“Lacey, I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t—”
“You didn’t mean to? Hannah, I don’t like Ava, but she was your best friend! You know that exact same thing happened to me with Riker, and now you . . . you just did it to someone else.” Her eyes are filling with tears, and for some reason, I have a feeling that this might be hurting her even more than it hurt Ava.
“Lacey—” I start.
“No,” she says. “Don’t ever talk to me again.”
And then she’s gone. And when I turn around, Noah’s gone, too.
The Summer
“So what’s she doing in there?” I ask, walking toward the diner, Lacey ambling along behind me.
“Just sitting.” Lacey chews on her lip. “And she’s insisting that we talk. Like, really insisting. She won’t take no for an answer.” She frowns. “It’s kind of scary, actually.”
I turn around and look at Noah, who’s out of the car now and a few feet behind us. “Would you mind going inside and starting to open?” I ask. “Lacey and I will be in in a second.”
“Sure,” he says, and rushes toward Cooley’s. He actually looks a little relieved, probably because he doesn’t want to get too involved in the drama. Guys get all weird when it comes to things like this. They have a hard time comprehending things like feelings and talking things out and sorting through problems. They just want to fistfight and get it over with. That’s probably why so many relationships have issues. Guys just don’t know how to resolve conflict in a way that makes sense to girls, i.e. marathon phone conversations and lots of crying.
“Now,” I say to Lacey. “We cannot stay out here.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because she can see us through the window.” Lacey turns around to look, and there’s Danielle, sitting at one of the booths by the window, peering out at us with a pissy look on her face. “Don’t look!” I say. Lacey averts her eyes immediately. “What is she doing here so early anyway? Shouldn’t she be in bed?”
“She has a new job working overnights at an answering service,” Lacey says. “So she got off work and came here. And she says she’s going to come back here every day until I talk to her!” Lacey looks like she really might lose it. I hope she brought her Xanax.
“Okay,” I say, squaring my shoulders and looking Lacey in the eye. “Listen. We are going to walk back in there, and you are going to tell her that you have to go into the back to take care of something, something very important and work-related. Then you and I are going to go into the storage room and make a plan.”
“Okay,” Lacey says, but she doesn’t seem that certain. I wouldn’t be either, if I were her. I mean, all you have to do is look at my love life, and you’d be able to see that I’m definitely not to be trusted when it comes to making plans and dealing with interpersonal relationships. Not to mention, I have no idea what kind of plan I’m going to come up with.
But I guess she really has no other choice, because she follows me inside and tells Danielle that we have to take care of something in the back, just like I told her to.
“Okay,” I say once we’re in the storage room. “Tell me everything.” I pull up an empty bucket that we use for mopping the floors, flip it over and sit down.
“Well,” Lacey says, “She came in here and I said ‘sorry, we’re not open yet, you’ll have to wait outside’ you know, all mean-like.” She looks proud of herself.
“Good for you,” I say, nodding. “She shouldn’t feel like she can just show up here before we’re even open.”
“I know!” she says. “It sucks the way people are just always showing up here! I mean, who cares if it’s a public place? It’s our place of business, and they should respect that. And it was really hard for me to tell her we weren’t open yet, you know? Because I was sooo afraid I was going to break out in hives again. The doctor said stress could bring them on.”
I just nod, not pointing out that if she does break out in hives again, it would be fine, since the doctor gave her a cream and told her she could take Benadryl. They think the hives were probably caused by stress, or maybe an allergic reaction to something, which, of course, is driving Lacey completely crazy since she has no idea what she might be allergic to. It was all I could do to keep her from throwing out all her clothes (it could be something in the fabric) and quitting her job (it could be something in the air).
“And what did Danielle say to that?” I ask.
“She said ‘Lace, I really need to talk to you.’”
“She calls you Lace? I thought I was the only one who called you Lace!” Not that I call her that very often. But still. I don’t want Danielle calling her that, too.
“You are.” She walks over to the sink in the corner and starts washing her hands, which probably means she’s really nervous. When Lacey starts getting nervous, she goes on a mission to get rid of germs. “Well, you’re the only who calls me ‘Lace’ that I’m speaking to, at least. So it doesn’t matter what Danielle calls me, because really, she shouldn’t be calling me anything.”
“I guess,” I say glumly, until I remember that this is about her, not me. “So then what?”
“So then you guys showed up and I said ‘excuse me, I have to go tell my co-workers something very important,’ and then she just plopped down in a booth like it was completely okay for her to be here!”
“Did you tell her to leave?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
“I thought you said she wouldn’t take no for an answer?”
“Well, she wouldn’t,” Lacey says. “I mean, it wasn’t what she said exactly, it’s how she said it. And the way she sat down in that booth made it clear she was not going to move anytime soon.”
I sigh. “So what did she do exactly? You know, to cause this whole fight?”
Lacey looks at me like she can’t believe what I’m asking her. “She stole Riker right out from under my nose!”
“No, I know that,” I say. I try to figure out how to put this delicately, without upsetting Lacey, especially since she’s already upset. And who knows, maybe her hives really are stress-induced. “But what did she do? Like, exactly. Was it just one night at a party, like it was with me and Sebastian?”
“No,” Lacey says. Her green eyes fill with tears, and she turns away.
“It’s okay,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to tell me, the details don’t really matter.”
“No, it’s . . . it wasn’t a one-time thing. They’d been sneaking around for months.” She shrugs, then pulls a paper towel out of the dispenser, drops it in the garbage (the first one is too germy for her), and takes the next one and uses it to gently dab at her mascara. “It was pretty simple, actually. One morning I drove to Riker’s, because I’d left my work shirt over there, and Danielle was coming out of his house. Riker came out behind her and he was all disheveled like he’d just woken up, and he didn’t have a shirt on, and he kissed her and then walked her to her car, which was parked behind the house in the wraparound driveway. I guess so no one would see.”
“Did you confront her?”
“Yeah,” she says. “She admitted it, but only because she’d been caught. I mean, what else could she do?” Her eyes dart to the closed door. “And now she’s out there.” She says “out there” in a whisper, like Danielle is a deranged serial killer, waiting for Lacey to come out so she can attack her with a meat cleaver.
“Okay,” I say, standing up. “You are going to go out there. And you are going to tell her that you guys are not going to be friends. Ever, ever again.” I shake my head emphatically. “What she did to you is inexcusable! She should be ashamed of herself.” My face gets a little hot, thinking about Noah picking me up this morning, about how he asked me to lie to Ava about the night we went to the concert, about how he was at my house at one in the morning for some reason. The guilt washes over me in a huge wave, and it’s almost unbearable. And the next thing I know, my eyes are filling with tears.
“Hannah, are you . . . Are
you crying?” Lacey asks, peering closely at my face.
“No,” I say, even though I kind of am. “Well, sort of. God, I must be getting my period or something, I don’t know, I’m a mess.” I swipe at my tears with the back of my hand.
“You’re not a mess,” Lacey says, bending down and giving me a hug. “You’re just upset for me. Which means you’re a good friend. No, a great friend.” I hug her back, feeling guiltier than ever.
Danielle’s sitting in her favorite booth, the one she poured the glass of water all over that day. Cooley’s is open now, so there are a couple of older men sitting at the counter drinking coffee and reading the paper. They’re regulars, the grouchy, old kind of regulars, and I’m not sure they’re going to be too pleased if Lacey and Danielle start getting into a ton of teenage-girl drama in front of them. And if they happen to tell Cooley about it, he’s definitely not going to be too pleased.
“Take her outside,” I tell Lacey. She looks panicked at the thought of what taking it outside could turn into (let’s face it, when you say “let’s take this outside” usually nothing good happens once you get there), but nods. I watch as she goes over to Danielle, says something to her, and then follows her out onto the sidewalk.
“What’s going on?” Noah asks. He’s behind the counter, brewing up a fresh pot of coffee and refilling the cream pitchers.
“Danielle showed up here wanting to talk,” I say, shrugging. “So they’re talking. Don’t worry, I gave Lacey a pep talk.”
“What do you mean, a pep talk?” Noah asks, looking worried even though I just told him not to be.
“A pep talk,” I say. “You know, a talk of pep? A rally call? What they give you in sports to get you all riled up?” I reach behind the counter and pull out the big stack of menus, then grab a towel from the counter. You’d be surprised how disgusting and sticky the menus can get. It’s like everyone who orders pancakes is pouring syrup all over them or something. That would be a good trick for Danielle to learn. She could go from pouring water on tables to pouring syrup on menus.
“But you told her to listen to her, right? To what she has to say?”
“To what who has to say?”
“Danielle!”
“No, I did not tell her to listen to what Danielle has to say,” I say, shocked. “Danielle did something really heinous to her, which I will not get into right now since I’m not sure Lacey wants me discussing it with you.” He rolls his eyes at me, like I’m making a big deal out of nothing. “Don’t roll your eyes at me,” I say. “You haven’t been cheated on, so you can’t talk. ”
I think about the male voices I heard the other day on the phone with Ava, and wonder if maybe Noah has been cheated on. Who knows what the hell Ava’s been up to. I remember one time, a while ago, before she met Noah, Ava said if you hook up with a guy in another area code, it doesn’t count as cheating. Of course, we were in seventh grade then and neither one of us had boyfriends, much less guys in other area codes we could cheat on them with, but still.
“I already know what happened,” he says. “Riker cheated on her with Danielle.”
“Yes,” I say. “But you don’t know all the horrible details. And you know what? It doesn’t really matter. All you need to know is that her boyfriend cheated with her best friend.”
“And Lacey’s not even going to talk to Danielle about it? She’s not even going to give her a chance to explain?”
“What’s to explain?” I ask, wiping down a menu and trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling I keep getting in my stomach, the feeling that keeps reminding me about how Noah came to my house last night at one a.m., and about how we haven’t even talked about why he was there. I wonder if I’m afraid to bring it up, and if I’m not afraid, why I don’t. Maybe Noah was up late talking to Ava, and she told him it was fine if we hang out, that he should make up with me. But then why didn’t he just talk to me at work this morning? Why would he come over to my house in the middle of the night?
“So Lacey doesn’t even want to hear Danielle’s side of the story?” Noah asks. He takes the now-full coffeepot, sets it on the warmer, and gets to work making another batch. The guys at the counter really take this whole “bottomless cup of coffee” thing to another level. With the kind of coffee we serve here, I’m surprised they still have any stomachs left.
“Her side of the story?” Suddenly, I’m furious at him. “What could her side of the story possibly be? ‘I wanted to have sex with your boyfriend, so I just did’?”
“No,” he says. “Sometimes people do things that are complicated. For complicated reasons.”
“Right,” I say. “Like showing up at someone’s house at one o’clock in the morning.” Noah turns around and looks at me, a stricken look on his face. I’ve never seen him look that way, not even when he caught me reading his screenplay that day. But he doesn’t say anything, just turns around and goes back to making the coffee, which enrages me even more. “Or like if someone’s writing a screenplay and doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”
The muscles in his arm flex as he puts the pot on the burner and his mouth tightens as he turns back around. “That’s not fair,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask. Suddenly, I feel like I want to take everything out on him. The fact that Ava lied to me about how she and Riker broke up, the fact that Lacey is outside right now talking to a girl who did something horrible to her, the fact that Sebastian cheated on me. And most of all I want to punish him for the fact that I could be as horrible as Danielle, because every second, ever since that night at the concert, every time I’m around Noah, all I want to do is kiss him.
“Because you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “And you shouldn’t talk about things you know nothing about.”
“Guys!” Lacey says, running into Cooley’s, her face all flushed. “I did it! I told her to leave me alone and that I don’t want to be friends anymore!” She twirls around. “I finally stood up to her!”
“Good for you, Lace,” I say, shooting Noah a pointed look.
He doesn’t say anything for a beat, but then finally, he looks at Lacey and says softly, “Yeah. Good for you.”
The First Day of Senior Year
I can’t afford to miss another class, which means I have to go to seventh period world history, even though I’m a mess. I decide take a seat in the back, and hope I don’t have a total and complete breakdown in front of everyone. Although if I did, no one could really blame me. I mean, I’ve ruined everything. My whole entire life! And for what? Some dumb boy?
Everyone knows that you should never wreck your life for a boy, and especially not one that you meet while you’re in high school. Seriously, everyone knows it. You never hear someone say, “Oh, wow, you’re seventeen and you really like him? That’s great, you should do whatever it takes to get him, even if it means wrecking your whole life.” The only people who would even come close to saying something like that are the people who are actually dumb enough to do it, right before they end up wrecking their whole lives. And then they realize how stupid they were for doing it.
A tear falls down my cheek and onto my notebook, making a splotch on the cover. Great. I hate when the covers of my notebooks get splotchy! Of course, a splotchy notebook cover is really the least of my problems at this point.
And then a problem I forgot all about comes waltzing into the room and sits down in the seat next to me. And that problem is named Jemima Marshall.
“Hey,” she says, softly. I don’t say anything, because I am so not in the mood to deal with this right now. She fidgets around in her seat, then scratches at a mosquito bite on her elbow.
“What are you doing in this class?” I ask finally. “I didn’t know sophomores could take world history.”
“It’s an elective,” she says. “And I needed another history credit.” Great. Now I can be reminded every day of what a mess my life is. Maybe if I’m really lucky I’ll fail, and she’ll get an A and end up going to Yale becau
se of it or something. Not right away, of course. She’s only a sophomore.
“Good for you,” I say, annoyed. I contemplate picking up all my stuff and moving a few rows over, but the room is filling up now and that would look really obvious. People would talk about it. Which they’re probably going to do already, but no sense adding fuel to the fire.
“Why are you crying?” Jemima asks.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” she says, but not in a mean way, more just matter-of-fact. “Your eyes are all red and your notebook is all splotchy.”
“My eyes are all red? How red?” Not that I really care how they look (who do I have to impress?) but I’m pretty sure the rumors are already flying about my showdown in the hallway with Lacey, and if people know I’m crying, that will be even more humiliating. God, I really wish I could go home. Only two more periods to go, and then I’ll be out of this hellhole. Of course, I’ll have the next ten months to deal with, but I’ll worry about that later.
“Not that bad,” Jemima says, but she says it the way you tell someone they look fine after they’ve put on a bunch of weight. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a mirror, a concealer stick, and a bottle of Visine. “If you do it quick, no one will notice,” she says.
“Thanks.” I accept the items gratefully, then use a few drops of Visine and dab some concealer under my eyes. A quick look in the mirror lets me know that even if it’s not perfect, it’s a lot better. And I feel a little better, too.
“So listen,” she says. “About—”
“Look,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I said that thing earlier about suing you. No one’s going to sue you. Lacey’s fine.” Just saying Lacey’s name makes me sad, and it gets stuck in my throat for a second before I can push it out. It’s also kind of a lie, since Lacey definitely isn’t fine. Ohmigod. What if her hives came back? And it’s all because of me? Or what if her acid reflux gets going? That’s the new thing that happens to her now when she gets stressed. “I’ll find out how much it’s going to cost to get my car fixed, and then I’ll let you know, okay? And we can go from there.”