Free I'm Not High by Jim Breuer Page B

wanted more than friendship, but her mom and stepdad would sometimes hint at it. We went out for New Year’s Eve once, and her parents sat us down and talked to me about what we were going to do and how we were going to behave. I bought her a sweatshirt once at Busch Gardens because she was cold, and every once in a while her mom would pull me aside and tell me how much Kristen adored it. Their behavior seemed odd to me, and it never added up that Kristen might be into me. In fact, one night, after I’d just moved back and it was clear that I was going to be around for the foreseeable future, Kristen told me that I had to meet her friend.
    “You’re going to love Kelly,” she said. “She’s so you. She’s a goofball. She’s laid-back. She’s funny. She’s into the same music that you are. You have to meet her.” She was really pushing her on me. I knew that she was trying to help me socially, but this was intense.
    So I took Kristen’s advice and went out with Kelly. And she was great, but she, too, was pretty much just a friend. I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in pursuing anything with her. But the fact that Kelly and I hung out changed something in Kristen. For one thing, Kristen started dressing a lot hotter .
    And Kristen already looked hot. Amazing. She had a knockout body. And she grew less and less excited to hear about my hanging out with Kelly. I thought that was weird because she was the one who pushed for it. Slowly, I came to learn that there was a bet between the two girls: Which one would get Jim to kiss her first? Typical high school stuff. And what was at stake, besides my dignity? One dollar.
    I’d continued to see Kelly, partly because I was mad at Kristen for orchestrating the bet. And that made Kristen mad. Apparently she was annoyed she hadn’t won the bet. The whole situation confused me. “Does she like me like me?” I wondered. We’d spent New Year’s Eve together, gone to Busch Gardens, hung out nightly, and I never had a clue. It hadn’t come up in all the nights we’d spent talking, and now we weren’t .
    We froze each other out for weeks. I stopped doing stuff with Kelly. It was just too weird, and I didn’t want to be in the middle anymore. Their senior prom was coming up, and though we’d all decided long ago to go as a group of friends, that was probably not happening now, and I didn’t care to find out. Still, as the days went by, I knew I was being foolish. Kristen had been my lifeline since I’d moved to Florida. It dawned on me that I should be the bigger person and not let a little drama ruin what we’d built. Something nagged me to go to her house and talk.
    One night, Kristen’s front door was open, and as I pulled up to my parents’ house, I could see her sitting in the living room, watching TV. I got the guts together to approach her. We met in her breezeway and sat down and talked for hours.
    I told her that if she was really into me, she should have let me know from the get-go. She shouldn’t have felt like she had to hide anything. We reached an understanding and put the bet behind us. It was a great talk. She also told me she’d bumped into an old friend from Boston who was in town and wanted to take her to the prom. She wanted to know if I’d take Kelly and we could still all go as a group. I figured, why not? This night felt like a resolution to me, and that was important.
    As we worked things out, I felt the need to kiss Kristen so bad. I had an overwhelming feeling. Not a romantic one. Not a sexual one. It was more like this overwhelming godly soul kiss. It was unexplainable. It felt right just to kiss her on the forehead and that’s what I did.
    Everything was peaceful. It was one of those rare, perfectly satisfying moments, utterly calm and serene. I felt clarity, which obviously, at that time, was in pretty short supply for me.
    Kristen died in a car accident the next day. She was a passenger in a car driven by one of her friends, and