“He did?” I croak. I blink hard a few times, my vision getting all spotty from the hot sun that’s beating down on me. For a second, I wonder if I’m going to faint, and I put my head down between my legs.
“Yeah,” she says. “About how Sebastian showed up there this morning, completely blindsiding you.” Oh, thank God! She’s asking about Sebastian, not Noah. Which means that she doesn’t know, which means that Noah might not know. But if he doesn’t, then why is he ignoring me? Unless he knows and just didn’t tell Ava? Jesus, this is horrible. What the hell am I going to do? Nothing, I tell myself. You’re going to do nothing. Big deal that you had a weird moment with Noah. Well, a couple of weird moments. A couple of weird moments that included him telling me about his screenplay, him telling me not to let Ava know that we were hanging out, and me getting completely turned on when he took my hand. Not to mention how I felt when we were sharing French fries last night. Wow. That’s really a lot more than a couple of moments.
“Hello!” Ava yells. “Are you there?”
“Sorry,” I say, trying to collect my thoughts. “Um, yeah, Sebastian showed up here this morning, saying he wanted to talk to me.” I realize that with all my Noah-obsessing, I haven’t properly obsessed about Sebastian. What did he want exactly? Does he really want me back? Does he know I drove by his house? Does he know that I called him three times and hung up right after we broke up? (I totally *67’d my number to block it, but with technology these days, you never know when someone’s going to invent a way to get around that. Nothing’s private anymore, you know?) Do I even care?
“What happened?” Ava asks. “Tell me everything.”
“I sent him away, of course. In fact, I gave him a total attitude.” I feel like Ava should be proud of me for this, that she should tell me I did a great job, that she can’t believe how strong I am. I mean, when she left I was a complete mess, just days off of my meltdown in Jenna Lamacchia’s bathroom. Now here I am, sending Sebastian away. It’s like I’m a completely new woman.
But there’s just silence. Then, “Are you going to call him or anything?”
“No,” I say. “Why would I call him?”
“Don’t you want to hear what he has to say? Just in case he wants you back?”
I frown. What the hell is she talking about? All Ava has been saying since the night of Jenna’s party is how much of a jerk Sebastian is, how I’m way too good for him, how I need to move on and upgrade, and blah, blah, blah. “No-ooo,” I tell her. “I don’t want to hear what he has to say. Besides, I thought you said that I hated him. That we hated him.”
“We do,” she says, “I mean, we did. When he dumped you. Now that maybe he wants you back, it’s kind of a different story.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she says, sounding uncomfortable. “It just is.” It sounds kind of like she’s implying I’m not going to do any better. So as long as Sebastian broke up with me, it was fine to say he was a loser, but now that he might want to get back together, I should go for it because I’m not going to do any better.
“Are you saying that I can’t do better?”
“Hannah, don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “I would never say that.” But she doesn’t deny that she’s thinking it.
I’m about to press her on it, when Lacey comes running out of Cooley’s. “Hannah!” she yells. “I have to go to the hospital!” I roll my eyes and am about to tell her that I really cannot deal with her freak-outs right now, but she shoves her arm in my face. Her bite, which just a few minutes ago was the size of a dime, is now the size of a half-dollar, with an angry red border all around it.
“That doesn’t look so good,” I say honestly.
“I know!” she says, panicked. “Noah said I should probably have it looked at.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No,” she says. “But it kind of itches.” She looks confused. “In fact, my whole body kind of itches.” She lifts up her shirt and starts scratching.
“Who’s that?” Ava asks. “And what did she say about Noah?”
“It’s Lacey,” I say. “She works with us.”
“Lacey Adams?” Ava says. “Ugh, the one who can’t get over Riker? I can’t stand that girl.”
“I have to go,” I tell Ava. Lacey’s still scratching, only now, her stomach is covered with angry-looking red bumps.
“Wait!” Ava says. “Can you tell Noah that—”
“Ava,” I say. “I have to go.” And for the first time in my whole life, I hang up on her.
The First Day of Senior Year
Ava laughs. A big, loud laugh that echoes off the walls of Cooley’s. I’ve just told her that I’m the one who’s been seeing Noah, and she’s laughing. Of course, seeing isn’t really the right word, I guess. Neither is “sleeping with” since that implies it’s been going on for a while, and it wasn’t. But it was building all summer, and although I’m probably not the reason he broke up with her, I must have at least had something to do with it, even if I was just a symptom of some problem they were having.
“What did you say?” she asks finally, when she realizes I’m not laughing back.
“I said,” I tell her quietly, “that Noah and I were together this summer. Not, like, the whole summer. We just . . . it happened last night.” Last night, in the back, here, up against the counter, on the floor, Noah’s hands in my hair and on my back, and . . . I take a deep breath and hope Ava can’t hear how fast my heart is beating from just thinking about it.
“Tell me,” Ava says, gripping her fork, “that you’re joking.”
“I’m not.”
A look comes over her face then, one I haven’t seen since the sixth grade when Ava found out that Andrea Benson’s mom was trying to make a move on Ava’s dad. She found Andrea on the playground and started screaming at her, calling her mom a slut and a whore. She had to go to the school psychologist for the rest of the year, that’s how crazy it was.
“I see,” Ava says quietly. “Well. I guess that explains what happened when you two came to visit me this summer.”
“Nothing was going on then,” I say. Now that I’ve said it, that I’ve put it out there, I want to take it back. But now that I’ve told her, that I’ve done it, I can’t. It’s like, in the one moment I wanted to hurt her, I’ve ruined everything. I feel sick to my stomach, the French fries I just ate churning around and making me nauseous.
“Nothing was going on then?” She’s talking really quietly, which is unnerving for some reason. I want some kind of yelling or screaming. I want her to ask me why, to call me a bitch and a traitor, something, anything other than talking quietly.
“No,” I say. “Nothing is even really going on. It just . . . Last night something happened.”
“What?” she asks. I don’t answer, just look down at my napkin. “What happened?” she says again, this time her voice rising.
“We . . . we were here,” I say. “At the diner. We were closing down, it was late, and . . . one thing led to another.” I swallow and hope she doesn’t ask me what I know she’s probably going to ask me.
“Did you guys . . . Did you sleep with him?”
For a second, I think about lying. I wanted to tell her, I did, but now all I want to do is take it back, and so my first instinct is to do damage control and stop what I’ve started. But something inside me tells me that if I lie, it won’t really matter. The damage is already done, and now the best thing I can do is get it all out there and hope that she can maybe forgive me.
“Yes,” I whisper, looking her right in the eye. Ava looks back, her eyes blazing. And then she reaches across the table and slaps me.
The Summer
I never realized how scary hospitals were until now. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever really been in a hospital unless you count when I was born. Of course we’re not actually in the hospital, we’re just waiting in the emergency room, which for some reason actually seems scarier. I mean, the hospital at least has people who
are already sick and diagnosed. The room out here is for people who have no idea what’s wrong with them. Like, it could be anything. Or nothing, which I guess is the better way to look at it.
“What do you think’s taking them so long?” Lacey asks from the seat next to me. Her leg is jittering up and down, and I reach over and put my hand on it. Lacey reaches out and squeezes my arm.
“Well,” I say, “they obviously don’t think it’s a big deal or they would have carted you right back there.”
“Or,” Lacey says, “they probably know I’m going to die and so they’re leaving me out here because they need to help the people who actually have a chance.”
“Lacey,” I say. “Did you see them bringing in the guy who was bleeding profusely from the head?”
“Yes,” she says.
“If that guy has a chance, then you definitely do.”
“True,” she says. “Still, I feel like I’m going to faint.” She puts her head down between her legs, and the tips of her red curls brush against the floor, which is definitely not sanitary. Who knows what kind of blood and guts have been on this floor.
“Sit up,” I say. “Don’t you want to watch Judge Judy?” I point toward the corner, where a flat-screen plasma TV is mounted on the wall. “You love her.”
“I do love her,” she agrees, fixing her eyes on the TV. But I can tell she’s still nervous. I wish Noah were here. He went to park the car after dropping me and Lacey off in front so we could sign in and get seen as soon as possible. Not that there’s that many people here. Besides the man with the gaping head wound (which was so not the visual we wanted when we first got here, let me tell you), the place is pretty dead.
The nurse comes out and looks at Lacey. “Lacey Adams?”
“Yes,” Lacey says, twisting her hands in her lap nervously, and then standing up. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Should I come with you?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “I’m okay. I’ll text you if I need you.” Then she kisses me on the top of my head and follows the nurse to the examination room.
I pick up a Parents magazine that’s sitting on the table in an effort to distract myself from the yuck hospital smell, and page through an article about how to throw the perfect birthday party for your toddler. Which is completely pointless, since I don’t have a toddler. I don’t even know any toddlers. But you never know when that kind of thing could come in handy (and honestly, a lot of the sweet-sixteen parties I’ve been to have been almost like toddler parties, what with the crazy cakes and streamers and people pitching fits), and I kind of like that the emergency room has such fun reading. It’s like they want you to be happy and keep your mind off everything, which I can totally appreciate even though Lacey probably just has hives or something. But if that man with the gaping head wound has any relatives that show up, I’m sure they’ll appreciate the cheerful reading material.
“Hey,” Noah says, loping into the waiting room. “Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.” I set the magazine back on the table as Noah slides his keys into his pocket and sits down next to me. “They took her to the back.”
He nods, then reaches down and picks the magazine up. The same one I was just reading. Which is kind of rude, when you think about it. I mean, he doesn’t know for sure that I was done with it. Maybe I was just taking a reading break.
“There’s a great article in there about how to throw a birthday party for a two-year-old,” I tell him.
“Oh yeah?” He keeps reading. And doesn’t laugh.
“Yeah,” I say. “You could throw one for a toddler you know, like if you had a little cousin.”
“Thanks.” Still reading.
“Are you mad at me or something?” I ask, because I don’t really want to sit out here not talking, and also because I’m sick of driving myself crazy wondering if he’s mad and what I did that’s so bad he won’t even say a word to me until we’re in the waiting area of an emergency room.
“No,” he says. But his eyes shift to the clock on the wall, like he’s trying to figure out how long he’s obligated to talk about this before making his escape. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“Because you’ve refused to talk to me all day.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have.” I wait, and when he doesn’t say anything, I give up. If he’s going to be a total asshole about this, then I’m done. I grab another magazine and start to read angrily. Well, I’m not sure you can really read angrily. But you can make it clear that you’re upset by sighing a lot and ruffling the pages. Which is what I’m doing now.
“I’m not mad at you,” Noah says after a few minutes of page ruffling.
“You already said that. And I don’t really care anymore.” Which is kind of true, kind of not. At the moment I don’t care because I’m pissed. But later I’ll probably end up caring a lot.
Noah keeps talking. “And if I were mad at you, I wouldn’t ignore you. But I’m not, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Okay, good.” I keep reading, skimming an article about how to make an apron out of an old sheet. It’s actually pretty complicated and involves a glue gun, which I guess you should already have, otherwise you should probably just go out and buy an apron.
We read our articles in silence for a few minutes, and then Noah slams his magazine shut. “Can I talk to you outside for a second?” he asks.
“Why? There’s no one here except for me, you, and Judge Judy.” I fold my hands and look at him expectantly, waiting.
“Never mind,” he says, this time sounding annoyed.
“Fine,” I say, rolling my eyes, “We can go outside.” I’m suddenly nervous. Going outside to have a talk? That sounds serious. And hot. Like, temperature-wise, I mean. “Well, we can talk. But can we go to the cafeteria or something? I’m thirsty and it’s too hot to sit outside.”
So we leave instructions with the triage nurse to tell Lacey to text us when she’s done. (The triage nurse is this older woman who couldn’t believe we would text each other such important information—I didn’t have the heart to tell her that about five people I know have been broken up with by text message, and that it’s how one girl I know found out her parents were getting divorced.) Then we head up to the hospital cafeteria. I grab an orange juice from the cooler and a turkey club out of the case, and plop them onto a tray. Noah gets a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is kind of funny. And a chocolate milk, which is even funnier.
“You’re getting chocolate milk and peanut butter and jelly?” I ask as we wait for the cashier in a line behind two middle-aged doctors I’m hoping aren’t in charge of Lacey. That’s because while they’re waiting in line, one of them shuts his beeper off without even looking at it. Which definitely cannot be good. I mean, what if there’s some kind of surgery or something only he’s qualified to do? And he misses it because he’s too busy enjoying his roast beef sandwich? I know doctors have to eat, too, but still.
“Yeah.” Noah looks down at his tray. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” I say. “If you’re seven.”
“I don’t think that ageism should be applied to food,” he says. “I think people of all ages should be allowed to enjoy peanut butter and jelly. And Boost.”
“Boost?”
“Yeah, you know, Boost? Like Ensure? It’s a meal supplement old people take. It makes a very good after-workout protein shake.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say, “I’m not seventy.” I’m trying to be haughty since he did ignore me all day, but inside, I think it’s kind of cute. While most guys would be all macho and drink something like Muscle Milk, or whatever it’s called, Noah’s drinking Boost after his workouts. After his workouts, when he comes home all sweaty, his muscles bulging under a tight tank top. Not that I’ve ever seen Noah wear a tank top, but he probably wears them to work out, right? A tight one that stretches across his stomach and—
“Seven ninety-five,” the cashier says, yanking m
e out of my daydream. Which is probably a good thing, since it was headed in an R-rated direction. I dig into my wallet and hand her my debit card.
We find an empty table in the middle of the cafeteria, away from the evening sunlight that’s streaming through the windows. I take the seat across from Noah, careful to keep my tray from touching his and my legs on my own side of the table. I don’t need any of my body parts accidentally brushing against his, thank you very much.
“So,” I say as Noah opens his chocolate milk. “What do we need to talk about?” Please let it be something about work, please let it be something about work, please let it—
“Look,” he says, sighing. “I don’t want to make a big deal about it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea if you and I hang out.” He’s watching my face carefully for my reaction, but all I say is “Oh,” mostly because I don’t know what else to say. Honestly, I’m a little bit shocked. I never thought he would just come out and say it like that, like “you and I shouldn’t hang out anymore.” I mean, I knew something was up, but . . .
“Do you mind telling me why?” I ask before I can lose my nerve.
“I just . . . I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” he says. “I guess it kind of freaked me out that I asked you to lie to Ava last night.” He shakes his head, then unwraps his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and takes a bite, his face thoughtful.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “But why did you do that?” I take a sip of my drink. “I mean, who cares if Ava knows me and you were hanging out. She’s the one who told you to look out for me, remember?” But even as I’m saying that, I know it’s different. Like, Ava wanted Noah to make sure I was getting out of bed every day. I don’t know how she’d feel if she knew he was taking me out to concerts, where there was fun and beer and lots of stomach flipping whenever Noah got close to me.
“Because of our problems,” he says. He looks down at his tray, an embarrassed look on his face.
“Our problems?” I ask. “But we don’t have any problems.” Well, besides the fact that every time he’s close to me, I feel like I want to pull him closer.