“I thought you already were by making me listen to this stuff.”
“This stuff?” He drops his head onto the counter, as if he can’t take it anymore. “This stuff,” he says, “is some of the best music to, like, ever exist. You do realize that, right?”
“You can’t dance to it.” I shrug. “And you can’t really sing along, and, like, it’s not that sad.”
“Sad?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m very into sad music right now, for obvious reasons.” But as I’m saying it, I realize it’s not completely true. I am into sad music right now, but at the same time, I haven’t had a really bad day since Lacey and I drove by Sebastian’s house. In fact, every day since then has gotten a little bit better. I’m actually kind of proud of myself.
“Okay,” Noah says, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I think I understand the problem now. We’re obviously going to have to ease you into this.”
“Ease me into what?”
“This whole music thing.” Noah reaches over me and snags a fry off my plate, then pops it into his mouth. I swallow. Hard. Something about the way he did that, the way he just reached over and grabbed my food like that. . . . It felt . . . almost intimate. Suddenly, I’m super aware of his closeness, the way his hair flops over his eyebrow, the crispness of his T-shirt sleeve where it hits his bicep.
Stop it, I tell myself. He’s Ava’s boyfriend, and he took a French fry off your plate. It’s nothing to get all freaked out about. In fact, it’s perfectly normal, probably. And the fact that my stomach is flipping all around now means nothing, except I’m obviously starved for male attention. I wonder if I still have Jonah Moncuso’s number in my cell. He never called me after that night we made out, but maybe he’d be up for hanging out again.
He reaches over and takes another French fry off my plate. See? Just two friends, sharing French fries, la, la, la.
“You’re obviously not ready for Sting or anything like that,” Noah’s saying.
“I am so ready for Sting!” I mean, I think I am. I want to be, at least.
“No,” he says. “Youre not.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wrinkled piece of paper, which he unfolds and sets on the counter. “Now I wasn’t going to go to this, because I’m exhausted and hot and sweaty and I still need to write tonight, but this . . . this is a drastic circumstance.”
I peer down at the paper. “‘The Spill Canvas,’” I read. “‘Tonight, at The Middle East.’” I look at Noah. “It’s a band?”
“Yes,” he says. “Now, they’re not on the level of Sting, or anything even remotely like that, but for our purposes, they’ll do. They play a lot of really sad music,” he explains. “But they’re actually a great group, and you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed about having them on your iPod.”
“Who’s embarrassed?” I say, shrugging and eating another fry. “So you’re going to put on some of their music?”
“No,” he says. “We’re going to the concert.”
I stare at him incredulously. Is he crazy? “No we’re not,” I say. “I’m exhausted, and I have to be back here at six a.m.” The only places I’m going are the shower and my air-conditioned bedroom.
“You’re kidding, right?” Noah says.
“No.”
“Hannah, you’re a teenager. You’re not supposed to be too tired to go to a show.”
“But you just said you were too tired to go.”
“That’s different.”
“How come?”
He hesitates, like he doesn’t really want to say what he’s about to say, but thinks I might need to hear it. “Hannah,” he says gently. “How much have you gotten out this summer?”
“I get out,” I say defensively.
“I don’t mean watching TV with Lacey,” he says. “I mean out-out.”
I open my mouth to protest, but then close it. I realize he’s right. I’m young. It’s summer. I should be out and about, living my life.
“Fine,” I say, popping the last fry into my mouth. “But you’re driving.”
“Over there,” I say, bouncing up and down in the passenger seat and pointing to an empty spot on the street. “Right there, right there!”
Noah expertly navigates the car into the space that’s just opened up a couple of blocks from The Middle East. Which is totally lucky, since we’re in Cambridge, and it’s, like, impossible to find a parking spot here at this time of night.
“Good eye,” Noah says, shifting the car into park and cutting the engine.
“It’s one of my gifts,” I tell him, shrugging and pretending to sound modest. I unbuckle my seatbelt. “My hidden talents are instinctively choosing the most horrible music and being able to spot open parking spaces from a mile away.” I look down at what I’m wearing. “Are you sure this is okay for a rock concert?”
Noah sighs, and then puts his head down on the steering wheel, the same gesture he made back at the diner when I asked if Sting was in U2. “It’s not a rock concert,” he says, his voice muffled against the steering wheel.
“It’s not?” I frown. “I thought you were taking me to a rock concert.”
“It’s not rock,” he says. “It’s more like . . . I don’t know, emo, alternative, that kind of thing.”
“I guess,” I say doubtfully. “But anyway, is what I’m wearing okay?”
I insisted that Noah take me home to change before we headed to Cambridge to see the show. He told me there was a chance we would miss the first opening act, but I wasn’t too concerned about that, since I’d obviously never heard of them. I mean, I’d never even heard of the headliners. Plus, when I went to see a Justin Timberlake concert once, the opening act was pretty horrible, some Disney girl-band that everyone booed.
So Noah took me home and waited in the car while I changed into dark jeans, boots, and a low-cut black T-shirt that’s tight around my boobs. I darkened my eye makeup and tied a bandana in my hair to make it look kind of like a headband, leaving my hair down and flowing. I look cute. Edgy. But not too edgy.
“You look great,” Noah says. He reaches over me and opens the door. “Door’s broken,” he says. “You have to jiggle it just right.” His arm brushes against mine as he pulls back, and I feel that same rush of energy that passed through me earlier. Stop, I tell myself. You’re just tired. And Noah’s a boy, and you’re broken-hearted and obviously going a little bit crazy.
I step out onto the sidewalk, and as if on cue, my phone rings. Ava.
“It’s Ava,” I say, holding it up.
“Oh.” Noah looks at me over the top of his car, where he’s still standing in the street. He gets a weird look on his face. “Um, could you not tell her you’re with me?”
“How come?”
He slams his car door shut and comes over to stand next to me on the sidewalk, stepping close to avoid all the people that are passing by. I inhale his scent again, then take a small step back so I don’t give his closeness another chance to mess with my head.
“It’s not a big deal,” he says, “I just—” He’s trying to explain before the phone stops ringing, but it’s too late. Ava goes to voicemail, which will almost definitely piss her off. Ava hates getting sent to voicemail. She says everyone always has their cell phones with them, so if she gets someone’s voicemail, she knows that person just doesn’t want to talk to her. Turns out, she’s right.
“Are you going to call her back?” Noah asks. We’re still standing awkwardly on the sidewalk, emo kids filing by us on their way to The Middle East, their voices blending together and getting swallowed up by the other sounds of the city.
“No,” I say. “She’ll want to talk for a while, and we’re . . . I mean, we’re going into the concert, right?”
“The show,” Noah corrects. “And yeah.”
We don’t move for a second. I’m waiting for him to explain why he didn’t want Ava to know he was out with me, and something passes between us that I’m pretty sure both of us can feel, even though neither
one of us says anything. It’s not any kind of attraction, even though I’ve been feeling that on and off all night. This is something different.
We have a secret now. A secret from Ava. He still doesn’t say anything, and I think about asking him again why he didn’t want her to know, but I have a feeling doing that would lead to more questions and a whole long conversation, and right now I just want to have fun.
So when Noah finally says, “You ready?” I push all my misgivings aside and follow him toward the club.
Three hours later, we emerge from The Middle East. My hair’s a mess, I’m a little buzzed from the beer I convinced someone with a wristband to buy me (and when I say convinced, I mean I paid them twenty dollars, but it was so totally worth it), my ears are ringing (but in a good way), and I feel completely high.
“That,” I say. “Was awesome.” I twirl around in the cool air, which feels nice after how hot it was in there.
“Whoa, watch out, Mustang Sally,” Noah says, as I almost go careening into a girl who’s coming out of the club with her mom.
“Sorry,” I say to the girl.
“No worries,” she says, and gives me a big smile. I love it! It’s like we’re all in this together! Just two girls, out and about, going to emo shows, hanging out in Cambridge. It’s like we’re real hipsters or something!
“So you liked the show?” Noah asks as we walk toward the car. “Or is that the beer talking?”
“No, it’s not the beer talking,” I say indignantly. And it isn’t. Yeah, the beer definitely helped a little bit, but the way I’m feeling now has nothing to do with beer, and everything to do with the fact that, for the first time in a long time, I’m having fun. For the past few hours, I wasn’t worried about Sebastian, or what was going to happen when I got back to school and saw him, or what he was doing with the pink Jeep girl. In fact, it was the last thing on my mind. And it wasn’t because I was zoned out in front of the TV or busy at work. It was because I was actually enjoying myself.
Although, if I’m being completely honest, even when I was with Sebastian, I was always worried: worried he might break up with me, worried I would say the wrong thing, worried he wouldn’t like what I was wearing, worried we wouldn’t stay together. And tonight, for a few hours, I wasn’t worried about anything. I just danced and drank and had fun.
“That really was amazing,” I say as I climb into Noah’s car. My bandana headband is wet with sweat, so I take it out of my hair and reach into my bag for a hair tie, then pull my hair up into a ponytail.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Noah says, giving me a smile. It’s one of those smiles you give someone you think has been sheltered, the kind of smile a mom would give their kid the first time they give them ice cream or something.
“Hey,” I say as Noah gets ready to start the car.
“Yeah?” he says, pausing before he turns the key in the ignition. He looks at me.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You’re welcome.” He smiles at me again, and my stomach does the same flip it’s been doing all night. But this time I’m in too good of a mood to care.
I oversleep, of course. Noah and I didn’t get home until almost two a.m., and since we have to be at work at six, sleeping through my alarm was kind of a given. So when he pulls into my driveway the next morning at five forty-five, I’m not even close to being ready. I yell out the window, “Just one second!” then quickly pull on yesterday’s shorts and scramble around for my Cooley’s T-shirt. I spritz some perfume on myself, run a brush through my hair, wash my face, and smear on some foundation and cover-up.
“Sorry,” I say when I’m finally in Noah’s car. I settle into the passenger seat and he holds a coffee out to me wordlessly. “You actually stopped at Starbucks?” I ask incredulously and take it. I figured Noah would be way too tired to even think about getting us coffee. I know it only takes a few minutes to stop, but when you’re dead-tired, even those couple minutes of sleep are precious. Seriously. Sometimes, during the school year, I can totally notice a difference in my mood based on how many times I’ve pressed the snooze button.
“Of course I stopped,” Noah says, “I knew you’d kill me if I showed up without your latte.” His voice sounds a little bit hoarse, and there’s stubble on his cheeks, but besides that he looks great. His hair is slightly rumpled, but more in an adorable kind of way, not an “I was out super late at a concert and now I’m late for work” kind of way. God, boys have it so easy.
I gulp down the coffee, letting it warm my body and start to wake me up. I don’t even care that it burns my tongue, since it seriously might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
“So how’d you sleep?” Noah asks as he pulls the car out of my driveway and into the street.
“For the whole three hours? Okay. You?”
“I slept great.” Figures. Of course he did. Although I’m starting to feel a little more awake already. There’s a slight headache behind my eyes, but even that’s pretty mild compared to what it could be, and my ears are a little clogged up from the loud music, but it’s not horrible or anything.
And then I remember something about last night, something that makes me blush. When we got back to my house, I invited Noah inside. Like I said, it was first time in a long time that I’d actually felt really happy, and I just didn’t want the night to end.
The whole way home, I’d been singing along with the Spill Canvas album Noah had downloaded to his iPod, and I guess I was getting caught up in the moment. And so when he went to drop me off, I turned to him and said, “Slushies?”
And he was all, “What?” and so I was like, “Slushies. Do you want to come in for a slushie?”
And he got this kind of weird look on his face, the same kind of weird look that he got when he looked at me over the top of his car last night and told me not to tell Ava we were together. And then he said, “Not tonight, it’s late.”
So then I said, in this super teasing voice, “But Noah, we’re young, remember? Come on, I’ll even let you have some Keebler cookies.”
“I really can’t,” Noah said. He said that he needed to get to sleep, which made total sense at the time. But now I’m thinking that maybe he said no because he thought I wanted him to come inside so that we could . . . Oh, God. There’s no way he could have thought that, right? Especially if he slept great last night. If he thought I wanted to seduce him, he would have been up all night, tossing and turning, wondering how weird it was going to be when he had to tell me that not only was he not interested in me like that, but that he was going to have to tell Ava about what I’d tried to do.
Ava! Ohmigod, I completely forgot about her! I never called her back last night! I pull my phone out of my purse. One lone bar of power stares up at me, along with ten missed calls from Ava, and three texts asking where I am. Damn. She’s going to want to know what I was doing last night. Why doesn’t Noah want me to tell her we were hanging out? And can I still not tell her?
I fire off a quick text even though I know Ava’s probably not awake yet, telling her I’m sorry and to call or text me as soon as she wakes up. I want to ask Noah what I’m supposed to tell her when she does, but something tells me it’s probably not a good idea. So I lean back in my seat, take another huge sip of my coffee, and decide to look on the bright side. The bright side being that at least I’m not obsessing about Sebastian anymore. I really am totally getting over him. And it didn’t even take that long! Yay!
And then we’re pulling into the parking lot of the diner, and like some kind of terrible joke, there’s his truck. Sebastian’s. Right by the front door, parked in the first parking space. It really is just like a horrible prank. Like fate or God or whoever decided to look down at me and say, “You think you’re over him, huh? Well, we’ll show you!” and then zapped his truck right into the diner parking lot.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Noah asks, pulling his car into an empty spot and peering through the window. Sebastian’s standing by the front doo
r of the diner, smoking a cigarette, one hand shoved in his pocket.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Coming for an early breakfast?”
But it doesn’t seem that way. Because as soon as he spots us, Sebastian walks over to Noah’s car and leans down so that he’s looking right at me through the open passenger window. “Hey, Hannah,” he says. “Can we talk?”
The First Day of Senior Year
“There has to be someone else,” Ava says. She’s picking through her salad, which she tried to order with organic salad dressing and organic carrots. Apparently carrots are more likely to be genetically engineered than other vegetables, so it’s super important that you only eat organic ones. It’s something Lulu taught her, and it makes no sense to me, but whatever. I’m trying to give Ava the benefit of the doubt, since I know how it is when people get their heart broken. They kind of lose their minds. I ate ice cream and refused to wash my clothes; Ava has apparently decided to obsess over vegetables.
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“Because,” she says. “He wouldn’t just dump me out of nowhere.” She looks at me across the table. “So you still haven’t answered me. Did you notice anything this summer? Who was he hanging around with?”
“No one,” I say honestly. “I told you, he was working the whole summer.”
“It was probably someone he works with then,” she says. She takes in a huge breath through her nose. “Some little trollop who paraded around and, like, mopped the floors for him so he could get out early with her and they could go to some dumb party.”
“We do a lot more than mop the floors around here,” I say, not that loud.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I eat another fry, even though I’ve totally lost my appetite.
“I hope it’s not that Lacey girl,” Ava says. “Did you know that she was going out with Riker? And was, like, devastated when he dumped her? She must be really bad in bed.”