She doesn’t answer him; instead, she lifts her gaze to the top of the enormous window, then runs her fingers along the edges before rapping on the glass.
“I wonder if—” she begins, but Aidan cuts her off.
“No way,” he says. “Don’t even say it.”
“I wonder if we could break in somehow,” she says, ignoring him.
“Are you kidding?”
She blinks at him. “Not entirely.”
“I don’t think this is exactly the right time for either of us to get arrested,” he says, the color rising in his cheeks, as it always does when he gets frustrated with her. “I have a feeling UCLA might frown upon that sort of thing, and I don’t need to give my dad another excuse to be disappointed in me. Not when I’m just about out of here.”
“Yeah, but—”
He holds up a hand, stopping her before she can continue. “I bet Dartmouth wouldn’t be too thrilled about it, either,” he reminds her, then gestures at the window. “Besides, we’re right here. I realize the phrase ‘close enough’ isn’t in your vocabulary, but why is this so important to you?”
“Because,” she says, holding out the piece of paper, which is now balled up in her hand, “because this is our last night. And it’s supposed to be perfect. And if we can’t even get this right…”
Aidan’s face softens. “This isn’t a metaphor,” he says. “If we don’t check off everything on this list, all that means is we’re flexible. We can roll with the punches. And that’s a good thing, you know?”
“You’re right,” she says, swallowing hard. “I know you’re right.”
But still, she feels inexplicably sad. Because of course Aidan would think that. He wants desperately for everything to work out between them. If he walked over a patch of sidewalk right now that read CLARE AND AIDAN SHOULD ABSOLUTELY BREAK UP TONIGHT in brightly colored chalk, he’d still manage to somehow explain it away, to turn it around and make it into something positive.
Maybe the world isn’t full of signs so much as it’s full of people trying to use whatever evidence they can find to convince themselves of what they hope to be true.
For Clare, it seems pretty clear that a start like this doesn’t bode well, and she feels a small glimmer of satisfaction at this: the prospect that she’s been right all along, and that now, even the universe agrees that the only logical thing to do is part ways with Aidan.
But this is followed by a powerful wave of grief over the thought of actually having to do this, and she inches closer to him, feeling a little unsteady.
Aidan circles his arms around her automatically, and they stand there like that for a moment. In the distance, a car engine roars to life, and a few birds cry out overhead. Around them, the sky is fading from blue to gray, the edges going blurry, and Clare presses her cheek against the soft cotton of Aidan’s shirt.
“Has anyone ever suggested that you might have some control issues?” he says with a smile, stepping back again. He takes the paper gently from her hand and smooths it out again. “Looks like this rules out number eight, too.”
“The fall formal,” she says with a nod. “Our first dance.”
“Right,” he says. “No chance of getting into the gym, either. Too bad I’m not allowed to be romantic, or else I’d make you dance with me right here.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “I’ve already seen your moves.”
“Not all of them. But don’t worry. The night is still young. I’m saving my best stuff for later.”
“I can’t wait,” she tells him, realizing just how much she means it.
Whatever happens later, they still have the rest of tonight.
And maybe that will be enough.
She links her arm with his, leaning into him as they start to walk back to the car. A breeze picks up, and for the first time Clare notices there’s a bite to it: an early hint of autumn. Normally, she loves this time of year, and for weeks now, whenever she’s told someone about Dartmouth, they’ve brought up the fall foliage in New Hampshire: the brilliant reds and yellows and oranges spread out over the campus and beyond. Clare has no doubt she’ll find it enchanting once she gets there. But right now, she doesn’t want to think about the coming of a new season. She just wants to live in this one for as long as she possibly can.
They’re nearly to the car when she stops short.
“Shoot,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder. “I meant to get a souvenir.”
“So this is a scavenger hunt.”
“I just thought it might be nice. You know, to have something from each place we stop tonight.”
Aidan tilts his head at her. “You sure this wasn’t just an elaborate plan to steal all those precious gemstones from the Earth Science classroom?”
“I think precious might be overstating it,” she says. “But no.”
“Okay, then,” he says, stooping to grab an ordinary-looking rock from the ground at his feet. It’s slate gray and rounded at the edges, and he rubs at it with the end of his plaid shirt before handing it over with a solemn look.
“Here,” he says, and Clare feels the weight of it in her palm. She runs her thumb over the smooth surface, thinking back to that first day she’d seen him in class, the way his face had lit up when he turned over the rock to find all those purple crystals, like it was a fortune cookie or an Easter egg, the best kind of surprise.
“By my authority,” Aidan is saying now, “as a B-plus student in Mr. Coady’s junior year Earth Science class, I’m pleased to inform you that this little gem is now officially considered precious.”
And here’s the amazing thing: Now it was.
The Pizza Place
7:12 PM
For a while, the two of them stand just outside Slices, peering in through the fogged windows at all the unfamiliar faces.
“Didn’t take them very long to move in, huh?” Aidan says, squinting at a corner booth that used to belong to some of his lacrosse buddies and that is now occupied by a cluster of sophomore girls all huddled over their phones.
“Out with the old…” Clare says lightly, though she feels a bit unsettled, too. After two weeks of goodbyes—two full weeks of sending their friends off one at a time—it feels like the town should be empty now. But here, it looks like any other night, the place completely packed, full of laughter and gossip and noise.
It’s just that it’s no longer their laughter and gossip and noise.
Aidan turns to face her, his blue eyes bright. “Let me guess,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “First place I spilled something on you.”
Clare shakes her head. “Nope.”
“First place you saw me trip over my own feet? First time you saw me eat four slices of pizza in under ten minutes? First time I did that trick with a straw wrapper?”
“First place we talked,” she says, stopping him, because she knows this could go on all night. “Not that it was much of a conversation, but it was the first time you spoke actual words to me.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “I remember now. I’m pretty sure I said you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and then asked you out right there on the spot.”
“Close,” Clare says with a smile. “You asked me to pass the Parmesan.”
“Ah,” he says. “One of my lesser-used pickup lines.”
“Worked on me,” she says as he pulls open the door.
Inside, the restaurant is thick with steam and filled with the smells of tomato and mozzarella. There’s exactly one middle-aged couple in the far corner, hunched over their pizza and looking hassled by the chaos all around them. Otherwise, pretty much everyone is under the age of eighteen. That’s the way it’s been for as long as anyone can remember—this place isn’t so much a restaurant as an off-campus lunch spot, an after-school meet-up point, a weekend hangout for the high school crowd. With its cracked leather booths and basic brown tables, the row of aging video games along one wall and the ironclad rule that slices come plain only, it’s alwa
ys sort of belonged to the town’s younger population.
Just inside the doorway, Aidan stops short, and Clare sees that their usual table is occupied by a few of the underclassmen from the lacrosse team. When they notice Aidan, they start to scramble to their feet, but he waves them back down again.
“Sorry,” one of them says. He looks like a younger version of Aidan, round-faced and broad-shouldered and easygoing, but all the confidence drains right out of him at the sight of his former team captain. There’s a note of awe in his voice as he apologizes. “We thought you’d already skipped town.”
“Just about,” Aidan says, clapping him on the back. “I’m headed out tomorrow.”
“Do practices start right away?”
Aidan nods. “Preseason.”
“Well, good luck, man,” he says, and a few of the others chime in with well wishes, too. “Can’t wait to hear all about it at Thanksgiving.”
As they walk away from the table, Aidan takes Clare’s hand, and she gives his a little squeeze. She catches sight of their reflection in the darkened window and realizes how lost they both look, like they’ve walked into a familiar room to find that all the furniture has been rearranged. But then they recognize a voice over near the register, and they both turn to see Scotty, leaning against the counter and scraping his pocket for coins.
Aidan steps up beside him, slapping down a five-dollar bill.
“It’s on me,” he says, reaching out to punch his friend’s shoulder, but it doesn’t quite land because Scotty manages to dodge him, cuffing Aidan’s ear before ducking away again. Clare hangs back as the two of them tussle the way they always do, circling each other like boxers until they notice Oscar—the hulking, largely silent cashier who has been there forever—watching them from behind the counter, looking entirely unamused.
“How many?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.
Aidan coughs, straightening up again. “Five,” he says. “Please.”
Oscar skulks off toward the oven without another word, and Scotty reaches over and gives Aidan’s arm one last thump. “Thanks, man.”
“I feel like I should start some sort of charity pizza fund for you before I go,” he says. “I’m worried you’ll starve without me.”
“I’ll manage,” Scotty tells him, pushing up his thick-framed glasses. His dark eyes move between Aidan and Clare. “So,” he says, “this is it, huh?”
Aidan nods. “Last night.”
“For a little while, anyway,” Scotty says.
Clare gives him a reassuring nod. “Just for a little while.”
“And you two are, uh, doing okay?” he says, though it’s clear what he’s really asking is this: Have you two decided what to do yet?
“We’re fine,” Clare says, exchanging a look with Aidan.
“Who’s fine?” Stella asks, appearing at their side. She’s wearing all black, as usual, from her boots to her jeans to her shirt and all the way up to her earrings, two feathery-looking things that get lost against her jet-black hair. She always manages to look as if she’s preparing for a burglary, and Clare can’t help feeling conspicuous next to her in spite of the fact that she’s wearing a completely normal spectrum of colors: a blue sundress with a green cardigan.
“Where’ve you been?” Clare asks. “I thought you were coming over this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Stella says, twisting her mouth up at the corners. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I got caught up with something.”
“With what?” she asks, but Stella’s eyes have drifted over to Scotty, who is busy pouring oregano directly into his mouth. Most of it lands down the front of his Batman T-shirt, and he coughs and pounds on his chest, his eyes watering as he attempts to swallow the rest.
“It’s like watching a toddler try to figure out how food works,” Stella says, shaking her head. Scotty glares at her as he wipes the flakes from his shirt, and as always, Stella glares right back. She has a couple of inches on him in the staggeringly high heels she always insists on wearing, and after a moment, Scotty just shrugs and returns to the oregano.
The fact that the two of them have never gotten along usually isn’t a problem. But with most of their friends off to school already, their crew has been whittled down to an awkward foursome: Scotty and Stella, already sniping over things that don’t really matter, and Aidan and Clare, still at odds over all the many things that do.
Clare turns back to Stella. “You do realize I’m leaving tomorrow morning, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Stella says after a second. “And I’m leaving the next day.”
“So where have you been?”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Where’ve you been the last few days?” Clare repeats, ignoring Scotty and Aidan, who are looking back and forth between them as if watching a tennis match. At the moment, she doesn’t care. All she wants is for Stella to snap out of whatever it is that’s been going on with her lately. Because this is a big deal—leaving for college—and Clare could really use her best friend right now.
This is part of the job description, after all: the unspoken contract between all best friends. Clare is required to be there for Stella—to help her with college essays or tag along during endless thrift-shop excursions, to listen to her complain about the lack of interesting guys at their school, or her trio of exhausting younger brothers—and in return, Stella is supposed to be there for Clare, too. Even if it means giving her a hard time.
“You do know,” she’d said once, earlier in the summer, interrupting one of Clare’s frequent musings over what to do about Aidan, “that you’re gonna break up with him eventually, right?”
They were in the car on their way to a movie, and Clare had flicked her eyes away from the road to meet Stella’s, surprised. “Why do you say that?”
“Because,” Stella said, propping a foot on the dashboard, “it’s the truth. If it doesn’t happen at the end of the summer, it’ll happen a few weeks later, or at Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or next summer. It’s inevitable.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Stella said, sounding maddeningly confident. “And meanwhile, you’ll spend your whole freshman year sitting around watching your idiot roommate—”
“Beatrice,” Clare said, exasperated. The moment she’d received her new roommate’s contact information, Stella—who had herself requested a single room—immediately decided she didn’t like the sound of her. And once they started texting, it only got worse. Stella insisted on scrutinizing every message that popped up on Clare’s phone, rolling her eyes at the steady stream of band names and tour dates Beatrice was constantly mentioning.
“Fine,” Stella said. “You’ll be sitting around watching your idiot roommate, Beatrice, getting ready to go out to all those totally dope shows she likes so much while you’re stuck back at the dorm in your flannel pajamas reading a book because you don’t want to have any fun without Aidan, who—by the way—will be out in California getting convinced by his idiot roommate—”
“Rob.”
“—his idiot roommate, Rob the surfer—”
“Rob the swimmer.”
“Whatever,” she said, clearly impatient. “Rob the swimmer, whose only concern is apparently whether Aidan is cool with getting a mini-fridge for their room, which I’m guessing is not so they can keep their veggies crisp. You know he’ll definitely be dragging him out to meet girls. And even if he doesn’t, Aidan will meet them anyway. Trust me. That’s what college is all about.”
“Aside from the whole learning thing.”
“That’s a very distant second,” Stella said matter-of-factly. “The point is, do you really want to spend the next four years feeling guilty because you went out with your roommate one night and got all moony-eyed over some drummer with great hair and killer eyes?”
Clare laughed. “When have I ever gone moony-eyed over a drummer?”
“Well, you haven’t,” Stella admitted, giving her a sideways look. “But maybe that?
??s just because you haven’t let yourself imagine there are other possibilities out there.”
“You mean besides Aidan.”
“I mean,” Stella said, “besides high school.”
But all this was early in the summer, when Stella still cared enough to be honest. And when she had time to listen. Lately, she hasn’t been around to do either, and even though they’re both still here—at least for one more night—it sort of feels to Clare like her best friend has already left.
Maybe it’s that Stella has been trying to give Clare and Aidan time to figure things out on their own, or maybe she’s just been busy getting ready to leave herself. Or maybe it’s that everything is coming to an end, and it’s easier to pretend it’s not. Stella’s never exactly been great at this sort of thing, anyway; she’s allergic to sentiment and wary of emotion, so trying to get her to appreciate the significance of a milestone like this is a bit like trying to hug a skittish cat.
But still, after fourteen years of friendship, Clare refuses to let her slink off to college without some sort of meaningful goodbye.
Now Stella is leaning against the counter, absently pulling napkins from the dispenser, avoiding Clare’s question. Finally, she shrugs.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve been around.”
“Not really,” Clare says, shaking her head. “You haven’t been returning calls, you’ve been showing up late—”
“Maybe she can’t tell time,” Scotty jokes.
“—you haven’t been returning texts—”
“Or type,” he chimes in again.
“Shut up, Scotty,” they both say at the exact same time, and then they can’t help themselves: As soon as their eyes meet, they start to laugh.
“I’m sorry,” Stella says after a moment. “There’s just been a lot going on. But we’ll make up for it tonight. Really.”
“You promise?” Clare asks, and Stella grins.
“I double-pinky promise,” she says, holding out her fingers the way they used to do when they were kids. Clare smiles grudgingly, then hooks her pinkies around Stella’s.