Remember When (Remember Trilogy #1) (2 page)

   To make matters worse, while there are the multitude of questions swirling around in your own head, there are the inquiries from friends and acquaintances and people you barely know. You try to be polite and accommodating toward anyone who asks about the situation, but really, you just want to slap them and tell them to mind their own business.

   But worst of all are the people who don’t bother asking anything at all. They are the ones who think they’ve got it all figured out and don’t need to bother finding out the real story. They’re the ones who will say pitying things behind your back like “Oh, that poor, little girl” or “The man aged ten years overnight when that woman left him”. Sometimes, I’d overhear someone say something about “that Kate Warren woman”, which always made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

   There was a lot of talk that summer but mercifully, I wasn’t privy to the majority of it until my teen years. I think I was so caught up in my own feelings on the matter to have been aware, or to have even cared, about what anyone around town may have thought. I was too busy dealing with it myself, trapped in my own head for the weeks following her absence.

   Ultimately, I had a pretty bad spell at one point that summer, and I credit Lisa as being the one who brought me back from the edge. It seems she has been there for every single moment- whether epic or trivial- throughout my entire life.

   One of our more monumental moments was that I was due to turn seventeen about a month into our senior year, lending even more distractibility to my mind on that particular September day back in 1990.

  It was a beautiful, sunny day outside and my head was consumed with thoughts of my impending vehicular freedom.

   Therefore, I was ill-prepared for the bomb that was about to hit my English Lit class on an otherwise unremarkable Monday afternoon.

Chapter 2

TRIPWIRE

   I was sitting in Mrs. Mason’s fifth period English Literature class when it happened.

   It was only the second week of the new school year, my senior year (finally!) at
über-prestigious St. Nicetius Parochial High School- since it was the only Catholic school in town, it was less formally referred to as “St. Norman’s”- and already I was counting down the days until graduation. Five down; one-hundred-and-seventy-five to go.

   It’s not that I didn’t like school. It’s just that the weather was still perfect in September and it was hard to get back into institution-mode with the sun shining so maliciously through the open windows of my butter-yellow concrete cell; the warmth of a sunbeam against my skin taunting me with an almost audible ticking as the end of summer counted down its final hours.

   I was staring outside, catching the scent of warm, cut grass and thinking about taking a dip in the pool at the end of the day. The pool was my haven, my one place I could go whenever I wanted to block out the world. Living in New Jersey only allowed about a five month window to indulge in that activity, but my father would sometimes take mercy on me during the winter months and splurge on a day pass for the pool at the Jewish Y. Being that it was September, however, I knew I had at least a couple more weeks before it would become an issue. I’d managed the rare task of getting in a few laps before school that day, waking up before my alarm even went off, allowing a few extra minutes to grab a quick swim. I turned my face into my shoulder and breathed in, picking up a hint of chlorine through the shield of Aqua Net in my hair, offering a small promise of the lazy, floaty afternoon to come.

   I’d had a bad run-in with the Sun-In a few weeks back which streaked my dark brown hair the nastiest shades of burnt orange. My best friend Lisa, after laughing hysterically at my predicament, came over and helped me dye it back to my natural color. I would have considered that very helpful if it weren’t for the fact that Lisa was the one who insisted I be the guinea pig for that particular brand of hair lightener in the first place.

   I’d been staring wistfully out the window at the sunshine, daydreaming about working on my tan, driving around in Lisa’s beat-up old LeBaron with the top down or getting in a few more laps once I got home from school.

   The second bell hadn’t rung yet and already I was zoned out, slouched in my seat, waiting for Mrs. Mason to get on with Part Two of
Romeo and Juliet
. I had gotten through the entire book over the weekend, a fact I was forced to keep to myself considering Mason’s explicit instructions that we not read ahead.

   My ears perked up when I heard Mrs. Mason speaking over the din of a not-yet-settled classroom. “Thank you. You can take the desk over there behind Miss Warren, by the windows.” Teachers always tried to convey some illusion of respect by calling us by our last names.

   My parents had saddled me with the unfortunate
first
name of Layla. My father has always explained that my mother was in the middle of a pretty heady rock-and-roll phase in the years surrounding my birth, which explains, but doesn’t excuse, the fact that my brother’s name is Bruce Springsteen Warren. I shit you not.

   In any case, I hadn’t been paying much attention to Mrs. Mason until I heard her say my name. I looked up and saw some new kid hand her a slip of paper then turn toward the direction of her pointed finger. The sight that greeted me was enough to stop my heart.

   If I were living in a movie, the opening strains of “
Crazy Train
” would have piped in, creating a background for this gorgeous boy who was walking slow-motion toward me. Our eyes met for a second before I realized I’d been staring and suddenly looked away.

   I tried to look engrossed in my book, flipping pages and avoiding eye contact as he sauntered down the aisle and slipped into the seat behind me.

   I normally loved that the seating arrangements were done alphabetically. Most of the time, I wound up with a seat near the windows and I almost always got the last desk in the row. I couldn’t imagine being someone like Sonny Aetine, who normally got stuck in the front seat right next to the classroom door. It always pissed me off whenever I was in a class with Art Zarelli, because that was the only time I ever had to deal with anyone sitting behind me. But now here was this new guy occupying a desk at my back, and suddenly, the idea didn’t seem so bad.
No sooner had he gotten himself settled when the bell rang, signaling the start of class.

   Mrs. Mason stood and announced the obvious. “Good afternoon, everyone. You may have noticed that we have a new student today and I’d like to invite him up here to introduce himself.”

   God, what kind of sadism seminar do teachers attend that encourages torturing the new kid? If I had to get up in front of the whole class and offer some condensed biography of my life, I’d probably die. But New Kid strolled right up to the front of the room without the slightest bit of self-consciousness. And then, because
all
eyes were on him, I had the excuse to look right at him.

   He had sun-streaked, sandy hair which he wore long on top, but short enough in back that Sister Jean wouldn’t drag him by his ear into her office to shave his head as she’d been rumored to do. I hoped he’d keep on top of it, because it would have been a crime to shave off a beautiful mane such as that.

   He bared a smile of gleaming, white teeth as he slid a hand into his back pocket, making the muscle of his arm strain against the sleeve of his white Oxford.

  
My God.

   He mussed the back of his hair with his free hand as Mrs. Mason introduced him to the class as Terrence C. Wilmington
the third
, which prompted him to immediately correct her with, “Everyone calls me Trip.”

   The smooth tenor of his voice caught me by surprise. Mrs. Mason must have been a little affected too, because she didn’t bristle at being disputed, and merely smiled back at Trip’s direct gaze and charming grin.

   He turned back to our class and started in with the ease of someone who’d had to endure this barbaric ritual many times before. “My name’s Trip,” he said again. “My family just moved here from Indianapolis.”

   I don’t know why, but the phrase
cornfed Indiana farmboy
came into my head at that moment. Indianapolis is hardly farm country, but I didn’t count anyplace as a city except New York. Everything west of here was amber waves of grain as far as I was concerned. But even though he had the look of someone who’d have been perfectly cast in the role of sexy stableboy, he was way too polished to have been mistaken for a mere farmhand. Regardless of a rural upbringing.

   “Before Indy, we lived in Seattle, Phoenix, L.A. and Chicago, where I was born.”

  
Ah, okay. More “cities”.

   Mrs. Mason interrupted his schpiel then. “Is your father in the military, Trip?”

   “Uh, no. He’s in hotels. But I guess I could see why you’d get the impression that I’m an army brat. According to my sister, the brat part sums me up pretty good, though.”

   A few girls started giggling at the little joke which probably would have gone over like a lead balloon if it were told by anyone less gorgeous. I snickered at that thought and hoped it wasn’t loud enough to hear.

   Trip continued with, “My father likes to oversee construction when any one of his new hotels is being built. We normally spend a few years in each city until the grand opening and then we move on to the next one.”

   I felt my heart sink inexplicably, thinking that Trip’s days here were already numbered. I didn’t even know the guy, but I’d been excited by the promise of someone new in this town, someone who hadn’t lived here since birth like the rest of us. Someone who wasn’t in every class picture of mine since kindergarten. Someone, let’s face it, who was pretty easy on the eyes.

   Mrs. Mason asked, “You named a bunch of big cities, there. How is it that you wound up in Norman, New Jersey? We’re hardly a mecca for tourism.”

   That brought a few chuckles from the class as Trip flashed another amazing grin and answered, “Actually, the hotel’s being built in New York. My father says this is his last hotel and he wanted to save it for when he was ready to retire, so I guess we’re here for the long haul. The city’s close enough to Norman and my dad spent his teen years here. I guess he wants that for me, too.”

   My stomach did a quick flip of rejoice. At the time, I was trying to convince myself that all I cared about was an improvement to the scenery of boring old Norman. Trip was like a one man beautification committee just by existing.

   “Well, Trip, welcome to our town. I hope you’ll like it here.”

   I guess Trip took that as his cue to escape, because he started walking toward me, back to his newly assigned desk, but not without saying, “Thanks. I have a feeling I will.” Then he gave my desk a quick tap with his fingertips- which knocked me out- before sliding into the seat behind me.

   I hoped I didn’t have some noticeably embarrassing shocked look on my face, but my mouth had certainly gone dry and I swallowed hard. This, with my life, led to a very noticeable coughing fit which just got worse the more I tried to stop it. I raised my hand to be excused and Mrs. Mason just wagged her head in the direction of the door. I made a break for it, almost tripping on Mary Ellen Simpky’s oversized Gucci purse on my way out of the room. I high-tailed it down the hall to the water fountain outside the girls’ room and slugged down about a gallon of Norman’s finest before the sputtering fit subsided. Without the luxury of long sleeves to swipe my face (Oh, please. Like everyone doesn’t do it), I cruised into the bathroom in search of a paper towel.

   Penelope Redy and Margie Caputo were standing together in the same open stall amidst a swirl of smoke. They both jumped when I walked in before realizing it was only me and not some teacher coming in to bust them for cutting class and sneaking a cigarette. Damn. I was so distracted that I forgot the cardinal rule of the Girls’ Room, and didn’t say “It’s okay” upon entering.

   We exchanged quick hellos before I turned toward the towel dispenser and they turned back to their conversation.

   “I heard he’s from Indiana,” Penelope said through an exhale.

   Margie spat back, “They don’t make them like that in Indiana. Mount Olympus, maybe. But not Indiana.”

   Clearly, the hot topic of gossip for the next millennium at St. Norman’s High School was going to be about the new kid.

   “Do you think he has a girlfriend, like back home or whatever?”

   Margie threw the butt into the toilet with a sizzle and flushed the incriminating evidence away. “Guys like that always do. Why? You think
you
have a shot at him? As if.”

   Penelope huffed at her friend’s assessment and made her way over to the sink next to me. “That’s
not
why I asked. I already have a boyfriend anyway. I was just curious, is all.” Then she directed her next words to me. “Layla!”

   I turned toward her all innocence, as if I hadn’t spent the past minutes chafing my face and hands on the scratchy excuse for a paper towel just so I could eavesdrop.

   Penelope asked, “What do you think? Have you seen him yet?”

   “Who’s that?” I asked unconvincingly.