Don't Ever Change (10 page)

I don’t feel the same way about Boston. I don’t care about the city specifically, I just care that it’s three thousand miles away. I confess this to Courtney, the shallow truth that I only like Boston because it’s far from L.A. and seems safer than New York and essentially that’s it,
that’s the only reason I’m going to school there
, and she shuts the book, hands it to me.

“Take this,” she says.

“I’m not going to Amsterdam,” I say.

“I know, but think of Amsterdam as Boston,” Courtney says.

“How do I do that?”

“Just try to think deeply about being somewhere other than where you are.”

I skim through the Lonely Planet guide. Nothing looks that interesting. There’s a page about Anne Frank’s house, but it doesn’t seem interesting either, which makes me feel like a bad person.

“Lots of history, I guess,” I say.

“Lots of history in Boston too.”

“Do you think you’ll change when you’re in Amsterdam?” I ask.

“Sure, but not that much. I mean, not like
my essence
.”

“In Boston I want to change everything,” I say. “I’m going to buy a beige trench coat like Mom’s Burberry one and carry a newspaper under my arm, and every time I want a book, instead of buying it on Amazon, I’m going to
check it out
from the
library.
And maybe I’ll be wearing glasses, too, either round tortoiseshell ones or the kind with clear frames, very
professorial
.”

“Ooh,” Courtney says, laughing, “how will I
ever
recognize you?”

“Real change can come from the outside first,” I say. “It’s possible.”

“I hope that’s not what you’re teaching your campers,” Courtney says. “I hope you’re empowering them, because they’re girls and girls need guidance.”

I take out my notebook.
Empower them,
I write.

Courtney wants me to look through the guide again, at the photos of old windmills and public parks lined with blooming tulips and beer gardens and canals and a ton of things named after van Gogh, after Rembrandt, after Anne Frank. Amsterdam is nothing like Boston, but it still gives me an idea for a story: Anne Frank
lives
. Like, she
makes it
, and goes on to lead a secret resistance against the Nazis by hiding other girls and empowering them to fight back. It’s historical fiction, or maybe creative nonfiction, which I’ve never tried, but maybe trying something new beats out writing something you know. Mr. Roush might think so, because he’s always so serious about not limiting oneself, and also only a
really
bad person wouldn’t be interested in an alternate history of Anne Frank’s life.

Then my eyes stop on this super-peaceful picture of the Dutch countryside, and it’s not hard for me to imagine my sister there, riding a bike or just picnicking with new Dutch friends. I always thought
I’d
be the only one leaving and so I’d be the one getting wiser, and I always liked that idea, but now I realize that Courtney’s better at being the Weird Philosopher and I’m better at being the Absorber, the person who takes it all in. And so maybe I’m not meant to
experience
but to chronicle
other people’s experiences
, and now I feel like I totally know how to empower the girls and also how to empower myself so I can totally obliterate the Roush Problem, 100 percent: I’ll go to Barnes & Noble and buy ten blank journals and then sneak into Dad’s office and steal a fifty-pack of Bic pens; I’ll tie pink and turquoise yarn to everything, and then I’ll be ready.

I hand Courtney back the book, and even though I know she won’t like me saying this, I say it anyway: “I don’t need some Lonely Planet guide. What a stupid name.”

“Don’t you think the planet
is
lonely, though?”

“I mean, space is lonely. Like, the Arctic tundra’s lonely.”

“What about Sunny Skies?” Courtney asks.

“I guess,” I say. “That can be lonely too.”

“Get out your notebook,” my sister says. “Write this down: ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are.’”

I write it down, look at it.

“It’s true, Eva. There isn’t a city you could ever travel to where
you
wouldn’t be. So you can’t rely on a place to change you. You have to do that yourself.”

“I know Boston’s not going to change
me
,” I tell Courtney. “
I’m
going to change
for
Boston.”

“By getting a trench coat and a library card?”

“Yeah.”

“What about ‘Don’t Ever Change’ or ‘Don’t Go Changing’?” Courtney says, grabbing my senior yearbook, waving it around. “A bazillion yearbooks can’t be wrong.”

“Nobody,” I say, “
nobody
wrote ‘Don’t Ever Change’ in
my
yearbook.”

Courtney flips through the signature pages. “This one says ‘Stay Cool,’” she tells me. “That’s basically the same thing.”

But it isn’t the same thing—not even a little, not at all—and I know it. What I don’t know is what we’re talking about anymore: staying or going, changing or being changed, by someplace, or someone.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“DON’T YOU EVER
wish Los Angeles had a Little Italy?” I ask Michelle. It’s nine and we’re at the Grove, waiting for Steph to finish counting her register and lock up the Gap so we can all share bland Italian food at La Piazza. I’m happy to be out on a summer night and eating late, which feels so European. Even though I usually complain when meals take forever, I understand that there’s a sophistication to not rushing through the dining experience.

“The phrase ‘Little Italy’ really has a vibe to it, doesn’t it?” I ask. “Like all the pleasures of somewhere exotic made super easy and brought right to your neighborhood. Little Italy really
conjures
something.”

“I thought you didn’t even like Italian that much,” Michelle says distractedly, fishing through her bag. She pulls out her phone for what seems like the eighteenth time and checks for texts.

“First of all—whose text are you waiting for?” I try to glance at her cell, but she shields the screen with her palm. “I’m already here and Steph’s coming any minute.”

“Skip to second of all.”

“And
second
of all,” I say, “it’s a cheese thing. I’d love Italian if they didn’t put so much cheese on everything.”

“Cheeseless lasagna, you’re saying.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s lasagna. It’s like a centuries-old tradition.”

“True, but we’ve evolved into humans who basically can’t digest dairy anymore.”

“
De
volved you mean,” Michelle says. Just then her phone beeps, and as her eyes scan the screen, she smiles privately. I’m about to pry for details when Steph finally arrives, wearing khaki shorts and a sleeveless denim button-up, total Gap-on-Gap—a Gap Attack. It’s less that I don’t recognize her in her work outfit, and more that I don’t recognize her as Steph, my best friend who never has a job or any reason to change out of her own Steph Uniform: velvet leggings and a baggy, boxy top.

“You look like a camp counselor,” I say. “And I would know.”

“Miranda calls it ‘the Basic Bitch,’” Steph explains.

“Who’s Miranda?”

“Miranda,” Steph says, and then Michelle says, “She told us about Miranda.”

“Why does Miranda think it’s so casual to call women bitches?” I ask.

Michelle drapes an arm around me in that bemused, Eva-just-can’t-help-herself way. “Always looking out for the females,” she says, shaking her head.

“It’s just not a helpful word,” I say. “That’s not what it means in the dictionary.”

“Miranda’s my work-friend,” Steph says.

“I don’t think you told me about her.”

“It’s not really news,” Michelle says, guiding me through the front door of the restaurant. Once inside she shuffles through her tote again and inspects her phone, scrolling through messages.

Steph’s looking around too—not in an ambient way, but purposefully, like someone should be there already. Someone
good
.

“Guys, what’s happening?” I ask, but abruptly we’re being led to our table, out on a fake piazza under white Christmas lights. “Wait,” I say, counting chairs and place settings and best friends, the numbers not matching up: it’s a table for five.

“Miranda’s joining us,” Steph says, and then Michelle says, “And so is Bart.”

“Bart—like from high school,
Bart
?”

“Yeah,” Michelle says.

“Who invited
him
?”

“It’ll be fun,” Steph says, opening her menu, hiding from my gaze. “Yum,” she says—a word I’ve never heard her speak, ever—“yum, yum, yum.”

Miranda keeps insisting we should’ve gone to Bestia if we wanted pasta. She’s Italian—or Italian-American, I think it’s important to point out—and apparently that gives her the authority to differentiate good red sauces from bad. She lifts her fork, frowning in disapproval at the watery marinara dripping through the tines of her fork next to our mozzarella sticks. La Piazza was actually Steph’s idea, but I don’t mention that, especially not after Miranda corrects her pronunciation of
secondo
.

“It means ‘main entrée,’” Miranda explains, while my two best friends, plus Bart, all nod, quite impressed. But they shouldn’t be;
secondo
sounds and even
looks
like “second.” Second, aka second course, aka main entrée—makes perfect sense.

Since Miranda’s the only one old enough to drink, she’s the only one drinking. She’s on her second carafe of red wine, though we still haven’t ordered our
secondos
.

“I think I want the linguini,” Bart says to no one in particular. Bart’s always been pretty
nice
, I guess, but who cares? The problem is he’s not
interesting
, which is way more important. Even though everyone changes after high school, it hasn’t been that long yet, so there hasn’t been enough time for him to change so much that it’s actually noticeable. “I use to order it in Rome a lot,” he continues, “piled high on top of pizza crusts.”

“When were you in Rome?” Steph asks, covering her mouth to ask, which means she’s impressed.

“A few times, actually,” Bart says, and now maybe I’m impressed. Or jealous. Or both.

“Well, have you been to Florence?” I ask, twirling my angel hair. “Do you know anything about Italian art or history or anything?”

Michelle tries to kick me under the table, but I know her too well and so move my legs to the side, her shoe thudding against my chair.

“The Vatican is actually really sick,” Bart says, rambling. He’s so uninteresting he can’t even tell that no one cares. He can’t even tell that he’s not supposed to be here, that it’s supposed to just be me and Michelle and Steph, telling our usual jokes, being our usual selves—which means being content. “Content,” which if you look it up in the dictionary means “happy” and “totally satisfied.”

“Cheers to the Pope,
salute
,
cin cin
!” Miranda says, raising her glass. We toast her back with our ice waters and nod. My cup’s so full it spills when we all clink glasses, because I’m not drinking any of it because I read you’re not supposed to consume liquid while you chew. It weakens the saliva.

“Miranda, you’re such a
lightweight
,” Steph says, like it’s some cute fact she’s learned firsthand. Then Steph leans across the table and, in an overly animated way, mouths the word “wasted.” Everyone breaks out laughing. At what? At the acknowledgment that if you drink two carafes of wine it makes you drunk? It’s so stupid the world doesn’t just feel small, it also feels spun around, flipped upside down.

“Bart spent Thanksgiving in Rome,” Michelle tells the table.

“No way, what did you eat?” Miranda asks, pink-cheeked and buzzing. It takes her a full three seconds to open her eyes after a blink.

“I had risotto and my brother had something alfredo—or eggplant? One or the other, can’t quite remember. No one there even
knew
it was Thanksgiving. I mean, you’d think, ‘Oh, of course they don’t know, they’re not American, so they don’t celebrate it.’ But then you could also think, ‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s not impossible that maybe Italians know about Thanksgiving. And maybe not just know
about
it, but maybe even know what day it is and know that there’s special Thanksgiving foods and things like that.’ We wondered if the waiter might say something when he brought our plates out—because he spoke perfect English, even asked if we were from New York—but he didn’t mention it.”

For Bart this many sentences in a row is practically a soliloquy, straight from Shakes himself.

“That’s so annoying,” I say, killing the table’s glow. “That he assumed just because you were American you were from New York City. Ugh, I hate that New York worship, it’s such propaganda.”

No one bothers trying to kick me under the table this time.

Steph changes the subject: “I bet the linguini in Rome is better than the linguini in Florence. Because it’s an older city. They’ve had more time to perfect it.”