Don't Ever Change (30 page)

“So you’re back where you started.”

“Shelby, you’re supposed to be cheering me up,” I tell her.

“No, I’m not.”

After she finishes blow-drying my hair, we go outside and play checkers on the patio. I’m black and she’s red. I don’t say much except “King me, king me, king me,” because I’m on a roll and winning every game. It’s really effective at helping me not think about Alyssa or Jessica or Zoe. If I keep winning at checkers, eventually I’ll be fired up enough to drive my ass to Sunny Skies and demand my job back. That’s one strategy at least.

Then, out of nowhere, Shelby says, “I know you made out with Zack.”

“I didn’t, though.”

“You kissed.”

“No, Shel, I’m telling you.”

“Fine, say exactly what happened—
exactly
.”

What
did
happen? Not much. But yes, something. Definitely something.

“Never mind,” she says, homing in on me. “I’d rather you answer this: Why even do it? Why even call Zack, or pick up when he calls you? Why go out with him wherever you went, and do with him whatever you did? Like, what’s even the point? What is there to
gain
from seeing Zack? I’m just curious what the hell the point is.”

“There’s no point,” I tell her, looking down at my lap. “There’s nothing to gain, literally. Only something to lose.”

“What did you
think
you were doing?” she asks, and I’m pained by how genuinely she wants to know.

“I guess—and I know this sounds kind of psycho,
I know
—I just wanted to see if I
could
. I wanted to see if the option was even there. I think I wanted his attention, but then got it and realized I didn’t actually want it.” I try and beam this truth out as clearly as I can, so she can sense the purity of it. “I do like Zack, but I like him for
you
. And you for him.”

Shelby doesn’t look at me in disbelief; she looks at me in utter
belief
. The Eva Answer she was expecting was the Eva Answer she got. “You’re selfish,” she says.

“And you’re Shel-fish.”

She looks sick of me. “You’re always . . . quipping.”

“I’m well e-quipped,” I say, playing the smarmy bitch Shelby’s cast me as.

“You had sex with Zack—admit it.”

I almost wish I
could
admit it, because then I could confess it, have it out, be forgiven, and move on. But now we’re stuck: I’ll keep denying it and she’ll keep not believing me. How do I explain to her that for one night I almost experienced what it was like being Shelby? And now I’m seeing what it’s like to be Zack—broken up with, gotten over.

“You’re making me sad,” I say.

“
I’m
the sad one, not you. It’s my relationship, not yours.”

“I know, I swear. Trust me, I felt it.”

There’s a pause, and she leans in. “Know what your problem is?”

There’s never any satisfactory answer to that question, so I ignore it, refocusing on the checkerboard. It’s my turn. I pick up my piece and double-jump.

“Your problem is you were there to do a job,” she says, cycling back, “to do something different from what you normally do, to act a way you don’t normally act—and you
just couldn’t do it
.”

I look at her numbly but apologetically, and shrug.

Shelby hops a checker, shakes her head, and laughs an incredulous laugh. “It’s the same with your glasses,” she says. “You just don’t want to
see
.” She makes an expression like she’s amused.

“I see what I want.”

“You have to think about the entire story, Eva, not just what you feel like writing,” Shelby says. “You say that you think of yourself as one of your characters—well, then your arc’s moving backward.”

“My arc’s fine.”

“Is it?” she spits, snatching a piece from my hand and holding it out of reach. “What’s your personal journey, or whatever? How are you going to resolve it all?”

“I won’t know until it ends,” I say, and then flip the checkerboard, spilling pieces everywhere, because that’s something her character thinks my character would do.

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..................................................................

AFTER SHELBY LEAVES
I go inside, rattled, and find Courtney in my room, in the dark, in her underwear, staring at my laptop screen.

“I just wanted to look something up,” she says. She’s clearly been crying. And eating. There are crumbs all over her bra.

I look at what she’s looking at. It’s a Gchat conversation with Lindsay.

“I needed advice,” she says.

“What’d Lindsay say you should do?”

Courtney points to the screen, but there’s a lot to read. I scroll up and down, trying to find something that reads like advice, or makes sense:

me: right now it just feels good to be home.

Lindsay
: i get that, totes.

me
: maybe there’s more of this country for me to see, do you know what i mean?

Lindsay
: listen. when I wuz in Japan last yr I totally couldnt handle my feelings of like displacement, u know? Evn in Tokyo, where there’s like millions of ppl, it wuz still so . . .

Lindsay
: lonely

Lindsay
: n then when I came back, eating burgers, fries, drinking coke with ice—the best! 2 miss smthng as dumb as ice! I mean, wow, u know?

Lindsay
: Tkyo Dizney just felt, like off or smthng. like how there’s Mickey but he’s not OUR Mickey. I dunno, it wuz weird. like I shldn’t have felt this way, Mickey shld belong to evry1, but I kept thinkin Mickey belongs to us! he’s such a symbol.

Lindsay
: n whut he symbolizes is . . . home. u know, america.

Lindsay
: I mean, don’t u feel like being abroad makes u question yr whole idea of identity on like a personal n national level???

Lindsay
: n don’t u sorta feel like now u’ll know more bout whut it means 2 b american or whtevr than u ever did? or maybe, tragically, even less?????

Lindsay
: i mean, srsly, doesn’t it feel like the world’s just so small???

“It’s not a particularly insightful thing to say,” I tell Courtney.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Isn’t it?”

It isn’t! And that makes me want to say something a thousand times more insightful, because if someone’s going to blow Courtney’s mind with clichés and stupid Disneyland truisms, like It’s a Small, Small World, then I want it to be me. If my sister’s currently a mess and therefore more of a receptacle for thrift-store wisdom, then it should be my lazy knowledge lifting her up, not Lindsay’s. Not Lindsay’s Wisdumb.

“You know how they say, ‘This too shall pass’?” I ask.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, what they’re really saying is ‘Everything passes.’ But I think the saying should really go, ‘This all shall pass, even this moment, and
this
moment, and yes, even
this
moment, right now, that we’re living through
right now
, even if it’s a wonderful moment, doesn’t matter, it’s just got to pass. There it goes, and there
that
goes, and there this moment goes too.’”

Courtney stares at me.

“Gone,” I whisper, and blow invisible dust from my hand.

“I love you,” my sister says, kind of sadly, and she pats me on the head.

“Are you going to Amsterdam?” I ask.

“Are
you
going to
San Diego
?”

“For what?”

“Lindsay’s play,” she says.

I forgot about Lindsay’s play.

“I can’t,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to see her acting like someone else before I’ve even seen her acting like herself.”

Courtney nods, typing something on the laptop.

“How about meeting her at a bookstore?” She types a few more words. “Tomorrow.”

“I’m busy,” I say. “I have to work on getting my job back pretty much all afternoon.”

“I thought everything passes.”

“Okay, well, everything
does
pass. I just want it to pass my way.”

“If only they had a saying for that,” she says, mock-wistfully. Then she gives me a little kiss on the cheek and pinches my arm.

“Fine. So do I have to drive to a bookstore in San Diego tomorrow?”

Courtney skims the screen. “No, she was planning to come to L.A., actually. She wants to see the La Brea Tar Pits.”

“Doesn’t she know it’s just some stinky pond off Wilshire?”

“Actually, she doesn’t,” Courtney says, snapping the laptop closed. “And you’re not going to tell her.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

AT ONE I’M
at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove, waiting to meet Lindsay, trying to remember the last time I was in a bookstore, which makes me realize I haven’t read one book since I graduated. Emerson sent me a summer reading list at some point, but I never got around to looking at it. Why not?

I scan some book jackets, flip through a few chapters, killing time.

It feels unusual to be out in the real world in the middle of the day, among adults, rather than at camp surrounded by kids. But instead of bonding with family or old friends, instead of Frenching Foster for what would be the second, and most likely, final time, I’m idly combing through magazines, waiting for someone I’ve never met, who I’m about to spend every day of my life with. Is this the end or the beginning? I can’t tell.

Today I’ve got my glasses on. I found them in the top drawer of my desk, the single unpacked item left rattling around, appearing very much like a symbol in some Fitzgerald novel about flappers and car crashes. In the end, it’s about what a character does as much as what she doesn’t do—what she sees, and maybe more importantly, what she’s seen as. Dorothy Parker may have been right, but who cares, she was so sad, and I want to be a Great Woman Writer but not one who’s as sad as she is clever.

Anyway, with my glasses on I look like the Old Me and, because it’s been so long since I’ve worn them, like a New Me too.

I wander back to the corner of the store, near the sale stuff, hiding, I guess. It’s not so much hiding from Lindsay—that’s just delaying the inevitable—it’s more just generally hiding. I people-watch, playing the game where I imagine different people from high school that I would or wouldn’t want to unexpectedly bump into. I’m picturing Kerry Ward, standing next to a Mara sister, scowling at me, and that’s why I don’t notice Lindsay, even as I stare directly at her, at her waving, at her whole body approaching me down the aisle.

Now I’m wishing I’d seen her in that play.

Although all first meetings are sort of like a play. Lindsay will definitely be doing some acting, so I should probably work on the writing. I’ll establish a few contextual details first, before I get into the dialogue.

Lindsay’s walk can be described as confident, self-possessed. Every few steps she seems to grow slightly taller, and more confident, as if every book she passes gets instantly absorbed into her, the words spiraling off their pages and into her spine. Maybe Lindsay
does
have wisdom. Maybe, like Courtney, she’s actually read a lot of these books, has digested the knowledge and drawn interesting conclusions about them. The closer she gets, the more ridiculous I feel at having been found hiding in a bookstore, imagining showdowns with enemies and archenemies from high school, faking that I’ve even read a book this summer.