Don't Ever Change (33 page)

“Well, what kind of toothbrush do you like?” Foster asks.

“What kinds are there? Mine was always just like regular, with a regular handle.”

“There’re a lot of choices,” Foster says. “Like what about the coarseness of the bristles? There’s hard and soft and medium and also sensitive, which is different from regular soft, and also extra-medium.”

There are rows atop tiers atop columns atop pyramids of toothbrush options. I reach for a straight-handle brush with a purplish sparkly color that reminds me of my old one, but it’s hanging within a galaxy of other handle styles: flex-y necked, travel-size, cartoon tie-ins, sports teams, ones with a plastic pick on the end. I realize I’m concentrating so hard I’m chewing on my knuckles.

Foster starts pulling down one of every type to show me. He even grabs an electric toothbrush, which I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never seen before.

“What?” he says, shocked. “How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know!”

“They’re kind of expensive, but look, they rotate and vibrate and you can just replace the head when it gets old. You don’t have to buy the base again.”

“How do you know when you need to replace the head?”

“It probably says on the instructions.”

“Ugh, I can’t decide,” I say.

“The store’s open twenty-four hours.”

“This is the weirdest date in the world.”

“Why’s it so weird?”

“Because we’re at CVS, and now you can see how, I don’t know, like,
inept
I am.”

“It’s the best date,” Foster says. “Hey, relax, Eva.”

“Yeah, okay.” I try to seem light, but I feel heavy.

“Come on, don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” I say, but I touch my cheek and it’s wet, so maybe I am.

I close my eyes for a second and breathe. I picture a zero. Then I picture a one, a two, a three, and a four. I stop at five and visualize myself inside the number, sitting at the bottom of the dip, my legs dangling off. I don’t need Courtney’s zero protecting me, creating a barrier between my body and the world, because I have my own number—the five—and the loop of the five is open, it never closes.

I can enter it, and just as easily, I can leave it. There’s a beginning and an end. Even though nothing holds me in, nothing holds me back either.

I can choose any of these toothbrushes!

The idea suddenly overwhelms me with happiness, making me cry more, but these are happy tears, because I can see myself inside the five and Foster inside with me.

“I want to kiss you,” I say.

“Here?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s go outside,” he says. “We can go in my car.”

“No,” I say, “Here, now.” I grab his collar, pull him close.

But he pulls back.

“You might never see me again,” I say.

“Eva,” he says, and touches my face, my neck. “I’ll see you in Boston. At Tufts.”

I have a true, crazy Eureka Moment.
That’s
what he meant in his stupid cryptic text weeks ago,
And ill be tuff
: Tufts University, just outside Boston, only a few subway stops away.

“Tufts,” I say. “Tufts!” I scream. I jump up and down, then stop myself. “But wait, stories don’t end like this. It’s too neat, too perfect.”

“So what?”

Impulsively I grab a polka-dotted toothbrush, hold it tight against my chest.

“Is that the one you want?” Foster asks.

“I
want
you to clean my teeth with your tongue,” I say.

“Very . . .
forward
,” he says, laughing, and then I’m Frenching Foster, over and over.

Forward’s the only way.

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MY MOTHER PROPOSES
we all go to Whole Foods on one of my final nights at home so she can spend hundreds of dollars on a lavish family meal.

“It’s our last dinner all together, as a family,” she says.

“Technically Eva’s got a few more days, Mom,” Courtney says.

“Yeah, Mom, you can dial it back,” I tell her.

“What do you girls always say?” my father asks. “‘Save the drama for your mama’?”

So we drive to the store and fill an entire shopping cart with glamorous groceries.

“Anything you see that you want, throw it in!” my mother keeps saying. “You’re gonna miss all this pampering!”

I grab a nine-dollar pack of gluten-free muffins and throw them in the cart.

“Maybe I’ll be gluten free now too,” I say.

“Oy, Boston,” she says, “you can have her!”

Later, over by the olive oil, I notice Mr. Roush. He looks sheepish and polite, like a teacher glad to be done with summer school, so I don’t want to bother him. I try to maneuver around him and hurry down the aisle, but he sees me and calls my name. “Eva!” he says again, and then I stop. “Were you not going to say hello?”

“I’m just acting weird,” I tell him, and he smiles.

“There’s that Kramer candidness, that honesty. I’ll miss having it this year.”

I shrug, give him a look.

“Oh,” he says, “you’re not happy with me for submitting your story for that award.”

“No, I’m happy,” I say. “I’m grateful.”

“Grateful?” Mr. Roush asks, impressed.

“And guess what else?” I say. “I don’t know
anything
.”

Mr. Roush laughs. “What does that mean?”

“On the last day of school you said I should ask myself, ‘What do I know?’ Remember?”

“Mostly,” he says.

“Well, I thought about it, I asked myself, and I realized it’s nothing. Pretty much nothing.”

Mr. Roush sets his basket down, places a bottle of olive oil he’s holding back on the shelf. He looks at me with saddened, sorry eyes.

“That wasn’t at all what I meant, Eva.”

“No, I know that,” I say, though I’m not sure if I do.

“Have you been writing this summer?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not a single word.”

“Congratulations!” he says, enthused.

“What? But I wanted to redo my story, fix it, you know?”

“But you went out and lived. You
experienced
.
That’s
how you add to what you know.”

“I got
fired
,” I tell him.

“That’s good!”

“It sucked,” I say. “It was painful.”

“That’s
even better
!”

“The whole summer was kind of painful, actually,” I say, laughing.

“That’s a sign, Eva,” he says. “A sign you’re a real writer.”

That’s the sign I’ve been waiting for. And now, maybe, it’s time to write—about me, and about all of this.

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COURTNEY’S OFFICIALLY NOT
going to Amsterdam. She’s not getting her own apartment either. She’s not going anywhere.

“Don’t feel bad for me,” she says, but I do.

We’re lying on her bed, facing one another, in the dark. It’s night. Courtney was supposed to go to a party, but she changed her mind.

“I was never going to go,” she says, but the way she says it I can’t tell if she means Amsterdam or the party.

“Yes, you were,” I say. “You
go
—that’s your thing.”

“I don’t have a thing.”

“You’re a
fountain
of things. You’re totally defined.”

“I don’t want to be defined. Being defined is very Eva.”

“Okay, but you represent something, and that something is Going.”

“That’s you now,” she says.

Virgo. Vegan. Writer. I guess I can add a word to my list.

“I pictured the zero,” I tell her.

“What zero?”

“Your zero, Courtney, the ring around you.”

“The hollow ring.” She shakes her head, remembering. “You know, you don’t need everyone’s advice as much as you think you do.”

“I need
your
advice, though. Always.”

“Well, this time I don’t have any,” she says.

“I’ll just recycle then.”

Courtney rolls onto her back. “So what are you going to write about next?”

“Whores,” I say.

“Ah, okay then, maybe I
do
have some advice,” Courtney says.

“Can I give
you
advice, Courtney?” I stand, turn on her bedroom light. I want to tell her that she should go to that party, go see her friends right now. I want to say that it’s just Amsterdam; it’s just one city; there are a million cities you can go to. And when you go, there you’ll be.

It’s Courtney’s advice—I just want to give it back to her.

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THE NIGHT BEFORE
I leave, my mother helps me finish packing the very last of my clothes. She’s always been a champion packer. She can fold shirts until they’re so compact they look like trim linen napkins. She can ball socks into a perfect sphere, round as a tennis ball. She can also stack sweaters, roll scarves so they don’t wrinkle, and bundle jeans into flat little denim bricks to maximize luggage space.

My mother forgets nothing. She packs toiletries in separate plastic Baggies, so if anything spills, no clothes get ruined. She has different packing strategies for different types of luggage. For square-shaped traditional suitcases, she lines the bottom with shoes and layers clothing on top; for duffel bags, she positions the shoes around the sides like a wall to protect the rest of the contents.

And my mother knows everything there is to know about weather. She checks the forecast for her destination city daily for weeks leading up to a flight. She’s been following the highs and lows for Boston since June.

She hasn’t forgotten school supplies either. My mother’s filled a whole corner of my room with zippered pouches full of pens and colored pencils and Scotch tape and extra binders and even a mini stapler with mini staples already loaded inside.

She’s so committed and thorough that I start to forget it’s me who’s leaving and not her. I lie back on my bed, hypnotized by her assembly line, watching the master at work, and I listen to her talk—occasionally about Boston but mostly about folding methods—and eventually my eyes close.

And then my mind floats, and I imagine my mother folding me up into a compact, little form, instead of my clothes. My mother folding me up so small that I stay stuck in that position, and by the time they finally unfold me the plane’s already taken off, it’s landed in Boston, everyone’s learned all their lessons, made all their memories, and now they’re on their way back home.

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About the Author

M. BETH BLOOM
is a musician, video artist, and writer. Her fiction has appeared in
StoryQuarterly
and Dave Eggers’s Best American Non-Required Reading series. She is also the author of
Drain You
. M. Beth lives in Los Angeles.