Don't Ever Change (32 page)

ON THE DRIVE
home I break the law and scroll through the contacts on my phone. I call Steph first just to touch base, to tell her flat-out that I love her.

“I love you.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Then I call Michelle. “I love you, Michelle,” I say when she answers.

“Totally,” she says, not exactly paying attention. I’m happy with that; I’ll take it.

After that I’m on a roll—I can’t stop checking in. I text both Lindsay and Shelby noncommittal single-word messages: hi, hey. I text my mom, Comin home soon. Then, on a long stretch of empty highway, I call Courtney, recite every word out of Alyssa’s mouth, and a third of the words out of mine, but she says to save it.

“Save it for what?” I ask.

“
Savor
it,” she says, and I can hear her smile.

I hang up just as I’m pulling off the freeway. I’m wearing my glasses for dusk driving, even though this particular route’s basically ingrained in my sense memory. I could probably do this route blindfolded, because patterns you’ve traced a thousand times stay burned in your memory forever. As long as I can count, I can see. One, two, three, four speed bumps, and then a left. One, two, three weeks, and then I leave.

I pass Agoura Road, Foster’s street, which makes me miss Foster’s voice: the lowness of it, humming through my phone, tickling along my neck. The best way to break the ice is with a hammer, my dad always tells me—not a hemmer or a hawer. What he means is you shouldn’t hold back.

So I don’t: I call Foster. As it rings I envision the conversation I’m hoping we’re going to have, one of those really sprawling endless ones that lasts so long it actually gets kind of boring, spaced with calm silences; the kind that ends with you listing each other items in your dresser, sunlight starting to bleach away the night, while he keeps reminding you there’s only an hour or two left to actually get some sleep and make it to work before the first camp song.

I imagine all this while the phone rings: how to instigate such a connection after so much teenage tension, how to design my night so it seamlessly interlocks with his. But when Foster finally answers, he sounds rushed.

“Eva,” he says. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to call. To talk, you know.”

“Cool, yeah.”

“Thought I’d let you know I got fired from our job. It was a pretty fair slash unfair firing.”

“I was going to call,” Foster says. “I didn’t know what to say.”

“You basically predicted it.”

“Eva. I never wanted you to get fired.”

“But you thought maybe I deserved it.”

“No,” he says. “You’re wrong.”

“Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I tell him, “for being so lame at that party. I could’ve tried harder. Or honestly, at all.”

“The party wasn’t your thing, I get it. I didn’t mean to, like, force it on you.”

“I don’t have a thing,” I mumble.

Foster laughs, so sincerely it kills me, literally makes me die. Then I hear some clicking, followed by a spry computer bell, the bright ping of Microsoft saving a document.

“We can talk tomorrow if you’re busy,” I say.

“I’m just working on a new story,” he tells me. “I can take a quick break.”

“No, don’t. You’re in the zone, keep writing.”

“You sure?” Foster says.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “I’m sure.”

“You know I’ll be at camp till four.”

“The horror! The horror!” I say.

“So you
do
remember
Heart of Darkness
.”

“Impressed?”

“Eva,” he says, before slumping into a soft, extended silence, during which my mind skips ahead to the end of some fictional future life in which the two of us are much older, and falling in love. “Always.”

After he hangs up, I have a long talk with Foster anyway, sustaining the dialogue in my head like characters on the page, a scene from our story. I work on it all the way until sunrise, when I hear my father’s alarm go off, followed by the whirring of my mother firing up the coffee machine downstairs.

That’s what lifts us up, us writers: we have our imagination, if nothing else.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

LATER THAT AFTERNOON
it hits me how much I need to see Michelle and Steph, because time isn’t holding on, it’s running out, and who knows what we’ll all be like by Thanksgiving, or if we’re not all home for that, Christmas? At first I’m brainstorming ideas on how to solidify this, like,
fragile harmony
we have going, even if only for a few hours, but then I stop because the truth is it’s
not
so fragile—they love me, I love them, and they’re not going to stop loving me just because I acted like an ass this summer and then moved three thousand miles away.

I propose meeting at the mall food court, but Steph says she and Michelle have been at the mall all day.

“We obviously would’ve invited you,” she says, “but we thought you were at camp.”

“That’s over.”

“What happened?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I just got back from Hawaii yesterday, actually,” Steph says. “That’s why I haven’t called.”

“It’s okay.”

“Did you get my postcard?”

“No.”

“I sent one,” she says. “You have to believe me.”

“I do,” I say. “I can’t wait until it comes in the mail.”

“Let’s meet at Islands then. You can get a veggie burger.”

“I think those veggie burgers have cheese in them—,” I start to say, but then say, “Never mind, I’ll be there.”

When I get to Islands, Michelle and Steph are in a booth with a tray of fries, already laughing. I love them. I’ve seen every movie they’ve seen; I’ve heard every joke they know. We don’t have plans to marry brothers or live on the same street when we’re older or anything corny like that, but we do have firm plans for New Year’s Eve that I’m really looking forward to. I pause in front of their booth, not sure which side to sit on, because neither of them scoot in.

“What’s the grace period for being a jerk?” I ask.

“You mean grace
less
period,” Michelle says. “One summer, I think.”

“We were all jerks,” Steph says. “Some of us just tanner jerks.”

“Will you sit on the same side of the booth?” I ask them. “So I can see both of your faces?”

They move to the same side, and I slide in across from them. They’re sharing fries and smiling easily, and every impulse I have is to totally degrade myself so they’ll permanently forgive me. But I should know by now that you don’t have to do that for real friends, and I should also know that ultimately there’s no imbalance because we’re all equally awful and awesome, just at different times.

“If there was one thing in the universe I could do to make you guys happy, what would it be?” I ask.

“Write to us,” Steph says.

“Write
about
us,” Michelle says.

“I thought you hated that,” I say.

“How could I
really
, though?” Michelle asks.

“It should be flattering,” I say.

“We know,” Steph says.

“I wish we’d known each other when we were five,” I say. “I wish I had a million more stories I could tell about you guys.”

Michelle and Steph smile and dip fries in ketchup.

“I wish I knew every story in your lives. Or at least all the stories of your
summer
.”

Michelle nods and Steph sips some water.

“At least we have, like, ten days—right?” I ask. “That’s some time. We can hang out every day and do everything we want.”

“My college starts next week, actually,” Steph says.

“And I leave on Friday,” Michelle tells me.

“No,” I say, crushed, but they both just nod.

Then the waiter comes, and I order a bun with lettuce and tomato and guacamole and that’s it. Michelle and Steph cock their heads, shoot me knowing looks, those vintage
Oh Eva
looks, and I shrug.

“I’m saving all my changes for Emerson,” I say. “Once I’m there I’ll start eating cheeseburgers and writing about my childhood and getting into everything I used to hate, even beer.”

“Don’t do that, Eva,” Michelle says.

“Yeah,” Steph says. “Don’t ever change.”

I wish I’d brought my yearbook.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

OVER THE NEXT
few days I get a couple texts from Elliot—some sweet, some shameful—and even a couple from Zack—
very
sweet,
very
shameful. I don’t text back. What’s the point? I’m allowed to say that now—
What’s the point?
—since their chapters are over.

I’m still playing a game with Foster, though, and that game is Who Texts First. I knew going into it I’d lose; I
want
to lose, right . . . this . . . second.

I miss you.

I miss you too, Foster texts. Want to c u.

2nite???

Can’t tonite.

Oh ok.

Unless yr free l8tr?

I look at the clock. 9:18. How much latr? I text.

Midnite.

Just the word alone, misspelled, makes me feel sexy.

Where? I text.

U pick.

What’s open?

Hmm, Foster texts, and then there’s a few minutes where neither of us text. I open my laptop and type in the search bar:
open 24 hrs Agoura Hills CA
. The first result is CVS.

CVS? I text.

U want to go to a drugstore?? Ha.

Yes, I text. Want to go n e where w/ u.

At midnight Foster and I are the only ones in CVS. There doesn’t even seem to be one stock boy or security guard on the clock, which makes it feel intimate, despite all the fluorescent lights. My heart actually beats faster, like I’m on a date—a first date even—but we’re just standing by the magazine rack, flipping through a
GQ
, eyeing expensive suits and exotic vacation destinations. Tropical Muzak wafts down from tiny speakers in the ceiling.

Foster looks at me. “So what do you need?”

“In life, or . . . ?”

“In CVS, Eva.”

“Oh right,” I say. “Something, I’m sure.”

“Let’s shop then,” Foster says, taking my hand and swinging it.

He seems a little nervous too—though not as much as me—because his palm is sort of sweaty and he’s reading aloud the names of pain relief pills we pass by: “Advil, Excedrin, Aleve, ibuprofen.”

“Foster,” I interrupt, “I like you so much.”

Foster smiles, caught off guard. “You should win,” he says. “That writing award, I mean.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “You should win!”

“Now I
know
how much you like me.”

“It’s just that I have so many
other
awards to win,” I say, tugging a little on his shirt.

“You’ve already got the Junior Nazi Whistle-Blower Award,” he says.

I hide my face behind my hands. “Steven thought I was going to be great, remember? Great, great, great.”

“You
are
great,” Foster says, “but you’re also Eva.”

“Shit,” I say, and we laugh. “Oh! I know what I need!”

“What?”

“A toothbrush.”

Foster leads the way over to the mouth-care aisle, and at first it’s just rows of picks and flosses and whiteners and gels and washes. We start combing through the options, and soon I’m thinking more about my teeth than I ever have, and how I guess I’ve always hated my teeth, or at least never felt any positive emotions toward them, but now I’m being forced to assess minute preferences for hundreds of teeth-related products. My whole life I’ve just used whatever toothbrush and toothpaste has been given to me by my mother or dentist and never thought twice about it. But starting this fall I’ll have to buy my own toothbrushes, my own shampoo and deodorant, my own
everything
.