Sometimes It Happens (6 page)

I stare at her blankly. “But what about me?” I ask.

“We-ll,” she says. “I asked the director if you could go too, but they only need one person.” She smiles, as if to show how nice it was of her to ask about me.

“No, I mean, what about me? What am I going to do without you?”

“Hannah, you’ll be fine,” Ava says.

“No, I won’t!” I say. “I’ll be all alone all summer with no car and no friends and no anything!”

“Hannah,” Ava says, “you’re acting kind of hysterical. What about Krystal Shepard? You like her, call her up and see what she’s doing this summer.”

“
First
of all,” I say, “I am not acting hysterical.” Not really true, but if there was ever a time to be hysterical, this is definitely it. “
Second
of all, Krystal Shepard is going away to some pre-college program in Spain this summer. And
third
of all, Krystal Shepard is not you! No one is!” It’s true. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like Krystal, she’s just not a close friend. In fact, besides Ava, I don’t really
have
any close friends. In middle school we used to hang out with a lot of different girls, but there always seemed to be fights and drama, and eventually, after girls had been circling in and out of our group for years, our group became just me
and Ava. Which, looking back, was actually really stupid since now I’m stuck with no friends for the summer.

“And what about Noah?” I rush on, starting to get really panicked. “How can you just leave him like that?”

“Noah,” Ava says. “doesn’t rule my life.” She takes a bite of her brownie, and then she says, “Hannah, I’m really sorry about the timing of everything. I am. You know I was planning to spend the summer with you. It’s just . . . I don’t know, I think it would be good for me, to challenge myself. And you can come and visit me anytime you want.”

I don’t point out that, without a car, there’s no real way for me to get to Maine, and I don’t bother protesting anymore because I know her well enough to realize she’s not going to change her mind. What I really want to do is ask her how she can leave me here all by myself when I’m totally broken-hearted, and what she thinks I’m going to do all summer with my boyfriend hooking up with someone else, and me with no other friends and no car to go anywhere even if I
did have
friends to go places with.

But it won’t make a difference. Ava’s willing to get up at nine on the morning after a party to take me to Starbucks, and she set me up with a rebound hook up, like, five seconds after I caught my boyfriend cheating. . . . But I know her well enough to know that when she makes up her mind, she makes up her mind. And if she’s set on going to Maine, then she’s going to Maine.

So I just smile sadly, and tell her I’m going to miss her. Then I try not to think about how horrible the summer is going to be without her.

And three days later, after Ava and I have spent countless hours at Super Walmart, picking out all the things on her packing list, she loads up her car and pulls out of my driveway, on her way to Maine. And I return to my bed, where I stay for the next four days.

“Can I talk to you?” Sebastian asks again. He’s asking again because the first time he said it, I totally ignored him.

“No, you cannot talk to her,” Ava says. “You’re not even in this homeroom, so get out of here.” She’s turned toward him in her seat now, looking vaguely threatening even though she’s wearing a very girly purple dress.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Ava,” Sebastian says. “So mind your own business.” Yikes.

“Look,” I say. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” Wait. So Sebastian
isn’t
in this homeroom? He came in here just to talk to me? So Jessica Conrad
was
telling the truth. Wow. He made a special trip down from the third floor just to talk to me, even though the second bell’s going to ring any second. Not like Sebastian cares about being late for class. But still.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter if he’s not in this homeroom. I mean, it doesn’t change the fact that, when it comes down to it, I really
don’t
have anything to say to Sebastian. He’s pretty much been ignoring me all summer, except for
a couple of weeks ago when he randomly showed up at my house around one in the morning causing kind of a big scene, and then when he showed up at the diner causing an even bigger scene.

“You have nothing to say to me?” Sebastian asks, sounding pissed, and a little bit surprised. “Does this have anything to do with Noah?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say quickly, rolling my eyes and turning back to Ava, hoping she gets the point that Sebastian is a raving lunatic who has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Is that why he was at your house the other night at one in the morning? And why he almost punched me?” The warning bell rings, signaling homeroom is going to start in one minute, and Sebastian stands up. “I’ll wait for you after homeroom,” he says to me. He shoots Ava a dirty look, and then takes off.

“Noah almost
punched
him this summer?” Ava asks.
“Why?”
She’s turned completely toward me now, her eyes wide and questioning. Shit, shit, shit. Damn that Sebastian. Seriously, what is with him? Like he hasn’t ruined my life enough.

“Oh, um, it was nothing,” I say. I uncap my pen and open my notebook, trying to look normal and like my biggest priority is writing down any important info we’re going to get in homeroom. “Sebastian stopped by the diner, you know, and he was being a jerk as usual.”

“And Noah
punched
him?”

“No. I mean, he almost did, but it didn’t really come to that.” I say it like there’s a big difference between actually punching someone and almost punching someone, which I guess there kind of is. I mean, you can’t get arrested for almost punching someone, even though the intent is the same.

“Was he messing with Noah or something?” Ava asks.

“No,” I say, shifting on my chair. This part, at least, is true. But luckily, I don’t have to say that, or explain it, because Mrs. McGovern walks in and starts taking attendance. Which is good. Because there’s no way I want Ava to know the real reason that Noah almost punched Sebastian. And that’s because of me.

“It’s definitely broken,” my mom says, looking down at our washer with a frown on her face. Ava only left three days ago, and already my life has hit a new low. Friday night. And I’m doing laundry. Although I guess it’s not technically night. I mean, it’s five o’clock, which is more like evening. And I guess I’m not
technically
doing laundry, because as soon as I put my clothes into the machine and tried to start it, the whole thing made this ridiculously horrible noise with lots of shuddering and shaking and then just . . . died.

“Maybe it’s unplugged or something,” I say hopefully. I look behind the washer, but the cord is plugged right into the wall outlet. It stares back, taunting me. I think it might be pissed off. The washer, I mean. It could probably sense that it wasn’t going to get much use this summer, since in my depressed state my hygiene habits have so far taken a backseat to other, more important endeavors, like stalking Sebastian online.

“Honey, it’s broken,” my mom says. She sounds like she’s
trying to break it to me gently. I can’t really blame her. The other day she told me there was no more vanilla ice cream, and I burst into tears right in the middle of the kitchen. She obviously knows I’m fragile.

“But I need clothes!”

“Well,” she says. “I’ll drive you to the Laundromat on my way to the hospital.” My mom’s a veterinary technician, and she works nights at the emergency animal hospital in Grafton, which is about forty minutes away. She wants to be a veterinarian though, which means that when she gets off her shift, she takes classes at Tufts’ veterinary school. Which means she’s never around. Which means I should be throwing lots of parties and having fun and kicking people out all panicked when my mom pulls in the driveway unannounced. But I can’t do that since Ava’s not here and I have no boyfriend and I’m too depressed to clean my clothes, let alone plan and throw a whole party.

“The Laundromat?” The only thing worse than spending your Friday at home doing laundry is to spend it at the Laundromat doing laundry. “Forget it.” I close the lid of the washer, leaving the clothes in there. “I’ll just find something else to wear.” What, I don’t know. Everything I have is dirty, but I’m sure I can figure out something. Maybe I can make a dress out of a garbage bag. Lady Gaga wore that meat dress to the VMAs, so I should be able to dress in garbage bags. I’ll get black ones, to symbolize my current state of mind. Like performance art or something.

“Come on,” my mom says. “I’ll help you get everything ready.”

“No.” I head out of the laundry room and into the great room, where I lay down on the couch and pick up the remote, getting ready to turn on the TV and pick up my
Friday Night Lights
marathon right where I left off. Tim Riggins is so hot.

My mom follows me. “Hannah,” she says from the doorway, “do I need to call your father? Maybe you should go and spend some time with him since being here obviously isn’t making you feel better.”

I glare at her. It’s an empty threat (she would never send me to stay with my dad, and my dad wouldn’t want me even if she did), but it’s enough to get me going. The last thing I need is my dad calling, asking me how I’m doing. To put it bluntly, my dad is kind of an asshole. My parents got divorced when I was ten, and my dad lives, like, two hours away, but he hardly ever calls or sends money or anything. Which is probably why I’m so depressed about Sebastian. I clearly have issues with abandonment.

“Fine,” I say. “But we’re getting the washer fixed.”

“Of course,” my mom says. “And then maybe this weekend we can sit down and talk about you possibly getting a job.”

Geez. So much for her knowing I’m fragile. I ignore the part about the job and make a big production of heading up to my room to get the rest of my clothes together. I mean, if mom thinks a job is going to cure my depression, she really couldn’t be more wrong.

There are actually a ton of people at the Laundromat, which is kind of annoying because almost every machine is full. I already can’t wait to get out of here, and it’s going to completely suck if I have to wait for a dryer. Don’t people have anything better to do on a Friday night? Oh, well. Judge not lest ye be judged, or whatever.

I heft my two garbage bags of clothes (one for whites and one for darks) up onto an empty washer. I couldn’t put them in laundry baskets because I’m going to have to walk the twelve blocks home and there’s no way I can do that with baskets—as it is, I’m worried about doing it with bags. Then I feed one of the twenty dollar bills my mom gave me into the change machine.

It roars to life and eighty quarters come tumbling out. Most of them collect in the metal compartment under the dispenser, but a few of them bounce out and roll all over the floor. I try to stomp on them with my flip-flop as they go by, but two of them go rolling under a dryer. Ugh. This is turning out to be a disaster already and I haven’t even put my clothes in a washer yet.

I turn to the guy who works there, a middle-aged man with an overgrown beard. He’s wearing a green plaid coat (in summer?) and tinkering with a washing machine. “Excuse me?” I ask. “Do you have a plastic cup or something I could use for my quarters?”

“No,” he says in a really unfriendly way, then goes back
to working on the machine. Wow. Talk about bad customer service.

I decide not to worry about the two that went missing, and scoop up a handful of quarters from the metal compartment, not sure where I’m going to put them. What a pain in the ass this is turning out to be. I am so hitting up the vending machine on the way out and getting one of those so-disgusting-they’re-good chocolate Yoo-hoo drinks, so that I have fuel for the walk home. I definitely deserve it after all this.

I’m just about to try and stuff as many coins as I can into my pockets and maybe just leave the rest, when a hand reaches down next to me and scoops up the rest of my quarters. Like, seriously scoops them all up. In one smooth motion, like one of those giant claw machines that you use to try and win crappy stuffed animals.

“Hey!” I say to the anonymous hand. “What are you—”

“Sorry,” Noah says. “I saw you were having a little bit of a problem.”

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a Ziploc bag, drops my quarters in, closes the bag, and then hands it to me. I just stare at him. What the hell is
Noah
doing here? And why does he have Ziploc bags with him?

“Do you need some help?” he asks. He gestures to the ground, where my trash bags are now sitting.