One Moment in Time (4 page)

“Meet in our room in fifteen,” Celia instructs. “We're gonna hit the beach, okay? Nathan will probably be there, so wear your black bikini.” She grabs my hand and then twirls under it, like we're ballroom dance partners or something.

I giggle in spite of myself. This
is
vacation, after all. And the beach sounds awesome right now.

“See you in a little,” Celia says. She and Paige disappear down the hallway toward their room. I sigh and wish I were going with them. I think about heading back into the conference room and begging Mr. Beals to let me change my room assignment. But I know it's probably not going to happen.

Whatever. Just because Lyla and Aven and I are going to be in the same room doesn't mean that I have to hang out
with them. In fact, I probably won't even see them. It's my senior trip. I'm not going to be sitting in my room the whole time—I'm going to be out and about, having fun.

My phone starts ringing in my bag, and I reach in and rummage around for it. It's my brother, Neal.

“Hey,” I say, as I start wandering down the hall toward the elevator bank. There's a crowd of kids from my class doing the same thing, so I linger a little longer near the lobby, deciding to wait until things thin out a bit. “What's up?”

Neal's a sophomore at Stanford, but he's home for spring break. Neal and I are pretty close—well, as close as you can be to your older brother. I always secretly wished Neal had been a girl, so I could raid his closet and talk to him about boys. Of course, everyone I know who has a sister wishes they had a brother, because their sisters are always stealing their clothes and being bitchy to them. Also, they think that if you have an older brother, he brings home his hot friends and then you get to hook up with them.

Neal does have a lot of hot friends, but I've never hooked up with any of them. One, because I don't have time for that. And two, because, well, none of them has ever really shown any interest in me. (Actually, that's not true—last year Neal brought his freshman roommate, Brody, home over Thanksgiving. After dinner Brody cornered me in the hallway and asked if I wanted to party in his room late night. Then he
raised his eyebrows up and down, like he wanted to make it clear exactly what kind of partying he was talking about. Which it was, because he was making it so skeezily obvious. Actually, now that I think about it, I probably should have told my parents and made them kick him out, because that was extremely inappropriate. Oh well. He and Neal aren't friends anymore—Brody dropped out of Stanford over the summer and never came back. I think he was on drugs.)

“Not much,” Neal says. “I just wanted to let you know you have a letter here from Stanford.”

My stomach does a back handspring, and a lump forms in my throat. A letter? From Stanford? Genevieve said she wasn't going to send it out for a few days! Didn't she? Or did she just say a copy of her email was soon to follow? Why is my normally perfect memory failing me now? Maybe it's blocking out traumatic experiences, like how accident victims can't remember anything about getting hurt.

Suddenly, something about a letter arriving at my house seems almost . . . ominous. An email is one thing—people are always firing off emails at a moment's notice without worrying about what's in them.

But a letter sounds official. An official admissions letter. On real, actual paper. Probably with the school seal and a masthead. It sounds like the kind of thing that would have to be logged somewhere. Up until this point, I was kind of
hoping maybe I could just email Genevieve and try to get her to change her mind, or at least find out who else I could talk to. Now that a letter's been sent, it's a whole different ball game.

Although . . . maybe the letter isn't from the admissions office at all. Maybe it's just one of those pamphlets they send urging you to apply to their school. That would be ironic—them inviting me to apply when they've just rejected me.

“Oh,” I say to Neal, trying my best to keep my voice light. “Who's it from?”

“Stanford. I just said that.”

“No, I mean . . . what department at Stanford?”

“Admissions,” he says. He sounds exasperated, like he can't believe I'm asking so many questions. “It's probably your acceptance letter.”

Or not.

“Oh,” I say. “That's great.”

“Why are you being weird?”

A bunch of kids from my school go walking by, talking excitedly. They're being pretty loud and obnoxious, but for once I'm actually glad they're acting that way. I need some time to stall so I can figure out what the hell I'm going to say to my brother.

“Hold on,” I say, then take my time moving to a corner of the lobby that's a little quieter. I take in a deep breath, like
they taught us to do in this yoga class we had to take in gym. “I'm back!” I say finally, trying to inject some enthusiasm into my voice. “Thanks for calling me! Sorry if I was being weird, we just got to the hotel and there were a lot of people around.”

“Oh, okay.” Neal accepts this explanation, because he is a boy and boys have simple emotions. Score one more point for having a brother. “So do you want me to open it or not?”

“No!” I practically scream. “I mean, um, I don't think so. No, thanks.”

“No?”

“No. Ah, I think I should wait until I get home so I can do it myself.”

“Are you sure? That's going to be, like, three more days. Don't you want to know what it says?” Not really.

“Of course I want to know what it says. But I want to open it myself. You know, to have the moment.” My words sound hollow in my ears, and I'm afraid I'm losing control of the situation. I try to think about what I would do if I hadn't gotten that email this morning, if I didn't already know that I didn't get into Stanford. Probably I would have let Neal open the letter. But that's not an option. And then I have a brilliant idea. “Send it to me!” I crow.

“What?” Neal sounds startled, probably because I sound manic.

“Send it to me! The letter! Overnight it to me, here at the hotel.”

“Really?” He sounds doubtful. “Don't you want to open it in front of Mom and Dad?”

Ha. Ha. Ha-ha! “Well, obviously, you know, that would be
ideal
.” In a nightmare. “But since I'm not home, I don't want to have to wait days. So if you could just overnight it to me, then I could open it. Maybe I'll have someone take a video of me doing it, and then I'll send it to Mom and Dad. You know, like a surprise.”

“I don't know, Quinn,” he says. “You know Mom and Dad don't like surprises. They'll probably be upset they didn't get to see you open your letter.”

“What are you talking about? Mom and Dad love surprises.” My phone buzzes with a text, and I look down at it. Celia.
u almost ready for the beach?
I quickly type back,
almost! txt u when I'm ready!
I add a smiley emoticon at the end, and one of those emojis of a palm tree. I hate emoticons, and the only reason I even have them on my phone is because Paige downloaded them one day without my knowledge. She and Celia think it's hilarious how much I hate them, and they did it to annoy me. For a while they were sending me messages strictly in emojis, leaving me to try and decipher them.

“They do not love surprises,” Neal is saying. “Remember
when Mom threw Dad a surprise birthday party? He really didn't like it.”

“Yes, he did.”

“No, he just
pretended
to like it, but inside he really didn't. He thought it was over the top, and it made him feel awkward.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Neal, first of all, Dad did like that surprise party. And second of all, a surprise party is different from a video surprise from his daughter.”

“How?”

“How?”

“Yes, how is it different? They're both fundamentally the same thing. They're both going to pop up on him out of nowhere.”

“My video will not pop up on him out of nowhere! My acceptance letter is totally expected. It's all I've been talking about for, like, my whole life.”

“Yes, but . . .” As Neal starts prattling on about the reasons he thinks it's a bad idea, I marvel at the fact that I'm having an argument with my brother over something so stupid. Actually, that's not really the weird part. My family gets into debates over things all the time—affirmative action, gay marriage, what an object really is, whether boys should
be encouraged to like pink. We're a very debatey family. It's how we connect. But to be having an annoying debate like this with my brother, over something that's not even going to happen, is a whole new level of ridiculousness.

“Neal!” I say finally. “I hear what you're saying, and thank you for your thoughts on whether Mom and Dad like surprises. I will take them all into consideration before I decide what to do. But in the meantime, could you please overnight the letter to me?” I say a quick prayer of thanks that the days of thick envelopes and skinny envelopes are over. Nowadays colleges don't send you a big packet if you've been accepted. They just send you a letter with a link to a pdf file that has all the info.

“Fine,” Neal says, sounding miffed. “What's the address?”

I spot a hotel notepad sitting on one of the tables in the lobby, and I rattle off the address that's printed on the bottom, then give him my room number. “Thanks,” I say before hanging up.

My phone buzzes again, and I look down, about to tell Celia and Paige that I'm hurrying and to stop bothering me.

But it's not a text.

It's my email.

From myself to myself.

Before graduation, I promise to . . .
do something crazy.

I shake my head and delete it. Again.

Begging my brother to send me my rejection letter, all the while making him believe it's an acceptance letter, is crazy enough for me.

WHEN I FINALLY GET UP TO MY ROOM, LYLA IS
sitting on one of the beds, looking around in confusion. There are two queen-size beds on either side of the room, and a twin-size cot set up in the corner. Lyla's bags are sitting on the floor near the bed she's sitting on, almost like she's claiming it. Not that I blame her—who the hell wants to sleep on a cot? I thought for sure I'd end up having to be the one to do it, since I took so much time downstairs. But it looks like Aven hasn't gotten here yet.

Lyla looks up, her eyes meeting mine. My chest tightens, and a flash of sadness flows through me. For the briefest moment, and for some unexplainable reason, I wish more than anything that I was going to the beach with Lyla and Aven, and not Celia and Paige.

But that's ridiculous. One, because it could never happen. Lyla and Aven and I aren't friends anymore. Lyla wants
nothing to do with me, and if I'm being honest, I don't blame her. What I did to her was . . . well, it was awful. But thinking about that doesn't serve any kind of purpose, and besides, it's not like she was innocent in the whole situation.

So I just look at her and say, “You've got to be kidding me.” Then I drop my suitcase on the floor and walk into the bathroom. I take deep breaths and splash some cold water on my face. I am strong, I am confident, I am in control. I repeat the mantra to myself and then return to the room.

I intentionally avoid Lyla's gaze. Her eyes are this deep, rich brown, the kind of eyes that change color depending on her mood or the lighting, going from dark to light back to dark again. I remember when we had our fight how I couldn't stop looking at her eyes, how I could tell she was really mad by the way they kept changing, like flashing lights warning me to back off. But I couldn't stop it. The damage was already done. And even though I kept trying to reach out to her, it didn't matter. She was done with me. And Aven, too.

Whatever. I have enough to worry about right now without thinking about that. It's in the past. I pick up my suitcase and drop it onto the other bed.
I will not look at Lyla, I will not look at Lyla, I will not look at Lyla.
It's taking every single ounce of my willpower not to ask her what she's been up to, if she ever thinks about me and Aven, if she got the email she sent herself and if she's going to do what it says.

“I'm assuming you took that bed?” I ask instead. I'm
trying so hard not to let her see how flustered I am that my tone sounds a little harsher than I intended.

“Um, well, I'm not sure,” Lyla says. “I mean, I didn't want to take it before everyone else got here, so I just thought that maybe—”

“Well, whatever,” I say. “You can have it. Let Aven sleep on the cot.”

“Aven?”

“Yeah.” I'm rummaging through my bag, looking for my bathing suit. I finally find it buried under a pile of tank tops. I pull it out, along with my cover-up and flip-flops. “She's our third roommate.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” She sounds genuinely shocked. How did she not know that Aven was our roommate? Did she not look at the paper they gave us on the bus?

“Yup.” I shake my head. “Apparently she's still living in fantasy world.”

Lyla frowns and pushes her hair back from her face. “What do you mean?”

“Aven was in charge of making the room assignments. She's on the Student Action Committee.” I feel bad for a second, because I don't know for sure Aven's the one who made the room assignments. But what are the chances she didn't? There's no way we just randomly got selected to be put together. No way.

“The Student Action Committee?” Lyla's asking. “I've
never even heard of the Student Action Committee.”

“That's not surprising,” I say. What I mean is that she's probably never heard of it because the Student Action Committee is worthless, but Lyla looks like she's been slapped. And then I realize she must think I mean she doesn't pay attention to anything, and that's why she's never heard of it. I open my mouth to explain. But then I think, so what if she thinks I said something bitchy to her? I tried to reach out to Lyla so many times, I sent her text after text after text for days after our fight, only to be ignored. Why should I feel bad for being a little bratty to someone who treated me like that?

“What's that supposed to mean?” Lyla asks. She sounds halfway defensive, and halfway like she really wants to know.

“Nothing, just that sometimes you don't pay attention to what's going on.” Like when I'm passing her in the halls at school and she's totally consumed with her boyfriend, Derrick. Seriously, it's so annoying. I'm sure they're like ohmygod totally in love, but really? Do they have to walk around holding hands like lovesick puppies? Actually, lovesick puppies don't hold hands—they just stare at each other with love. But I've never seen Derrick and Lyla staring at each other with love. At least not in a while. Are those two having problems? I remember how Beckett Cross was carrying her bag on the plane, and I wonder if there's something going on between the two of them.

“Yeah,” Lyla says. “And sometimes
you
pay
too
much
attention to what's going on.”

I open my mouth to let her know her remark makes no sense, that there's no way someone can pay
too
much attention to what's going on. I mean, seriously? But then I realize what she means. That I told her secret. That I screwed everything up. That if I'm being completely honest with myself, the real reason Aven, Lyla, and I aren't friends anymore is because of me.

It's not one of those “oh, everyone had a part in it, it's a complicated situation” kind of things. It's
my
fault.
I
told Lyla's secret.
I
betrayed her. And I can't take that back. But instead of dealing with any of that, I close my mouth and march into the bathroom, where I change into my bathing suit and cover-up.

When I come back into the room, I make a big show of unpacking my stuff and placing it in my drawers. I'm already late to meet Celia and Paige for the beach, but I don't care. I want to give Lyla a chance to say something else to me.

But she just makes some snide remark about how I'm unpacking my clothes at a hotel, which is a ridiculous thing to make a snide remark about, because honestly, who
doesn't
unpack their clothes at a hotel? What is she going to do with hers, just leave them in her suitcase? That's a horrible idea. They'll get all wrinkled. And how will she be able to find anything? She'll have to go pawing through her suitcase every time she wants to change.

I'm just finishing up when a key card slides into the door and Aven comes strolling in. She looks around the room and sees me putting my stuff into the dresser by one bed and Lyla sitting on the other. I wait for her to freak out about the fact that we stuck her with the cot.

“I guess I'm taking the cot,” she says happily. Wow. She doesn't even have the decency to look guilty about how she manipulated things and got us all put in the same room. Talk about an abuse of power. I'll bet if I told Mr. Beals about this, he'd totally kick her off the committee. I think about marching downstairs and telling him right now, just to be a brat. Then maybe he'd fix it and I could go back to being roommates with Paige and Celia and not have this whole vacation be a total nightmare.

“I think we could all benefit from spending some time together,” Aven says when she realizes that Lyla and I are just staring at her incredulously. “I know that our misunderstanding got out of hand, but with graduation coming up, I think it might really be time to move past it.”

For a second, a weird kind of hope blooms in my chest. Are we going to talk about this? Like, really talk about what happened? Here? Now? Are we going to maybe work it out?

But Lyla just laughs bitterly. “Is that what you think it was? A misunderstanding?”

“I know your feelings are still probably really hurt, Lyla,”
Aven says, her tone serious. “But Quinn and I never meant to hurt you.”

“Don't speak for me,” I say automatically. I
didn't
mean to hurt Lyla—in fact, it was the last thing I wanted to do. How was I supposed to know that telling her secret was going to end up in disaster? When I did it, I didn't realize what the consequences were going to be. But letting Aven talk for me is a bad idea, since the reason we're in this mess in the first place is because of everyone talking behind each other's backs.

Lyla glares at me. “So you
did
mean to hurt me?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Why is she so angry all the time? So defensive? What does she think, that people never get into fights? She never even gave me a
chance
to explain, even though I tried to talk to her dozens and dozens of times. So maybe this whole thing
wasn't
completely my fault. If Lyla had just given me an opportunity to explain, maybe we could have worked it out. Suddenly getting into this right now seems extremely exhausting and a complete waste of time. To do the same things over and over again, hoping for a different outcome, really is the definition of insanity.

“Whatever,” I say. “I don't want to do this. I don't even
care
about this. It takes up, like, this amount of space in my mind.” I hold my fingers an inch apart, so they can
see how little I think of it. It's a half lie. I try not to think about the two of them that much, but only because it's way too painful.

And then, before they can say anything else, I turn and walk out the door. I'm suddenly super angry at both of them. How dare Lyla not give me a chance to explain when we first had that fight? And how dare Aven set us all up to be in the same room? This is our senior trip, too, and she knows Lyla and I wouldn't have wanted the three of us to be roommates. Talk about being selfish.

I open the door to the room and poke my head back in. “Keep your hands off my stuff, Aven,” I say. “I know you like to borrow people's things.” Then I give them both this really big fake smile and slam the door.

I stand out in the hallway for a moment, not moving. I thought snapping at them like that would make me feel better, would make me feel like I had at least a little bit of control of the situation. But it didn't. In fact, it just made me feel worse.

Go back in. Apologize. Maybe we really can work this out.

My phone buzzes.

Paige.

Where r u?!?!

I sigh and head for the elevator bank. Quinn and Aven are a part of my past. And that's where they're going to stay.

When I get to Paige and Celia's room, Celia is already tipsy, and Paige is looking at her in thinly veiled disgust.

“How are we going to get her downstairs and past Mr. Beals?” Paige asks as soon as I walk in.

We both glance over at Celia. She's sitting on her bed, talking to someone on the phone and painting her toenails bright red. When she sees me, she breaks into a huge smile and then hangs up on the person she's talking to without even saying good-bye.

“Quinny!” she says, even though she knows I hate that nickname. “What took you so long?”

“I was getting ready,” I say, deciding not to get into the fact that I was trying to avoid a fight with my ex–best friends and freaking out about my official Stanford rejection letter, which has apparently just arrived at my home and fallen into the possession of my unreliable older brother. “What have you been doing?”

She looks around. “Shhh!” she says. Then she reaches under the bed and pulls out a bottle of Corona. “I got this. From a guy.” She giggles.

“From a guy?” I look at Paige, who shrugs.

“Some guy was coming door-to-door asking if we wanted to buy beer,” she says. “I think he was one of the
local college kids, trying to make a buck.”

“And you let her buy some?” I take the Corona out of Celia's hand and study it for signs of tampering. “Are you crazy? That's how girls end up raped and dead in the woods.” What is
wrong
with the two of them? I mean, seriously.

“Oh, relax,” Celia says. She waves the nail-polish brush in the air, and little drops of red polish fly off and drop onto the white comforter. “I made sure the bottles were still sealed.” She caps the polish and starts blowing on her toes. “I'm not stupid.”

And that's the thing. She really
isn't
stupid. She just makes really bad decisions. “How much have you had to drink?” I ask.

“Only one and a half, Mom,” she says. When she sees the look Paige is giving her, she throws her hands up in the air. “Oh my god, not you too, Paige!” Hmm. What's that supposed to mean? That she expects me to be lame, but she can't take the idea that Paige might give her a hard time, too? “I thought you
wanted
to buy the beer!”

“I did, but I didn't want to start drinking it right away. I thought we'd at least save it for later.”

“We have plenty for later,” Celia says. She motions us over and lifts up the comforter on one side of the bed. Three six-packs stare back at us. “Can you believe he was charging fifty dollars a six-pack?” She throws herself back on the
bed and giggles. “Not that I care. I think he was surprised I didn't try to haggle.”

For the first time, I say a quick prayer of thanks that I'm not rooming with Celia and Paige. If I got caught with alcohol in my room, there's no way I'd be allowed into Stanford. I'd get sent home from the trip and it would appear on my permanent record. I know because it was all over the informational packet they sent us—that if anyone got caught with alcohol, it would go on our permanent records and any colleges we'd applied to would be notified. Say what you want about Lyla and Aven—but at least I won't have to worry about them bringing beer into our room and getting me kicked out of school.