Don't Ever Change (31 page)

Lindsay looks tan—a better word would be “honeyed”—but the more general impression she gives off is that she looks
healthy
. I realize that’s kind of a clinical term, like you’re describing a purebred puppy or blood cells under a microscope, but I don’t mean it like just physically, I mean it of the mind and the spirit too. Lindsay’s giving off really good vibes, as my sister would say. A very positive energy.

“Eva?” she says, and, even when she’s right in front of me, she waves and waves. “Eva! Eva!”

Then she’s hugging me and I’m hugging her, and then she pulls back, smiling the fullest smile, with her lips
and
her eyes. It’s not the fake smile I throw out dozens of times a day when I’m annoyed or bored or don’t care, wide and meaningless, the one I use for strangers, neighbors, friends I don’t really know, counselors whose names I’ve never learned. Lindsay gives me the real thing.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses!” she says, really looking me over.

“I didn’t either,” I say. I notice a La Brea Tar Pits key chain dangling from her keys. “How was it?”

“The Tar Pits are awesome,” she says. “Just awesome.”

“I haven’t been since I was a kid.”

“You should’ve told me! I could’ve met you there instead,” Lindsay says.

“It’s not really my thing.”

“No way, you’ve got to go again! I mean, you
have
to go before we leave for school.”

“I don’t need to go to the shitty Tar Pits,” I say.

“Oh, okay.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“I get it,” she says. “You’ve been a hundred times. You’re tired of the Tar Pits. Makes sense.”

“No, you’re right. I really should revisit some of the places I used to go, all the old spots.”

“Soon there’ll only be new ones,” Lindsay says, already positive again.

“Totally,” I say.

Lindsay turns to her left, noticing a particular book, and strokes its spine absently, like she’s petting a kitten.

“Know something crazy? Like a month ago I made this decision to stop reading new books. And not just
new books
, but also books that are
new to me
. I kind of felt like, if there’s something I haven’t read by now, I should probably just keep it that way until college, because once I’m there I’ll find out about all the right books I should read,” she says, glancing at me, to see if I agree. “But the problem was the only books left are, like, Harry Potter and the stuff I read in high school. I mean, at first it was fun, digging into a bunch of my kid books I’d forgotten about, but then it’s like, come on! So after a while I just stopped reading. Period. It’s kind of sad.”

“Lindsay,” I say, stunned, “we’re so alike.”

We talk about some other topics—San Diego, the Sea World there, driving on the freeway and how weird it’ll be to not drive in Boston—while Lindsay idly touches an atlas someone left on the shelf next to us. Soon I’ll know more about her than I do about anyone else. I’ll watch her talk on the phone to her parents, type emails at two in the morning, do her homework or ignore it. Whatever she’s interested in that I don’t care about—geography, history, current events—will rub off on me, because she’ll be so close. I don’t know if she’s a Star Student, but I can already tell she probably gets passable grades and knows some interesting stuff, like details about how certain celebrities died and which tampon brand is best. She’ll be my first college friend. Maybe she already is.

“Hey, this one looks pretty good,” she says of some generic-looking book on our aisle. “I think I’m going to buy it.” She winks at me.

She changed her mind. I’m impressed.

We go up toward the cashiers but don’t get in line. We both realize that a purchase means the completion of the bookstore experience, and the conclusion to our meeting, so both of us just stand there, not really knowing what else to do.

“Well,” Lindsay says.

I’ve learned from listening to a lifetime of my mother’s phone conversations that the word “well” is the beginning of every ending.

“Anyway,” she continues.

I’ve also learned that an “anyway” followed by a sigh means that a talk is over, that it’s time to leave. So I don’t bother Lindsay with what the rest of her L.A. plans are, if she’s seeing other sights or if she’s just getting back in her car with her generic book and tourist key chain and driving home to San Diego. I don’t try to extend the hangout, even though I’d like to, since I have nowhere to go and nothing to do until my flight to Boston leaves.

I don’t tell Lindsay to call me or Gchat me because what’s the point, we’re about to be together basically forever, but I do hug her because right now she’s as new as she’ll ever be, and in a week or so, when we get to the dorms, she’ll already seem familiar. I hold her for a minute, burying my face in her soft hair. But when I feel her start to pull away, I also feel a tug on my earring and realize that we’re attached—my hoop to her hair.

I rub my head against her, trying to loosen my earring from whatever strands it’s knotted in, but she doesn’t understand that I’m caught, that a part of me is attached to her and if she pulls away she’ll rip my earlobe and I’ll scream.

“Sorry,” I say.

Lindsay thinks I’m having a moment, that I’m overwhelmed by our meeting, by college looming so close, the separation anxiety. So she strokes my back, staying still, letting other customers slip past to make their purchases.

I keep trying to untangle the hoop, get it free, but I can’t see my hands, can’t tell what I’m doing, if I’m getting closer or just making it worse. I wonder if Lindsay will have something wise to say about it, some easy advice like she shared with Courtney.

And then she does.

“Let go, Eva. I need you to let go.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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ON MONDAY I
set my alarm for six thirty, because seven is when the copy shop opens. I’m the first one in the door, and when the bell chimes, it’s like the bell chiming in my head,
Happy Day, Happy Day
.

I make ten copies of each of my pages and then take the fat stack of pages up to the counter.

“Can you bind these into ten books?” I ask. “And can you use the spiral binding, and can you make it with this Curl Powder page on the cover and this dedication page on the back?”

When the zines are finished, I carefully write each girl’s name on the top of her copy in my fanciest cursive, with my coolest colored pens, and then personalize each one with a note and a
Love, Eva
. Then I gather everything up and drive to Sunny Skies with no real plan. As I’m cruising up the entrance, four big yellow buses rumble past me going the opposite way. I U-turn and follow them as they cross up and over the mountain, heading for Zuma Beach.

Once we’re there I park at the edge of the lot and stay in my car, watching kids pour out of the buses and sprint across the sand toward the ocean. I see Booth; I see Melly; I notice Christy/Katie laying a towel down. Then I spy Rachel holding hands with Alexis, leading the rest of my girls to a little dune, where they all drop their beach bags and snacks. Alyssa’s in a purple bikini, holding a bottle of sunscreen. Closer to the water I make out Corey and his group, and Foster.

Maybe I technically don’t deserve it, but I feel like I belong out there on that beach. There’s an Eva-Shaped Hole in this scene, and it’s all wrong. I’ve never felt so apart from something I wanted so badly to be a part of.

This lack, this Eva Absence, starts to depress me in a way I can’t deal with, so I turn up the radio, some song about being a teenager. It takes a few verses before I hear Alyssa calling my name.

“Eva!” she yells, jogging toward me, barefoot. “Hey, Eva!”

She knocks on my window, and I roll it down.

“Alyssa, you should go back to the group,” I say.

“What are you doing here? Why are you in your car?”

“I got fired.”

“Duh,” she says. “No duh.”

“So, I don’t think Steven would want me out there, around you guys.”

Alyssa hops from one foot to the other, her feet burning on the hot asphalt, and I’m about to ask her if she wants to get in the car, but then I worry that’d seem really sketchy, and I didn’t come here get in any more trouble, I came here to do the right thing. I slip off my sandals and hand them to her.

“Thanks,” she says, putting my shoes on. “What’d you do anyway?”

“To get fired?”

“Yeah.”

“I wasn’t a very good counselor to you guys, that’s all.”

“That’s horseshit,” Alyssa says.

“Hey,” I say. “C’mon.”

“You’re my favorite counselor I’ve ever had.”

“How many counselors have you had?”

“One million,” Alyssa says, and sticks out her tongue.

“How’s Corey?”

“You mean how’s Foster?”

“Alyssa,” I say, holding her wrist, “if you were four years older, you’d be my best friend and I’d worship you.”

“I know,” she says.

“So how is Foster?”

“A little sad, I think. Corey told me he tried convincing Steven to let you come back for a day so you could say good-bye.”

“Guess that didn’t work.”

She shrugs.

“I miss you guys,” I say, looking out across the beach where Rachel’s helping the girls bury Alexis in the sand. “I don’t like seeing you guys without me.”

“Rachel’s nice, though.”

“I’m sure.”

“But she’s kind of boring, and she makes us do all the stuff on the schedule and even forced Alexis to jump off the high dive without her goggles or nose plug.”

“Was she okay?”

“Obvi, Eva.”

Obvi.
Obviously I screwed up majorly. I feel sicker, and sorrier.

We listen to the waves crash a little. Alyssa squints in the sun. She seems kind of anxious now, like she doesn’t know whether she should stay here with me longer or go back to the group. She glances in Corey’s direction and then inside the car at me. I must look upset, because she pats her hand on my shoulder, like she’s reassuring me.

“You’re stoked for Boston, right?” she asks.

“
Obvi
,” I say. “What about you? Stoked for high school?”

“Pbbth,” she says, rolls her eyes.

I reach over to the passenger seat and grab the thick brown envelope with the zines inside.

“Listen, Alyssa, take these and give them to the girls for me. At first I was trying to edit and improve them but later changed my mind and whited out all my notes. So this is just everything, as is. Every page you gave me is in here.”

“Even Lila’s crappy poem?”

“All the crappy poems,” I say. “Every one.”

“That’s cool,” Alyssa says.

“You should go back.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t tell
Corey
that you saw me.”

“I won’t,” she says, smiling, and slips my sandals off and takes off running across the parking lot.

But I can’t stand it, letting them all go like that, so I jump out of my car and run after her, catching her as she gets to the edge of the sand.

“Tell the girls to sneak off over by the showers. Go, I’ll wait there,” I say.

Alyssa nods and leaves, and I jog toward the beach showers. It’s blazing out today but I have on a hoodie because, once again, I’m hiding from people. I loiter on the shady side of the shower building, my head down, my hood up, waiting for nine girls who I know for a fact move very, very slowly.

For some reason I think of Tiffany Lee and her valedictorian speech. If she’s right, and the University
is
the Universe, then my Universe is only just about to begin. What an amazing feeling. Because my life so far, even with the bad parts, has been pretty great, which means everything I’m about to do should be even more amazing.

I think of all the side characters I’ve known, and still know, that make my story layered, complex.

I imagine my readers, and how they’ll judge me, and I think ultimately it’s okay to be judged, because all that truly means is that you’re being thought about, looked at, considered.

I think about what I know, what I’ve learned, and it’s not a lot. But it
will
be, eventually.

Then I think about the lesson of charades, about teaching yourself to communicate without speaking, without writing, for the times when you don’t have the right words, or when what you’re trying to express is too huge, too deep. When you’re faced with the Whole Thing.

That’s when my girls jog up, a squealing, open-armed mob. I crouch down and let them crush me, a frenzy of Curl Powder and Whirled Peas, and then I hug them one by one, squeezing until my arms feel sore, and it’s time to let go, for good.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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