First There Was Forever

by Juliana Romano

  chapter

  nineteen

  The noise level in the library during lunch was the perfect amount of loud for studying. Too much quiet could be even more distracting to me than too much sound. Maybe it was because I had grown up listening to the constant thrumming of the waves on the beach and the grinding buzz of cars on the road, but true silence rang in my ears like an alarm.

  I was working at my favorite library table when I got that heavy feeling you get when someone is standing behind you. I turned to check and there was Nate. Gray hoodie. Dirty jeans. Ballpoint pen clamped between his lips like a cigarette. He walked around the table and slid into the seat across from me.

  “What Spanish class are you in?” he asked, nodding to my textbook.

  “Spanish two. Sixth period,” I said,

  “I have that class fifth,” he said. “Are you studying for the quiz?”

  I looked up at him, and felt my cheeks grow immediately hot under his warm blue gaze. “Yeah.”

  He took the pen out of his mouth and placed in on the desk.

  “Quiz me,” he said, giving me this lopsided smile.

  “Me gustaría ir a España, pero no puedo,” I read cautiously.

  “I would like to go to Spain, but I can’t?” he translated.

  “Right,” I said. “Conditional of hablar?”

  “Hablaria, hablarias, hablaria, habliaramos, hablariais, hablarian,” Nate recited.

  I was impressed. “Right.”

  “Give me something hard,” he said.

  I searched. “Second person conditional of poner versus poder. They’re similar.”

  Nate closed his eyes for a minute and I watched him think.

  Finally he said, “Shit, I don’t know. Tell me.”

  We quizzed each other back and forth for the rest of lunch. When one o’clock arrived, Nate stood up.

  “Are you going to Cole’s Halloween party this weekend?” he asked. And then he teased. “I know how much you love to party.”

  “I didn’t know about it,” I confessed. “Are you going?” A strange bubble of nervousness formed in my throat when I said it.

  He flicked his ballpoint pen on the desk so it spun around and around, like a top. When it had slowed to a stop, he shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

  • • •

  “I heard Cole is having a Halloween party,” I said to Hailey in the car-pool line later. “Maybe we should go and dress up as something together. Like, I know we’ve always said we’d do Thelma and Louise.”

  “I’m going with Skyler,” she said casually, “and we’re dressing as fucked-up fairies.”

  “Oh,” I said, deflating a little. I hadn’t been planning on dressing up this year until I’d heard about the party from Nate, but since then I’d started to get excited. I’d spent all sixth period brainstorming. I could wear overalls and be Shelley Duvall from The Shining. Or wear Dad’s clothes and be Annie Hall. Or Hailey and I could do something together. In fifth grade we’d gone as conjoined twins, and even though it was basically impossible to walk in the three-legged jumpsuit Mom made us, it was the best Halloween ever.

  “Cole’s is going to be stupid anyway,” Hailey said, checking her cell phone. She was barely paying attention to me. “We might, like, not even go, ’cause we’re going to Bridget’s brother’s friend’s house first. And if that’s fun, we might just stay there.”

  I felt myself being pulled under a wave of disappointment. Hailey must have sensed it because she put her phone away and focused on me.

  “I’m sorry, Li. Are you mad?” she asked in the baby voice that she reserved for times when she was trying to get something from me. “I didn’t think you would want to go.”

  “I’m not mad,” I said quickly. “It’s not a big deal.”

  The autumn Los Angeles sun was sitting low, shedding a pallid light over the cars and washing out the concrete walls of our building.

  Hailey’s mom’s car pulled up in front of us. Hailey had been resting her backpack on her feet and now she scooped it up and climbed into the car.

  I waved to Brenda and she waved back, her face hidden behind a plaster mask of make-up.

  Hailey stared straight ahead as they drove away, and I watched them go, wondering what they would talk about in the car, or if they would talk at all.

  chapter

  twenty

  Mom and Dad and I were watching Chinatown and eating Chinese food that Saturday night when the landline rang.

  “It’s Meredith Hayes,” Mom said. “For you, honey.”

  “Walker and I are going to this Halloween party at someone named Cole’s house, and we want you to come,” Meredith told me over the phone. “It’s an old-fashioned all-school rager. Not really our thing, but Walker is convinced it’ll be good for us to participate in some mainstream social activities.”

  I laughed. “I don’t have a costume. I’m just watching a movie with my parents.”

  Suddenly it was Walker on the other end of the line.

  “We’re coming for you in an hour,” he said.

  “Oh—hi, Walker,” I replied.

  “Be ready.” The line went dead.

  Mom was really supportive of me going to the party. Maybe she was feeling bad for me because I was hanging out with her and Dad and clearly had nothing better to do. We stopped the movie, and Mom and I went upstairs to scrape together a costume. We rummaged through the old costume chest, discarding some ratty angel wings and a tutu, and finally decided I should be something really easy and classic, like a black cat.

  Mom painted whiskers on my cheeks with black eyeliner and put my hair in pigtails. I wore a long-sleeve black leotard and black skinny jeans. Over it I wore the black leather jacket, and the costume was complete.

  Studying my reflection in Mom’s full-length mirror, I found myself wondering who would be there. I looked like the kind of girl who things happened to. The kind of girl who had exciting nights.

  Billie Holiday blared from the scratchy stereo as we zoomed along the Pacific Coast Highway. Walker and Meredith passed a cigarette back and forth, and the salty air slammed into the car and washed the smell of smoke away as quickly as it was being produced.

  I texted Hailey on our way to the party to see if she was there. I knew it was petty and stupid, but I wanted her to see me show up with the Hayeses. I hoped she’d be jealous. Even though she thought they were scary, they were still undeniably ultracool.

  Meredith and Walker hadn’t even made an attempt at wearing costumes, not that they needed to. Dressed in their regular clothing they looked like rock stars.

  “Where are Lily and Henry?” I asked.

  “Being lame,” Meredith said simply. “Having ‘couple time.’”

  “Probably braiding each other’s hair,” Walker added.

  That made Meredith laugh and laugh.

  When we pulled up to the party, Hailey was waiting for us outside, shivering in her costume. She was covered in glitter, and her white tights were ripped with big holes showing her skin. Her little white dress was a few sizes too small.

  Her jaw dropped when I got out of the car. My costume was so simple and so cute, and I could feel her envy.

  “Let’s go in. I’m freezing out here,” was all she said.

  “I like your costume,” I said. I knew I was fishing for a compliment.

  “Thanks. I made it in, like, twenty minutes,” she said, and as soon as we walked through the door, she turned to me. “I gotta find Sky, she has my cigarettes. You’re okay, right?”

  I nodded, stunned, and immediately was alone. Cole’s steamy, windowless living room was packed with people in makeshift costumes that were already falling apart. The floor was sticky from spilled beer and smashed fun-size candy bars.

  “Hey!” Emily shouted, weaving across the room toward me and wearing a wet suit
and Aqua Socks. “Your costume rules!” She smiled as she arrived beside me. Her eyes were full of genuine awe. “That jacket is so cool,” she said, touching the leather with her fingertips. “Wow. It’s, like, a real biker jacket.”

  “I got it at the Rose Bowl Flea Market,” I said.

  “You shop at flea markets?” Emily asked. “If you ever want to go again, I’ll go with you. We can carpool from Malibu.”

  I nodded and then moved on my way, scanning the room for Hailey or Meredith or Walker. Not seeing anyone, I followed two confident-looking older girls up the stairs. They stepped into a room at the end of the hall, and I could smell the smoke and hear the music leaking out.

  I knocked.

  A boy with a paper bag over his head and two tiny eyeholes cut out opened the door. He was tall and slim and I wondered if it was Nate.

  “Yo, Hailey, your friend’s here,” said the voice from the bag. Not Nate.

  Hailey was sitting on the floor between the two older girls, her back propped up against the wall, sipping a 40.

  “Come here, Lima—have a malt beverage,” she said. “Make room for Lima! Scoot down!”

  Her sudden warmth surprised me, and in a weird way, it bothered me more than when she had ditched me earlier. Or maybe it wasn’t her warmth that bothered me but the way that she managed to turn it on and off like a faucet.

  “Nate isn’t coming,” Hailey whispered. Her breath was warm and smelled like sugar. She rested her head on my shoulder.

  “How do you know?”

  “I texted him to see if he was coming, and he said no,” she sighed. “And I look so hot! Don’t I look hot?”

  “You look amazing,” I said.

  “Fuck it,” she said, abruptly popping up. “Let’s dance.”

  She jumped up, cranked the volume on the stereo, and started dancing. The rest of the room joined in and I stood awkwardly in the corner for a few minutes, pretending to enjoy myself.

  Finally I inserted myself in the dance party just long enough to grab Hailey and shout over the music, “Hailey! Come downstairs with me. I want to see people’s costumes.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t hear you!”

  She waved at me, and I stumbled out of the dance party and down the stairs. After circulating through the first floor, I found Meredith and Walker lounging on a couch. They agreed that the party sucked, but Meredith said Walker was waiting for some guy to show up, so they couldn’t leave. I called Mom to come get me. I felt like such an overdressed loser going home at 9:30 p.m., but I had no desire to stay out. Halloween was a big, stupid disappointment.

  Sitting on the steps outside Cole’s house waiting for Mom, I found myself thinking about Nate. I wondered what had he done instead tonight. Did he stay home and watch movies with his parents, like I usually did? Had he gone out and hooked up with a girl from outside of school?

  A pair of girls in identical jailbird jumpsuits walked past me into the party. Their arms were linked, and they were laughing so hard they could barely walk. They left an extra-sharp silence in the space behind them.

  chapter

  twenty-one

  I brought my books into the library on Monday at lunch and dropped them on the desk. I cracked open my history reading and stared at the page. I heard footsteps behind me and snapped my head around to see who it was. A boy in Coke-bottle glasses padded past my desk.

  Emily and I walked to fifth period together through the old gym, the one that smelled like sweat and chlorine. A pack of boys walked toward us from the opposite entrance. They were shouting, but the claustrophobic acoustics in the hallway kind of made their voices disappear—like the opposite of an echo. As they came closer, I could see that Nate was among them. He dragged a little behind the others, kicking a basketball gently between his feet, coaxing it with him.

  Hunter was at the front of the group. He was tall and gangly and goofy. We had carpooled together in elementary school, but I hardly ever spoke to him anymore.

  “Hey,” Hunter said. “Lima. Like the city in Peru.”

  I kind of smiled. I could feel that my face was starting to burn from his attention. How is it possible, I wondered, that some girls my age could already be having sex and I was still blushing when I talked to boys?

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so much better than me at Spanish. Although, pretty much everyone is better than me at Spanish,” he joked.

  I could feel Nate looking at me, and I tried to hold Hunter’s gaze firmly. Nate scooped up the basketball and held it with one arm, pressing it casually to his side.

  “I’m not that good at Spanish,” I lied.

  Hunter spun around and slammed hard on the basketball, snapping it forward out of Nate’s grip, and it bounced toward me. It came at me fast. I tried to catch it, but it hit my shins and trickled back toward Hunter. I felt clumsy and ashamed.

  The cluster of boys began to move away, but Nate seemed to hesitate. I let my eyes slide over in his direction, and our gazes met. I think I expected him to smile or say hi, or to offer up some reason why he hadn’t gone to Cole’s party. Instead, he just looked at me, unflinching.

  “Nathan, come on,” Hunter called.

  Nate turned and followed his friends into the locker room.

  I stared at the door through which they had disappeared.

  “That was so awkward,” I said.

  “What was?” Emily asked.

  Right, I thought. It was nothing. It was a twenty-second interaction. Snap out of it, Lima.

  chapter

  twenty-two

  The following Monday, Mom had an appointment and couldn’t pick me up until four thirty. Staying late at school had always been one of my least-favorite things. Campus was eerie after school. Without people, familiar places seemed distorted, the way they would in an anxious dream.

  I decided to do homework on the patio behind the administration building, which was my favorite spot on campus because of the two huge jacaranda trees that bloomed there in the fall and spring.

  I unlatched the gate and walked in. Purple flowers, as bright as a highlighter, canopied the whole patio like a net of stars. I took another step and froze. Nate was sitting at the picnic table, wearing a long-sleeve, light blue button-down shirt, and I hadn’t even noticed him. He looked dressed up. I wondered if I should try and leave without him seeing me, but it was too late.

  “Hey,” he said.

  I swallowed. “Hi.”

  He looked at me for a long moment before he spoke again.

  “Whatsup?” he finally said.

  “I was going to do some homework back here. I’m not getting picked up for a while.”

  He nodded. “I was just leaving.”

  I felt a strange knot in my stomach, and I wasn’t sure if it was relief or disappointment.

  Nate stood up and walked toward the gate, stopping just before he passed me.

  “I’m going to the gas station across the street,” he said. “You want to come?”

  I hesitated, and then I said, “Okay.”

  We walked across the empty campus and out the back gate, not speaking. I wondered what Hailey would think if she saw us walking together.

  “Do you always stay late after school?” I asked as I filled a big cup with an electric-blue slushie.

  Nate was standing next to me, already digging into a big bag of Doritos. “Well,” he said, “I was on academic probation, so I still have these monthly meetings with Leslie and Rick.”

  I stuck a big straw in my slushie and looked up at him. “Really?”

  He popped three Doritos in his mouth at once and nodded. We made our way to the cash register. “It’s not like school is hard for me. I just fucked up a lot last year ’cause I stopped caring.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So do you care now?”

  He laughed. “Good question.”
r />   Nate reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out his wallet. I watched his hands as he opened it up and found a five-dollar bill. His hands were so nice. Strong and defined, with these clean, hard bones pressing out from under the skin.

  He glanced down at me—maybe he could sense me staring—and I flushed.

  “I’ll get her slushie, too,” he said to the man behind the counter.

  “You don’t have to,” I said.

  He ignored me.

  Outside, the hot afternoon sun glowed yellow.

  “Do you mind if we just chill here?” he asked, gesturing to a dirty bench. “I can’t go back to school right now.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  We sat down on the bench, the sunlight burning down on us. But I didn’t mind.

  “Anyway, the dean says I have to start doing better in school,” he said. “Put in a little more effort.” He made air quotes around the word “effort.”

  “I never considered not caring about school,” I said. “I think I just follow rules. I’m a rule follower.”

  He laughed. “I like that.”

  I looked at him. And when our gazes touched, I felt my insides heat up.

  “This shirt is so stuffy,” he said abruptly, jerking around like he was uncomfortable in his own skin, adjusting his tie, shirt, and pants. “My mom makes me dress nice on days when I meet with Rick.”

  I giggled.

  “I guess she wants me to look more like a rule follower,” he said.

  I tried not to laugh anymore. I was almost embarrassed by how much fun I was having, just sitting here next to Nate. I sucked hard on my slushie straw.

  “You really like that drink, huh?” he said.

  “It’s so good,” I said. “It’s the best flavor I’ve ever had.”

  He looked at me, and his eyes moved over my face slowly. “Your lips are blue,” he said.

  I sucked my lips between my teeth.