“Hi, Mr. Davies,” I say as soon as I’m in his office.
“Hello, Hannah,” he says, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “What can I do for you today?” Mr. Davies looks exactly the way you’d expect a guidance counselor to look, with a trim little mustache and glasses. He’s always wearing sweater vests, even when the weather is super hot, and he’s never without a cup of coffee.
I pull my schedule out from under the cover of my math book and slide it across the desk at him. Better make this quick, hit him before he has a chance to realize what I’m doing. Not that he could have any idea of my real motives. “I need to drop ceramics, so can I have a drop slip?” Wow, I’ve really gotten very aggressive today. It’s kind of making me uncomfortable, if you want to know the truth.
“Now, Hannah,” Mr. Davies says, looking down at my schedule. “Why would you want to drop ceramics? That’s a very hard class to get into.”
“I know,” I say. “But, um, . . .” I wrack my brain, trying to think of an excuse. I really should have planned this out better. “My hands are just . . . I mean, I’ve been having arthritis or Carpal Tunnel or something, and it’s really not good for me to work with clay.”
Mr. Davies frowns, and I don’t blame him. It sounds lame even to me, and I’m the one who made it up. “That doesn’t sound right,” he says. “Listen, why don’t you give it a shot for a couple of days, and then if you still want to drop it, come back here and we’ll talk, okay?”
“No!” I almost scream. “I mean, I can’t. It . . . It will only take a few minutes of working with the clay to set off my hands.” I try to contort my face in a mask of pain, then reach my fingers up and flex them at him.
Mr. Davies frowns again, his bushy eyebrows knotting together over the top of his glasses. Then understanding dawns on his face, and he looks at me. “Does this have anything to do with what happened in the hall earlier?”
“What do you mean?”
“The scene in the hall? Between you and Lacey and Noah?”
“Nooo,” I say. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that.” I try to sound offended, like high school dramas have no bearing on the decisions I make, even though we both know that making decisions based on high school dramas is, like, the basis of your teenage years.
“Hannah, running away from your problems isn’t going to change them. Now, let me write you a pass back to Western Civ.” God. Does he have to be such a guidance counselor? Seriously, guidance counselors are always putting the fact that they’re supposed to be guiding us above treating us like human beings. It’s really kind of annoying.
And that’s when it happens. I lose all my self-respect. I literally throw myself across his desk. “Please!” I say. “Please, you don’t understand. I cannot be in that ceramics class. Please, Mr. Davies.”
He looks at me and for a moment, I think maybe, just maybe, he’s going to change his mind. He’s going to say that even though he doesn’t believe in running away from things, that it’s okay this one time, that he’s going to make an exception, that he trusts me to know what’s best for myself. The indecision flickers over his face, but the next thing I know, he’s signing the pass for me, sending me back to Western Civ.
“Hannah,” he says. “Please return to class. And next period, I’ll expect to hear that you’re in ceramics.”
So what can I do? I take the pass. Which means that next period, I’ll be in the same room as Ava. And Noah. And Sebastian. I leave guidance, and I don’t think it’s my imagination that Rosie smirks at me as I go by.
The Summer
“Okay,” Noah says when I open the door at seven a.m. on the morning of our trip. “Are you ready to rock ’n’ roll?”
I stare at him blankly. “First of all, no one says ‘are you ready to rock ’n’ roll?’ anymore.”
“They don’t?”
“No. And second, do I look like I’m ready to rock ’n’ roll?” He takes in my hair (a mess), my clothes (the T-shirt and shorts that I slept in), and the space in the hallway behind me (a tangle of suitcases, bags, and clothes, with a stray curling iron and some makeup thrown in for good measure).
“No,” he says. “You don’t. What is all this mess?”
“Packing,” I say, walking toward the pile and almost tripping over the cord to my hot-roller set.
“We’re only going for two nights.”
“I know,” I say. “But I’ve never been to a summer camp before. I don’t know what to wear.”
“You don’t know what to wear to camp?” Noah looks perplexed, like it should be obvious. But it’s really not.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I know I need mostly casual clothes, like shorts, T-shirts, stuff like that.” I point to my open suitcase, where a bunch of those items are shoved into one corner. “But will we be going out at all? Like on Ava’s time off? Will we go out to dinner? If so, I should probably bring regular clothes. And what if we decide to go to a nice place? Then I should probably bring a nice sundress or something. And what if she wants to go out both nights? Then I need two. And what if it rains? Do I need sneakers? Are we going to go hiking? How messy will I get? Are there showers? I want to bring my hair dryer, but are there even outlets?”
“I see what you mean,” Noah says, nodding mock-seriously. “There are very important decisions to be made here.”
“Life-changing,” I agree. “Or at least trip-changing.”
“I vote for three T-shirts and pairs of shorts, one nice pair of jeans, a nice shirt, two sundresses, and all your hair dryers and stuff, just in case. Also, wear your sandals in the car, but pack your sneakers in case of a hike.”
I stare at him in awe. “That was an amazing amount of distillation.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an amazing distiller.”
He grins, and I grin back, then gather up all the stuff he told me I would need, place it in my suitcase, and zip it all up. I hurry upstairs, run a brush through my hair, change into a pair of jean shorts and a tank, step into my sparkly black slides, and run down the stairs. “Ready,” I say.
When we get in the car, Noah pulls out his iPod and plugs it in. “I made a new playlist,” he says.
“You made a playlist for us?” Then I realize how that sounds, and so I quickly add, “I mean not for us, I know not for us, but for the trip?”
Somehow the babbling makes it even worse, and Noah looks uncomfortable for a second and then he says, “Yeah, a lot of The Spill Canvas and some stuff you haven’t heard before.”
“Cool,” I say, sliding my seat belt over my lap. “How long does it take to get there?”
He checks the GPS. “Two and a half hours,” he says.
“Yay, road trip!”
Three hours later, we’ve gone twenty miles. There’s some kind of horrible accident on the Mass Pike, and we’ve been stuck in traffic forever. We can’t even get off the highway, because the shoulder’s closed and there’s nowhere to go. “I should call Ava,” I say. “And tell her that we’re going to be late.”
“Good idea,” he says. I can’t believe neither one of us thought to call her earlier, but honestly, sitting in traffic with Noah hasn’t really been all that bad. We’ve been talking and listening to music, and the time has just flown by. The only thing we haven’t talked about is his screenplay, which I do want to talk about, but haven’t brought up because:
a. I don’t know what to say about it. I mean, I read it three times and it was amazing and well-written and I loved it, even though I have some ideas on what he could do to sharpen some of the girl’s dialogue and the romance between the two characters. But I don’t know how to bring it up, since it’s obviously a big deal for him to show it to anyone, and I really don’t want him to think that I’m saying I like it just because I feel I have to.
b. I don’t know what it means that he showed it to me. Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) late at night when I’m in bed, I think about how no one else, not even Ava, has read it, and how that has to mean something. And the
n I hope I’m right, while at the same time hoping that I’m wrong. Because if I am right, and it does mean something, then what does that mean? And if I’m wrong, and it doesn’t mean anything, well, then . . . that would kind of break my heart a little bit.
I push all that stuff out of my head and dial Ava’s number. “Hi,” I say when she answers.
“Hi!” she says. “Are you almost here? Just pull around to the south parking lot, you’ll see a big sign that says ‘visitors.’ I’m in the dining hall, but I can—”
“Actually, we’re not almost there,” I say. “Not even close. We got stuck in traffic, we’ve been sitting on the Pike for, like, three hours.” Silence.
Then, “Well, how far away are you?”
“We’re only about twenty minutes from home,” I say. “And to tell you the truth, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be breaking up anytime soon.”
More silence. Then, “Oh.”
“Oh?” I ask. “Are you mad?”
“Not mad,” she says. “It’s just kind of rude of you not to call me before this.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m so sorry, we just lost track of time.” Next to me, Noah is going through his iPod, scrolling through songs until he settles on one. “Ohmigod!” I say as the first notes come out of the speakers. “This is Sting! I recognize his voice.”
Noah reaches over and gives me a high-five. “There might be hope for you yet,” he says.
“Excuse me?” Ava screeches.
“Oh,” I say. “Nothing, sorry, I just . . . I got excited because I recognized a Sting song Noah put on.”
“So?”
“So he thinks I have horrible taste in music, and he’s been trying to expand my horizons.”
“Oh.” It’s just one word, but something about her one-word responses are really packing a punch, if you know what I mean. It could be my imagination, I could just be feeling guilty, but I don’t think so.
“So we’ll be there really soon,” I say brightly. “And I’ll call you when we get close.”
“Okay,” she says. “Hurry up.” And then she hangs up on me.
I slide my phone back into my bag. “She said to hurry up,” I say. I don’t tell him that she hung up on me, but I think he knows, since I never said goodbye. Yikes.
An hour more into the trip, I crack. I can’t take it anymore. So after we’ve stopped at a McDonald’s drive-through for strawberry-banana smoothies and chicken nuggets, I wait until we’re back on the highway and then I blurt, “So I read your screenplay.”
Noah doesn’t say anything for a second, then reaches over and turns down the music. He takes a slow sip of his smoothie, then shifts on his seat. “Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Honestly?” I say. “I really, really loved it.”
“Of course you did,” he says, looking straight ahead with a wry smile. At first I think he’s pretending to be arrogant in that fake-macho way guys do, but then I realize he thinks I’m saying I like it just because we’re friends. But I’m not just saying it. I really did love it. So to prove it, I pull the script out of my bag.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“The copy of your script I printed out and made notes on,” I say. Suddenly, I feel like kind of a dork. The copy of your script I printed out and made notes on? I mean, that’s kind of pathetic. “Not a lot of notes,” I rush on. “I mean, I didn’t read it a ton of times or anything, it was just some, you know, overall thoughts.” I’ve read it three times and given it a thorough line edit, but Noah doesn’t need to know that.
“So you really did like it,” he says, looking over at me and grinning.
“I really did,” I say, flushing at the thought that me reading his script could make him so happy. “But, um, I, ah, had some ideas on how you could make it better.”
“You did?” He sounds interested, so I forge ahead.
“Yeah,” I say. “Mostly with the girl’s dialogue. Girls don’t usually say things like ‘homes’ and ‘tricked out’.”
He laughs. “Point taken.”
“Also, the . . . the romance. I didn’t really buy that he’s so in love with her that he would give everything up throughout the movie. His family, school . . . He busted his ass for that.”
“I didn’t know girls said things like ‘busted his ass’,” he says, but he’s teasing, so I say, “This girl does.”
“So you didn’t think the ending paid off?”
“No, it . . . I mean, I got that he liked her a lot, but he just let her leave at the end, after he’d risked everything. I felt like if he loved her, if he really wanted her, he would have fought for her. At least, that’s what I would do if I really loved someone.”
“That’s true,” he says. “I guess it’s hard to write when you’ve never really felt that way about someone, you know?”
“Oh,” I say, flipping through the pages of the script and suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “You don’t . . . I mean, what about Ava?”
“Oh, of course I love Ava. I’m just talking about the kind of love that’s in that screenplay. You know, like, an epic love story.”
“You and Ava aren’t an epic-love-story love?”
“Ava is amazing, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “She’s funny and smart and when I came to school, she really went out of her way to be nice to me.” So did I, I want to say, but don’t. “But I’m only seventeen. I’m not sure that’s old enough for epic-love-story love.” He laughs, and then turns the conversation back to me. “How about you?” he asks. “Is Sebastian your epic love?”
“No,” I say.
“Did you think he was?”
I consider the question. “I guess not,” I say. “Maybe for, like, a second. But I don’t think that seventeen is too young for epic love. And you shouldn’t either. I mean, the characters in your screenplay are seventeen.”
“Yeah, but that’s a screenplay.”
“Right.” I hesitate, and then I say, “But don’t you kind of want that?”
“Epic-love-story love?”
“Yeah,” I say.
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, and I hold my breath, wondering what he’s going to say next. “Of course,” he says. “I’m just not sure I’m ready for everything that comes along with it.”
Ava comes flying out of the dining hall after we pull into the parking lot. She got extensions in her hair, and it’s halfway down her back, all straight and smooth and gorgeous. Her legs are tan from spending so much time outside, and she actually has muscles. She’s wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a navy blue tank. I jump out of the car and she throws her arms around me before she even looks at Noah.
“Hans!” she yells.
“Avs!” I say. I am so, so happy to see her, my stomach is all excited and it hits me how much I missed her. It’s almost enough to get me all teared up. “I missed you!” I pull back and look at her. “Look at your hair, it’s amazing!”
“They’re clip-ins,” she says, reaching up and smoothing them down. “There’s a beauty supply store a couple of miles away, and since it’s one of the only places there is to go around here . . .” She smiles and then looks at Noah, who’s still sitting in the car. Their eyes meet and her smile gets wider, and then Noah’s out of the car, hugging her.
She grabs onto him for a long time, and when she finally pulls back, she says, “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” he says. I look down at the ground and drag my toe across the sand and gravel, feeling like an outsider. Which is weird, since I know Noah way more now than I did before the summer, and I never used to feel that way when Noah and I would hang out with Ava before. Or when Ava and I would hang out with Noah, I mean.
“So let me give you guys the grand tour,” Ava says. “I signed out the guest cabin for us, so we’ll all be able to stay in there together, although I think Brooke Wilkins is having friends up, so they’ll probably be in there, too.” She wrinkles up her nose.
“Brooke Wilkins?” I ask as Noah walks around to the back of the car and hefts our bags out of the trunk.
“Oh, right,” she says. “I never told you about her. She’s this really annoying girl from Cali who, like, constantly talks about all the girls she’s hooked up with. It’s just so freshman year, you know?”
“What is?”
“Bragging about how you’ve hooked up with girls.”
“We never did that.”
“No, but everyone else did. Remember Sonya Fullmer?”
“Oh, right,” I say. “She was always kissing girls to get guys interested in her.”
“I remember her,” Noah says, grinning.
“Figures,” Ava says, grabbing his arm. But he has both our suitcases in his hands, and they’re banging against Ava’s leg so she lets go of him, and it makes me happy to think that Noah wouldn’t have picked up both our suitcases if he was thinking about holding Ava’s hand.
“So here’s my cabin!” Ava says a few minutes later, opening the door. It’s small, with six bunk beds pushed up against the walls. “No one’s here right now, obviously. The girls are at their swimming lesson.”
“Who’s watching them?” I ask.
“No one’s watching them, Hannah, they’re not here to get babysat.” Ava rolls her eyes. “They’re being supervised and taught by the swimming instructor and Carrie, my co-counselor.”
“Cool,” I say, deciding to let her snarky remark go.
We drop our bags off in the guest cabin, and then Ava shows us the lake and the dining hall before we head back to Noah’s car so we can drive into town and get something to eat. I stop at the passenger side, and almost climb in before I remember that Ava will sit in front. She holds open the door and I reach down to push the car seat forward, then slide into the back behind her.
We have lunch at a place called The Seaman, which Noah decides is the best name for a restaurant he’s ever heard. Once we’re inside, I suddenly wish that I’d changed my clothes, since everyone here is kind of dressed up. Well, not really dressed up, they’re just more, like . . . preppy. Ava fits right in with her tan skin and her long blond hair and her crisp khaki shorts, but I’m still wearing the same clothes I wore on the drive, jean shorts and a tank top.