Don't Ever Change (6 page)

“Well, I’m into
knowledge
,” I say, trying to discreetly smear the unicorn stamp off my hand. “I know, ‘
God
what a
nerd
.’”

“No, knowledge is cool, but you’re not into knowledge—you’re into the
illusion
of being at college.”

“How’s it an illusion when I’m literally there?”

“You know what I mean,” he says, rolling his eyes, which reminds me of an episode I saw once of this boring eighties sitcom, where Michael J. Fox is a Republican. In it, the character Jennifer has to pretend like she doesn’t know anything about baseball to get a guy on the baseball team to like her, even though she knows everything about baseball—more than him even—and that’s why it’s supposed to be funny. But I don’t find it funny at all; I find it disturbing that girls in the eighties had to dumb themselves down just to get a cute boy.

“What are you looking for?” Elliot asks.

“Nothing,” I say, looking around the venue, at zine racks and show flyers and boys in band shirts.

“I mean at Emerson.”

“Oh. At Emerson.” I ponder it for about one second, then say, “Everything.”

Elliot laughs. “All things?”

“Extreme intelligence and immense depth.”

“I’m living life after depth,” he says.

“I
thought
you looked pale,” I tell him, then lick the back of my hand and rub it until the unicorn is a purple smudge.

“The stamp is like a rite,” Elliot says, nodding at my inky fingers. “Shows you’ve experienced something.”

“Yeah, well, I told my parents we were going to Barnes and Noble at the Brand, and you don’t get your hand stamped for buying
The Portable Thoreau
.”

“You lie to your parents?” he asks, turned on.

“Only about where I’m going.”

“That’s kind of naughty,” Elliot says, then Dean-leans against a brick wall, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

“I can be naughty,” I say, remembering Jennifer again, the way she sheepishly asks the hunky pitcher if there’s a difference between home and fourth base. “I do believe in casual text,” I tell Elliot, trying to be simultaneously flirty and clever.

“Casual sext?” he asks, smiling.

“Too naughty?”

“I bet you’re the type of girl who believes everything they told you in D.A.R.E.”

This is what my father means when he says someone has your number.

“Every. Single. Word,” I admit.

“You’re not into drugs then?”

“They’re so sixties,” I say. “They’re so eighties. People on drugs are depressing.”

“You’ve got a lot of opinions, don’t you? ‘I think, therefore I am’ and all that shit.”

“Yeah, I do,” I say, starting to get indignant, “and if you don’t like it—”

“I like it,” Elliot interrupts.

Whatever quiet band was playing finishes, and the doors to the Smell swing open, and we all migrate out into the alley to wait for the next group to set up. No one’s being rowdy like you’d think they might be at a DIY rock show; they’re conversing politely, hands in their pockets, nodding in agreement that whatever they just saw and heard was pretty good. A few guys come over to us, but Elliot doesn’t introduce me, and I don’t expect him to. One of them asks when his band’s playing next, and Elliot gives a long, detailed response. I zone out to the sound of his voice, and when I zone back in, he’s still talking. Elliot’s acting like he knows everyone here, like this world is basically another home, and maybe to him it is.

Then the next band kicks into their first song and everyone floods back inside the venue, and it’s just me and Elliot alone in the alley.

“Why do you like it?” I ask. “I mean, what about my having so many opinions do you like
in particular
?”

“Can’t I just like it
in general
?”

“No,” I say.

Then Elliot laughs really loud, like he’s got all my numbers, like they couldn’t be more obvious, stamped in permanent ink all over my hands.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

COURTNEY’S STANDING OVER
my shoulder, telling me what to do. “Compose,
compose
,” she keeps saying, but I’m not ready yet. I still don’t know what the first thing I write to my new college roommate should be.

“Well, what do you know about this girl?” Courtney asks, impatient. “Get the paper.”

“Okay,” I say, reading. “She’s from San Diego, she keeps her room ‘moderately’ clean, she wants to major in theater, and she likes to wake up early.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. It’s not a
Cosmo
quiz, it’s . . .
utilitarian
.”

“That’s a good word,” Courtney says. “Start using that more.”

“Courtney, I don’t need your help.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Not really.”

“Fine. You write Lindsay’s email and then I’ll edit it.”

“Fine,” I say.

I sit for thirty minutes drafting and saving and deleting, poring over this stupid utilitarian message, trying to draw assumptions from the little I have to work with. Lindsay might surf or boogie board or she might have OCD and be addicted to caffeine or she might know every lyric to every song from the musical
Annie
, or have even played Annie or some other orphan, or maybe she actually
is
an orphan. Or maybe she just has an older sister like mine, who’s so completely sure of everything that you might as well let her do everything, since she’s twenty-one and learning Dutch and you don’t even remember a word from the three years of French you took because it’s summer and high school’s over.

San Diego,
what do I know,
theater,
what do I know,
Lindsay,
what do I know?

“Move,” Courtney says.

I get up from the desk and pace the room once and Courtney’s already clicking the send button.

“There,” she says.

“There?” I ask. “You sent it?”

“Eva, it’s Go Time, you know?”

“Then go, Courtney. It’s time to go.”

After Courtney leaves, I search my sent box to read what she wrote. It says, Hey, Lindsay, I’m your new roommate Eva, just wanted to say what’s up, so write back when you can.

That’s all. That’s it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

WHEN ELLIOT SITS
down on the edge of my bed, I pretend not to notice how moody he’s being. I know why he’s annoyed—he wanted us to go to an indie show at the Troubadour instead of coming here—but I didn’t want to do that, and I’m not sorry for saying so. I flip through DVD boxes, trying to find something fun we can watch, and wait for him to speak. He never does. Elliot can go a pretty long time without saying anything, but I can go longer. I’m not even close to cracking when he finally says, “We should have just gone to the Troubadour.” I don’t reply. Then he says, “I should have brought my guitar,” and still I don’t say anything.

(First of all) it’s Saturday night, our last date before he leaves, so no, I don’t want to go see another band play at a dumb club where I can’t hear what Elliot has to say and he can’t hear me, (second) while I drink Tropicana orange juice the bartender uses as a “mixer,” (third) just so we can be out too late like the last few times and never really get to kiss. (Not to mention fourth) I also have no money and don’t feel like standing in a line just to find out Elliot hasn’t got any money left either and that maybe this time he doesn’t know the door girl and then have it be awkward. And also (fifth!!!) we’re in my bedroom, basically alone in the house for the first time, and isn’t that sort of sexy and doesn’t watching a movie in the dark on my bed sound incredible?

“I said I should’ve brought my guitar,” Elliot says.

“Why?”

“So I could play you something.”

“I have an old Casio from when I took piano lessons in third grade.”

“Do you have a Gibson SG?”

“Is that a guitar?”

Elliot just looks at me. Maybe he’s as amazing a guitar player as he swears he is, and maybe it would blow my mind to hear him play, but the way he’s pouting makes me want to throw his Gibson SG off a cliff, or at least dangle it out a window. Although picturing that now—a guitar hurtling off a seaside cliff into the Pacific Ocean, splashing down, floating away tenderly to the horizon—reminds me of a scene in one of Mr. Roush’s sample stories, which seems kind of romantic. And this makes me remember when Elliot first took my hand and held it, standing underneath the crossed palm trees in front of the Brentwood In-N-Out Burger.

And here, now, seeing him sitting on my high school bed, in my high school bedroom, among all my soon-to-be-packed-up-or-thrown-out high school things, I can’t believe how bad I want to make out with him. So I sit down at the other edge of the bed and wait for Elliot to scoot closer, but then
he
starts flipping through DVDs. I assume if Elliot could take the strings off his guitar and stick his tongue in the hole of his Gibson SG he probably would, and he then wouldn’t need my mouth. Because it’s not like we’re talking anyway.

“Tell me about the tour,” I say.

“We’re going across the country and back, like, forty cities,” Elliot says.

“That sounds awful.”

“No way, man.”

“So you’re leaving Monday.”

“Yeah, Monday,” he says.

“That’s when I start camp too,” I say.

“Yeah, what’s up with camp?”

“I thought it was important to not get some boring mall job and instead do something that’ll provide me with real experiences. And also I’m helping kids and getting sunshine, which stops depression. I mean, I’m not depressed now, but this way I definitely won’t be later because of all the sun, and also the positivity of working hard and helping children.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Why would I be kidding?” I say.

“It’s just dodgeball and lanyards and wading in the shallow end,” Elliot says.

“I guess,” I say. “Maybe it’s just running around and singing songs.”

“Hey, that’s what I’ll be doing.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I get it, though. That was like your warm-up speech,” Elliot says. “Like your preshow ritual. You’re pumping yourself up, getting psyched for the big gig.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“God,” Elliot says, “now I really wish I’d brought my guitar.”

But before I can say anything about guitars hurtling over cliffs, Elliot says, “I’m hungry.”

Downstairs I make two soy cheddar and Tofurky sandwiches on sprouted soy bread while Elliot waits up in my room. My mother’s at the kitchen counter watching me while she picks at a Weight Watchers thing, shaking her head. She wants us to come downstairs and eat with her so she can watch me chew and swallow for one of the last fifty times. My dad’s scrolling through the Netflix queue with Courtney, but they can’t decide and end up aimlessly flipping through TV channels, which is so irritating I try to spread the mustard faster to get this over with. I don’t know how Courtney can even watch anything with Mom, because she likes the volume all the way up and the lights on, or with Dad either, since he always gets up in the middle to look through some book or take a shower. I hear Elliot start to come down the stairs, but I rush to meet him in the middle so he doesn’t have to witness my family being so ADD and annoying.

Elliot sits Indian-style across from me on the carpet, holding his sandwich with two hands like a little kid. He’s already gotten mustard on his pants and fingers, which is the sweetest thing ever, because he’s supposed to be some cool guy in a band and not some weirdo covered in mustard. I think about whether it’s normal to already miss Elliot, or be sad that he’s leaving in two days when I honestly still don’t really know him that well. It seems a little crazy, but since I can’t help it, that means I’ll just have to get to know Elliot better
faster
. Like, immediately.

“Say a bunch of things about yourself that you haven’t told me yet,” I tell him. “Go.”