The First Day of Senior Year
Mr. Davies writes me a pass back to my eighth-period class, but since I never went there to begin with, no one will be expecting me, so I ditch the pass and decide to hide out in the cafeteria, where I plop myself down in a corner. Literally, in a corner. Not even a corner table. I go right for the floor.
I don’t even care that it’s probably really gross, or that I’m wrecking my first-day-of-school outfit. The first day of school is bullshit anyway. It’s supposed to be about new beginnings, but really all it does is wreck your life. And set you up for failure. And make you realize everything is completely and totally fucked.
I bury my face in my knees and decide to sit here for a long time and feel sorry for myself. I wonder if I can get away with skipping ceramics next period, but I know that if I do, I’ll definitely get written up. Mr. Davies is totally on to me. He knows I want nothing to do with the pottery wheel. Not to mention, Ava and Sebastian and Noah will all know exactly what happened, that I chickened out of facing them.
I sit there for a few minutes, feeling like I want to have a good cry, but not really being able to find any tears. And then I hear a voice say, “Hannah? Are you okay?”
I look up to see Riker Strong, of all people, standing there with a concerned look on his face. “What are you doing here?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“Shouldn’t you?” he asks. Which is a good point.
He sits down at the table near me and sets his books down. “Don’t you wanna get up? It’s probably dirty down there.”
“You’re one to talk about being dirty,” I say.
He sighs. “So you hate me, huh? Because I broke up with Ava? Come on, Hannah, even Noah’s over that.”
“No,” I say, looking up at him. “And I still don’t know if I believe you broke up with Ava.” The whole thing is very sketchy in my mind, and despite everything that’s happened today, I’m still having a hard time believing Ava would lie about something like that.
Riker sighs. “I broke up with Ava,” he says. “Trust me.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a sandwich. Tuna fish. Riker has a tuna fish sandwich in his back pocket. In a Ziploc bag. He pulls out one half and offers it to me. “You want some?”
“No, thank you,” I say haughtily. “And it almost doesn’t matter if you broke up with Ava, because either way, you cheated on Lacey.” Not that Lacey and I are friends anymore. But still. It’s the principle of the thing.
“Now that, I did,” he says, nodding before taking a big bite of his sandwich. “But I heard that you had sex with Noah, and isn’t that just as bad?”
“As bad as maybe breaking up with Ava and then cheating on Lacey? No.”
“Not ‘maybe breaking up with,’” he says, exasperated. He reaches into his pocket, the same pocket that held the tuna fish sandwich, and pulls out his cell phone. He scrolls through, then shows me something on the screen. An email. From Ava.
I know we can work it out. Just give me one more chance.
“You made that up,” I say. “That’s so not real, who saves their emails from ten months ago?”
“I save all my emails,” he says, shrugging. “Don’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .” I trail off. Because the thing is, I believe him. Which means Ava’s been lying to me this whole time.
“Whatever,” he says, shrugging. He slides his phone back into his pocket, picks up the rest of his sandwich and stands up. “And Hannah?” he says. “Don’t beat yourself up too much. You know, about the whole Noah thing. Sometimes it happens.”
The Summer
The next two weeks are horrible. In fact, they might even be the most horrible days of my life. It’s kind of a weird, cruel joke when you think about it. I mean, I traded being heartbroken over one guy for being completely heartbroken over another. And I didn’t even get to have any fun in between. No relationship, no sex, not even a good make-out session.
“So are you going to come tonight?” Lacey asks. It’s the last day of work before school starts tomorrow, we’re getting ready to close up the diner, and Lacey is trying to convince me we have to go to Jenna Lamacchia’s party tonight.
“Lacey,” I say, wiping down one of the counters. “You do understand that the last time I was at Jenna’s house something horrible happened, right?”
“Which is why,” she says, “you have to go tonight. So you can create a new, better memory to replace the old one.”
“But I don’t want to.” She’s lucky she got me to go into the city a few days ago to get a haircut and buy school clothes. And really, the only reason I did that was because I wanted a chance to drive my new car, which I picked up last week. It totally decimated my bank account, and put a serious dent in my back-to-school shopping money, but it was so worth it. But there’s no way I’m going to a party. Replace the old memory with a potentially crappier new one? No thank you.
“But then you’ll never be able to get over your old memory, and you’ll never be able to go to a party at Jenna’s again.”
I shrug. “Fine with me.”
“Noah,” Lacey yells into the kitchen. “Will you please tell Hannah that it’s ridiculous not to want to go to Jenna’s party tonight?”
“Why don’t you want to go?” Noah asks, popping his head through the divider.
“Because I don’t,” I say. “I’m tired. And I’m cranky. And I want to go home and go to sleep.” I don’t tell him the real reason I don’t want to go is because I know Ava will be there. She’s coming back from camp tonight. And they’ll be together, and it will be like . . . I don’t know, like something awful. And that’s the other problem. Who am I supposed to hang out with at the party? Ava or Lacey? Lacey or Ava? They hate each other.
“You have to gooo,” Lacey says.
“She doesn’t have to,” Noah says. “If she can’t handle it, she can’t handle it.”
I turn around and glare at him. Nothing really bad has been going on between me and Noah—he still picks me up in the mornings, we make small talk on the way to work, he buys me coffee, etc. But we don’t get personal, we don’t talk about music, and we definitely don’t talk about his screenplay or the reason he was at my house that night. We don’t talk about what happened in Maine, or how pissed off I am at him for leaving me all alone that day, or how we both know I was just pretending to sleep on the ride home.
“I think I will go after all,” I tell Lacey. “Pick me up at nine?” I just really hope it’s not a mistake.
This was a complete mistake.
“Now, when we get in here, if you see Danielle, don’t even look at her,” Lacey instructs. “And if you see her before I do, don’t, like, try to tell me or anything, because then it will be obvious that I care.” She pulls up the top of her black strapless sundress. “I don’t want her to know that I’m even thinking about her being here.”
“Okay,” I say, following her up the steps and wondering if there’s going to be a lot of alcohol here, and if so, what kind. I’m thinking it might be time to get drunk, and fast. The good thing is, Ava and Noah won’t be here after all—Ava decided to stay in Maine to have dinner with her camp friends, so she’s not getting back until late tonight. I tried to tell her she’d be exhausted at school tomorrow, but she didn’t want to listen.
When we get into the party, I start to have some kind of horrible flashback. Seriously. It’s like I have PTSD or something. I’m walking through Jenna’s living room, and suddenly my head feels all light, and I can’t really even see where I’m going. The music’s on, and there’s that familiar smell of Jenna’s house—pot and beer and cologne. And then the room starts spinning a little bit, so I pull on Lacey’s hand and lean into her and say, “I’m sorry, I . . . I have to get out of here.”
“Wait, what?” she says, but it’s kind of like I’m underwater or in a dream or something and I can’t really hear her.
I stumble back through the front door and onto the sidewalk, and I ca
n hear Lacey calling my name, but I’m running down the street, all the way home. When I finally get there, I suddenly feel very calm.
And then, before I even know what I’m doing, I get into my car and drive to Cooley’s.
I can see him in there, mopping the floors, staying late so Lacey and I could go to the party. On my cell, I have a bunch of texts and missed calls from Lacey, freaking out about where I am and if I’m okay, so I text her back letting her know I’m fine.
And then I open the door and walk into the diner.
He doesn’t seem that surprised to see me, which is kind of surprising to me, since I’m surprised I’m here, so you’d think he would be too.
But he just leans the mop he’s holding against the wall.
“Hannah,” he says. And it’s something about the way he says my name that makes me almost turn around, that makes me almost stop what I know is probably about to happen.
“Why did you come to my house that night?” I ask. “At one in the morning?”
“I wanted to see you,” he says, and takes a step toward me. My face heats up and my stomach does a flip, and it’s the same thing he’s been doing to me all summer, but this time, somehow and in a way I can’t explain, it’s different.
“Why?” I look up at him, and he hesitates for a second and I’m afraid he’s going to take it back, that he’s going to stop it, that it’s not going to happen.
But then he says, “Hannah,” again, and he moves toward me and his mouth is on mine and my heart is racing, but it feels right and perfect and safe.
The First Day of Senior Year
This day has seriously been like some kind of crazy loop. You know, like that movie Groundhog Day where the guy keeps waking up and living the same day over and over? Only with me, I keep being afraid to go places. Like this morning when I was sitting in my car, afraid to go into school. And right now, when I’m standing in the hallway of the art wing, afraid to go into the ceramics studio.
“Please tell me you’re not in this class,” a voice says behind me, and I turn around to see Lacey standing there, her eyes angry and her voice steely.
“Please tell me you’re not in this class,” I say, not to be smart, but more out of weariness and a feeling of disbelief that this is my life.
“I am,” she says, then pushes by me and into the room. Great. Now, not only do I have to deal with everyone else who’s going to be here, I have to deal with Lacey, too.
I peer into the classroom. I’m one of the first people here, which gives me some hope. Maybe Ava and Noah and Sebastian all had the same idea I did, only maybe they have different, better guidance counselors than I do, ones who actually let them drop the class. Maybe they’re not coming, maybe they’re not going to even be here, maybe they’re—
Ava goes brushing by me, her face streaked with tears.
Great. There goes that theory. She takes a seat at one of the tables on the right-hand side, so I go in and take a seat near the back and in the middle. Both Lacey and Ava shoot daggers at me from different sides of the room, but I keep my gaze fixed straight ahead as kids start pouring into the studio. Two girls I don’t know very well, Luna Marsh and Lilly Peters, sit down at my table. Which is good, because it means there’s only one chair left. Hopefully some other random person will sit there. If I can just keep all of us away from each other, maybe I can get out of here unscathed. And then tomorrow I can go back to Mr. Davies, I can tell him that I tried it and that it didn’t work, that I really made an effort but that—
Lacey comes over and plops herself down in the chair next to me.
“So,” she says. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“Um,” I say. “I will. I mean, I want to.” I take a deep breath. “Let’s get coffee or something after this, okay?”
“No,” she says. “Now.”
Both of the girls at my table are staring at us, along with a couple of other people at other tables. But I have a feeling that if I don’t answer Lacey’s questions, she’s going to get even louder, and then even more people are going to start staring, which I definitely don’t want.
“Lacey,” I whisper, looking nervously over to where Ava’s sitting. “Please, can we—”
“No,” she says. “Now.”
I grab her hand and drag her over to the corner of the room. Everyone’s still staring at us, so I lower my voice in an effort to keep Ava, and everyone else, from hearing.
“Well,” I say. “This summer, I . . . I kind of started having feelings for Noah.”
“And you never told me?”
“No,” I say. “I never told you.”
She sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe you never told me! I thought we were best friends.”
“We were! I mean, we are, I hope. I just . . . I guess I kept wishing it would go away, you know?”
“But this morning, in homeroom and in math, you just sat there, letting me believe everything was fine, that nothing was going on with you guys. You never even told me! And then I came to pick you up from Cooley’s, I left school to come and get you, and you totally lied to me!”
“I didn’t really lie. But I know it’s just semantics. Lacey gives me a look. “Fine,” I say. “I lied.”
I look down at my hands, and two tears come streaming down my face. I wipe them angrily away with the back of my hand. Figures. When I wanted to have a good cry in the cafeteria, nothing. And now that I’m here, in front of everyone, it happens.
“Oh, God,” Lacey says. “Please don’t cry. It’s . . . I mean, I understand.”
“You do?” I ask her.
“Yeah,” she says. “Because, um, I have a secret, too.”
Ohmigod. She slept with someone too? I wonder who it could be. The only guys we’ve really had contact with this summer are the old men who come into the diner and Cooley. Unless . . .
“Oh, God, Lacey,” I say. “Please tell me that you aren’t in love with one of your doctors.”
“God, no!” she says. “I only go to female doctors—they have a lower malpractice rate.”
“Oh,” I say. “Then who is it?”
“Who’s who?”
“Who did you sleep with?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t sleep with anyone,” she says. “I . . . I’ve been talking to Danielle again.”
“You have?” I’m shocked. Lacey hates Danielle. “But you hate Danielle!”
“I know,” she says. “But I just . . . I missed her and she seemed like she felt really bad and . . . I don’t know, we’ve been texting a little bit. I’m not saying we’re friends again, but I’m just . . . I’m keeping my options open.” She looks at me nervously, like maybe I’m going to be mad at her, but all I do is reach over and squeeze her hand.
“I think it’s great,” I say.
“You do?”
“Yeah,” I say. “People make mistakes.”
“It will probably never be the same,” she tells me, and I don’t know if she’s talking about her and Danielle, her and me, me and Ava, or me and Noah. Probably all of the above.
“I know,” I say. I smile at Lacey, and she smiles at me, and I know we’re going to be okay.
And then, suddenly, Ava’s speaking up from her side of the room. “Isn’t that nice,” she says. “You guys are so cute, becoming BFF while I’m out of town. The psycho stalker—” She looks at Lacey. “And the boyfriend stealer.” She looks at me.
“I am not a boyfriend stealer,” I say. I think about telling her Noah wants nothing to do with me, but I have a feeling that really wouldn’t make her feel better.
“Whatever,” she says. And her voice is so cold that I’m kind of afraid she’s going to hit me again. At least now we’re in school, so it would be broken up pretty quickly.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Noah’s head snap up from a table. He must have come in while I was talking to Lacey. Our eyes meet across the room, and I want him to say something, to do something, but it doesn’t seem like
he’s going to. “It doesn’t matter,” Ava says. “You two deserve each other anyway. My ex-best friend the bitch,” she looks at me, “and my ex-boyfriend the asshole.” She looks at Noah. If he hears her, he doesn’t show it.
“Ava,” I say. “Please, let’s talk about this later, let’s—”
“I never want to talk to you again!” she screams. So much for bringing Lacey over to the corner. I am officially and definitely making a scene.
And at that moment, our ceramics teacher, Mr. Guthrie, walks into the room. He sees Ava and me yelling (well, Ava’s yelling, I’m standing there with a shell-shocked look on my face) and he says calmly, “You two girls, please go to the office.”
I start to protest, but then I realize there’s nothing I can do. So I gather my books, and as the whole class watches, follow Ava out the door to the office.
But Ava has other ideas. Besides going to the office, I mean. She leads me out of the school, which we’re going to get in total trouble for, since we’re not supposed to be leaving school, we’re supposed to be going to the office, and they’ll know it. Mr. Guthrie would have called down and told them to be expecting us.
“So why’d you do it?” she asks, once we’re standing on the side of the building by the basketball courts. “Tell me why you did it.”
“Ava,” I say. “Please, let’s go somewhere after school, let’s go have coffee, you can come over, we can—”
“Fine,” she says. “Forget it. Don’t talk to me.” She starts walking back toward the school, her purple dress swishing around her legs.
“Wait!” I say, taking a few steps. I grab her arm, and she stops and turns back around. “I just . . . I started liking him.”
“Are you guys together?”
“No,” I say. “We’re not together.” Saying those words makes me upset, but I force myself to look at her. “We’re not together, and I regret it, Ava, I really do, I never meant to hurt you.” And in that moment, I mean it. I do. If I could go back, if I could take everything back, I would. Because it’s not worth it. Feeling this way, like my heart is completely shattered, isn’t worth anything.