Forever Changes (11 page)

Brianna woke up the next day feeling especially tired.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if this was something she should be worrying about, but she just told herself that she was stressed out about everything she had to do.

Sunday was supposed to be the day of rest, but there was a big paper in English, a big paper in history, a big test in calc, and, oh yeah, her MIT application.  She really wanted to polish it off today, but she knew if she sat around here all day, it would be impossible for her to do it.  Every time she wanted to sit down and do it, she found herself doing other stuff.  She knew it was because of her stupid irrational fear that completing the application would cause her to be struck dead for having the hubris (a good word she’d learned when they read
Oedipus
which was otherwise really boring) to hope for a future.

Well, there was nothing for it.  If she was going to get this done, she needed Adam to make her do it.

As soon as it seemed like a decent hour, Brianna called Adam’s house.

“Hey,” he said. “You are so lucky.  Jessica just left five minutes ago.  Early flight.  If she’d been here when you called … hoo boy.  Trouble.”

Brianna rolled her eyes. “Can you hear my eyes rolling?”

“Actually, yes I can.  Did I go to the well one too many times on that joke?”

“At least.  Listen, can I ask you a favor?”

“You can ask.”

Brianna rolled her eyes again.  God, the kid was a cornball.  “Okay, well, I’m having a hard time making myself do the application, so I was hoping we could like get together and you could bug me until I do it.”

“Sure!  I have a pantsload of work to do today, so I’d love some company.”

“Great!”  She hadn’t thought this out very well.  Her house was tiny and not that clean, and she didn’t really like having anybody but Melissa and Stephanie and maybe Ashley over here.  “So, do you wanna meet at Melville’s or something?  Maybe get some coffee?”

“Why don’t you come over to my house?   My mom made pie last night.  I like to like sit in the sunroom and look at the sea a little bit, and it makes homework a little more tolerable.”

Wow.  She knew from driving him home from MIT that Adam lived in East Blackpool, but she’d only seen the front of the house, and it had been dark.  If he had a sunroom with an ocean view, he must be loaded.

“Okay.  Great. When’s a good time for you?”

“Well, how about one o’clock?”

“Great.” Brianna hung up.

At one, she arrived at Adam’s house.  It was about five times the size of her house. Adam’s mom showed her into the sunroom, which was like a big porch with windows on every wall.  In the distance, the waves crashed against the shore, never stopping, each wave an integer, each wave an atom, each wave a point, each one an infinitesimal fraction of all the waves that ever were or ever would be.

“Hey!”  Adam said as she walked into the sunroom.  “You want some pie?”

“Um, sure,” Brianna said.

“Oh, look, and here’s Mom with two big slices now!”

Adam’s mom, a tall, incredibly pale, kind of nerdly looking woman (big surprise), said, “Just so you know, Brianna, I don’t always wait on him.  I’m trying to teach him a little bit about hospitality here, though it’s probably lost on him.  Smart boy, but kind of clueless socially,”  She teased.

“Hey!” Adam said, grinning, “I resemble that remark!”

“See what I mean?” his mom said.  “Gets that corny sense of humor from his father.  I can’t seem to break either of them of it.”

She set the pie down, and Brianna thanked her.  “You see, Adam?” Mrs. Pennington said.  “That’s what you do when someone does something nice for you!”

“Thanks, Mom.  Can you get back in your cage now?”

This earned Adam a quick smack on the back of the head.  “Only language he understands,” Mrs. Pennington said, smiling.

“I’ll remember that,” Brianna said.

“Hey, you only get to smack me if you make me pie first,” Adam said.

“In your dreams,” Brianna retorted.  She popped a pill and took a forkful of the apple pie—it had those crisscrossed parts on the top and tasted amazing.
“So, what have you got done so far?” Adam asked.

“I’ve done a first draft of my essay,” she said, “I asked everybody for recommendations. Now I just have all this other crap to fill out.” Brianna indicated the forms with all of the basic personal information blanks.

“All right.  Let’s get to it.  You wanna copy mine?”

“We have the same social security number all of a sudden?”

“I was joking, geez.”

Brianna realized another reason she hadn’t done the forms.  Because filling out all these forms was just like filling out the medical forms.  Here is my name and social security number.  Here are the medications I am currently taking. Here is where I sign to indicate my understanding that there is a small, but nonzero chance of my dying as a result of this procedure.

Still, with Adam looking on, she made herself do it.  For about thirty seconds, until her phone rang.  Melissa.

“Hey Mel, what’s up?”

“Freaking out.  Totally freaking out.  I have a test tomorrow, and I’m sorry, Bri, I know you already explained this stuff to me, but I really need help, I am totally going to fail.”

“Okay, calm down.  Do you want me to come over at four?”

“I can’t, I have to work.  Can you come over now?”

“No, Mel, I’m kind of … I’m in the middle of something.”

She could hear Melissa’s panic get overwhelmed by curiosity.  “What are you in the middle of? Is Todd over there?”

“Ugh, God, no.  I’m just over at Adam’s getting some help with my MIT application.”

“Tell her to come over,” Adam said.  “There’s plenty of pie.”

“Um, you wanna come over here?”

“I don’t want to butt in on your little study date,” Melissa said.  “God, that is so cute!  And I love the fact that you can’t even deny it because he’s sitting right there!”

“Yeah,” Brianna said in a flat voice, “Here’s Adam to tell you how to get here.”  She handed the phone to Adam and went back to filling out forms.

Melissa arrived fifteen minutes later, shown in to the sunroom by a beaming Mr. Pennington.

“Hi, Adam, thanks for letting me come over,” Melissa said, smiling sweetly.

“No problem at all!  You want some pie?”

Melissa looked at Brianna.  “It’s really good pie,” Brianna said. “You should have some.”

“Okay.  So, Bri, I’m sorry, but can you look at this?”  Melissa said, pulling a notebook out of her bag.

“I’m about halfway through this short answer question.  Give me about five minutes.”

“Maybe I can help?” Adam offered.

“Awesome,” she said.  “Thank you.”

An hour and a half later, Brianna was done with her application and Melissa was no longer convinced she was going to fail her test and ruin her life.

They left together, and Melissa said, “He’s really nice.”

“Yes he is,” Brianna said.

“Don’t worry, though, Bri, you can have him.”

Brianna punched Melissa in the arm.  “Would you shut up?”

Melissa laughed, and Brianna drove home feeling happy.

When Dad got home from work, she came out of her room, sealed envelope in hand, and popped it in his lap.

“Done!” she said.

“Hey, congratulations!” Dad said.  “You want me to mail it for you?”

“Yeah, that would be great. I don’t even want to look at that thing anymore.”

“So how are we gonna celebrate?” Dad asked.

Brianna suddenly found herself annoyed. “We can’t celebrate unless I get in,” she said.  And, she didn’t say, maybe not even then, because even if I get in, there’s no guarantee I’ll live long enough to go.

Dad must have seen the shadow cross her face.  “What’s the matter, honey?” he said. “You know, I called about some motorcycle lessons, and I think your bike will be ready by—”

“It’s not that, Daddy.  I just … I want to go, but, I’m just afraid …” Weird.  She thought it all the time, but she couldn’t make her mouth say the words.

“I know,” Dad said.  He got off the couch and hugged her and didn’t say anything.  There was nothing to say.

Brianna woke up earlier than usual.  She was grumpy and tired and kept snapping at Dad that he was doing the percussion all wrong.

“Hey,” Dad stammered, “It sounds like … your breathing … do you think we should call Dr. Patel and maybe get you another nebulizer treatment?”

Brianna was furious.  “No more nebs!  They taste like hell and they don’t work!  No, no no!  I’m fine!”

Dad pounded on  her in silence for a minute.  “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing is
wrong
, okay? I’m just grumpy.”

“Okay.”  Pound, pound, pound. “Now, I’m not going to give you advice because I know you hate that.”

“Good,” Brianna said before coughing up and spitting up a gob of phlegm.

“Nice one!” Dad said, and Brianna couldn’t help smiling.

“Yeah, I try.”

“Anyway, just listen to everything I have to say before you get mad, okay?”

Brianna knew that meant he was about to infuriate her, but once Dad got it into his head that he had something to say, there was no getting him to stop.  “Okay.”

“I want to tell you something about my life.”

Brianna didn’t say anything.

“Your mom took off because she was afraid of losing you.”

“Dad, this isn’t what I want to talk about first thing in the—”

“Wait. Let me finish.  Now, I think that she made a terrible choice.  I mean, I’m just as afraid as she is, but if I’d let that fear rule my life, I would have missed out on so much—pretty much everything that made my life worth living.  I am not going to pull away from you because I’m afraid of losing you.  I mean, a lot of people tell me not to ride my bike at all, even for the three miles from here to Bargain Zone because it’s too dangerous, what if something bad happens?  Well, I mean, what if it doesn’t?   Then at least I get a little fun in my day before I have to go make sure there are enough Dora the Explorer backpacks on the racks and fire a few of your classmates for getting high out back.”

Brianna laughed.  That happened about once a year, and it was never surprising and always amusing.

“So that’s it.  The fact that things are scary doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them.  That’s not living.”

Brianna knew it was good advice, but she also knew that Dad was full of shit. If he was so bold about diving into life no matter what happened, why hadn’t he dated anybody since Mom left?  He was all about not being afraid of things he didn’t really think were going to happen—he didn’t really believe he’d wipe out on his bike because it had never happened.  But he knew he could get his heart shredded because it had already happened, so he wouldn’t give it up to anybody else.  Or else he was still carrying a torch for Mom.  She didn’t know which one was sadder.

“Hey,” Dad said as he finished up the percussion, “you in there?”

“Yeah,” Brianna said. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said.

Brianna got to school early and headed up to Eccles’ room.  He wasn’t there, so she went to the caf for a few minutes.  Melissa wasn’t there, but Stephanie was.  Brianna sat down and helped herself to munchkins, and Stephanie started talking about how she was now ready to dump Tom who’d beaten up Kevin at the party because, she said, “he just isn’t that nice to me.”

Brianna bit her tongue hard to resist pointing out that if you decide to go out with a guy because you’ve seen him beating somebody up, it really shouldn’t be such a shocker if he turns out not to be that nice.  Stephanie went on and on about her bad luck, and Brianna finally said, “Maybe it’s not your luck.  Maybe it’s the choices you’re making.  I mean, there are tons of nice guys out there, but they’re probably not the ones getting into fights at parties.”  Ooops.  She said it anyway.

There was an uncomfortable silence and Brianna was really afraid that Stephanie was going to start crying or something.  Instead she just sighed and said, “Yeah.  Maybe you’re right.  Let me know if you find any.”

The bell rang.  “You never have any trouble finding guys—you just have to pick the nice ones.” Brianna said.

“I know,” Stephanie said.  “But there’s something about dumb and good-looking that I can’t resist.”

“But sweetie, it’s making you miserable.”

“Yeah.  Maybe I should just take a break from all guys for a while until I can figure out how to start liking better ones.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Brianna said.  The bell rang and they both ran off to homeroom.

She felt winded by the time she got there.  It was  a trip she had made without getting winded countless times.  Well, she was stressed out.  She plopped down next to Adam.

He looked up with a big grin on his face. “Thank you so much!” he said.

“You’re welcome?  What are you thanking me for?”

“Duh! Two girls in my house! You should have seen the look my dad gave me—I honestly don’t think he’s ever been as proud of me as he was last night.”

“That’s great, I guess.”

“So this is hilarious— first he gives me this lecture about how it’s important to play the field—like I’ve ever even been on the field!  But, he says, I have to be careful about hurting people, and I shouldn’t string two girls along at once.”

Brianna knew it wasn’t really nice to laugh, but she just couldn’t help it.

Fortunately, Adam didn’t seem to mind.  “Wait,” he said, laughing, “it gets better.  this morning I found a
box of condoms
on my nightstand.  Like he thinks I’m some kind of super stud or something.”

“Eww!  Eww!”

“I know.  My dad’s delusional.  But still, I guess it was a pretty big deal to him.  And, I guess to me too.  It was nice to be included.”

She had an urge to tell him that there just weren’t that  many nice people out there, that being nice was more important than being popular, that she could see his future stretching out, and it looked a lot nicer than Jim’s or Kendrick’s or any of those guys who never got picked on, who enforced the code of conformity in the halls by making fun of chubby goth girls and stuff.

But it would have been weird to say that, so she just smiled and said, “Well, it was nearly painless for us too.”

“Hmm. Next time I’ll be sure to sing. Then it’ll be
really
painful.”