heel of his hand against the other. She was chasing that joy, same as him, but he'd found it in her. Of all the damn places, he'd found it in her. The truth pounded through him like hangover, all nausea and headaches.

His shades were on his dresser. He considered cementing them to his skull, but a slam rattled his door. Someone had entered the basement, and he stashed the pendant in his sock drawer. Monday afternoons weren't meant for sulking. He'd done plenty of that on Sunday. Mondays were meant for homework, and he carried his backpack out of his room.

Fez was by the lawn chair, setting up one of the Formans' TV tray tables. He must've gotten it from behind the shower curtain, and he put a textbook on it. At least Hyde wouldn't be doing homework alone.

"Hey, man—"

"Please, Hyde, no talking," Fez said. "Trigonometry is kicking my ass. My rock-hard ass."

Hyde chuckled and went to Forman's stereo. He scanned the record shelves below it, searching for an album that wouldn't wreck Fez's concentration. But between Wings' Band on the Run and Venus and Mars, he found Led Zeppelin III. It was in the wrong place. It fucked up his thoughts, but he didn't touch it. Enough reminders of Julie pulsed in his memory: her smell, her taste, the pleading look in her eyes. Listening to that record would only send him back to her house.

So far, she hadn't pulled the trigger on her threat, telling people what he'd done to her. Girls still treated him like a cuddly dog, fondling his beard without asking. They'd stop once they heard about his lack of follow-through—if Julie ever reported her dissatisfaction. But maybe she was holding back out of some desperate hope he'd rectify it.

He might but not today. He put Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on the stereo, dragged his chair close to the spool table, and started on his physics homework.

"Hyde," Fez said twenty minutes later, "do you think I have a chance to be homecoming king?"

"Always a chance, man." Hyde returned to the stereo and flipped over the record. "Always a chance for anything."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Nope."

Fez's shoulders slumped. "Ai."

Hyde settled back into his chair as Pink Floyd's "Money" moved beyond its cashier sound effects. The song used to conjure Jackie in his mind, but after their summer of Donahue and confessions, it made him think of her dad. It even had his name in it, Jack.

He shut his physics textbook. That crap was done, his physics homework and thinking about Jackie. Whatever was going on at her house, whether or not her parents had come home, wasn't his business. He had thirty pages of Shakespeare's King Lear to read.

Getting his head into the language took his full concentration, with its thees and thous. Just as he began to do it, though, Forman shoved open the basement door, sweaty and out of breath. He clutched the door knob, and Donna pushed past him. Her Catholic school uniform was rumpled, but after-school nookie couldn't be the culprit.

"Twenty miles," Forman said and trudged from the door. "Twenty miles to and from Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow."

Donna dashed to the laundry area. She grabbed a plastic cup from the sink, filled it with water, and brought it to him. "Eric, drink this."

"Thanks." He accepted the cup and drank it down.

"Take this, too." She grabbed a towel from the laundry basket and draped it over his sweaty neck. "Some deodorant would be useful—"

"Okay, Donna, I smell. Do you know why? Because I biked twenty miles! I need my car back."

She patted his arm. "You really do." She sat on the couch with her backpack on her lap. "But you picking me up from school everyday makes you sexier."

"And smellier. Don't forget about that," Fez said. "Maybe they should call your school Our Lady of Perpetual Stink." He laughed at his own joke, but it was a good burn. And accurate.

Hyde waved his hand over his nose as Forman walked by. "Yeah, man. Go change your shirt."

"Fine." Forman dropped his backpack on the floor and vanished up the wooden stairs. He reappeared after a few minutes in a fresh shirt. "Happy now?"

Donna rubbed the couch cushion beside her, an invitation. "Very."

He sat down, and she pecked him on the mouth. A sickening sight, but Hyde's lips buzzed at the fantasy it created in his skull—of Jackie kissing him the same way after school, of sitting with her and doing homework, or not doing homework, and generally being happy.

Happiness … fresh nausea frothed in his stomach at the idea. Fantasies like that were just that, fantasies, and he raked his fingers through his hair. It had grown too long even for him. His curls were packing together in thick clumps. Combing them out would take close to an hour, time he didn't feel like wasting. A haircut would solve the problem, but he'd have to care enough to get that done.

He pushed his chair back from the spool table. Reading would distract him. Taking Shakespeare as his English elective had been a smart move. Nothing boring about these plays, even with their dense language. He propped his feet on the mushroom footstool and found his place in King Lear, but the basement door swung open. Kelso raced inside, shouting, "Have you seen this?"

Hyde didn't look up from King Lear. "If you've gotten VD again, I'm not checkin' it out."

"Neither am I," Forman said. "Would you start using condoms already? One of these days, you're gonna catch something that'll kill you."

"Or you'll get some poor idiot pregnant," Donna said.

"This is way worse than VD!" Kelso's footsteps thumped across the floor, and King Lear flew from Hyde's fingers. Photos of Jackie and Mark took the play's place. They were dented in parts, as if they'd been handled roughly. "Have you seen them, Hyde? Have you?"

Hyde shoved the photos back at Kelso. He'd studied them plenty on Saturday. "What're you complaining about? Aren't you goin' out with Valerie 'Pom-Poms' Clayton?"

"Yeah, who wouldn't let me past first base on our first date. She's gonna make me 'earn' sex. Just like that chick Annette in California." Kelso flipped through the photos, adding more dents to them. "I don't have time for that. Jackie and I got to third base on our first date."

"That is such a lie!" Donna said.

Hyde suppressed a smirk. She didn't know the half of it. Kelso had never gone down on Jackie. Maybe that explained why he nailed so many different girls: he sucked at sex. The smarter chicks, the more experienced ones, and those with good self esteem probably refused to screw him again. But those who didn't know any better, the ones with little or no experience—or bad experiences—they invited him back for more, just like Jackie had.

Freakin' Jackie. She had no clue what sex could be like, what it could feel like, with a guy invested in her enjoyment of it.

His fingers tingled with pressure. He stood up and rammed his fist into Kelso's upper arm, unleashing the force of all he couldn't say, all he couldn't do, into Kelso's muscle and bone.

Kelso staggered backward, and his face contorted with pain. The photos of Jackie and Mark spilled onto the floor, but Hyde picked them up. "How the hell did you get these anyway?"

"Valerie," Kelso said. He tried to swipe the photos, but Hyde slipped them inside his physics textbook. Kelso made a grab for the book, and Hyde punched his shoulder again. "Ow! Quit frogging me, Hyde. It really hurts!"

Fez held up a photo. It wasn't one from Kelso's group of dented ones, but it showed Jackie and Mark Frenching in the grass. "Mark's pretty," Fez said. "I hope Jackie invites me on their next date."

"Why would she do that?" Donna said.

Forman leapt off the couch and flailed his arms in stop! motion. "Okay, enough! This basement has been Jackie-free for seven days, ever since she and Hyde broke off their unholy alliance. Talking about her is almost as bad as her being here."

"Eric!" Donna tugged on the hem of his shirt, and he looked at her. "You're acting like an ass. I was gone all summer, and now that I've changed schools, I barely see her."

"She stopped by your house a few times last week."

"It's not the same as her hanging out with us. I miss her."

"Well, Donna, you wouldn't have to miss her," Kelso said, but he was glaring at Hyde, "if someone hadn't interfered with me and her."

Hyde clutched his belt buckle and tilted his head. Kelso took the warning and backed off, but he didn't quit talking. "That should be my tongue in her mouth in those pictures, but no. You had to get in the way."

"If by 'getting in the way,'" Hyde said, "you mean I hung out with her after you bolted to California and cheated on her—"

"I had to! Otherwise I'd be engaged to her and planning wedding stuff. God!"

Hyde blew out a breath and sat in his chair. This conversation was a dead end, just like his relationship with Jackie. It was his own damn fault, expecting her to take all the risk and accepting none himself.

"If you actually care about me," she'd said on Saturday night, "then you'll deal with my confusion. You'll stay, even if it hurts, until we figure this out."

She never defined the this, even after he'd asked, but she'd also said, "Us being friends doesn't work for me anymore." Us.

"Hyde, are you all right?" The question came from Donna, and he blinked. He was stooped in his chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together.

"Yeah. Fine." He remained hunched and scratched the side of his face. His beard irritated his fingertips, but Jackie's words scraped his guts. If she'd meant he had to stick around until they figured out their relationship, then he'd wait—despite that she'd rejected his friendship, despite that his patience might lead to nothing—because care didn't begin to describe how he felt about her.

She'd engulfed him like some kind of electromagnetic field. Her mere presence charged him up. Her voice accelerated his synapses, and her touch increased the energy of every electron he had. If he ever got to kiss her again, light would probably arc across his body like the freakin' aurora borealis.

So he'd wait. Fooling around with other chicks only created guilt anyway. Dust covered the nudie magazines under his cot. Jackie had planted her flag in his brain, in his chest, and it was flapping in the wind. But he wouldn't yank it out. That was up to her.

"Kelso," he said and pushed himself up from his chair, "you're staying outta Jackie's way."

Kelso retreated to the couch, squashing himself beside Donna, and his brow wrinkled. "What's that even mean?"

"No!" Forman pointed his pencil at Hyde. "I will not have my history homework disrupted by that she-demon. I will not have my life disrupted by her."

"Dramatic much, Forman?" Hyde retrieved his copy of King Lear. Kelso had flung it onto the deep-freeze. "Alls I'm saying is if anyone messes with Jackie, they're messin' with me."

Donna put a hand over her heart while Forman leaned back his head and groaned. But Fez erased something in one of his notebooks. He was obviously too involved in his homework for the conversation to register.

Kelso, though, sprang to his feet and said, "You don't get to make the rules! She was my girlfriend, not yours. We were in love, and you have no idea what that's like. 'Cause you've never been in love."

Forman's face hardened, and he gestured at Kelso. "He has a point, Hyde. You've never had someone you'd fly to California for, even if it'd get your car confiscated by your parents."

"Or someone you'd run away to California from," Kelso said, "because you love her so much she could force you to marry her."

Hyde struck King Lear against his hip. "What're you gonna do when she marries someone else, man? Pull a Benjamin Braddock and try to stop the wedding?"

"Don't be stupid. I'm way better looking than Dustin Hoffman, and Jackie's younger than me."

"Whatever. You've been warned."

Hyde eased into his chair as Fez hummed Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson". Kelso muttered something else about The Graduate, but Hyde had thirty pages to read in King Lear and a hefty amount of uncertainty to tolerate. But that was the most consistent theme of his life: uncertainty. Falling in love with Jackie fit right in.