She’s always acting like she never does anything wrong when, if you ask me, she does a lot of things wrong. She just doesn’t want to admit it to herself. Anyway. That was back when our friendship was so fresh in my mind that any interaction I had with her automatically got logged in my brain, like I was just buying time until we were going to be friends again. But of course we never are.
“Oh,” I say. “Ummm . . . hi.”
“Listen,” she says. Her light-brown hair is pulled to one side in a fishtail braid, and she’s wearing khaki shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt. Isn’t she cold? I know we’re going to Florida, but why is she wearing her Florida outfit now? “I need to talk to you.” She holds her phone up and bites her bottom lip. “Did you get your email?”
“Sorry,” Derrick says, looking at her. He shakes his head. “Aven, right? Sorry, Aven, but we’re talking here. And it’s kind of private.” Wow. He sounds very serious. I’ve never heard him sound so serious before. I flush with pleasure. He must really want to have sex with me if he’s sounding so serious.
Aven swallows. “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t . . . I mean, I didn’t realize you were talking.” But she doesn’t move. She just takes in another deep breath and stands there. “It’s just . . . did you get your email?”
“My email?”
“Yeah, the ones we sent? Did you get it?” Her voice sounds frazzled, and she shifts her weight from foot to foot, like she’s here asking about a secret government document and not just some dumb email we sent when we were fourteen. Her hair is a lot longer than it used to be, and it’s darker on the top than the bottom. She must have gotten an ombre. It makes her look older. In a good way.
“What email?” Derrick asks.
Oh, god.
“Yes,” I say to Aven. “I got it.” I say it firmly, like the conversation is over and that’s all I have to say on the matter. This isn’t going to turn into one of those trips down memory lane, where we reminisce about how crazy everything was when we were fourteen, and oh my god can you believe we sent those things, and holy crap weren’t we so young, and maybe we should just be friends again or at least if we’re not friends, we should just forget about everything and no hard feelings when we go to college okay mm-hmm bye.
I thrust my chin in the air and force myself to meet her eyes, determined not to show her any emotion.
But my throat tightens and my heart starts beating fast. I remember her, standing in front of the school on the day we stopped being friends. I’m not the one who told your mom, Lyla! I don’t understand how you could be mad at me! It’s not even anyone’s fault.
But of course it was her fault. Her and Quinn’s fault, both. And no matter how much I miss both of them, no matter how much I think about them, it can never be the same. And so what’s the point?
“Flight 935 to Sarasota is now boarding, Flight 935 to Sarasota is now boarding at Gate 24,” a voice chirps over the loudspeaker.
“Well!” I say just as chirpily. “Here we go! I guess we better board.”
“Where’s your stuff?” Derrick asks, frowning. “Didn’t you bring a carry-on?”
“Nope,” I say. “Just this.” I hold up my Coach wristlet, a present from Derrick for my seventeenth birthday last summer.
“That’s all you brought for a carry-on?” Aven asks skeptically.
“I’m trying to simplify my life,” I reply haughtily. “Everyone is so obsessed with materialism and things. I’m, you know, streamlining.” I pet my Coach wristlet like it’s the only thing I need in life. Which is really ridiculous when you think about it, because if someone were trying to strip down their existence, they really wouldn’t leave themselves with a Coach wristlet. They’d probably get some kind of wallet made from recycled hemp or something.
“You’re trying to streamline your life?” Aven asks, sounding even more incredulous. Like she knows me or something.
“A person can change,” I say ominously. I try to look mysterious, like there are all kinds of things she doesn’t know about me, all kinds of ways I’ve changed in the two years since we’ve stopped being friends.
“When did you decide to simplify your life?” Derrick asks. “Because you never told me that.” He looks suspicious. “Is this why you want to have sex?”
“You want to have sex?” Aven asks. Her forehead crinkles. “Wait. You two haven’t slept together yet? Haven’t you been going out for forever?”
“Oh my god,” I say, holding my hand up. “Both of you need to stop.”
“Whatever,” Aven says. She shakes her head. “Your sex life is none of my business.”
“You’re damn right it’s not.”
I turn and start to walk away, hoping they get the message. The message being that Derrick should follow me and Aven should just go away. But it doesn’t work.
“Lyla,” she says. “Please, wait. Can we . . . I mean, can I talk to you for a second?”
I sigh, then tilt my head back and roll my head around, trying to get rid of some of the tension in my shoulders. “What is it?”
She glances at Derrick. “Um, I want . . . can we talk in private?”
I almost laugh out loud. Funny that she’s so worried about privacy now. I want to tell her no, but I have a feeling she’s not going to give up.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Derrick.
I walk a few feet away and cross my arms over my chest. “What is it?” I ask her. “Make it quick, we’re about to board.”
She nods, then fiddles with her hair. “I just wanted to know if you’re going to do what the email says.”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you taking it seriously? You know, about learning to trust? Because I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking that I’m going to be really, um, trying to do what mine says.” She shakes her head. “In fact, I’ve kind of been waiting for a chance to do it.”
I remember her email. The one she sent to herself.
Before graduation, I will . . . tell the truth.
I know exactly what she meant, too. While my email was ambiguous, hers was very specific. It was about Liam, the guy she’s had a crush on for forever. She was going to tell him she was in love with him.
For a second, my heart softens, and I want to tell her that we were just kids, that we just wrote things down without really thinking about them, without really knowing the repercussions. That if she’s going to tell Liam that she loves him, she really needs to think about what that’s going to do to their friendship, if it’s worth the fact that things might change or that she might lose him.
But then I remember what she did to me, what she almost cost me.
And I feel my heart harden.
“Yeah, Aven,” I say, sarcastically. “I’m really going to work on learning to trust. Because remember what happened when I trusted you? It didn’t work out so well, remember?”
She looks like she’s been slapped. “Lyla,” she says. “I never wanted—”
“Save it,” I say. “I didn’t want to hear it then, and I don’t want to hear it now.”
I turn away and walk back toward Derrick.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, even though my stomach is rolling. “I’ll feel better when we’re in Florida.”
And when Aven Shepard is out of my sight.
When we get on the plane, Derrick changes seats with me so that I can have the one closest to the window. He takes my hand and pulls me close. I lean my head against his shoulder and breathe in his scent. Beckett and Aven start to fade into the back of my mind, and for the first time all morning, my heart rate slows to normal and I start to feel like myself.
“I’m so glad we’re going on this trip together,” I murmur.
“Me too,” he says. His voice sounds more enthusiastic than usual. If we’re being completely honest, Derrick didn’t even really want to go to Florida. He wanted to go on some dumb baseball trip, which didn’t make sense because he’s not even on the baseball
team. Derrick plays lacrosse. But all his friends play baseball, and they were going to Myrtle Beach to play in some tournament, and Derrick wanted to go too, which was so stupid because what the hell was he going to do down there while all his friends were playing baseball?
“What room number are you?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
He reaches into his duffel and pulls out a sheaf of papers. “We got these on the bus,” he says. “Room 145. I’m rooming with Beckett Cross and Liam Marsh.”
Beckett. At the sound of his name, my stomach does a somersault. “You’re rooming with Beckett?”
“Yeah. He’s a cool guy. Liam too. They’re definitely the types that would let us have the room to ourselves for a little bit.”
“Beckett’s not going on the trip,” I say automatically. Don’t ask me how I know, don’t ask me how I know, don’t ask me how I know.
“He’s not?”
“No.”
“Perfect.” Derrick grins and doesn’t ask me to elaborate. I guess the possibility of sex is making him a man of few words. “Then we’ll definitely have a chance to have the room to ourselves. Who are you rooming with?”
“I don’t know. Where did you get that paper?” I ask.
“I told you, they handed them out when we got on the bus,” he says.
Shit. What with this whole maybe-having-sex-with-Derrick thing and then Aven coming up to me like that, I almost forgot that I’m not even supposed to be here. Although I’m already on the plane, so I really doubt they’re going to make me get off. It was surprisingly easy to board. I just handed over my ticket like everyone else. None of our class chaperones even asked me why I wasn’t on the bus. Talk about not keeping track of us. I mean, isn’t that pretty irresponsible of the school?
I always see those links on Facebook to news stories about kids getting left behind in dangerous places by their schools, and I always wondered how the hell that could happen. Now I know. They don’t pay any attention. To anything. But still. Just because they were so hands-off about boarding doesn’t mean I want to call attention to myself.
“Do you think if I ask for my room assignment they’re going to make me get off the plane?” I ask.
“Why would they make you get off the plane?” Derrick sounds panicked. Hmm. I wonder why he didn’t seem as panicked when he thought I’d missed the bus. He was just calmly eating pretzel nuggets. He’s probably nervous now because he knows he’s going to get some sex.
“Because I wasn’t on the bus!” I say, slightly exasperated. I know he has sex brain, but really. Try to keep up.
A head pops over the back of the seat in front of us. “Hola!” a voice says. It’s my friend Juliana. Well, our friend Juliana. She was actually Derrick’s friend first. Well, sort of. She was dating Derrick’s friend Jasper and then they broke up, but somehow she stayed friends with Derrick. And now she’s friends with me. Again, sort of. She’s not the type of friend you can call up and, like, depend on for anything. First, she never answers her phone. And second, she has no boundaries. Like, for example, if I had called her this morning, she most likely wouldn’t have answered her phone. And if I had, she would have refused to let me talk to Derrick until she found out all our business. She’s nice. But she’s kind of nosy.
“Are we excited to get crazy?” Juliana asks. Sometimes she talks in first-person plural.
“I am,” I say. “I’m definitely ready to get crazy.”
Juliana laughs and tosses her head back. Her long, dark curls hit the window.
I frown. “What’s so funny?” Of course I’m ready to get crazy.
“Oh, nothing,” she says. “Just, you know, thinking about you two getting crazy.”
She looks at Derrick and gives him a secret little smile.
I glance over at him, and he shifts on his seat a little, looking uncomfortable. Could Juliana be talking about our sex life? Derrick wouldn’t have told her we hadn’t had sex, would he? That’s, like, personal private information.
“Anyway,” Juliana says, “I have a hookup for tonight. Party in my room.” She winks at us and then drops back down into her seat.
I want to ask Derrick what she was talking about, but I decide to let it go. So what if he told Juliana we haven’t had sex? It’s not like she’s a stranger. She’s my friend, too. And besides, I’m not embarrassed about it. There’s no reason to be embarrassed about not having sex yet. After this weekend, it won’t be an issue anyway.
The pilot is on the speaker now, talking about how we should turn off all our electronic devices. So far not one teacher has even bothered me about being on this flight. They must have checked me off on some list when I boarded, but really? I wasn’t on the bus. Doesn’t anyone even want to ask me about it? This trip is definitely not well managed at all.
“So,” Derrick says. He leans in close to me again. “What were we talking about?”
“Having sex,” I say. The words feel foreign and delicious on my tongue. I mean, yes, I’ve talked about sex before, but not about me actually having it. Like, imminently. A dangerous little thrill runs up my spine.
“So you really want to?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “I really want to.”
And that’s when Beckett Cross taps Derrick on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he says. He holds up my carry-on bag. “But Lyla left this on my motorcycle.”
THREE
THE PROBLEM WITH LIES IS THAT THEY CAN end up making something totally innocent seem like more than it is. If I’d just told Derrick from the beginning that Beckett had driven me to the airport, it would have seemed like I had nothing to hide. Which I didn’t. Which I don’t.
And then Derrick wouldn’t have had to find out when Beckett showed up on the plane holding my bag. Of course, it also didn’t help that Beckett said that I’d left my bag on the back of his motorcycle. It was very inflammatory language when you think about it. Saying you left something on someone’s motorcycle sounds very covert and sexy, like maybe you left it there after a night of passion.
Of course, not only had I lied about how I got to the airport, I’d also lied and said I was minimizing my life instead of just admitting I’d forgotten my carry-on. (That was a really ridiculous lie. I’m shocked I was so brazen about it. If Derrick hadn’t been so tantalized by the prospect of having sex with me, he wouldn’t have believed it for a second. I’m, like, the most materialistic person around, and everyone knows it. Even Aven couldn’t believe it, and she always tries to see the best in people.)
“I wasn’t riding around with him,” I say. “Beckett was just at the school when I got there late, and so he drove me.”
“He drove you?” Derrick asks.
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes.” I don’t know why, but suddenly I’m confused. He’s making it sound like Beckett driving me was doing something bad. It’s like a double entendre or something, even though it’s not.
“Well, which is it?” Derrick demands.
We’re having this fight as we walk into the Sand Dollar Siesta Hotel. It’s a very inopportune time to be having a fight, because all I really want to do is enjoy the fact that I’m in Florida. As soon as we stepped out of the airport, the warm air soothed my soul and the humidity tickled my nose and made my skin feel like it was getting a much-needed drink.
The whole flight here Derrick just sat there in stony silence while I tried not to think about the fact that Beckett had come all the way back to the airport just to bring me my bag. Of course I knew Beckett hadn’t come back just for me. He must have come back because he’d decided to go on the trip after all. He wouldn’t have come back just to give me my stuff.
Although if I’m being completely honest, thinking about Beckett coming back just for me gave me a tiny bit of a thrill. It didn’t help that he’d been sitting a few aisles over from us on the plane, and that he’d sent me a drink from the stewardess—a cranberry with Sprite (pink!) accompanied by a note that said, Pink—Sorry if I got you in trouble. Tell your
boyfriend to chill out from me. ~B
Of course I had to show Derrick the note, because if I hadn’t, he would have gotten all suspicious. But then when he read it, he got even more mad and demanded to know why the note was addressed to Pink, and then I said it was because Beckett didn’t know my name. Which I thought would actually make Derrick feel better, because really, how could anything scandalous be going on if Beckett didn’t even know my name? But this just incensed Derrick even more. He said it was more insulting that I was lying to him about a guy who didn’t know my name, and that of course Beckett knew my name, and that he must have just been pretending he didn’t to play a mind game with me.
Which didn’t make any sense, because why would Beckett want to play a mind game with me? So then I told Derrick he was being a little bit crazy, so then Derrick said it was completely inappropriate for another guy to give me a nickname, and then he just sat there and refused to talk to me for the rest of the flight, and then kept it up for the whole bus ride from the airport to the hotel.
He even made me carry my own suitcase, which was super annoying. Hasn’t he ever heard of chivalry? You’d think after I’d pretty much just agreed to have sex with him, he’d at least carry my suitcase.
“Hello?” Derrick says now. “Are you going to answer me?”
“I forgot the question,” I say honestly. I’m distracted now because as we’re walking, one of my shoes is acting funny. I look down to see that the part of my flip-flop that goes between my toes has started to come loose. Great. That’s what I get for changing my shoes as soon as we got on the bus to the hotel. How do people who are simplifying their lives deal with their shoes breaking down? Probably they don’t even wear shoes. Or the ones they do are made from extra-strong raw materials.