From This Moment

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “Sure we can,” I say, the pleading in my voice turning to franticness. “We can just pretend it never happened. We can go back to our book club, we can just be friends again, it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “It means everything.” His voice is low, smoky, in a tone I’ve never heard him use before. “Aven, you’re my best friend. And I just don’t think that we’re . . . I don’t want to ruin that.”

  The words are sharp little knives stabbing my heart, over and over again. “Then let’s just go back to how it was,” I say.

  “I just need some time to think about things,” he says. “But I want you to know that I—”

  I pull my hand from his. “Stop,” I say. “Please, just stop.” I’m crying, the tears running down my face, and I’m embarrassed and humiliated and rejected and alone. All the horrible feelings you could feel, all rolled up into one. “Please. Just. Stop.”

  And then I turn around and walk away, leaving him standing there.

  He calls my name.

  I don’t turn back.

  But I let myself have one last moment of wishing, one last moment of imagining that maybe things could be different. One last second where I hope maybe he’ll follow me, or call after me again and beg me not to go. I want him to say my name, to tell me it’s going to be okay, that no matter what we’re always going to be friends, that we can go back to the way things were.

  But he doesn’t.

  He lets me go.

  And I wish I could do the same, that I could let go of the way I feel about him. But he’s imprinted on my heart in a way that makes that impossible.

  I’m not proud of what I do next, but as soon as I step off the elevator onto the second floor, I text Colin. I apologize for what happened, tell him I’d like a chance to explain, and then I invite him to come back.

  I know apologizing is the right thing to do, so that part’s fine. But the only reason I’m inviting Colin to come back is because I don’t want to be alone. I can’t take the thought of going back to my room, lying on my cot, tossing and turning and trying to fall asleep. It’s too depressing.

  I pace up and down the corridor, waiting for Colin to text me back, feeling like I’m holding on to my sanity by a thread. When I get to the end of the hallway for the second time, I press my head against the wall, trying to feel anything except the aching sadness that’s permeating my body.

  I start to cry. Big, ugly sobs that start deep in my chest, deep in my soul, and pour out of me. I feel out of control, both emotionally and physically. It’s about Liam, most of it, anyway, but it’s also just this overwhelming loneliness that I don’t know how to deal with.

  I’m so lonely.

  I’m on this amazing trip, and I have no one to share it with.

  My heart is broken, and I have no one to talk to.

  I had all these stupid ideas for this trip—that maybe Lyla and Quinn and I would become friends again, that maybe something might happen between me and Liam.

  It was all so stupid and naive—did I really think that four days could change my life forever? The only thing the last two days did was make things worse—Lyla and Quinn still hate me, things with Liam are completely screwed up, and I’m spending the night alone. It’s the worst vacation I’ve ever had, times about a billion.

  I wish I could blame it all on my fourteen-year-old self, the girl who stood on a beach with her friends and made a promise to herself, thinking that four years would be more than enough time to make that promise come true. But I can’t. Because my three-days-ago self was just as bad. I thought I could change things during this trip, that I could make my life better. But the truth is, I haven’t accomplished anything.

  I pull my phone out and look at the screen, but Colin hasn’t texted me back. I try to tell myself he’s walking home and so he probably didn’t hear his phone, but I know that’s not true. He’s not texting me back because he doesn’t want to get involved with me. He thinks I’m crazy. Not that I can blame him. I mean, I spent all night drinking and dancing like an insane person, then got into a fight with another guy right in front of him. No wonder Colin doesn’t want anything to do with me—he thought I was this fun, exciting girl, and all I am is a mess. A complete and total mess.

  I sit there for a while, on the floor at the end of the hallway, just feeling sorry for myself. I’m all alone, because most of my classmates are out and about, having fun on their vacation. No one is just sitting around the hotel, like some kind of loser.

  Except me.

  After a while, I pick myself up and drag myself back to my room.

  I stand outside the door for a moment, wondering again how I could be so clueless and naive to think that sharing a room with Lyla and Quinn for a few days would be enough to mend our friendship. The wounds between Lyla and Quinn and me go deep. Much deeper than one weekend is going to fix.

  In fact, I’m starting to think that the rifts in my relationships—the one with Liam, the one with Lyla and Quinn—may not be able to be fixed at all.

  TEN

  I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT THE FIGHT WITH Quinn and Lyla was my fault. I know, logically, that that’s not really true—the situation was complicated, and everyone contributed to it. But still, some part of me, the biggest part, has always felt that everything that happened was because of me. Not because I think I did anything wrong, but because if it wasn’t for me, the whole situation never would have happened.

  It started off innocently enough—a trip to the mall with Lyla. I don’t remember why Quinn wasn’t there. She might have been busy with one of the extracurriculars she was always signing up for (Quinn wanted to go to Stanford more than anything in the world, and she knew that even though her parents were both legacies and her grades were stellar, it was still going to be hard—so she was always volunteering or signing up for different clubs and activities that she thought would look good on her transcript).

  Anyway, Lyla and I had been at the mall, trying on clothes in an effort to find the perfect casual T-shirt—the kind of T-shirt you could wear on a date and not feel like you were underdressed, but was also comfortable enough for hanging around the house binge watching Scandal.

  It was so exhausting that we ended up at IHOP, sharing pancakes covered with strawberries and whipped cream, eating ourselves into a sugar coma.

  “My dad asked me to move with him to New Hampshire,” Lyla said when we were halfway through our stack, totally matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t some big revelation.

  “Oh,” I said, remembering thinking that I should choose my words carefully. I knew Lyla’s parents were getting divorced. She’d told Quinn and me earlier that week, and she’d said she wasn’t upset about it.

  Lyla’s parents had always had a weird relationship—when you were at their house, you could feel it. Her dad was never really around—he’s a doctor and worked a lot—and you could feel the tension in the house when he was. It wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable or anything, it was just different. Kind of like when you had a guest over and everyone was trying to be on their best behavior. But of course Lyla’s dad wasn’t a guest—he was her dad. He lived there.

  The whole vibe could be really weird, which was why we never spent much time at Lyla’s house. It was, like, a known thing, even though she didn’t talk about it much. So when she said she was fine with her parents getting divorced, and then acted like everything was totally normal, Quinn and I had no choice but to believe her.

  But when Lyla announced her dad had asked her to move in with him, I remember wishing Quinn was there, because she always knew what to say in those situations. I was the peacemaker, I could make light of things, but Quinn—she knew what to say when people said something that might be upsetting or complicated. She would know the exact line to straddle, hitting that perfect balance between making the person feel like it was going to be okay and making sure not to discount the way they were feeling.

  I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing that I hardly said anything—obvi
ously I didn’t want Lyla to move to New Hampshire with her dad. But I also didn’t want her to think that if she wanted to go, there was something wrong with that.

  Of course, I knew deep down she would never really go. Lyla and her dad weren’t even close—why would she uproot her whole life, leave her mom, her school, her friends, just to start over in a new place? It didn’t make sense. But the fact that she was even bringing it up as a possibility made me think she was more upset about the fact that her dad was leaving than she’d previously let on.

  So all I ended up saying was, “That’s interesting. Are you going to go?”

  And she said she didn’t know, and then we dropped it. I don’t remember her asking me not to tell anyone, although later, she would insist that she did. To this day, I’m not sure who was right. All I know is that we both remember it very differently.

  The three of us had plans to sleep at Quinn’s house that night, so I figured we’d talk about it more then. But on the way out of the restaurant, Lyla begged off, saying she wanted to spend time at home, that she didn’t want to leave her mom all alone. I should have pressed her on it. I should have asked her what she meant, I should have brought up the fact that she’d said she and her mom were fine with the split, that it was the best thing for everyone involved. I should have asked her what was really going on. I should have talked to her more. But again, I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing that I just said nothing at all.

  When I got to Quinn’s, we ordered pizza and talked about this new development.

  “We have to support her,” Quinn said. “If she wants to go to New Hampshire, we have to be there for her.”

  “What if she makes new friends?” I’d asked.

  “Of course she’ll make new friends,” Quinn said. “But they won’t be friends like us.”

  We decided we’d be the best friends ever—we’d help Lyla pack if she needed us to, we’d take buses out to see her every weekend until one of us got our license. (And a car—the thing about turning sixteen was that it was actually really easy to get a license—you just needed to go down and pass the test. Getting access to a car was the tricky part.)

  We’d make sure we didn’t fall out of touch or drift apart the way people always promised not to and then did anyway. We were different. We’d make an effort. We decided. And back then, I was naive enough to think that if you wanted something bad enough, you could make it happen.

  I didn’t hear from Lyla all weekend, and it made me nervous. The three of us were never out of contact with each other for that long, having a running group text that went back for months and never had more than a couple of hours of blank space.

  I asked Quinn what we should do, and she said to wait until Monday, that maybe Lyla was just processing things.

  So we waited for her outside school on Monday morning.

  “Yo,” I said when I saw her walking up from the bus circle. “Where you been?” I was trying to come off as cool and unconcerned, trying to keep it casual in case Lyla had had a rough weekend.

  Lyla’s face was completely blank. It was a weird look, one I’d never seen on her before.

  “Yeah, we were trying to get in touch with you all day yesterday,” Quinn said, finally looking up from her phone. When she saw the look on Lyla’s face, she got concerned. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  But Lyla didn’t answer. Instead, she turned to me. “How could you tell her?” she screamed. “I told you not to tell anybody!”

  “What?” I was confused, not really knowing what she was talking about. Tell who? About what? She definitely couldn’t have meant telling Quinn about her dad. First of all, Quinn already knew that Lyla’s parents were getting divorced. So it wasn’t like I’d told the major part of the secret. And second of all, Lyla, Quinn, and I told each other everything. None of us had ever kept secrets from each other before. It wasn’t like that. Two of us weren’t ever closer than all three of us were. When it came to our friendship, we all were the same. Best friends. Sisters.

  “You told Quinn!” Lyla yelled. “What I told you about my dad!” She was angry, angrier than I’d ever seen her.

  “Lyla, I didn’t think you meant Quinn! All three of us tell each other everything.” The weird thing was, even though I was saying those words, I couldn’t remember if she’d even asked me not to tell anyone. Why would she have said that? I wouldn’t have told anyone except for Quinn, and so if Lyla had asked me to keep the thing with her dad a secret, I felt like I would have questioned her on it. But I wasn’t going to contradict her—not when she was looking at me like she wanted to kill me. Seriously, it was scary. I’d never seen her that mad at anyone before, let alone me.

  “Wait, just calm down,” Quinn said, shaking her head like she was trying to make sense of everything. I let out the breath I’d been holding, relieved. Surely now that Quinn was getting involved, everything would be taken care of. Quinn would fix it. She had to. “Lyla—”

  But Lyla just seemed more upset as she turned toward Quinn. “You,” she said, cutting her off. “How could you have told your mom?”

  Quinn looked confused, and I did, too. Why would Quinn have told her mom about Lyla and her parents? “How did you know that?” Quinn asked.

  “I know that because she told my mom! And now my mom is freaking out!” Lyla’s voice had already been raised when she started talking to us, but now she was pretty much shrieking. It wasn’t so much that she’d increased her volume as her tone. Her voice was so fraught with emotion that it was scary. I was nervous, and instead of trying to calm things down, I turned on Quinn.

  “You told your mom?” I asked her incredulously. “Why the hell would you do that? Your mom has the biggest mouth in the world.” It was true. It wasn’t that Quinn’s mom was a gossip, really. She wasn’t the type who would call you up just to tell you the latest news she’d heard from the neighbors. It was more that she didn’t have any boundaries. I’d always found Quinn’s mom to be kind of cold and emotionless, so it would make sense that she wouldn’t have a problem repeating things someone told her. It was like she couldn’t fathom the idea that someone would want to keep secrets or try to work something out alone, in their heads.

  “She does not,” Quinn said. She turned to Lyla. “And I had no idea she was going to tell your mom.”

  “Neither one of you can keep a secret!” Lyla raged. Her hands were at her sides, her fists clenched so hard and her arms so rigid I was afraid she might be having a stroke or something. “You realize now that both my parents hate me, right?”

  Obviously she was exaggerating. Why would both her parents hate her? And why was her dad offering for Lyla to come stay with him without even checking with her mom first? I understood they were going through a divorce, but really. It seemed like there was more going on than just the amicable, mutual divorce Lyla had told us about. At the very least, more was going on with Lyla than she wanted to let on, otherwise she wouldn’t have been so upset.

  “Look,” I said. “We all need to calm down.” The bell rang, signaling the beginning of first period. “We can talk about this at lunch. We’ll blow off afternoon classes.” Afternoon classes were easier to blow off because after lunch, no one really knew where you were. I knew we should get to first period, but I didn’t want to just leave things the way they were until this afternoon. Lyla was way too upset. “Unless . . .” I took a deep breath. “Unless you want to go somewhere now?”

  Quinn nodded immediately. “I’m in.” I was glad she was agreeing so readily, but it also made me a little bit scared. Quinn hated to miss class, so the fact that she was agreeing to skip pretty much meant she thought whatever was going on with Lyla was really serious.

  We both turned and looked at Lyla.

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, and I held my breath. There was no way she was going to say no, was there? Obviously she was upset, and so of course she would want to go somewhere and work it out. The three of us hardly ever fought, but when we did, we work
ed it out immediately. It was one of the reasons our friendship had been so successful.

  But Lyla shook her head. “I don’t want to go,” she said. “Stay out of my life.”

  And then she turned and walked into school.

  Quinn and I sent her a group text later, asking if she wanted to talk after school. But she never replied. We thought she just needed some time. So we kept trying.

  But the days of Lyla not replying to us turned into weeks. I even tried to talk to her a couple of times in the halls at school, but she wouldn’t talk to me. I tried to come to her house, but her mom apologetically told me she refused to come to the door.

  She never ended up going to New Hampshire. I don’t know why, if she was ever really considering it, if she wanted to go or why it didn’t work out.

  At first, Quinn and I were a united front, bonded by our friendship and our mission of trying to get Lyla to talk to us. But eventually, we drifted apart. I think both of us, on some level, blamed the other for what had happened—Quinn thought I should have let her know how important it was to keep Lyla’s secret, or that maybe I shouldn’t have even told her in the first place. And I thought Quinn should have known better than to tell her mom.

  So after a while, I stopped trying to talk to either of them. Because it was just too painful.

  I gave up.

  ELEVEN

  I DON’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT.

  I can’t.

  I try, but it’s just not working.

  At around four a.m., I give up.

  I slide my feet into my flip-flops, pull on my sweatshirt, and head down to the beach. I buy a coffee and a doughnut from a tiny little shop on Ocean Boulevard. I sip the coffee, and the warmth helps me to calm down, but I’m afraid the caffeine is just going to end up making me more jittery, so I force myself to take tiny sips, hoping that if I make it last, it won’t give me too much of a caffeine rush.

  I walk down the beach, until I’m all the way at the end, back where Liam and I sat yesterday, playing tic-tac-toe in the sand. Was that less than twenty-four hours ago? It seems like a lifetime.