Don't Ever Change (14 page)

I had thought that making it to the first weekend of my first-ever job would feel incredibly satisfying, like I’d been through so much and really come out on top. But when Friday night comes, I don’t know, it’s not like that. I don’t feel like a survivor, and I definitely don’t have a million great stories or funny anecdotes. I text Michelle and Steph to see if they want to go to the movies and then wait for them to text back.

It seems like there’s a lot of static in the air, because I keep getting shocked when I touch the banister or doorknobs or the DirecTV remote. For a minute there’s even a brownout, then a full-on blackout, which makes Courtney scream because she’s in the shower. There’s a scramble for the candles, but once they’re lit I find my phone and still no one’s texted. Mom starts saying how the good thing about landlines was that you never lost your phone, while Dad makes jokes about something ancient called a beeper. I’d always rather have a cell phone, because it means that no matter how long power is out Elliot can still call, and Michelle or Steph can still text. Even though none of them do.

Sitting in the dark, watching my sister flipping the switch of her blow dryer on and off, I get an idea for a new play. There’re two couples, two families, who live next door to each other. This is the 1980s or nineties, it’s a period piece, so that means they have landlines and regular plugged-in phones. After a blackout, their phone lines get crossed. The first couple starts receiving calls meant for the second couple and vice versa. One night the first couple gets a call from a worried friend of their neighbors’ teenage daughter. She’s missing. She’s run away. The two of them were on a summer trip together in Amsterdam, or London, and last night she vanished. Just gone. But the first couple doesn’t tell their neighbors; they don’t say a word about it. To them it’s a mystery, like a problem, one they want to solve, so they hide the truth, pose as their neighbors, try to piece together clues, only to get the call at the end of the second act that their daughter is never coming back. Not
their
daughter, their neighbors’ daughter. And now they can’t keep the secret anymore, because they’ve got to go over there and do the right thing. The play could be called
Neighbors
, or
Lines
, or
Crossed Lines
maybe.

Knock, knock.

Hello.

You remember that blackout last month?

Yes.

Our lines got crossed.

Yes.

We’ve got something to tell you.

Then the play ends, before anyone has to say the word “dead.”

Maybe I’ll give this one to Foster. Or maybe we can share it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

MICHELLE AGREES TO
hang at the mall until four, but Steph is busy until seven. I don’t want to wait there for three hours, and besides, the point is to all hang out
together
, but when I explain this, they say it’s okay because they saw each other last night, so it’s fine if there’s no overlap today. Then Michelle tells me about this Santa Barbara Jewelry Fair she’s working next week—although she doesn’t exactly invite me—while Steph describes how Miranda caught a shoplifter at the Gap, but I can’t pay attention to either of them, because I want to know where and
why
they were hanging out without me last night. I interrupt our three-way call and, in a weird desperation, start reading back all the texts I sent last night, demanding to know why they didn’t respond. They both claim they didn’t even receive them. But even if that
is
true, even if the lines were somehow crossed and my texts got sent to two
different
friends, that still doesn’t explain why I wasn’t invited, why they didn’t reach out to me.

“We were just at Kerry’s house, watching Kate Mara movies and Rooney Mara movies,” Michelle says. “Kerry calls it a
Mara
thon, and since you hate Kerry and don’t really have any feelings about the Mara sisters, no one thought to call.”

“I don’t remember hating Kerry,” I tell Steph.

Then, without saying the name Bart, but implying as much, Steph reminds me I hate everyone.

She’s wrong, though—I don’t hate everyone. It’s just that in high school you say mean things about your classmates because you’re dying of boredom and dying to graduate and because you’re just joking anyway.

“It’s not a big deal. You wouldn’t have had that much fun anyway,” Michelle says, and that hurts too, because why do my best friends assume I wouldn’t have fun watching movies with them?

This must be my rep: someone who’s Not a Good Sport, someone who’s this Very Specific Person, and
not
in a good way. I guess a Classic Eva move doesn’t mean a funny, cool, chill move, but a close-minded, judge-y move, which maybe was true before, but I honestly feel like I’ve begun to change all that.

“Am I that much of a bummer?” I ask.

“Bummer’s not the word
I’d
use,” Steph says, and Michelle just says, “Eh.”

“It’s just that you’re so rigid,” Steph says.

“Yeah, you have a lot of
rules
,” Michelle adds.

“Okay, but I’d still like to be extended the
opportunity
, even if sometimes I say no. Is that bratty?”

“I wouldn’t call it
bratty
,” Steph says, and then Michelle says, “I would.”

“Are you mad at me or something?”

“Let’s not get into that again,” Steph says.

“It’s not about being mad,” Michelle tells me.

We run out of things to say for a minute, so I check my email and there’s a message in my in-box from Shelby, asking if I want to hang out today. I relay this to Michelle and Steph, plainly fishing, hoping they’ll say something mean or dismissive about Shelby, but realize that’s more something I would do, which is what Courtney calls Classic Projection. Neither of them has a reaction to my news about Shelby, so eventually we trade stilted good-byes and I text Shelby that we should meet for lunch later.

Downstairs my mom’s got the fridge open, calling out items to my dad, who’s writing a shopping list. They can tell right away that something’s wrong.

“You know, water seeks its own level,” my mother says.

“What does that even mean?” I ask.

“It means people match up with other people who are on their level.”

“Okay, but what do you mean by ‘level’?”

“It’s advice, Eva,” my father says. “Take it or don’t take it.”

“But how can I take it if I don’t understand it?”

“You love Michelle and Steph, but you’re also on your way to college, where you’ll meet a ton of new people, many of whom will have the same
agenda
as you,” my mother says.

“Other writers, you mean.”

“Writers, thinkers,” my father says. “Other smart young men and women.”

“I’m not going to
Harvard
,” I say.

“Yes, but you’ll be
near
Harvard,” my mother says, hopefully.

“Sure, geographically, but not like,
mentally
.”

“You could make Harvard friends,” my father says. “It’s not impossible.”

“This is
not
advice,” I say.

“Oh, smile,” my mother says. “It’s Saturday!”

I force a smile and then leave to meet Shelby for lunch at Roxy’s Famous Deli. Shelby always picks the place, and she always gets there early so she can pick the booth. She’s already eating from a basket of cheesy fries when I slide in beside her.

“Did you get contacts?” she asks. “They look so good.”

“Contacts are gross.”

Shelby offers one, then remembers, takes the offer away.

“I’ll wear my glasses when I can get glasses that
suit
me,” I say. “I have to, like, grow into the look.”

“Glasses make everyone look smarter, and I know you, you want to look smarter than everyone.”

“I
want
to look sexy.”

“Guys will have sex with you even if you don’t look sexy,” Shelby says. “Fact.” She licks cheese and grease off her fingers. “Lasik?”

“Gross.”

Shelby shrugs and moves on. “Well, are you crazy excited, like, overflowing with anticipation for Boston?” she asks.

“I guess so,” I say.

“Oh, stop moping, Eva,” she tells me.

That’s the word she uses—“moping”—and when she says it, she rolls her eyes and waves me off like that’s also part of my rep, that I’m some Eternal Moper. Shelby says she moped for five straight days after she and Zack broke up, but she’s done with moping now.

Shelby’s a good friend—not a
close
friend, but a good one—and she does this thing my dad calls Telling It Like It Is, which really just means she doesn’t hold back on honest details, even if a person might not want to hear them. What I like about Shelby is that she’s always had such a different agenda from everyone else. She never wanted to go to college or move away, she just wanted to do people’s hair for a living and run her own salon in this very posh part of Pasadena. Shelby’s very ambitious, which I think is on my level, but her ambitions aren’t to be this Important Person or to Make It, which my parents would probably say is some totally different level from mine. Shelby’s also the only real adult in our graduating class, because she’s always had a job and birth control pills and a silver nose ring, and because she was always dating Zack, who’s like six years older.

The breakup happened two months ago, at the food court in the Thousand Oaks Mall. They were eating Sbarro’s and talking about the future when Zack invited Shelby to move into his bachelor apartment after she graduated in May. He said he cared about her, and how amazing it would be to live together, and if she did want to move in, maybe they should buy some new furniture together. Gradually, though, the conversation turned into a discussion of
space issues
—not issues regarding their own personal space but issues of where to physically put all this new furniture, like into
what space
. Zack suggested packing some stuff in a storage unit if necessary, or keeping extra furniture at his mom’s place, where he still sort of had a room. But Shelby didn’t like that idea; she thought the only way it’d work was if they got something bigger, like a one-bedroom or even a two-bedroom, even though that was kind of a huge commitment, since she was only eighteen and her summer job wasn’t going to pay much. Still, she told him she didn’t want to move into a place where she didn’t have space for her photography and her haircutting, so maybe the best thing to do was to just wait and figure it out later in the year. Zack proposed something else: renting a two-bedroom apartment in the Valley they could move into in June. Money wasn’t a concern to him; he loved her and would pay whatever she couldn’t cover. And as long as they’d be living together, why not get married, too? He smiled, asked her what she thought of the idea.

That’s when Shelby pushed away her slice of pizza. She couldn’t take another bite. She left the food court, left the mall, and left him there with no ride home.

“Really, you’re lucky with that guy Elliot,” Shelby says. “At least he’s not bugging you about marriage, about being some teen bride.”

“Shelby, I like barely know him. He’s only called me once since he left.”

“Ugh, you’re being like Zack,” she tells me—which means being something I shouldn’t be.

Coincidentally, on the drive home from Roxy’s, Elliot calls, from somewhere in the middle of the country. He tells me their drummer Marcus threw a bottle at Chelsea, the bassist. He tells me things have been getting crazier on the road because the whole band’s been drunk so much, except for him, and now the whole band’s angrier, and everything’s changing. Elliot thinks maybe Marcus had sex with Chelsea. I never knew Elliot had a girl bassist, because he never told me, and now I’m wondering if
Elliot
has had sex with Chelsea.

He wants to know if camp’s ruling. I say it isn’t. He wants to know if I’ve started packing. I say I haven’t and don’t really feel like talking about it. But I do tell him Courtney’s packing, that she packs for Amsterdam a little bit each day.

“Where’s Amsterdam?” Elliot asks.

“What do you mean?” I say.

“
Where’s
Amsterdam?”

“Holland?”

“Holla!” Elliot laughs. Then he says, “You were rushin’ but now you’re peein’.”

“What?”

“You were
Russian
but now
European
,” Elliot says, laughing harder.

It’s like the worst joke ever, so I hold my forehead in my hands, trying to remember if Elliot’s told me other bad jokes or if this is the first one. Is
his
rep as some Joker? Because I can’t stand that. Elliot asks what I’m wearing in this fake-sleazy way—another joke, because he knows it’s two p.m. and that I’m driving—and I tell him I’m completely naked and that makes him laugh again.