by Jen Klein
Krista’s hand falls away from the books. She turns to face me, dropping her voice. “Yeah, I know that guy.”
“You do?” I should be in drama club—it comes out in such a tone of genuine surprise. “What’s his story?”
“I used to date him, too,” Krista says in a conspiratorial tone. I lean in, waiting. She drops her voice to a whisper. “I was an asshole. I cheated on him.”
I wait, but that seems to be the end of the story, so I give what might be the correct response. “Oh, man.”
“I know, right? It was with a waiter from Fuddruckers. He’s, like, five years older than me and so cute. He’s an actor. He’s going to be in a Lifetime movie next month.”
These are the moments when I hate Los Angeles.
But all I say to Krista is “That’s cool.”
“Yeah. Ardy was shockingly nice about it. I mean, I wouldn’t have been. I would have lost my mind. But he was like, whatever.”
It’s also not at all the dramatic story I was expecting.
Krista shrugs. “Honestly, even if I hadn’t gotten my Fudd rucked—”
She pauses, and I realize she’s holding for laughter. I oblige with a forced giggle.
“—Ardy and I wouldn’t have lasted. He’s weird, and I didn’t want to be up in that anymore. Do you know he races pigeons or some shit?”
“I did not,” I tell her. Then I grab a pirate book, pay for it, and signal Leo to head for the door. “Thanks,” I tell her as I leave.
I even mean it.
When I get home, I send Cooper a text:
Ian’s full of crap. Girl #1 has issues. Not Ardy. She cheated and he dealt with it.
He texts back right away:
There’s 2 others.
I ignore it, and a moment later he texts again:
Also—Ian is hot and awesome.
Ugh.
* * *
We lose Friday’s soccer game to Verdugo High, even though I imitate Hope’s cheering and screaming every time one of our players steals the ball or makes a goal. But, sadly, our enthusiasm isn’t enough to lead REACH to victory. When the game is over and our players are trudging back to the locker room, Katie sails up. “You can still change your mind about the party.” She says it to me but a second later seems to realize she’s being rude. “Oh, you can come, too,” she tells Hope.
“Not this time,” I say.
“On Monday I’ll regale you with what you missed,” Katie says before taking off.
Hope looks at me. “We can go if you want to.”
I shrug. “I’ve been to a lot of parties.”
On the way to Hope’s house, I ask why Evan didn’t come to the soccer game.
“He doesn’t like sports.” Hope glances at me from behind her steering wheel. “He’s kinda like Ardy in that way.”
She’s trying to start a conversation about Ardy, but I’m not ready to go there. Not with her. Not yet.
I change the topic. “I didn’t bring a sleeping bag or pillow. Should we run back to my house?”
“No. We have stuff. Hillary stays over all the time and she never remembers to bring a toothbrush. My dads started stocking extras for my friends, literally because of her.”
It would never in a billion years occur to my parents to do that, but then they’re not exactly trying to woo my friends into staying over. On the rare occasion I do an overnighter with Katie, it’s almost always at her house. Neither of us is allowed to spend the night with Cooper, which always results in his feelings being hurt if we sleep over together.
I’m sure my mom would be even worse about it if she knew my first kiss was with Cooper.
We were in eighth grade when he asked me to go under the middle school bleachers with him. That’s where Cooper kissed me for what was the first time for both of us. Cooper smelled like the grape Popsicle he’d eaten as we’d walked there, but our mouths didn’t touch long enough for me to register whether he tasted like it, too. He pulled back immediately—like, so immediately—and beamed at me. “I’m gay,” he said. I burst out laughing—because it was so weird and blunt and random—and he set a finger on my lips to shush me. “Don’t be mad.”
“How can I be mad? I’m laughing.”
“I wanted to make sure,” he continued. “Because I really like you, and if I can’t get it up for you—”
“Gross!” I buried my face in my hands, but it didn’t stop Cooper from talking.
“—then I know for sure that I can’t get it up for any girl.” I finally pulled my hands away from my face to find Cooper staring at me. Very serious. “Good news,” he told me. “I’m going to be so much better for you than any boyfriend.”
“How’s that?”
“Guess you’ll see.” He grinned, and he was still wearing braces at the time, so his teeth flashed metal at me. “Wanna walk to the high school and watch the boys’ track team run around?”
I grinned back at him. “Totally.”
And so began our friendship. Now, sitting next to Hope as she pulls off the darkened street into her driveway, I wonder if that’s how all friendships work…without the kissing part, of course. One person decides it’s going to be a thing, and the other one accepts it.
Is that what’s happening with Hope and me?
Hope’s fathers greet us at the front door. They introduce themselves as Chris and Brad, and they both offer to get me a soda—which I decline—before asking me questions about myself. Chris, who has dark brown skin and a goatee and short hair twisted into a hundred tiny tufts, asks how I know Hope and what classes we share. Brad—possibly the blondest man I have ever met—wants to know how long I’ve lived in Burbank and what my parents do. I answer their questions until Hope finally pulls me away, telling them that we’re trying to have girl night and can they please stop.
Hope drags me away into the kitchen and starts opening cabinets. “I’m so sorry,” she says, pulling out a bag of gluten-free crackers.
“For what?” I honestly don’t know what she’s talking about.
“The dads are like that with new friends….Sparkling or flat?” Hope opens the fridge, gesturing to an array of bottled waters with one hand while grabbing a bag of soy string cheese with the other.
“Sparkling.”
“It’s like they’re trying to be best friends with my friends.” Hope scoops out two bottles of sparkling water and hands them to me. “I hate it.”
“They seem nice.” I’m telling the truth. My parents have never made an effort to befriend my friends. I don’t think they know how. Based on the limited circle of their own friends, maybe they’ve never known how.
“It’s so annoying.” Hope has finished assembling our snacks, and now she’s heading toward the back of the house. “I’ll show you.”
I follow her, wondering if being embarrassed by your parents is universal. Maybe my parents aren’t so awful after all. Maybe they’re just one particular brand of awful.
Hope leads me out the back door and onto the covered patio. She tucks the snacks under an arm so she can pull out her phone and use the light to show me her yard. Like many California yards, it’s encircled by tall cinder-block walls because good walls mean good neighbors, or something like that. Straight across the middle of the grass, there’s a giant tree, and built lovingly into it is…a playhouse. If I were to design a yard for a home with children, this is the perfect example of what would go in it. Even with only the light from Hope’s phone, I can see the big, beautiful fuchsia wooden house up in the tree. A bright yellow ladder leads up to it. “Dads put it in when I was little,” Hope says. “It used to be pastel pink, but they had it repainted last year to account for my maturity.”
She says that last bit in a wry tone, which amuses me. Or maybe I’m not feeling amusement but rather…jealousy? Or am I impressed?
Something.
“Can we go in it?”
Hope nods, leading the way across the grass. She switches the snack bags to her right hand and, with practiced ease, uses her left to catch nimbly from rung to rung as she climbs up. She scrambles onto the little platform around the tree house and then calls down to me. “Throw me the waters.”
I do, and—after a couple of tries—Hope catches the plastic bottles and shines her phone light down so I can use both of my hands to ascend. I clamber onto the platform and follow Hope, crouching to enter the dark tree house through the curtains covering the small door.
“Here.” Hope turns her phone on and gives it to me so I can shine it at her hands. I can’t totally see what she’s doing, but a moment later lights glow to life around the perimeter of the ceiling, and I realize she’s plugged in a string of white Christmas bulbs. They illuminate the inside of the tree house, which—despite Hope’s embarrassment—is nearly unbearably awesome. There’s a cozy turquoise rug spread over the rough wooden planks of the floor, and narrow shelves are built into the walls. I want to be a little girl again so I can fully enjoy it. It’s better than any IKEA room I’ve ever been in.
“Bananas, right?” Hope takes her phone back from me and plops onto the rug. “Evan’s ongoing joke is that this is where we’re going to have sex for the first time.”
I’m surprised as I sink beside her. Not that I’ve given it any thought, but if I had, I would have assumed that #Heaven had already done the Deed. They’ve been together forever, at least by high school’s time line.
Apparently, my thoughts are clear on my face, because Hope shakes her head. “I want to be supersure, you know?”
I do know. At least, in theory I do. It’s what I should want. Actually, ever since Ardy has come into my life, maybe it is what I want after all. I guess we’ll see. But the only thing I say to Hope is “Yeah.”
“Then when we do it, I want it to be perfect,” she continues. “And so far, I haven’t been sure, and it hasn’t been perfect. So we haven’t.”
“But how can it ever be perfect?” I cock my head to the side, looking at her. “I mean, how can you know?”
Hope shrugs. “I hope I’ll know when the time is right.”
I’m not so sure I’m with her on that one, but I keep my mouth shut about it. “So you never have?” I ask her. “With anyone?”
“No. Have you?”
I consider how to answer that. And why I’m answering it. Are Hope and I becoming friends?
“Yes.” Hope’s eyebrows rise at my half-truth. She doesn’t look like she’s judgmental, only curious. “One time.”
“What was it like?” Her question comes out hesitantly, which is surprising given how Hope never seems to hesitate about anything. She marches straight ahead, assuming she’ll be included, assuming she’ll be wanted. At least that’s what it seems like from where I’m standing. But maybe we’re all insecure about something.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, remembering Kai in his parents’ wine cellar. “I didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what we were doing, and then we stopped seeing each other.”
“So it wasn’t perfect.”
“Not by a long shot.”
“Yet here you are.” Hope smiles at me. “You don’t seem all regretful and broken.”
“Is that why you’re waiting—so you won’t be regretful and broken?”
“I guess it freaks me out.” Hope pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “We’re in high school, right? So no matter how much we love the boys we’re with, chances are not great that we’ll stay together. But I can’t imagine it, what would break us up.”
Whereas the assumption I live under is that every time I’m with a guy, it’s a short-term thing. It’s easier to go into it that way. When you’re standing at the beginning and already able to see the end, everything in the middle doesn’t have to mean very much. You can skate right through it. But if Hope is the opposite, I can see why the middle part is so weighted with meaning.
I try to flash forward to the inevitable end with Ardy. How I’ll wriggle out of it, what I’ll say to make him leave me. But unlike my usual sense of relief at the possibility, the thought of it sets an ache gnawing inside me. This time I don’t want to see the ending. This time I don’t want to arrive there.
“You’ve been friends with Ardy since you were little, right?” Might as well cut to the chase. I’m on a fact-finding mission: What does Hope know about his ex-girlfriends, and how close are she and Ardy?
“Yay!” Hope does what looks like a jazz-hands thing. “I was hoping we were going to talk about him. Do you love him?”
I stare at her. “It’s been, like, half a minute.”
“I know, I’m kidding. I’m mostly kidding. You like him, right?” Hope beams her signature beam at me. “You know I didn’t really have to ditch him for le français that day you drove him home, right?”
I stare at her, trying to figure out how to answer. If the thing I’ve suspected all along is true—that Ardy secretly, or even not so secretly, loves her—my being with him would help Hope maintain equilibrium. That is, if it’s true that he wants her, she knows it, and she wants to stay friends with him. Everything becomes a lot easier if he has a girlfriend. Namely, me.
I have to answer her, so I finally say, “Yes. I really like him.”
Which is true. Very true. Painfully true, and becoming more so with every minute I spend with him.
“Good.” Hope is nodding. “I wouldn’t want him to get hurt.”
It makes me wonder how much she knows about what happened at Verdugo High, about Krista Willis and those other two girls. How can I get her to tell me, without obviously fishing for information? Without letting her know that I’ve already done some investigating of my own. I can’t figure out a way in, so I go with a completely blatant question. “Have you and Ardy ever…been a thing?”
“No. Not even a little.” Hope shakes her head almost violently. “We grew up together. It would be like kissing a cousin or something.” I give her a stern look, and she bursts out laughing. “I know, I know…the thing with Daddly on the porch. I never should have told you all that.”
“But we’re so glad that you did.”
Hope sobers. “Anyway, Ardy and I are BFFs. I don’t think we could be if we had history between us. It would be weird.”
I disagree with Hope but don’t want to explain why. After all, I’m fine with all those boys I used to kiss. It doesn’t have to be huge. It doesn’t have to be fraught. People can move on and continue their lives. I do it all the time.
I’m about to change the subject when a soft thump comes from somewhere back behind the tree house, in the rear of the yard. I tilt my head to listen, immediately on edge. “Did you hear that?” I ask Hope. “Coyotes come down from the hills sometimes.”
“Don’t worry.” Hope’s eyes twinkle. “Coyotes can’t climb ladders.”
Down below, something bumps against the trunk of the tree. I jump, and this time Hope laughs out loud. “I’ll protect you,” she says, scrambling to her feet.
“Don’t—” I say as she pulls the curtain open while down below there’s the sound of movement on the ladder.
“Trust me,” Hope says right as Evan’s head pops over the edge of the platform.
Of course.
And how annoying that I didn’t even think of that.
“Ladies,” Evan says, pulling himself up. “Is Ardy coming?”
“Let’s see.” Hope pulls out her phone and starts texting. It sets a little fire of excitement inside me. I was already hoping I’d see him while I was here—like, maybe I’d run into him in the street outside. Now that he might come over on sort of a spontaneous double date, it’s just about perfect. “Ugh,” Hope says. “He doesn’t want to get me in
trouble for having boys over illicitly. I’m telling him that my dads are in for the night. They’re watching movies in their room.”
Evan looks at me. “Lark, you should text him.”
“I’m telling him you’re here,” Hope says. “Anyway, I wouldn’t get busted for him being up here—only for Evan.”
“I’m the troublemaker,” Evan admits. He climbs inside the tree house, which is starting to get crowded, and flops onto the rug. “I’m always trying to make trouble up here.” He raises his eyebrows at Hope in a not-very-subtle way. Gross. “What’s he saying?”
“Nothing,” says Hope.
And then there’s another soft thump from somewhere in the yard. The ladder starts shaking again. “That’s for you,” Evan tells me. “Close the curtain behind you.”
I’m glad I already had the talk with Hope so I can be certain they’re not going to have sex in there while I’m on the platform with Ardy. That would be awkward. And gross.
I duck through the curtains (making sure they swing shut behind me) and step out onto the platform, where I drop to my knees and crawl to the edge. Ardy looks up at me from the ladder below, starlight reflecting in his glasses. The sight of him makes me ridiculously happy until—“I’m not coming in,” he says.
“Why?”
“I’m a rule follower.” He climbs another rung. “I don’t want to piss off Hope’s dads. We kind of have a good thing going between us.”
I choose to shove any thoughts about that away for the moment, glancing back at the curtain behind me. It’s silent inside the tree house, which I assume means Evan and Hope are engaged in a slobberfest. And since they’re occupied…
I lower to my stomach, wriggling to the edge of the platform. “You don’t have to come all the way up,” I tell Ardy. “Just come close enough.”
“I can do that.” He ascends until his hands are on the top rung. I prop myself up on my elbows, allowing my hands to rest on his shoulders. It’s not the world’s most comfortable position, but I don’t care. I only care about one thing: kissing Ardy Tate. I think about kissing him so much—all the time, really—that I’m not going to let this opportunity get away.