First There Was Forever (21 page)

I
took the make-up chemistry test before school on the first Monday back after spring break. Patty worked quietly behind her computer while I sat at a desk and made my way through the exam. This time, I nailed it. When you knew what you were doing, getting the right answer was like digging for something you had buried in the ground. You might not be totally sure where it was at first, but if you were close enough, you found it eventually. I knew if I didn’t get a perfect score on this test, I had no chance of getting into AP Bio next year, so I had studied like crazy every day over break.

Each day of spring break had been prettier than the last. The sky got bluer, the ocean got brighter, the jacaranda trees around LA bloomed. Nate was out of town the whole time visiting his sister, and Hailey was in San Diego visiting her dad, so I didn’t have any distractions from studying besides hanging out with Mom. And balancing schoolwork with Mom-time was easy for me because I had so much practice at it. Sometimes, when Mom and I were making dinner after a long day of studying, I felt like the old version of myself. The girl I’d been last summer. No secrets. No broken friendships. No knowledge of her own capacity for doing bad things.

I finished the chemistry test twenty minutes before first period. Unsure what to do, I decided to go walk across campus and get a cup of tea from the student center. Outside, sunlight broke through the morning marine layer and glistened in the puddles on the concrete, bouncing light back up toward the sky.

Nate and I had texted over break and talked on the phone one night for twenty minutes while his sister slept, and I was excited to see him. But my excitement was laced with fear. Even after the whole two weeks of vacation, the memory of touching his penis still made me feel squeamish, even queasy. It was weird how separate that experience had felt from my general attraction to him. When he looked at me a certain way, when we held hands, even when he walked into a room that I was in, something moved deep inside me. A warm pit seemed to grow in my stomach. But that feeling didn’t have anything to do with the actuality of his body. After my quick brush with it the other night, I wondered if sex could ever feel like it synced up with all the other feelings I felt for Nate.

I cataloged all the people I knew who had had sex, trying to figure out who I could talk to. I guessed that Emily was a virgin. But Meredith had had sex. Walker, too. And Lily and Henry. And probably all the grown-ups I knew. Leo the Clean-the-Bay supervisor wore a wedding ring and definitely had it. Even though I wasn’t sure if Patty was married, I was sure she’d had it, too. Weird that so many people I knew had done it, and there still was no one I could ask for guidance. The only person I really felt comfortable enough to talk about sex with was Hailey.

After I got my tea, I walked back across campus and watched people roll out of their cars with spring break tans and new sunglasses. Girls wore colorful dresses and sandals, and seniors wore sweatshirts baring the name of the college they would be attending.

From across the patio, I saw Nate. He wasn’t facing my direction, but I recognized the particular blue of his backpack. A girl I didn’t know walked by him and smiled. I wondered for a second what it would be like to have our relationship out in the open. Would we walk to class together? Would we meet in the same spot every morning like Hailey and I used to? There were a million questions floating around my mind, and I had the crazy, sinking feeling that there might not be one set of right answers.

A
t the beginning of lunch, I spotted Meredith crouching down to open a locker in Upper School East. I had called her a couple of times during the break, but her phone went right to voice mail and she never called me back. Was she embarrassed that I caught her and Henry? Angry with me for sneaking away to be with Nate? Each night when I checked my phone and saw she hadn’t called me back, my fear that I had upset her grew. Now, I was eager to see her, to find out more about her and Henry and to apologize if I had made her mad.

“I didn’t know you had a locker,” I teased.

She closed the door and stood up.

“Hey, you,” she said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek.

Her hair was pulled back into tight ponytail, and she was wearing a white polo shirt, khaki shorts, and bright white Keds. It was a total good-girl outfit, but everything looked a little bit bad on Meredith.

“Want to go out to lunch?” I asked. “It seems like the perfect day to go get a hot chocolate from the 21st Street Bakery and be late for fifth period.”

She smiled a little. “It does seem like a good day to be late for class. I like how you’re thinking, Lima. Let’s get outta here.”

“Okay, good,” I said. “Because I feel like I haven’t seen you in so long. It’s like you disappeared during spring break.”

Meredith laughed and wrinkled her nose, confused.

“I’m serious. We haven’t talked since that night, or morning or whatever,” I said, trying to casually ease into the discussion. “And I don’t know. I just hope that nothing is weird with us.”

“What night?” Meredith said, her black eyes widening like two seeds blossoming. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” I asked. “But, like, you were so hard to reach during the break.”

“I was? You’re crazy,” she said, looking at me completely innocently. “I was just busy.”

I scanned her face to see if I could detect a lie, but she seemed to really believe what she was saying.

• • •

In the car, Meredith played Fleetwood Mac while she smoked a cigarette. Wind burned through the car and set her hair wild in electrified lines. I watched her mouth on the cigarette, her hands on the steering wheel. I thought about her and Henry and what I had seen.

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “What are you thinking about, Missy?”

“So, can I ask you about Henry?” I asked. “Is he going to break up with Lily to be with you?”

She dragged on her cigarette, and I wondered if I detected a little tremor in her hand at the mention of Henry.

“No, it’s not like that,” she said, and her voice was plain. “He’s cheated on Lily before. Lily knows.”

“About him and you? Or about the other girls?” I asked.

She sighed. “Both. She knows about me.”

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s so weird. So she doesn’t mind?”

“She minds. She just doesn’t want to break up with him,” Meredith said.

“Do you wish they’d break up so he could be your boyfriend?” I asked.

She blew a skinny stream of smoke out of her lips and then looked at me, pensively. “I don’t want Henry to be my boyfriend. I don’t want a boyfriend. I’m not in love with Henry or anything.”

I tried to process that.

“And Henry doesn’t love anyone besides himself,” she added.

I was surprised to hear the word love used with so much certainty. Was I in love with Nate? Was Hailey?

“Perfect song, right?” Meredith said, turning up the volume on her car stereo.

Stevie Nicks’s violin-like voice reverberated through the car.

Meredith laughed and threw her cigarette butt out the window. She smiled at me with her big, black mysterious eyes, and I realized, a little disappointed, that that was all I was going to get from her.

I
decided that if I was really careful about it, I could ask Hailey about sex. I just had to pretend to be the old me. The pre-lying-and-sneaking-around-with-Nate version of me. I wondered if I even knew how to do that anymore.

Hailey and Skyler were sitting together at a picnic bench drinking Diet Cokes and eating Cheetos during lunch the next day.

“Wow,” I said, dropping my backpack and sitting across from them. “I just overheard the most awkward conversation in the bathroom.”

“About what?” Hailey asked.

“Some girl was talking about having sex with her boyfriend,” I lied.

Skyler guffawed. “What did she say?”

“I don’t know, it just sounded painful or something,” I said vaguely. “Have you—like—are you a virgin?”

Skyler took a long sip of Diet Coke through a straw before she answered. “No. I lost it in ninth grade to my Spanish foreign-exchange student, Alberto. You didn’t know that? I thought everyone had heard that.”

I actually had heard it. “What was it like?”

“Whoa, Li!” Hailey said, laughing. “What’s going on? Sex on the brain much?”

I tried to play dumb. “I don’t know! Maybe! I mean, I am, you know, sixteen.”

Hailey reached across the table and gave my hand a condescending squeeze. “You are so cute. I love you.”

“Do you have someone in mind?” Skyler asked. And something about the way that her eyes fastened onto me made me scared that she knew about Nate. It wasn’t impossible that something would have leaked out.

“No, of course not,” I sighed. “Never mind. I was just, I don’t know, wondering.”

I knew right then that I was never going to think my way out of my questions about sex. The only way to get answers was to do it.

“H
ave you given any more thought to what you’ll do this summer?” Mom asked. She was giving me a ride to the twins’ house. Afternoon traffic on Sunset Boulevard was heavy and claustrophobic.

It was the beginning of May. The school year was doing that crazy speeding-up thing that it always did between spring break and the end of the year, as if time was getting sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. Summer was only six weeks away and I still had no idea what I was going to do. Patty had given us a list of science-related internships a few weeks ago, but I still hadn’t gotten around to reading it carefully. I had been meaning to sit down and choose a few to apply to, but I kept forgetting to actually do it. I cringed, realizing I had probably already missed a few deadlines.

“Not really,” I said distractedly. I stared at my cell phone, debating calling Nate. I wanted him to come to Meredith’s house so we could sneak off together, but I felt like he should initiate our getting together, not me. On top of that, I didn’t want it to seem like the only reason I went to Meredith’s house was to try and see Nate. Everything used to feel so magical there, but after the last time, it just felt different. Was Nate the only reason I was going back?

“What’s going on?” Mom asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, snapping out of my daze.

“You’ve been clutching your cell phone this whole car ride,” she said with a wry smile. “Is there someone you’re hoping to hear from?”

“Oh,” I felt embarrassed. I tossed my cell phone into my purse as if it was contaminated. “I don’t know. No.”

“You know,” Mom said tentatively as we waited for the light to change on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, “you can tell me anything.”

“I know,” I said. But the truth was, I couldn’t tell her everything. She would kill me if she knew I was involved with the same guy that Hailey had been in love with forever. She always took Hailey’s side when the two of us fought.

“Like, if there’s a boy . . .” she trailed off. “I don’t want to be nosy. But I did have a boyfriend when I was your age. So I do know a thing or two.”

I smiled a little. I was kind of curious about Mom’s high school boyfriend, but I needed to steer her away from this topic. I wished there was some little part of the story I could share with her that wouldn’t involve explaining the whole, messy thing.

“Mommy,” I said, “if you’re asking if I, like, have a boyfriend? I don’t.”

She let out a relieved puff of breath.

I’m not sure why I didn’t just tell Mom everything. If there were no Hailey, would I tell her about Nate? Could I ask her advice? It felt like a stupid question. Everything that happened was so intertwined, I couldn’t just like pull it apart and look at one thing on its own, in a vacuum. Everything depended on everything else.

• • •

“Cheers,” Walker said, handing Meredith a whiskey. The ice made an elegant clanking sound against the glass.

I had only ever watched TV in Meredith’s bedroom, but tonight we were going to watch the Bob Dylan documentary,
Don’t Look Back
,
in the screening room. It was amazing how even after all this time at Meredith’s house that there were rooms I had never seen and rituals I was still being initiated into.

The opening credits were on when we heard the doorbell. Walker went to answer it, and when he returned a minute later, Ryan and Nate were with him. Nate lingered a little behind, wearing that nice shirt he wore for visits with the dean.

“Look who I found,” Walker said, jumping over the back of the couch to reclaim his seat.

Meredith twisted her body around so she was facing Ryan. “Hey, neighbor. Did you come over to watch with us?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Is that cool?”

“Of course,” she smiled.

Ryan looked at her a little strangely, and I knew he was seeing that unexpectedly sweet side to Meredith for the first time.

Nate and Ryan sat down on the adjacent couch, and I groped for the right way to behave. Should I give Nate a hug? A kiss on the cheek? Unsure, I ignored them. I turned to Meredith and pretended to be suddenly interested in her necklace.

When the movie had started over, I finally glanced at Nate, whose gaze was glued to the screen.

I couldn’t focus on the movie at all. All I could think was that Nate was only a foot away and I was totally unable to interact with him. I was panicked that the whole night would slide by and we wouldn’t get a chance to talk. I hated myself for being so awkward and reserved. Hailey always made people feel welcome.

After what felt like forever, Nate stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

“Pause it?” Walker asked.

“Nah,” Nate said. He ran his hand along the back of the couch, and when he passed behind me, he grazed my shoulder with his fingers and quickly squeezed.

I made myself count to sixty before I followed him.

Nate was standing by the glass doors staring out at the city. All the indoor lights were off, so he was silhouetted by the sparkling lights of Hollywood and the valley behind it.

“Hey,” I said.

Nate glanced at me and then turned back to the window. I felt, as always when I was around him, that I could see the energy coming off his body, like colorless light. I walked up to him and stood next to him, and then, without thinking about it, I let my head tip onto his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around me pulling me to his side with an ease that made me feel as if we had done this exact thing a million times before. We stood there like that for a long moment, watching the planes take off from Burbank Airport deep in the valley. Each plane was a tiny red blinking light, arcing up into the night sky like an electronic shooting star.

“That movie makes me think about my dad,” Nate said, still staring outside. “He loved Bob Dylan.”

“Really?” I asked. His arm was still draped around my shoulder and I reached up and took his hand in both of mine, winding my fingers through his.

“Yeah,” he continued. “He took me to a concert when I was like five or six. I remember it well. It was raining and it was an outdoor concert. It’s one of my clearest memories of him. That whole day.”

“I bet it was fun,” I said. “I bet you were cute.”

He made a little half-laughing noise. “I don’t know about that.”

“Was he sick for a long time?” I asked.

“It didn’t seem that way to me,” he said. “It felt like it happened overnight.”

Nate bit his lower lip and looked at me.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You know, I’m not sad when I think about him exactly. It’s just weird. It’s been almost ten years. I just can’t believe how much he’s missed.”

I didn’t know what to say so I just squeezed his hand tighter. Nate pulled me into him, letting his face fall into my hair and I hugged him back. I could feel his heart beating, his breath going in and out. After a minute, Nate said, “Thanks.”

“For what?” I asked.

“I don’t know, just, whatever, listening,” he said. Then he took a step toward the back door. “Let’s go outside.”

I followed Nate past the pool and down the stairs to the lower deck.

Big, dark trees surrounded us, concealing the city lights and the traffic below. I liked feeling separate from everything and everyone except Nate. It made me wish we could go away together, somewhere where we could take as much time as we wanted to get to know each other.

“So,” Nate said. “Hailey called me tonight.”

I dropped back away from the railing as if I’d been hit in the stomach. It was the last thing I’d expected him to say.

“Whoa,” Nate said. “Are you okay?”

I nodded.

“She asked me if I was going to some party she was going to. It’s weird that she doesn’t know about us.”

I felt dizzy. “I just don’t know what to tell her yet.”

“Just tell her what’s up,” he said. “She’s your friend, right?”

“She’s my best
friend,” I said defensively.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, shrinking farther away. “It’s just complicated.”

“It’s not such a big deal, Lima.”

“If it’s not such a big deal, why do you care so much?”

Nate was quiet for a moment before answering. “I think because it just doesn’t seem like you. You don’t seem like you’re afraid of what anyone thinks.”

I knew he was trying to give me a compliment, but I bristled.

“You don’t get it,” I said. “Hailey isn’t just anyone. She’s my oldest, best friend and she is gonna be really mad at me.”

“All I’m saying,” he said, “is the Lima I know, the one I like, is an honest person.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I can’t believe this.”

Nate might have been right, but it didn’t matter. I was risking my entire friendship with Hailey just to be with him, and now he was going to stand there and tell me how I should behave? Angry tears stung my eyes.

“How can you lecture me about being a good person? You’re the one who started this whole thing,” I said. “You kissed Hailey and then just ignored her. You’re the one who is coming between me and my best friend. Why don’t you just leave me alone? That would fix everything.”

Nate’s mouth hung open for a moment in surprise, and then he just looked hurt. He stumbled backward.

“Wait, Nate, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean that.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re right,” he said, and retreated back up the stairs.