And besides, high school isn’t all bad. Yeah, there’s the getting up ridiculously early, and the learning things you know you’re going to have no use for, and the annoying girls who think they’re better than everyone, and the worrying about your future every time you have a math test that you don’t do so well on, and the boys who break your heart.
But I like having classes with Ava and my boyfriend, Sebastian. I like knowing that when I come to school every morning, I can get away with taking sips out of my travel coffee mug that’s filled with a vanilla latte, as long as I don’t make a big deal out of it. I like knowing how to get out of gym class (say you’re having stomach issues), how to get out of dissecting frogs in bio (ethically opposed), and what girls to steer clear of because they’ll have no problem stealing your boyfriend and/or talking behind your back (Lynn Mol and Lila Jankowitz). I don’t know any of those things about college (or, you know, the world at large), which makes it seem scary and overwhelming.
“Hey, guys,” Ava’s boyfriend, Noah, slides up to us in the hallway, puts his arms around Ava from behind, and nuzzles the back of her neck.
“Noah!” Ava rolls her eyes, but slides back into him. I swallow and try not to feel jealous. Not of Noah. I mean, he’s nice and everything, but I don’t like him like that. The jealousy is more because of just how close Noah and Ava are. Actually, I guess close isn’t really the word. It’s more like they’re comfortable together. Which is the total opposite of me and Sebastian.
Even after five months together, I still worry that Sebastian’s not going to call me when he says he will, and I’m still not completely sure what the rules are when it comes to kissing him in the hall or holding his hand at parties. Sebastian isn’t so into PDA. Which is fine, but it makes it kind of uncomfortable when we’re hanging out with Ava and Noah. Whenever we go on double dates, those two will be, like, practically making out, and Sebastian and I will be standing next to each other, feeling all awkward. Which would also be fine, if we could talk about it later. Like, if Sebastian would be all, “Wow, Noah and Ava are crazy, I’m so glad we don’t have to be all over each other in public to know how much we care about each other.” And then I would be all, “I know, right? But maybe we could hold hands sometime at least.” And then Sebastian would be like, “Okay, anything for you.” But that will never happen. Mostly because (a) Sebastian and I really don’t talk about relationship issues that much, and (b) he would never say “anything for you.”
“Party tonight,” Noah says now. “At Jenna Lamacchia’s.”
“Ugh, over it.” Ava takes a piece of gum out of her purse, chews it a couple of times, then spits it back into the wrapper. She throws the wrapper with the chewed up gum into her now-empty locker. Ava doesn’t like gum. She just chews it to make her breath smell fresh. “I hate Jenna Lamacchia, and I don’t want to go to a party.”
“Why not?” I ask, “It could be fun.” It’s a lie, and we all know it. The only reason Jenna Lamacchia’s house is fun is because her parents are never home. Her parties are always ridiculously loud, there’s always a bunch of people in the guest bedroom smoking pot that wafts through the whole house, and you can hardly move because the living room is so small. Plus, it’s not even that special anymore since she has a party, like, every night. “Besides,” I say, “there’s nothing else to do.” That part, at least, is true.
“What’s going on?” Ava asks, narrowing her blue eyes at me suspiciously. “Why do you want to go to Jenna’s so bad?”
“I don’t,” I say.
“Then why did you just say you did?”
I consider lying, but I know Ava will see right through it. That’s what happens when you’ve been best friends since sixth grade. “Fine,” I say. “If you must know, Sebastian has been MIA all day, so I’m not totally sure, but I’m assuming he probably wants to go.” Sebastian loves going to Jenna’s house. Mostly because of the pot in the back bedroom.
“You want to go to Jenna’s because you know Sebastian wants to go?” Ava asks. “Hannah, that’s kind of pathetic.”
“Ava!” Noah says. “Be nice.” But his tone is teasing and he’s biting on the back of her neck.
“Sorry, Hans,” Ava says. “But you shouldn’t want to do something you hate just because Sebastian wants to get high in Jenna’s back bedroom.”
“Look, “ I say. “I’m not—” And then I see Sebastian, walking down the hall toward me, his long legs encased in the jeans I bought him for Christmas.
“Hey,” he says, like it’s totally normal we haven’t seen each other all day. Like it’s totally normal that he didn’t meet me outside by the benches before school the way he told me he would, and then never texted me to apologize and/or explain why. He slides his arm around my waist and gives me a kiss. On the top of my head. WTF? I start to freak out a little. Okay, a lot. Sebastian has never kissed me on my head before. In our whole five-month relationship, I have never gotten a kiss on the head. Mouth, cheeks, sure. But head? No. Being kissed on the head is something your parents do to you when you’re, like, seven. And I’m smart enough to know that when your sixteen-year-old boyfriend is doing it, it’s not a good sign.
“Sebastian,” Ava says. “Would you please tell Hannah that you aren’t going to break up with her?”
“Ava!” Noah says.
“Ava!” I say. I want to say more, but I can’t because then what if Sebastian thinks I really am worried that he’s going to break up with me? So I just slide my arm around his waist, look up at him, and force my face into a smile. And when he smiles back, I let myself believe it’s going to be okay.
We end up at the party, of course, because there’s nothing else to do.
“You totally have to go back to the mall and get that tank top in blue,” Ava says as we tromp up the sidewalk toward Jenna’s house.
“Why?” I glance down at the long yellow tank top I’m wearing over black leggings.
“Blue just looks a lot better on you than yellow,” she says. “I keep trying to tell you that you’re a winter, not a warm.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. “You’ve never told me that before.”
Ava ignores me and steers me up the cobblestones to the front door, then walks right into Jenna’s house. There’s a cloud of smoke permeating the living room, and Belle and Sebastian is blaring from the iPod in the corner. You can hardly move because there are so many people. You’d think that, with it being the last day of school and all, someone else would be having a party too, but nooo. It’s Jenna Lamacchia’s or nothing. God, my life is boring.
“I’m going to find Noah,” Ava says, then disappears into the crowd and the smoke. At least, I think that’s what she says. I can’t really hear her. I sigh and then slide outside to the back patio to wait for Sebastian. I texted him earlier, but he hasn’t texted me back, which probably means he’s not here yet. Sebastian’s kind of like a girl—he takes forever to get ready and is late for everything. It really doesn’t make any sense because it’s not like he’s some kind of fashionista or anything. He wears jeans and T-shirts almost every single day.
Girls in bikinis and boys in swim trunks are splashing around in Jenna’s kidney-shaped pool, but there are no lights out here except for a few of those really cheap plastic ones that stick in the grass. Which is kind of weird. And also super dangerous. What if someone drowns because they can’t see anything? I’m somehow able to snag a deck chair in front of a plastic cup of beer that someone’s abandoned on the picnic table. And that’s when I see him—Sebastian. He’s in the pool, holding one of those water volleyballs. Seems like he’s ensconced in some kind of game. Nice of him to meet me at the door. Or at least text me back.
I sigh, and think about joining him in the water. I do have a bathing suit on under my clothes—a skimpy, silver bikini, with teeny-tiny straps. Definitely not something I would normally wear, but I bought it last week because Ava said I should, and she was very persistent. We got into a semi-argument about it in th
e dressing room of Sand Dune Swimwear (not like a fight-fight, more like Ava was getting exasperated with me because she said my fashion sense wasn’t daring enough, and then I got annoyed with her because she was being kind of mean), but now I’m glad she made me buy it. It probably sounds totally anti-feminist, but maybe a sexy bikini is a good way to get the spark back between me and Sebastian.
I stand up, slide my feet out of my sandals, pull off my tank top and leggings, and then, holding my clothes loosely to my chest (partly because there’s nowhere to put them and partly because I don’t know if I’m quite ready to expose myself in front of all these people), start walking toward the pool. And that’s when Sebastian surfaces in the deep end, puts his arm around some girl I’ve never seen before, and kisses her.
The First Day of Senior Year
“I seriously could have whiplash,” Lacey’s saying as we walk toward the front doors of the building. “That happened to this woman on an episode of 90210. The old one, I mean.”
“The old whiplash?” I ask, confused. Whiplash is a disease. Or an affliction. An injury? Whatever it is, I don’t think there can be a new kind. Unless it’s one of those new diseases that keeps popping up, like a couple of years ago when everyone was freaking out about swine flu. It’s also possible that the closer we get to school, the more my mental capacities are diminishing, making me unable to understand even the simple intricacies of teen dramas on The CW.
“No, the old 90210. You know, the one with what’s his name in it? The guy with the hair?” I shrug and give her a blank look. “Well, whatever,” she says.
She opens the door, and we step inside, which is, like, a totally and completely amazing achievement, considering I was almost hyperventilating in the visitor lot just a couple of minutes ago. Although, now that I’m here, I’m not exactly sure how I should behave. I mean, there are so many people I’m trying to avoid. Should I just keep my head down, hoping I don’t make eye contact with anyone who happens to cross my path? Should I scan the halls with an eagle eye so that if I do spot one of them, I have time to duck out of the way? Or (and this is the most terrifying choice) should I maybe just stop avoiding them altogether, since the longer I do, the scarier it’s going to be, and eventually they might realize what I’m doing and be all, “Hey, Hannah, why are you avoiding me?”
This whole thing is very complicated. Not as complicated as it’s going to be, a little voice in the back of my head whispers. I do my best to ignore it.
“Um, hello?” Lacey says. “Are you even listening to me? Who are you looking for?”
“No one,” I say quickly. I point to the little sign outside of room A3. “There’s my homeroom! I guess I’ll see you later.” I try to turn and walk away from her, but Lacey grabs my shoulder and whirls me back around.
“Hannah,” she says. “You were looking for Sebastian, weren’t you?” She puts her hand on her hip and taps her foot, waiting for my answer.
“No, I wasn’t!” It’s not even a lie. Like I said before, at this point Sebastian is the least of my concerns. Although he’s definitely someone I’m avoiding. Just not the main person (people?) I’m avoiding. This is really making my head spin.
“Then who were you looking for?” She’s looking at me with a mixture of concern and suspicion. Not that I blame her—if I were her, I’d be suspicious too. I mean, I spent pretty much the whole beginning of the summer trying to get over Sebastian. Lacey witnessed me crying a lot, eating a lot, and trying to drown my sorrows in beer. Which didn’t work. It only made me sick. Actually, all of those things—the crying, the ice cream, and the alcohol—made me sick. The combination of them probably screwed my stomach up for life.
“No one.”
“Hannah, seriously, are you okay?” Lacey asks. She tilts her head toward me, her lips pressed together.
“I’m fine,” I say again. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
“Hannah,” she says and waits. I think about it. I should tell her. I should. This is Lacey, she’s my friend, she’s not going to judge me for it. She’s not going to get all up on her high horse and lecture me or anything. She’s nice. She used to volunteer at the ASPCA for God’s sake! The girl has a heart. She even hates Ava, which might actually be a plus in this situation.
I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say. “But first you have to promise that you won’t (a) tell anyone or (b) judge me.”
“I won’t,” she says, her tone serious.
“All right,” I say, “So you know how—”
But the bell rings then, cutting me off, and Lacey bites her lip. “Go on,” she says. “Who cares about being late to homeroom on the first day?”
The halls are full now, kids shuffling by us, jostling their bags into my side as they go.
“No,” I say. “You should go. You don’t want to get in trouble already.” Last year, Lacey skipped a lot of her classes, so many that she almost got denied credit. She had her reasons of course (it had to do with a boy—what doesn’t?), but try telling that to the people in guidance. They really don’t understand how hard it is to hold your mental state together enough just to get to school in the first place, let alone when you have some kind of stress in your life.
“I don’t care,” Lacey says.
“I do,” I say. No way Lacey should get in trouble because I made a mess out of my life.
“Fine,” she says. “But meet me here after homeroom so we can compare schedules?”
“Definitely.”
She turns and disappears into the sea of faces, and I turn and look at the door to my homeroom. Nine minutes. Homeroom is nine minutes. Well, actually, that’s not true. Today we’re having an extended homeroom for, like, nineteen minutes so we can get our schedules and lockers and everything. But still. Nineteen minutes. I can definitely handle that. Just get through homeroom, the little voice in my head says. And then you can worry about what you’re going to do.
Feeling slightly optimistic since the voice in my head has decided to try and be positive for once, I push past the crowd in the hall and into the room. And then I stop. Because there, already seated in the second to last row by the window, is Ava. She’s wearing a purple summer dress and doodling in a notebook, but as soon as I see her, she looks up, almost like she has some kind of instinct that I’m there.
“Hannah!” she says, her face breaking out into a smile. “Yay! I saved you a seat!”
My heart dips and flips, and all of a sudden, I feel like I’m going to throw up. My feet want to turn me around and march me right out of here and back to my car. But I know I can’t do that. I mean, she’s already seen me. So I take a couple of deep breaths, then force myself to move forward and into the classroom.
The Last Night of Junior Year
Sebastian’s hands are on the girl’s face and in her hair and playing with the long strings of the bikini top that ties behind her back. I start to feel all faint and kind of wobbly, so I elbow my way through Jenna’s backyard and into the house, where I head straight for the bathroom on the first floor.
I lean over the toilet and wait to see if I’m going to be sick, but once I’m in there, my stomach isn’t churning as much, and I start to think that maybe I just had some kind of weird panic attack that made me think I had to throw up and/or faint when I really didn’t. I take deep breaths and fill my hands with cold water from the sink, then splash it all over my face. My eye shadow starts to run, and the bronzer I’m wearing comes off and starts staining my hands, but I don’t care. I keep putting the water on my face, over and over.
How, how, how could this have happened? And why now, on the last day of school? Although, I guess that part, at least, is pretty obvious. Probably Sebastian thought it would be better to break up at the beginning of the summer so he could have fun hanging out with whatever girls he wanted, bringing them to the beach and ogling them in their skimpy bikinis, taking them to the huge Fourth of July party he always has up at his family’s summer house, and inviting them to hang out by his p
ool all day, every day without me around bothering him to get a job.
Oh, God. I shouldn’t have spent so much time bothering him to get a job! I didn’t even care if he got a job! It was just his dumb parents. They were constantly on his ass, especially his dad, and I just figured that if he got a job, they’d give him some peace. I thought it was a good trade-off. But obviously I came across as some kind of horrible, nagging wife!
Of course, deep down I know it probably doesn’t have anything to do with me telling him to get a summer job. It’s probably about sex, because it’s always about sex, there’s no getting around it. But what else did he want from me? I mean, I know what else he wanted from me, but, I mean, besides that. We were doing Everything But! I am totally and completely the Everything But girl! I was getting very good at Everything But! I never complained about Everything But. I was constantly and happily ready and willing to give Everything But! Unless . . . oh, God. Am I horrible at Everything But? Supposedly, all you have to do is be enthusiastic, you know? It’s kind of like pizza, you can’t really get a bad—
There’s a knock on the door.
“Just a minute!” I call, slipping my clothes back on over my bikini and hoping whoever’s at the door can’t hear in my voice that I’m having a nervous breakdown. “I’ll be right out.” I look at my face in the mirror. I look horrible. Bronzer is all over my hands and running down my cheeks, mixed with mascara and purple glitter dust eye shadow. I grab a wad of toilet paper and start wiping my face, trying to clean up the mess.
“Hannah, it’s me!” the voice says. Ava. Oh, thank God. I pull open the door, grab her arm, and yank her into the bathroom.
“I saw you come running in here and I didn’t know what you were—” She sees my face. “Ohmigod,” she says. “What happened?” She goes right into Jenna’s linen closet and pulls out a clean blue towel, runs it under some warm water, and starts cleaning the ruined makeup off my face. Yikes. I hope that towel isn’t expensive.