Breaking the Rules: The Honeybees, book 1 (15 page)

I gasped out loud on the empty street. No. It couldn’t be.
 

The reunion was
the
night before the marathon
?

How had I not realized this? This was terrible news. I needed to rest the night before, to go to sleep early, to mentally prepare for the coming day. Not to mention, the marathon itself started at 7:00 a.m., though Devin’s and my group was a little later, at 7:25.

Could I do this? Would I have to choose one or the other? There was no way I could fully enjoy the reunion knowing that the marathon was coming up the next morning, and no way I could be in my best shape for the marathon if I went to the reunion.

Life can’t always be perfect
, a little voice in my head said.
Sometimes you just have to make do.
 

I took a deep breath. Okay. I would make do. I would go to the reunion and not have anything to drink. I would talk and catch up with my former classmates. And then I would go to sleep early and wake up early, ready for the marathon.
 

I could do it all. I started running again, heading back home.

Somehow, this affirmation made me feel better about Devin himself. I could do this. I could date Devin and stick to my guns and go to bed early when I saw him. I could handle Taco’s chaos and still do my training runs, still compete to the best of my ability. I could date Devin and find my grounding at the same time.
 

I just hoped I wasn’t fooling myself.

I saw Devin a couple of days later at our Saturday morning training. He’d brought Taco, and now, in the clear light of day, I was embarrassed at my freakout and surprised at the force of my excitement at seeing the two of them.
 

I approached shyly. “Hi, Devin,” I said, and he wrapped me up in a big hug.

“Hey, you,” he said.
 

We ran together, the three of us, and it felt comfortable, safe.

“Hey, so what are you doing this time next month?” he asked.
 

I searched my memory. “That’s the last weekend before the marathon, isn’t it?”
 

He nodded. “I thought it might be good for us to get away for a couple of days. Do something different. Maybe go to the coast. Just relax a little before the stress of your high school reunion and the marathon.”

I almost tripped in my surprise. “You knew? You knew the reunion was the same weekend as the marathon?”

“Of course I knew,” he said, side-eyeing me. “Is this a trick?”

“No trick. I just didn’t realize it myself until yesterday,” I admitted.
 

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Ooh-hoo,” he said. “You’re saying I’m more organized than Little Miss Plans-It-All? Surely not.”

I smiled and punched him playfully. He was right. I’d been the one who hadn’t planned ahead this time, not him. “I’m impressed,” I said.
 

“So how about it? Want to go away with me for the weekend? I’ll find us a little place to rent. We can leave after training and come back Sunday evening.”

I hesitated. It sounded nice—really nice, in fact. So why did I feel so much anxiety every time Devin suggested doing anything out of the ordinary? What was the worst that could happen?

“That sounds great. And”—I couldn’t resist adding—“I’m impressed with you for planning ahead a whole month.”

He grinned at me. “I’m pretty impressive.” And then he did a little dance as he ran—a celebration dance, perhaps. Goofy Devin. While I felt like my lungs were going to explode, he had enough extra energy to play his way through his workout.

Over the next few weeks, I saw Devin and Taco almost every day. The three of us were settling into a comfortable routine, and I couldn’t imagine my life without them. We went out to restaurants that allowed dogs, cooked together, rented movies and snuggled on the couch with Taco at our feet, and went for runs frequently.
 

But as the date drew nearer, I was increasingly nervous about the marathon. Being with Devin had meant eating rich foods and having desserts, and any weight I’d lost from running I’d gained back from spending time with him. I also wasn’t as fast as I needed to be, and Devin often wanted to go for shorter runs that I felt I needed. What if I couldn’t finish the marathon? What if I was so slow that he left me in the dust while he ran ahead? What if…

The questions could rattle around my head for hours, drowning out everything else, if I let them. I could definitely use a distraction, and I was glad I had our weekend away to look forward to.
 

A week later, Ms. Mayfield called me into her office first thing in the morning.
 

“Sophie, I have some good news for you,” she said.

I perked up. “About the field trip?”

She nodded, and I felt the excitement rise up from my stomach into my throat. “I can take them?” I couldn’t believe it. It had been months since I’d first broached the topic, and I’d assumed Ms. Mayfield putting me off was an answer in itself.

“I just got off the phone with the museum’s educational coordinator,” she said. “They don’t normally take groups that young, but I explained that you believe these particular kids are capable of handing it.”

My mind was racing. “When can we go? There aren’t a lot of weeks left before the end of the school year.”

Ms. Mayfield had hesitated. “Well, that’s the one problem…” She had explained that another school group had just canceled, and the museum director was hoping we could take their spot so that their educational coordinator could be there to give a tour. The slot, however, was only two and a half weeks away—days before the reunion and marathon, I’d noted. I’d have to rush to get my permission slips signed and to coordinate parent volunteers.

I was overjoyed by the news, though, and undaunted by the work ahead. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll get it all figured out right away,” I promised.

I rushed back to my classroom to make and print permission slips along with a letter to parents explaining the trip and why I thought it would be good for the students. As soon as the kids started arriving, I made sure each parent had a letter in their hands or in their child’s backpack.

But most importantly, I pulled Angelina and her mom aside the moment they arrived for their dropoff that morning. I practically skipped over to them, eager to share my news.

“Angelina,” I said, kneeling down to her level. “Guess what!”

“What?” she asked.

I told her about the museum field trip, glancing up at her mom for support, and Angelina’s eyes lit up. “That’s great, Ms. Burleigh!” her mom had said. “Angelina will love that!”

This was just how I had hoped it would happen. This field trip was going to be amazing! And Angelina, for her part, had been ecstatic, bouncing and dancing around the room in smiles.
 

The rest of the day, the smile never left her face. I was thrilled, and I hoped that the trip would live up to her expectations. It was kids like Angelina who made me enjoy being a teacher, kids who were excited about learning and about their futures. I pictured her walking around the museum with her typical careful gate, cautious not to disturb anything she wasn’t supposed to touch. We would show the educational coordinator that even these five-year-olds were capable of appreciating art. They would be the best-behaved group of kids the museum had ever seen.

I made a mental note to have a stern talk with Brandon before the field trip.

That afternoon, I got together with Rachel. Rachel was the last of the Honeybees, my one high school friend I hadn’t yet seen. I’d never been as close to her as to the others, and I felt less like I could relate to her life since high school as well. In part, it was because she lived further away, in the beautiful house along the coast I’d seen in photos. For another, I’d heard she got married very young, at twenty-two, not long after graduating from college, and so I imagined her life as being very different from my own.
 

We met on a cloudy day in early May, only three weeks before the reunion and the marathon. I was myself nervous to see Rachel, more nervous than I’d been to see my other friends, hoping I’d be able to bridge the gulf between us.
 

Rachel had suggested that we go to an art gallery near her house, and I was happy to get out of the city, if only for a few hours. I left work as soon as the bell dismissed my students and headed out on the BART.

My stop was a few blocks away from the gallery. I passed fancy sandwich shops and gelaterias, other art galleries and shops full of hand-knit sweaters and gifts. There were tourists were everywhere.

I arrived at the gallery a few minutes early and wandered around looking at the art while I waited for Rachel, feeling my excitement grow at the prospect of taking my students to see art. The room was filled with mostly abstract pieces in splashes of color and unexpected textures. It was pretty, but it wasn’t art I particularly understood.

Back in high school, Rachel had wanted to be an artist. She took art classes every semester, and I remembered her carrying her creations through the halls, huge frames or ceramic vases or masks. I wondered now if she had managed to become a professional artist after all. Did she, perhaps, display in this very gallery? I looked closer at some of the placards but didn’t see her name.

A moment later, I felt a warm hand on my arm. I spun around from the piece I’d been staring at, hundreds of pieces of painted strings strung over a canvas, and there was Rachel.

She looked just how I remembered her. Her dark, somewhat curly hair was cut short, and her eye makeup had softened a bit in the past decade, but otherwise she was the same old Rachel, staring at me with warm, amber eyes.

“Sophie!” she said, and pulled me into a hug. “I’m so glad you got in touch.”

“It’s really good to see you,” I said. “I couldn’t stand the thought of going to the reunion without catching up with my Honeybees first.”

Rachel looked at me blankly. “The reunion?”

“The high school reunion,” I prompted uncertainly. Had she not heard about it?

“Oh right, of course,” Rachel said. “I’d totally forgotten that was coming up.”

“But you’re going, aren’t you?” I asked. “You have to go.”

“I wasn’t…I wasn’t planning on it,” Rachel said, and I looked at her, shocked.

“But I need you!” I said. “I need all of the Honeybees there with me.”

Rachel laughed, shaking her head. “I haven’t thought about that term in so many years,” she said, almost to herself, and I tried not to be hurt. It may have been a long time, but didn’t our friendship matter to her like it had mattered to me?

Then, perking up, she gestured around her. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Do you have work here?” I asked. “It’s all very pretty…”

“Oh, no, I don’t do art myself much these days. But I do volunteer with the gallery a fair amount. I help them install and take down the art, and I particularly liked this batch.”

“Okay, that’s pretty cool.” I was surprised Rachel didn’t do art herself anymore, but if volunteering with the gallery made her happy, then I was happy for her.

“So what do you do these days?” I asked as we started to walk around, looking at the art more closely. Every so often, Rachel would point something out to me that I had missed, or explain what the artist was trying to accomplish with the piece.

Rachel didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “I do a lot of cooking. I walk up and down the beach with my dog every day.”

It seemed like she felt uncomfortable with the question, so I interjected, “You have a dog? I have a dog too!”

I told her about Taco, and she told me about her dog, a golden retriever. “I never pictured you as a golden retriever kind of person,” I said, imagining her with a tougher breed, or a mutt, like Taco.

Rachel shrugged. “Edgar always wanted a golden retriever when he was growing up, so we got one.”

“Edgar is your husband?”

“Yep, married almost six years.”

“Impressive,” I said. “I was with my ex for six years, but we broke up a few months back.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“I’m not,” I said, and for the first time I really meant it. I was truly better off without Matt—better and happier.

We stopped in front of a glass sculpture, colored bits twisting upward like arms toward the sky. “Okay, I’ll admit it, I said. “This is beautiful, but I don’t get it.”

Rachel stared at the piece, considering. “I don’t know that there’s anything to get, really,” she said. “It’s just about playing with form and color. The spirals show movement, even though the glass obviously can’t move. It looks like it’s reaching upward to the sky, like toward the heavens. Maybe like a child reaching up for a parent.”

“Well, that’s a lot of interpretation if there’s nothing really to get from the piece,” I said, and she laughed, conceding the point. Now that she had said it that way, I pictured the piece as Angelina, full of a five-year-old’s energy but careful to stay perfectly still anyway. And I thought of Devin too, his contained chaos, the way that he, like the sculpture, was so many different things put together, colors and shapes, vibrant and flowing. But did he also have the stillness of the glass, or was he only the movement and spontaneity it portrayed?

Maybe I was taking this a bit too far.

“So what’s it like being married?” I asked. “My ex and I lived together after college, but it seems different to actually be married.”

Rachel stared at a piece of art for a moment without answering, and then said in careful tones, “It is different. On the one hand, it’s scary to commit yourself to a single person. No matter how happy the relationship is, you’re always wondering what your life would be like with someone else. But on the other hand, there’s comfort in that stability. There’s comfort in knowing that even if one day goes horribly, horribly wrong, there’s always the next day, and the next. And the next. Because you made this commitment that you’re going to be together.”

I nodded, thinking. “That stability, the stability of knowing that you’re with someone for life, that you’re in it together, that’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.”