Don't Ever Change (5 page)

But we’re in the future now, and in my opinion inviting a girl on a real date displays a lot of confidence and strength.

Still, that’s just not Elliot’s style. He’s part of that long, dumb lineage of guys who have to maintain a cool distance about everything. It’s a clichéd convention stretching back into ancient history, which would usually bore me, but in this particular instance I’m choosing to be intrigued by it. Maybe less bookish girls wouldn’t appreciate the literary dimension of all this, but too bad for them!

“The Black Lips are playing at the Echo tonight,” Elliot tells me when he calls. “It’s all ages. Only eight bucks.”

“Uh-huh,” I say.

“I’ll probably get there at like ten, and stay till last call.”

“When’s last call?”

“Two—don’t you know that?”

“Okay, so you’ll be there from ten to two,” I say. “Four hours.”

“Or maybe longer,” Elliot says, mentally calculating, “’cause I’m driving myself.”

“You’re going alone?”

“Yeah. So I’ll probably bump into you there,” he says, and hangs up.

That’s as official an invite as I get.

But later, once I drive there and park and walk inside, Elliot’s the first person I see, loitering by the girl at the ticket counter stamping people’s wrists. It’s obvious he was waiting for me, and I can’t fake not being turned on by that.

Inside the lights aren’t that low or smoky and it’s not even very loud, both of which I associate with live music venues. Usually watching bands play twenty feet in front of my face isn’t something I find too thrilling—I guess it just doesn’t feel that classic to me—but being here now I’m realizing there’s an aspect to the performance that’s a lot like a play. It lives and breathes right there on the stage, and you have to truly be in the moment to understand and appreciate it. One of the quotes Mr. Roush kept up on the board for the first half of senior year was this Emily Dickinson one: “Forever—is composed of Nows.”

“Didn’t she only leave her bedroom, like, once in her whole life?” Elliot asks. We’re outside the club now, standing in the back area with the grungy, smelly smokers.

“That might be true, but what reason did she have to leave?” I say. “The outside world was so
antique
and cruel, and inside was probably mellow and comforting.”

“What’s comforting about being alone?” Elliot asks. He shoves his hands into his jean pockets and leans against a graffitied wall, pulling a James Dean. And the thing about James Dean is that he wasn’t just cute, he was
symbolic
, and I’ll never get enough of that.

“You’re not alone if you have your books and your pen and your ideas,” I say.

Elliot crinkles his forehead at that. Cute boys know exactly how to make you feel like an alien.

“
Aaaannnd
,” I continue, “the awareness that you’re like a poet VIP, and people will be studying and worshipping you forever.”

“What’s the quote again?”

“‘Forever—is composed of Nows.’”

“I’ve got a better one,” Elliot says, then interrupts himself. “Wait, hang on.” Then he goes back inside, the heavy door sealing behind him.

I wave away the cigarette smoke, give a small fake cough. It’s not cold out, but I hold my arms around my body anyway, shifting from foot to foot. I resist the impulse to mess with my phone because I don’t want Elliot to come back and find me that way. I pride myself on having a very long attention span, so I’m not afraid to just stand here alone, touching nothing and looking at nothing, just
thinking
—which makes me a true original. Maybe not compared to Emily Dickinson, but at least to people who’re still alive.

When Elliot returns he’s holding two sodas, sucking on an ice cube, and smiling.

“You bought me a soda?” I say.

“I know the bartender,” Elliot says. “It was free.”

“I only want it if it you bought it,” I joke. “If it took some
effort
.”

“Well, I tried pretty hard not to spill,” he says, and sticks out his tongue playfully. The cold of the ice has turned his tongue hot pink.

“Do you want to go and actually watch the band?” I say. “You know, see the music play?”

“You can’t see music,” Elliot says, like it’s his deep personal philosophy.

“What was the better one then?” I ask. “You were saying you had a better one. . . .”

“Oh yeah. It’s by A. A. Milne—know him?”

“The guy who wrote Pooh,” I say.

“C’mon, it wasn’t that bad,” Elliot says.

“Okay, what’s the quote?”

“So Christopher Robin asks what day it is and Piglet says, ‘It’s today,’ and then Pooh says”—here Elliot leans down, his face close to mine—“Pooh says, ‘Today. My favorite day.’”

“Is this a real date?” I ask, my eyes right beneath his, my nose just below his nose.

“It’s a little date,” he says. He chomps on another cube of ice. “A half date.”

“Still
half
to ask me,” I say, pretty pleased I left my bedroom for once in my whole life.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I MEET MICHELLE
and Steph at the Thousand Oaks Mall on the Friday before our last weekend as do-nothing ex-seniors. Michelle’s been hired as a personal assistant by some rich woman who makes jewelry in Santa Monica, and Steph got a job folding at the Gap. What I like about Michelle is that she’s tough, and never moody, and what I like about Steph is that she’s sensitive and really pays attention. I guess I round out the group by being some mixture of both. I like to think of myself as the glue that holds us together, and I also like to think that if I wasn’t around, maybe Michelle and Steph would never really see each other, that’s how much I connect us all.

Michelle’s trying on a fitted blazer that feels very East Coast, very Boston, so I try one on too. Someone makes a Sisterhood of the Traveling Blazers joke, and it kind of makes me feel old, like I wish it was the summer
before
senior year and not the summer after. I don’t want to get a job, or rather, I don’t want to
have
a job, but I do, and can’t stop complaining about it. What I don’t like about Steph is that she lets everyone complain, on and on, because she thinks it’s therapeutic to just get everything out, even though sometimes it isn’t.

The three of us are definitely cliquish, though, which has been getting a bad rap lately in movies and books and overall culture. There’s this backlash against people “wanting to belong,” but the truth is I don’t want to belong
in general
—I want to belong to
these
two, and I want them to belong to me. Courtney says that being too close to people can become toxic, and that you have to watch out for that, especially with high school friends. She also says I shouldn’t forget to “spread my wings,” because in a year I might not even know them—maybe in less than a year. Which makes this blazer, this iced coffee with soy milk, these receipts for candles and hoop earrings, all feel like ticking bombs, and that gives me an idea for a story: a seventeen-year-old girl is visited by two forty-seven-year-old women claiming to be the future versions of her two best friends from high school come back to make sure the girl keeps up their friendships so as to change the course of all three of their lives. This is a good one; Mr. Roush might like it. I scribble it down on something.

“Anyway,” I say, “Foster will be at camp with me. So that’s something.”

“Foster, huh,” Michelle says.

“Don’t say his name like that.”

“I like Foster,” Steph says. “We all think he’s cute.”

“We don’t all think that,” I say.

“What about that guy Elliot?” Michelle says.

“Has he called?” Steph asks.

“He texted.”

“That’s better,” Michelle says. “It’s like, ‘Hey, boys, text me, don’t call me, okay?’”

“Calling is committing,” Steph says.

“And Eva doesn’t want to commit.”

“You’re leaving for Boston in, like, two months anyway.”

“And he’s leaving for tour. . . .”

“There’s also Foster. . . .”

“Guys,” I say, interrupting. “I’m not the protagonist in some rom-com, and you aren’t my pushy, sentimental sidekicks.”

“Hmm,” Michelle says, and then Steph says, “Yeah, hmm.”

Later we’re at the food court, and since I can’t find anything vegan at Panda Express I just watch Michelle and Steph go wild on some chicken chow mein. Michelle keeps dangling the noodles in front of me, saying if I want to take a bite she won’t tell anybody. This is what everyone thinks: that I’m dying for their chicken chow mein but because there’s some noble agenda, some lofty idea to stand behind, I won’t let myself indulge. They think at home, alone in my room, I’m slamming turkey cheddar sandwiches, and they also think I just need a friend, or anyone, to convince me to chill on my principles for a minute so I can enjoy life and a big piece of lasagna. But what they don’t know is that their egg rolls are time bombs, that they’re ticking, because these could be the last egg rolls Michelle and Steph ever share, and isn’t that a bigger deal than my dietary choice to slowly save the planet? I tell them all of this, then pound on the food court table and take away their forks so I can hold their hands.

“You have to stop listening to Courtney so much,” Michelle says.

“Your sister doesn’t know how it is with us,” Steph says.

“Yeah, we’ll be friends for a supremely long time,” Michelle says.

“We’re in no danger of not being friends,” Steph tells me.

“And didn’t someone say something about absence and the fonder heart?”

“And don’t our key chains say something about friends and forever?”

“Guys, are we being naive?” I ask.

“Of course we’re not being naive,” Michelle says, and then Steph says, “Two of us are eighteen, Eva.”

I force Michelle and Steph to make firm promises for the summer concerning multiple weekly hangouts and lengthy phone call catch-ups and constant text and email updates. I don’t know why but I feel a little desperate, and even though I’m not that interested in the daily business of handmade jewelry from Santa Monica or ribbed V-neck tees and tanks, I feel like I need to hold on to this connection or else I’ll be so lonely. So I promise not to slip if they won’t slip, and I know that I won’t slip because it’s
summer camp
, and really, after a long day of being stuck with nine nine-year-olds, all I’ll want to do is bond with my friends before we have to say good-bye in August.

“You’ll also want time to write, though,” Michelle reminds me.

“And talk to Elliot on the phone,” Steph says.

“And what about Foster?”

“Or some other counselor you might meet that you want to hang out with.”

“Guys!” I say, frustrated. Then I pick up Steph’s fork and shove a big bite of greasy noodles in my mouth, to show that I
can
commit and that I
will
commit, all summer long, until the day I get on the plane for Boston. I think they’re impressed, because they immediately feel bad and hug me and tell me I don’t have to swallow the chow mein.

So I don’t; I rush to a trash can and spit it out before it explodes.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

LATER THAT NIGHT
Elliot wants to see/not see another band play, but this time it’s at this place downtown called the Smell. Elliot knows the girl working the door, so I get my hand stamped—with a unicorn jumping over a rainbow—without having to pay, which I guess in some countries is the same as a person buying a ticket for you. I realize I should be thankful, but mainly I’m just curious what Elliot did to get owed so many favors and complimentary beverages and free admissions into places no one’s particularly excited to go or be. It’s very Big Man on Campus, only without the campus part because Elliot claims “life” is his campus, which makes me fake gag instantly.

“So you love college?” Elliot asks. “You’re in love with going to college?”