Sometimes It Happens (10 page)

“Yeah,” he says. “You take Hannah home, okay?”

I think about protesting, about saying I can walk, but it’s twelve blocks and I’m exhausted. So as much as I don’t want to be the loser without a car who needs rides from people, it’s better than having to walk home in the heat.

We’re halfway to Lacey’s car when I realize that I don’t have my cell phone. “Forgot my phone,” I tell her. “Be right back.”

When I get back inside, Noah’s behind the counter, sitting in front of his laptop, a look of concentration on his face. He must be doing some ordering, or whatever it is restaurant people do on computers before they clean up for the night.

“Hey,” I say. “I think I left my cell in here somewhere. Have you seen it?” I’m down on my hands and knees now, looking behind the counter. But no phone.

“Let me go check the lost and found,” he says. “A lot of times, if there are keys or phones lying around, they end up back there.”

“Thanks,” I say gratefully, straightening up and plopping down in his chair. The laptop in front of me is open to a word document, and on the screen is a page of what looks like a script. It’s called “Midsummer.” “Scene One,” it says “Int. Car, At Night. Laura Watson, seventeen, sits in the passenger seat. She is beautiful but complicated, with a—”

The laptop screen snaps shut. “What are you doing?” Noah asks. He’s looking down at me with a scowl, his eyes dark and angry.

“Um, nothing,” I say, my face turning hot. “I just—”

“You just what?” Noah’s lips tighten into a line.

“Nothing,” I say. “I mean, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked at that. I mean, I
didn’t
look at it, I didn’t really see anything, it was just . . . um, did you find my phone?”

He slaps it into my hand.

“Thanks,” I say. But he doesn’t say anything back, so I rush out of the diner and back to Lacey’s car.

“Something really weird just happened,” I say to Lacey once I’m in the passenger seat. I pull my seat belt across my body and click it in. “So I went back in there to get my phone, right? And Noah was—”

“I’m about to do something bad,” Lacey says, cutting me
off. She’s staring straight ahead, a look that’s somewhere between fear and excitement on her face, and her hands are tight around the steering wheel.

“You are?” I’m intrigued. Intrigued enough to forget about the whole weird interaction Noah and I just had. I mean, what’s a little fight over looking at someone’s computer when Lacey’s about to do something horrible?

“Yes.” She pulls the rearview mirror down and starts to fiddle with her hair. “I’m going to drive past Riker’s house before I go home.”

“Riker
Strong
?” I ask incredulously. “Why would you be driving by Riker’s—Ohmigod!
Riker Strong
is your ex-boyfriend? The one Danielle had sex with?” How did I not know this? Probably because once Riker and Ava broke up, we spent most of our time totally avoiding him. So it would make sense that I never really knew who he was dating next. Still, you’d think I would have heard
something
about it, or at least remember seeing him in the hall with Lacey or something. I wonder if she knows how obsessed he is with Ava. Hell, I wonder if
Danielle
knows. She probably wouldn’t be too pleased if she knew her boyfriend was still practically in love with someone else. Probably she’d do a lot worse than just spill a cup of water.

“Yeah,” she says. “Why?”

“He used to date my friend Ava.” I want to tell her that he stalked her after she broke up with him, but something tells me Lacey wouldn’t want to hear that. So all I say is,
“Lacey, I don’t think that’s a good idea. To drive by his house, I mean.”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Like you haven’t driven by Sebastian’s house?”

“Nope,” I say. “I prefer to barricade myself in my room and stay away from everyone.” I can’t help feeling a little bit smug about this. Maybe I’ve gained a few pounds and maybe I wasn’t the best about showering and maybe Ava had to tell Noah to keep an eye on me because she was afraid I was going to spike my Coke with arsenic, but besides spending a little too much time on his Facebook page, I never stalked Sebastian the way Lacey’s obviously done to Riker.

“Then how are you supposed to know if he’s hanging out with other girls?” Lacey seems confused.

“Lacey,” I say. “I saw him kissing another girl right in front of me. I’m kind of assuming that he’s hanging out with other girls.”

But as I say it, my voice starts to falter just a little bit. I’ve had a good day, a busy day, a day where I made a lot of money (one hundred and fifty dollars, which is not a lot of money to some people, but is definitely a lot of money to someone whose bank balance is two dollars and sixty-three cents, aka me) and felt like I was actually doing something instead of being completely unproductive and consuming my weight in ice cream. (Which, let’s be honest, was only going to get harder and harder as my weight went up.) But now the day is over and all I have to look forward to is
going home, lying in bed, and watching DVDs . . . And then I have to get up early again tomorrow and go work at my shitty diner job, doing the whole thing over and over, every day, for the rest of the summer. Pathetic.

“Well, I’m driving by Riker’s,” Lacey says. She starts the car up, then glances at me out of the corner of her eye, like she’s giving me one more chance to stop her. But I don’t have the energy. “Do you want to come?” she asks. “Or should I drop you off at home first? Either way is fine, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable by having to go on my stalker mission with me.”

I hesitate for a second, but then I say, “Okay, I’ll come.” I take a deep breath. “But, um, can we drive by Sebastian’s house too?”

Lacey smiles.

We go to Sebastian’s house first, because his house is closer. Riker actually lives right around the block from me, and when Lacey finds this out, she almost has an orgasm. “This is perfect!” she screams. “I can pretend I’m hanging out at your house and then we can go for walks around the block or something. He’s always outside, he likes to work on cars and play basketball in his driveway.”

I don’t even tell her it’s pretty rude for her to imply that she would use me for my geographical desirability, and I definitely don’t tell her that if Riker sees us walking by his house twelve times a day it’s probably going to seem a little
suspicious, and/or cause him to get a restraining order. But she must be reading my mind, because she quickly adds, “Not that I would use you for your house. And not that I would make it obvious or anything.”

“Oh, totally,” I say, mostly because she seems really excited, and I don’t want to be mean. Besides, if Riker did get stalked, it would serve him right for stalking Ava. Plus, we’re getting closer to Sebastian’s and I’m trying to brace myself for whatever I’m about to see.

“That’s his house,” I say, pointing at the white colonial with blue trim on the corner. Lacey slows the car down.

“Don’t slow down!” I yell. “What if he’s outside or something?”

“Just duck down,” she instructs me, like she’s done this a million times before. (Which she probably has.) Although, I don’t know how she can duck down while she’s driving. That definitely doesn’t seem all that safe.

I slouch down in the seat, peeking out the window. “There’s his truck,” I say, exhaling in relief. He’s home! Of course, him being home at seven o’clock on a weekday doesn’t mean that he isn’t going out later. But still.

I feel a squeeze in my chest. Sebastian kissed me for the first time in that truck. He was driving me home from school, and it was this really electric moment, where I was really hoping he was going to, but not knowing if he definitely was, and then, just when I thought he wasn’t, he leaned over and—

Wait a minute. Whose car is that?

“Whose car is that?” Lacey asks. “It’s super cute.” There’s a pink Jeep with the top down parked on the street, right in front of Sebastian’s house.

“I don’t know,” I say. A pink Jeep? Sebastian’s mom drives an Accord, and his older sister has a black Hyundai that she got as a graduation present a couple of years ago.

And then, when we get closer, I see the bumper sticker on the back of the Jeep. “Granbury High Sophomores Do It Better” it says.

Lacey must see it at the same time I do, because she speeds up and drives off. We sit in silence for a few seconds. “Maybe his mom got a new car,” Lacey finally says. “A lot of people have midlife crises and get pink Jeeps. I know this girl whose mom—”

“I saw the sticker,” I say. I look out the window, not saying anything.

“Maybe it was one of his sister’s friends?” she tries.

“One of his sister’s friends who’s still a sophomore at our school?”

“He’s a jerk, Hannah.”

“Yeah.” I keep my face turned toward the window, my eyes filling with tears that turn the houses into a blur of colors as we go by. Everything looks all smudgy, and it feels fitting and reinforces how I’ve felt these past few weeks—like my life is one big smudge.

When we get to Riker’s house, his car isn’t there.

Lacey doesn’t even blink, she just lets me direct her to
my house and then pulls in the driveway. “Are we pathetic?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. But something about having her with me, having a partner in all of this, makes it seem less pathetic. It’s nice to have someone that’s going through the same thing I am. It makes me feel like I’m not that crazy.

“New pact,” Lacey says. “We are never driving by their houses again.” She puts her hand out. “Deal?”

“Deal.” I shake it.

It’s an easy deal to make really. I mean, this is why I’ve kept myself hidden away these past few weeks. Because even though I’ve driven myself a little bit crazy thinking about what Sebastian’s been doing or what he might be up to, at least they were just fantasies. A fantasy is something that, when it’s horrible, even if it might be true, you can say, “Oh, I’m sure that isn’t really happening, it’s just my imagination running away with me.” I mean, my imagination runs away with me all the time, about all sorts of things.

But your imagination running away from you is a lot different than a pink Jeep with the top down and a very inappropriate bumper sticker staring you right in the face. To add insult to injury, it’s probably true. Sophomores probably
do
do it better. Definitely better than me, since I’ve never even done it.

“Do you want me to stay?” Lacey asks. “I mean, I have a late doctor’s appointment, but I could cancel it. We could hang out and order Chinese or something.”

“No,” I say. “I’m fine, really. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I slide out from the car and head inside, where I call Ava and leave her a voicemail. “It’s me,” I say. “Something really horrible happened, and I need to talk to you. Call me back as soon as you get this message. I don’t care how late or how early it is.”

I hang up the phone and head for the ice cream in the freezer.

How was I supposed to know that the girl who hit my car is the sophomore who does it better? I mean, I’ve only really seen her once, when she was making out with my boyfriend in a pool, and her back was to me. And at that time, I was having a traumatic moment and was completely under duress. And it’s, like, a proven fact that people who are in a traumatic moment and completely under duress are unable to remember pertinent details. They did a whole study on it and everything. Of course, it had to do with witnesses and crimes, not people whose boyfriends are cheating on them, but still. The principle is totally the same.

“I guess she was telling the truth when she said that she got a new car,” I say to Lacey as we navigate through the hall on our way to our third period class. “She must have traded her pink Jeep in for a red BMW.”

“Honestly,” Lacey says, “I think you should sue her.”

“Just because she hooked up with Sebastian?”

“Yes,” Lacey says. “And also because she really hurt my
neck.” She rubs it like she’s trying to show just how screwed up it is.

“Are you going to have to wear one of those foam collars?” I stop at my locker to drop off the books I’ve collected in my first two classes. Lacey stops with me.

“I never thought of that,” Lacey says. “But probably.”

“You can get everyone to sign it, like a cast.”

“Not funny,” Lacey says. “You shouldn’t make fun of me, because someday, sometime, there really
is
going to be something wrong with me, and then you’ll—”

“Hannah!” Ava comes running down the hall, her brown platform sandals flapping against the tile floor. She flings herself at me, accosting me with the scent of her perfume.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, reaching out and grabbing her before she can go hurtling into my locker. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to you.” Her face is pale and her dark eyeliner, which looked perfect this morning, is now really smudged and giving her a kind of weird, vampire look against the paleness that is now her skin.

“What’s wrong?” I repeat.
She found out
, I think. She knows what happened last night. I don’t know how, but she does. And now it’s going to happen; she’s going to start screaming and yelling and maybe even hit me.
How does she know?
I wonder. Did someone see us? Is there a rumor going around? Did Noah tell her? Is that why he was acting so weird? Thinking about Noah telling her makes me happy.
It shouldn’t, I know it shouldn’t, but a lot of things that shouldn’t have happened have. I let the feeling wash over me for one second and then I push it back down before I can start hating myself for feeling it.

Stay calm,
I tell myself.
She doesn’t know. If she knew, she wouldn’t have just tried to hug you and she wouldn’t sound like she wants you to make her feel better.

“I need to talk to you,” Ava says again. It’s a whisper this time, and her eyes flick over to Lacey.