Sometimes It Happens (26 page)

And at the end of last year, Ava, Sebastian, Noah, and I all signed up for it. We figured it’d be an easy A, it would get our art elective over with, and it would guarantee that we’d all have at least one class together. Unfortunately, that means that at the end of the day, we’re all going to be together. In one class. Not even sitting in desks, but at those long tables
that are in all the art rooms, the kind that allow people to mingle and talk and maybe even get into fights. When I remember all of this, I realize there’s no way we can all be in the same room together. So I have no choice but to go back down to guidance.

“Oh, hi,” I say to Rosie when I get there, giving her an embarrassed grin. “Sorry about that before.” I roll my eyes, like,
wow, who hasn’t been in a situation like that, wasn’t it crazy?

But Rosie’s not having it. “You mean when you ran out of here and caused a big disturbance in the hall that would have constituted me writing you up if I weren’t so busy in here?” she asks.

I want to tell her that (a) she doesn’t have the authority to write people up, that only teachers can do that, (b) she doesn’t really look that busy, since it seems like she’s been spending most of her time turning people away, and (c) she really shouldn’t mess with me, because I’m definitely not in the mood.

But instead I just smile sweetly and say, “Yes, well, I’m obviously in need of some guidance.” When did I become such a smartass? I have no idea. I think I’ve been pushed to my brink. Normally I wouldn’t dare say that to someone. Ever. Secretary or not.

“Obviously,” she says.

“So can I see Mr. Davies?”

“No,” she says. “You had your chance. You blew it.”

I don’t even bother listening to her. I just march over to a
chair in the corner and sit down. Again, I don’t know where this is coming from. Until today, I’ve never been in trouble at school. I hardly ever even skip class. I seriously might have really lost my mind. Like, for real. Not that anyone could blame me.

“What are you doing?” Rosie asks, sounding aghast.

“Waiting for Mr. Davies.” I cross my legs and fold my hands on my lap primly.

Rosie looks at me for a second, then reaches over and buzzes Mr. Davies on the phone. “I have Hannah Kaplan in here,” she says. I guess she knows my name after our little interaction earlier. Which I’m not sure is a good thing. “She’s
insisting
on seeing you, and being very belligerent, not to mention that scene she caused in the hall earlier. Shall I write her up and send her back to class?” She listens for a second, and then her lips purse up and she replaces the receiver without saying goodbye. Judging from the dirty look she gives me, I’m assuming Mr. Davies said he’d see me. She turns away and then starts typing something into her computer, probably updating her Facebook page with something about how she can’t deal with the little snots that go to this school. I’ve seen her write similar things on there before. She has her page set to private, but Sebastian knows ways around that.

After about twenty minutes, Mr. Davies calls me in. Which is no good. I haven’t missed ceramics yet, and I realize that, in my panic, I’ve made a huge tactical error. I should have come here
during
ceramics. But now that I’m already
here, I can’t just leave and decide I’m coming back later. Especially with Rosie out there. Which means I’m just going to have to convince Mr. Davies that I need to drop ceramics. Immediately.

“Hi, Mr. Davies,” I say as soon as I’m in his office.

“Hello, Hannah,” he says, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “What can I do for you today?” Mr. Davies looks exactly the way you’d expect a guidance counselor to look, with a trim little mustache and glasses. He’s always wearing sweater vests, even when the weather is super hot, and he’s never without a cup of coffee.

I pull my schedule out from under the cover of my math book and slide it across the desk at him. Better make this quick, hit him before he has a chance to realize what I’m doing. Not that he could have any idea of my real motives. “I need to drop ceramics, so can I have a drop slip?” Wow, I’ve really gotten very aggressive today. It’s kind of making me uncomfortable, if you want to know the truth.

“Now, Hannah,” Mr. Davies says, looking down at my schedule. “Why would you want to drop ceramics? That’s a very hard class to get into.”

“I know,” I say. “But, um, . . .” I wrack my brain, trying to think of an excuse. I really should have planned this out better. “My hands are just . . . I mean, I’ve been having arthritis or Carpal Tunnel or something, and it’s really not good for me to work with clay.”

Mr. Davies frowns, and I don’t blame him. It sounds lame
even to me, and I’m the one who made it up. “That doesn’t sound right,” he says. “Listen, why don’t you give it a shot for a couple of days, and then if you still want to drop it, come back here and we’ll talk, okay?”

“No!” I almost scream. “I mean, I can’t. It . . . It will only take a few minutes of working with the clay to set off my hands.” I try to contort my face in a mask of pain, then reach my fingers up and flex them at him.

Mr. Davies frowns again, his bushy eyebrows knotting together over the top of his glasses. Then understanding dawns on his face, and he looks at me. “Does this have anything to do with what happened in the hall earlier?”

“What do you mean?”

“The scene in the hall? Between you and Lacey and Noah?”

“Nooo,” I say. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that.” I try to sound offended, like high school dramas have no bearing on the decisions I make, even though we both know that making decisions based on high school dramas is, like, the basis of your teenage years.

“Hannah, running away from your problems isn’t going to change them. Now, let me write you a pass back to Western Civ.” God. Does he have to be such a guidance counselor? Seriously, guidance counselors are always putting the fact that they’re supposed to be guiding us above treating us like human beings. It’s really kind of annoying.

And that’s when it happens. I lose all my self-respect.
I literally throw myself across his desk. “Please!” I say. “Please, you don’t understand. I cannot be in that ceramics class. Please, Mr. Davies.”

He looks at me and for a moment, I think maybe, just maybe, he’s going to change his mind. He’s going to say that even though he doesn’t believe in running away from things, that it’s okay this one time, that he’s going to make an exception, that he trusts me to know what’s best for myself. The indecision flickers over his face, but the next thing I know, he’s signing the pass for me, sending me back to Western Civ.

“Hannah,” he says. “Please return to class. And next period, I’ll expect to hear that you’re in ceramics.”

So what can I do? I take the pass. Which means that next period, I’ll be in the same room as Ava. And Noah. And Sebastian. I leave guidance, and I don’t think it’s my imagination that Rosie smirks at me as I go by.

“Okay,” Noah says when I open the door at seven a.m. on the morning of our trip. “Are you ready to rock ’n’ roll?”

I stare at him blankly. “First of all, no one says ‘are you ready to rock ’n’ roll?’ anymore.”

“They don’t?”

“No. And second, do I
look
like I’m ready to rock ’n’ roll?” He takes in my hair (a mess), my clothes (the T-shirt and shorts that I slept in), and the space in the hallway behind me (a tangle of suitcases, bags, and clothes, with a stray curling iron and some makeup thrown in for good measure).

“No,” he says. “You don’t. What is all this mess?”

“Packing,” I say, walking toward the pile and almost tripping over the cord to my hot-roller set.

“We’re only going for two nights.”

“I know,” I say. “But I’ve never been to a summer camp before. I don’t know what to wear.”

“You don’t know what to wear to camp?” Noah looks
perplexed, like it should be obvious. But it’s really not.

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I know I need mostly casual clothes, like shorts, T-shirts, stuff like that.” I point to my open suitcase, where a bunch of those items are shoved into one corner. “But will we be going out at all? Like on Ava’s time off? Will we go out to dinner? If so, I should probably bring regular clothes. And what if we decide to go to a nice place? Then I should probably bring a nice sundress or something. And what if she wants to go out both nights? Then I need two. And what if it rains? Do I need sneakers? Are we going to go hiking? How messy will I get? Are there showers? I want to bring my hair dryer, but are there even outlets?”

“I see what you mean,” Noah says, nodding mock-seriously. “There are very important decisions to be made here.”

“Life-changing,” I agree. “Or at least trip-changing.”

“I vote for three T-shirts and pairs of shorts, one nice pair of jeans, a nice shirt, two sundresses, and all your hair dryers and stuff, just in case. Also, wear your sandals in the car, but pack your sneakers in case of a hike.”

I stare at him in awe. “That was an amazing amount of distillation.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an amazing distiller.”

He grins, and I grin back, then gather up all the stuff he told me I would need, place it in my suitcase, and zip it all up. I hurry upstairs, run a brush through my hair, change into a pair of jean shorts and a tank, step into my sparkly
black slides, and run down the stairs. “Ready,” I say.

When we get in the car, Noah pulls out his iPod and plugs it in. “I made a new playlist,” he says.

“You made a playlist for us?” Then I realize how that sounds, and so I quickly add, “I mean not for us, I know not for
us,
but for the trip?”

Somehow the babbling makes it even worse, and Noah looks uncomfortable for a second and then he says, “Yeah, a lot of The Spill Canvas and some stuff you haven’t heard before.”

“Cool,” I say, sliding my seat belt over my lap. “How long does it take to get there?”

He checks the GPS. “Two and a half hours,” he says.

“Yay, road trip!”

Three hours later, we’ve gone twenty miles. There’s some kind of horrible accident on the Mass Pike, and we’ve been stuck in traffic forever. We can’t even get off the highway, because the shoulder’s closed and there’s nowhere to go. “I should call Ava,” I say. “And tell her that we’re going to be late.”

“Good idea,” he says. I can’t believe neither one of us thought to call her earlier, but honestly, sitting in traffic with Noah hasn’t really been all that bad. We’ve been talking and listening to music, and the time has just flown by. The only thing we haven’t talked about is his screenplay, which I
do
want to talk about, but haven’t brought up because:

a. I don’t know what to say about it. I mean, I read it three times and it was amazing and well-written and I loved it, even though I have some ideas on what he could do to sharpen some of the girl’s dialogue and the romance between the two characters. But I don’t know how to bring it up, since it’s obviously a big deal for him to show it to anyone, and I really don’t want him to think that I’m saying I like it just because I feel I have to.

b. I don’t know what it means that he showed it to me. Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) late at night when I’m in bed, I think about how no one else, not even Ava, has read it, and how that has to mean something. And then I hope I’m right, while at the same time hoping that I’m wrong. Because if I am right, and it does mean something, then what does that mean? And if I’m wrong, and it doesn’t mean anything, well, then . . . that would kind of break my heart a little bit.

I push all that stuff out of my head and dial Ava’s number. “Hi,” I say when she answers.

“Hi!” she says. “Are you almost here? Just pull around to the south parking lot, you’ll see a big sign that says ‘visitors.’ I’m in the dining hall, but I can—”

“Actually, we’re not almost there,” I say. “Not even close. We got stuck in traffic, we’ve been sitting on the Pike for, like, three hours.” Silence.

Then, “Well, how far away are you?”

“We’re only about twenty minutes from home,” I say. “And to tell you the truth, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be breaking up anytime soon.”

More silence. Then, “Oh.”

“Oh?” I ask. “Are you mad?”

“Not mad,” she says. “It’s just kind of rude of you not to call me before this.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m so sorry, we just lost track of time.” Next to me, Noah is going through his iPod, scrolling through songs until he settles on one. “Ohmigod!” I say as the first notes come out of the speakers. “This is Sting! I recognize his voice.”

Noah reaches over and gives me a high-five. “There might be hope for you yet,” he says.

“Excuse me?” Ava screeches.

“Oh,” I say. “Nothing, sorry, I just . . . I got excited because I recognized a Sting song Noah put on.”

“So?”

“So he thinks I have horrible taste in music, and he’s been trying to expand my horizons.”

“Oh.” It’s just one word, but something about her one-word responses are really packing a punch, if you know what
I mean. It could be my imagination, I could just be feeling guilty, but I don’t think so.

“So we’ll be there really soon,” I say brightly. “And I’ll call you when we get close.”

“Okay,” she says. “Hurry up.” And then she hangs up on me.

I slide my phone back into my bag. “She said to hurry up,” I say. I don’t tell him that she hung up on me, but I think he knows, since I never said goodbye. Yikes.

An hour more into the trip, I crack. I can’t take it anymore. So after we’ve stopped at a McDonald’s drive-through for strawberry-banana smoothies and chicken nuggets, I wait until we’re back on the highway and then I blurt, “So I read your screenplay.”

Noah doesn’t say anything for a second, then reaches over and turns down the music. He takes a slow sip of his smoothie, then shifts on his seat. “Oh?”