How it Ends (3 page)

This is not exactly the exciting
new high school experience I had in mind.

I’m a month into St. Ignatius, a regional, parochial school nine miles from home and I still don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m going, or how I’m supposed to be.

Plus, this is the ugliest uniform in the world. It’s true. I would like to know what girl-hating hag cursed us with knee-length brown plaid polyester skorts, long sleeveless vests, and baggy yellow polyester blouses.

I wish Crystal’s parents had transferred her here, too, instead of keeping her in public school. Then we could be miserable together.

Oh, and I definitely need new shoes. Mine are loser wear.

Sigh.

I’d still rather be here with five hundred new kids, though, than stuck with nobody but the same boring, cliqued-out crew from junior high. They move in huddled masses just like they did in ninth grade, and seeing that makes me feel like some kind of intrepid pioneer striking out on my own.

Hanna’s big adventure.

It’s scary but I kind of like it.

(Cue Grandma Helen’s voice)
Back straight! Stand tall! Look ’em in the eye! Smile! Never let ’em see you sweat!

(Cue my voice) Be brave, Hanna.

School would be a lot easier if I had a partner in crime.

I miss Crystal.

I’ve done some research and found that most of the older girls’ uniforms are way shorter and tighter than mine. I asked someone about it and she said that’s because everybody hems them up and takes them in. They wear killer heels and black panty hose, too. All against the rules, but most of the nuns are old and slow, so even if one tries to snag you on a dress code violation, you can usually outrun her before she IDs you.

Turns out only us lame sophomores wear long, baggy uniforms.

Time to convince Gran to do a serious overhaul on this hideous skort.

Well, it took whining, pleading, and begging but she’s hemming my skort even though my father said he didn’t spend three hundred dollars on a uniform to see it turned into something too small to wear to the beach. I said everybody wears them that way, and he said (of course),
Come on, Hanna, if everybody else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge…

He is so tiresome sometimes.

My mother laughed and told him it was just history repeating itself because
she’d
gone to parochial school, too, and had a uniform just as ugly, and she’d always rolled her skirt up at the waist because feeling ugly was no way to spend your whole high school career.

My father just looked at her and shook his head like she was hopeless.

She laughed again and tickled him in passing. He told her to quit it but I could tell he was trying not to smile.

I love it when everybody’s happy.

Oh my God, I’m in love.

Seth Kobilias.

I must have him.

He’s a junior, beautiful, sexy, sweet, and I found out that Bailey, the girl he really loved last year, broke his heart so now he supposedly parties hard and goes out with a lot of different girls because he was too hurt and doesn’t want to be again. He plays guitar, too, and hangs out in the courtyard.

I need to make the courtyard my new hangout ASAP.

I never felt anything like this before. I love his eyes and his smile and his hair and just everything. He’s really tall, blond, and a little skinny but it looks perfect on him. He even makes a uniform jacket and tie look hot.

He hasn’t noticed me yet but I can change that, I just know it. Good thing Gran Helen hemmed this uniform. Now at least when he
does
look at me, he’ll be able to tell I’m a girl.

Also, I hung out with another sophomore named Sammi Holloway who I think might be my next partner in crime. We’re pretty different—she’s thinner, flatter, richer, and sleeker than me, and next to her I feel like nothing but flyaway hair, frayed edges, and loose ends—but she cracks me up bad and so far I like her a lot.

I think we could have great adventures together.

Life is very exciting these days.

I took too many classes. I have to drop some right now. They’re interfering with my chance to meet Seth. The days are rushing by and I’m not getting anywhere because of all these stupid classes! I tried to dump
algebra and physical science but Mr. Sung in guidance won’t let me. So maybe journalism and…what? There’s nothing else I can get rid of. I don’t mind dumping journalism; it’s all about facts, and who needs facts when imagining what could happen is so much more satisfying?

I kept creative writing but dropped journalism so now I have an extra free period
and
I just found out that for some reason my name isn’t on the sophomore Mandatory Community Service list. Yay! I probably should be worried about this but I’m not, and I’m
sure
not bringing it up. I can use the time for my Seth quest. I’ll just make it up next year or something.

I love a good computer glitch.

My parents went on a date last night—which kind of freaked me out because the last time they did that was like two years ago, and right after, they argued about growing apart—so I went down to Crystal’s and we passed the time hanging out with her older brother and his friends. They were full of compliments and if I didn’t like Seth so much, I probably could have found myself a boyfriend.

I hope he appreciates this sacrifice.

Oh. My. God.

Seth noticed me today. For real. And it was good.

No, better than good.

Great.

I was caught in a stream of kids changing classes, flowing down the right side of the hall, and there he was, heading toward me in the stream on the left side, ambling along, head and shoulders above the crowd, laughing at something somebody said and kind of scanning oncoming traffic as he walked.

I looked at him right as he looked at me and I swear time stopped.
He held my gaze for like a full three seconds, then smiled this sweet little sideways smile and lifted his chin in a
Hi
. I smiled back and then we passed and he didn’t break the connection until he was almost past me.

He saw me. Out of all the hundreds of other people in that hall, it was
me
that he smiled at. Me!

These teachers take their classes way too seriously. I mean, I’m fifteen; I have like another
seventy years
to worry about zygotes or circumferences or whatever.

I wish I could just learn what I’m interested in, which would be creative writing, psychology, and nature stuff. And not biology. I don’t want to hack open dead animals; I want to study them alive and healthy.

If I ever have to take biology, I’m boycotting carving up dead things, and too bad about the grade. If anybody makes me do it, I’ll just throw up on purpose every single day all over the lab until they let me out. I don’t care. I will not mangle dead animals.

Gran won’t mind. Heck, she’ll probably give me a medal.

(Cue Gran’s voice) :
No, Hanna, we don’t kill spiders; they’re the perfect natural insect control. Careful, you almost stepped on that beetle. Look, the spring fawns are out frolicking on the lawn!

Yes, she actually uses words like
frolicking.

She is so embarrassing sometimes. (I would never tell her that, though. It would hurt her feelings too badly. Actually, I’d better call her soon or else her and Grandpa will show up at school or something just to make sure I’m still alive.)

Anyway, what I really need is less classes and more free time. How else am I supposed to develop into a sociable, well-rounded human being if I never have the time to get my hands on Seth?

Sammi’s doing trash pickup along the roads with a bunch of other kids for her community service, and yesterday some lady in a Lexus
stopped and asked if they were from a juvenile detention center because usually only prisoners from the county jail pick up garbage, but they wear orange jumpsuits so everyone know they’re prisoners out on work detail.

Sammi, being tired, disgusted, and a smart-ass said
they
usually wore brown plaid uniforms and wouldn’t get released unless they completed their mandatory service, too.

The lady looked righteous and said,
Well, I don’t know what you did to get into this situation, but I certainly hope you’ve learned your lesson,
and drove away.

Sammi said it was funny but also pretty humiliating, and next year she’s just gonna stuff envelopes or something instead.

God, I’m glad I escaped this.

I’ve been sitting out on the curb in the courtyard in my free time, pretending to read or page through my notebooks but really watching Seth from beneath my hair and trying my hardest to will him to come over and fall in love with me.

So far, it isn’t working.

I
am
learning him, though, by watching and listening, and sooner or later that’s got to be worth something. I’ve already discovered that he smokes Marlboros, loves
South Park,
and is a killer flirt when he’s high. He also seems to be addicted to bitchy girls with long nails, ankle bracelets, and cool, you-can’t-touch-this smiles, which is kind of depressing.

“Hey,” Sammi said, plopping down on the curb beside me. “Anything good going on?”

“You-know-who likes ankle bracelets,” I said glumly.

“So?”

“I hate ankle bracelets,” I said.

“I like them,” she said, leaning back on her hands and turning her face to the sun. “I think they’re hot.”

“I don’t,” I said. “They remind me of shackles.”

She snorted, amused. “Oh, c’mon Hanna, you can’t tell me that if he walked up to you and said you’d look hot wearing an ankle bracelet, you wouldn’t go right out and get one.”

“No,” I said, irritated, and then, “You’re a pain in the butt, you know that?”

“I love you, too,” she said, smirking and bumping her shoulder against mine.

“It’s pretty quiet around here these
days,” Lon says, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table and easing down into it. He’s been outside cleaning the gutters and his arrival carries the mingled scents of hand soap, damp soil, and cold, matted greenery.

“Mm-hmm,” I say and ladle him out a big bowl of vegetable beef soup from the pot simmering on the stove. I set the bowl in front of him and, ignoring his searching look, head for the pantry to see if the last of the summer tomatoes have ripened yet.

“Heard from Hanna?”

“Not since I hemmed up her uniform,” I say without turning.

“That was back in September,” he says.

“Was it?” I say lightly, as if I wasn’t aware of every single empty second. “Well, I imagine homework and such is keeping her busy. She’ll visit when she gets a chance.” I wait, but other than a quiet exhale Lon is kind enough not to take it any further, as he knows it will only make me feel worse than I already do.

Most days I deal with Hanna’s absence by trying to keep busy: baking muffins, feeding the birds, enclosing the porch in clear heavy-duty plastic, setting up the heat lamps and readying the stray-cat condos for
winter, raking leaves, and stapling new
PRIVATE PROPERTY/NO HUNTING
signs on the trees along the wood line. When those tasks fail to distract me, I remind myself that it’s normal for her to want to socialize with new friends rather than spend all her free time dancing attendance on an old one. It’s a bitter pill, though, and doesn’t go down well, so I’ve taken to calling Melanie Thury, Hanna’s mom, once or twice a week just to chat.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Lon says.

“In a minute,” I say, holding the pantry door frame and stepping carefully down into the chill darkness.

“My soup’s getting cold,” he says.

“Then start without me.” I reach up and finding the pull cord, yank on the light.

The bare overhead bulb isn’t fancy but it does the job, revealing rows and rows of wooden shelves stocked with cabbages, buckets of carrots in sand, yams, potatoes, kale, garlic and onion braids, and of course, the tomatoes.

At the end of the season some gardeners pull the entire tomato plant from the ground and hang it upside down to let the green tomatoes ripen on the vine. I’ve never taken this shortcut as I figure no matter how well you shake the roots there will always be dirt and bugs left clinging and brought inside. My way takes longer but I’d rather go plant by plant, fruit by fruit, examining each for bite marks or spoilage, filling my buckets and then carefully lining each tomato up on the pantry shelf beneath sheets of newspaper so they can ripen at their own speed.

I lift the first sheet of newspaper. It rattles and I realize my hands are trembling again. This has been happening more and more lately, and I don’t know whether it’s low blood sugar or just old age smirking at me from around a shadowy corner, but I have no intention of letting it win, so after I eat I’m going to do more reading through my natural home remedy books for causes and cures.

“Hey, Helen, I’ll make you a deal,” Lon calls. “If you bring me back one of those big, juicy beefsteaks, I might be persuaded to split it with you.”

It’s his tone, teasing and tinged with the memory of a younger man’s mischief, that coaxes my first smile of the day. “Oh, really?” I abandon the small Rutgers tomato I was considering and move farther down the shelf to where the massive beefsteaks lie. “Will I have to do anything R-rated to seal this deal?”

“No,” Lon says, sounding startled.

“Then forget it,” I say, and at his snort of laughter, pick the biggest, ripest tomato we have, hide my trembling hand in my apron, and head slowly up out of the darkness and back into the bright, cozy kitchen.

Seth’s best friend is a junior
named Connor, so to get closer to Seth, I said hi to Connor twice today in passing. He looked pleasantly surprised the first time and said hi back the second. This is progress.

Then Connor just
happened
to be outside my English class when I got out and walked me to my locker. We passed Seth, and I really didn’t like the looks they gave each other, like a thumb’s-up from Seth to Connor that he was walking with me.

This is not good.

Later on I dodged Connor by changing hall routes and ran into Seth in the courtyard by himself. There was no way I could just go up to him so I headed over to my regular spot on the curb and he said, teasing, “What, you don’t want to talk to me?”

So I went over and it turned out he was getting high and offered me weed but I lied and said, No, it gives me hives. (Weed at school. Right. Like my mother wouldn’t rip my head off and take it bowling if I ever got caught getting high at school. Especially a school my father keeps wondering if he can afford to keep me in. No, I’m not losing my chance at Seth just for that.)

Anyhow, Seth said something about Connor, like he was trying to find out if I liked him and I said, “He’s okay,” because I didn’t want to talk about stupid Connor, I wanted to make
him
like me.

He finished getting high and said, “C’mon, let’s go into the cafeteria, I need something to drink.”

I really didn’t want to lose my chance alone with him but what could I say? So we went, with him being silly and messing my hair up on purpose, and me walking slow to make it last and praying nobody was in the cafeteria, but of course Connor was, along with a bunch of others.

So what did imbecile Seth do?

Brought me right over to Connor and with a big dorky grin said, “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

And then
he went and sat at a different table with stupid senior Nutria Cerelle, who had great blond bed head but also wicked knock-knees and, although nobody seemed to realize it but me, a name that meant a giant swamp-dwelling, orange-toothed
rodent.

What a stupid day.

“Gran called earlier,” my mother said when I dragged myself in the back door and dumped my books on the kitchen table. “She said to tell you that she’s pickling the green tomatoes tonight so you should be there by six.”

“Well, I can’t go tonight,” I muttered, peeling off my coat and slinging it across the back of a chair.

“Why not?” my mother said.

“Because I already made plans,” I said, opening the fridge and hanging on the door. “Why don’t we ever have anything good to eat?”

“Eat a banana,” my mother said.

“I hate bananas,” I said, scowling and closing the refrigerator.

“You’d better call Gran and tell her you’re not coming,” my mother said. “Don’t just leave her waiting, Hanna. She counts on you.”

“I know, I won’t,” I said and, grabbing my purse, headed up to my room.

But I did because I knew she would try to talk me into coming, and I didn’t want to go and that made me feel guilty. I mean, I pickled the tomatoes with her every year, and yes, I loved the steamy scent of hot vinegar steeped with fresh dill and pickling spices and how she always sent me home with a giant jar of my own, but I wasn’t really in the mood to pickle anything but myself so I went down to Crystal’s instead.

There was a keg party in the woods behind her house so I drank two beers, and spent the rest of the night flirting with some karate guy I never met before who showed me how to flip people and actually did a move and put me down real gently right in a pile of leaves. Twice. He was cute but his goatee worried me. Plus my parents would probably have heart failure if I ever brought home an eighteen-year-old with two-foot dreads and a giant
FUCK
tattooed on his biceps.

Yup, not gonna happen.

Well, that’s just great. While I was being tossed around by karate guy, Seth and Nutria the Rodent became a couple.

Sammi and I were standing in the courtyard when the Rodent-mobile pulled in, and Nutria and Seth got out. They held hands and walked over to her friends.

“Stop staring,” Sammi whispered, kicking me in the ankle. “Here comes Connor.”

And of course the first thing out of my mouth was, “I thought Seth didn’t want to go out with anybody because he didn’t want to get hurt again.” And Sammi gave me this
Arghhhh
look, but too bad. I was so freaked at the sight of the Rodent flicking back her bed hair and Seth smiling down at her that I wanted to throw knives at them.

Connor gave me a funny look. “Yeah, well, I guess he changed his mind.”

Then he said his parents were going away for the weekend and he was having a party and we were invited if we could get a ride there. He lives in the same town as Sammi, which is about six miles from me. Seth lives fourteen miles away. The Rodent lives in Seth’s town. Of course.

I hate my life.