First There Was Forever

by Juliana Romano

  Happy bday ;)

  It was after midnight now. All I wanted to do was text him back but I worried it was too late. I felt suddenly exhausted. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep this thing with Nate a secret. I had to tell Hailey about us soon or I might ruin everything.

  Back in my room, Hailey was sleeping on her stomach, her face smeared across my pillow. I turned off the lamp and climbed into bed beside her. She curled up behind me, her body folding neatly next to me like a shell.

  It’s crazy, I thought, how some things never change while other things change so drastically. From the outside, things looked exactly the same as last year: me and Hailey sleeping together in a bed like sardines. But inside, under the surface, everything was different. Patty had gone on a tangent recently about how the magnets at the North and South Pole are constantly shifting. They move too slowly for people to notice, but then, once every several hundreds of thousands of years, they just switch and everything starts moving in the opposite direction. I didn’t totally understand the science, but it felt true. Lying there with Hailey’s arm around my stomach, and this huge secret eating away at my heart, I wondered if that was what had happened to my life.

  chapter

  forty-four

  “Hey,” Mom said. She was standing in my doorway, her wet hair wrapped in a cocoon of towel on top of her head. “Don’t forget, we’re going to Santa Barbara this weekend to see Caroline.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking down at my hands as I zipped up my cutoff shorts.

  Hot, dry winds had started up just a day or two before. Santa Ana winds are violent, desert winds that ransack the city and give the days a strange, surreal quality. The waves on the ocean get loud and erratic, and everything, even your own thoughts, feels out of balance.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

  It was amazing how Mom could sense the tiniest shifts in my mood. “Is it gonna be weird without Nana there? I’m kind of afraid to go back.”

  Mom frowned. “It might be a little sad, but I think it’s going to be okay. It will be nice for Caroline to have us there. Do you want to bring a friend? Hailey?”

  I know Mom added “Hailey” because she was afraid I was going to invite Meredith. But there was no way I could spend a whole weekend with Hailey without telling her about Nate. It was out of the question.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  • • •

  Later that day, I saw Emily sitting in the library, typing furiously on her laptop.

  “Can I sit here?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said, “especially if you’re going to talk to me and distract me from the most boring art history paper of all time.”

  Emily’s skin look burnished. It was clear she spent every second that she wasn’t in school on the beach. That was probably why she was always trying to get her homework done during lunch.

  “Hey, do you want to come with me to my aunt’s house in Santa Barbara this weekend?” I asked.

  “Wow,” Emily said, surprised. I was pretty surprised that I’d asked her, too, and maybe it was a bad idea, but the words had escaped my mouth and now I couldn’t take them back.

  “I know it’s random,” I said, embarrassed. “But there’s a pool, and it’s close to the beach and stuff. You can probably even surf if you want.”

  “Surfing in Santa Barbara is awesome,” she said. “I wouldn’t go alone. But yeah, totally, I’d love to come.” And then she paused and added, “Really? You’re sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s not that exciting. You might want to bring your computer and do homework. I usually get a lot of homework done when I go there.”

  Emily smiled. She was one of those people who smiled with her whole face, not just her mouth. “This is gonna be awesome. I’m so there.”

  chapter

  forty-five

  Loading up the car before we left Malibu felt like standing under the nozzle of a hair dryer. A blast of wind came at me as I dumped Mom’s suitcase into the trunk, and it whipped my hair across my face so that a few strands stuck to the ChapStick on my lips.

  What if bringing Emily to Santa Barbara was a mistake? I thought as I climbed into the backseat. What if we had nothing to say to each other? I really didn’t know her very well.

  But as soon as we got to Emily’s house and I saw her standing out front wearing baggy jean shorts and a big T-shirt with a Quicksilver logo printed on it, I felt better. She was not intimidating at all.

  “I can’t believe this heat,” Dad said as we drove up the PCH with the air-conditioning on high. “I guess summer is here early.”

  “I know, it’s crazy,” Emily agreed. “It’s not even April yet.”

  “It’ll cool down again,” Mom said. “Santa Ana’s come and go.”

  Emily turned to me.

  “Can you believe tenth grade is like three-quarters over? We have eleven weeks left not including spring break. I counted.”

  “That’s weird,” I agreed. “That means high school is eleven weeks away from being half over.”

  “Unbelievable!” she said, her eyes popping out of her head.

  We talked for a little while longer, and Emily was super- nice to Mom and Dad, clearly answering their questions about what her parents did and how long she’d been surfing. But then she looked out the window and zoned out, a vague, contented smile painted across her face.

  Caroline greeted us at the front door. She had cut her hair super-short, and it made her look like a dandelion.

  “Ah, the new Hailey!” Caroline teased, when I introduced her to Emily.

  I gave Emily a tour of the house, and she dumped her backpack in the guest room where she would be sleeping.

  “This place is really nice,” she said politely.

  “I know,” I said. “I love it.”

  Emily glanced out the window at the hard, cobalt blue sky.

  “Want to go swimming?” she asked brightly.

  Emily stripped off her clothes by the side of the pool. She wore a black racer-back swimsuit, like athletes wear.

  “Can you dive?” she asked, climbing the ladder up to the diving board.

  “I mean, I kind of dive,” I said. “Like, it’s not technical or anything.”

  “I’m really into diving,” she said. “My brother and I always rate each other on a scale of one to ten. Will you rate me?”

  I was sitting on the edge of the shallow end, my feet dangling in the velvety pool water. “Sure,” I said.

  Emily had a stocky build. Her legs were solid and tough- looking. She wore her fat like a seal or a whale, thick and smooth. She bent down and touched her toes and then arched her back, her arms slicing through the blue sky behind her. Her dive was breathtaking. She seemed to move slowly, hovering in the air for a second before making her vertical descent into the water. The pool’s surface barely seemed to break as she entered. It was the most graceful, elegant thing I’d ever seen.

  When she came up for air, her face glistening with water, her hair smoothed back against her head, she was transformed.

  I clapped my hands enthusiastically. “Ten! That was a perfect ten!”

  “Really? No way!” Emily said, laughing. She seemed surprised, too.

  I think if some people did a perfect dive like that, it could seem like showing off. But with Emily, it didn’t.

  I dropped into the water and floated around. I alternated from my stomach to my back, feeling the warm sun on my body and listening to the quiet, uncity sounds of Santa Barbara as the afternoon wore on.

  • • •

  Later, Emily stayed by the pool while I helped Mom and Caroline make dinner. Dad sat on a bar stool at the kitchen counter, drinking a beer. I chopped garlic for a salad dressing. I liked trying to get the pieces so tiny that they were like pulp.

  “My little brother, Ji
m, is used to being surrounded by women,” Caroline said, putting a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa in front of Dad.

  “I’m a lucky guy,” Dad said. “I can’t complain.”

  It was so weird to think of Dad as a little brother. Caroline was a few years older, but I wasn’t sure how many. I thought about Nate and his sister, Liz, and tried to picture Dad and Caroline young and close like that. It was impossible to picture them in high school.

  “Li, someone’s calling you,” Mom said, gesturing toward my cell phone, which was vibrating on the counter. “I’d get it, but my hands are covered in dough.”

  I put down my knife and walked to the phone. I looked at the screen. It was Nate. I didn’t want to answer it right here in front of my parents so I let it go to voice mail.

  “Who’s calling?” Caroline asked, a slight teasing in her voice.

  I must have been blushing, because Caroline was looking at me as if she was seeing right through me.

  “Nobody,” I said. I could feel my face turning red.

  Mom and Dad both looked at me then, and I could tell they knew there was something going on. I just absolutely wanted to disappear.

  “Does someone have a boyfriend?” Caroline was full-on smiling now.

  “No,” I said. “It’s nobody, or I don’t know who it is—it’s a number I don’t know. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  Caroline must have been able to tell I didn’t want to talk about it. She looked at Dad inquiringly, and Dad just shrugged.

  I went back to chopping garlic. I was dying to listen to the voice mail, but I didn’t want to show all the grown-ups that I cared, so I put it out of my mind.

  • • •

  One of the things I liked about being at Caroline’s house, away from the city, is that when it gets dark, you just kind of make your way to bed. Just as we were finishing dessert, Caroline opened another bottle of wine, which I knew meant that the grown-ups were going to stay up late talking and drinking.

  After Emily and I had watched an hour of TV, we went up to our rooms. Finally alone, I listened to Nate’s voice mail.

  “Hi, Lima. Calling to say hey, seeing what you’re up to tonight. Yeah, okay, call me back.”

  My heart skipped at the sound of his voice. I put down my phone and stared out the window into the dark, quiet night. I wanted to call him back, but I was afraid of seeming too eager. I didn’t want to be pushy with him like Hailey had been.

  I changed into my nightgown and looked at myself in the room’s full-length mirror. The lamp cast everything in a warm yellow light. I had gotten some sun in the pool. I pressed my thumb hard into my shoulder and watched it go white and then flush with color again. That was how Hailey had taught me to check for a tan. I felt gripped by a sudden pleasure at my reflection. In spite of being dirty and sunburned, I looked vivid and alive. Like a person Nate could want. I wished he could see me just like this.

  I grabbed my cell phone and pressed talk. I held my breath while I waited for Nate to answer.

  “Hello?” Nate said, panting.

  “Hi, Nate,” I said. My voice sounded tiny. A moment ago I had felt kind of grown-up. Now I felt like a kid. “It’s Lima.”

  “I know,” Nate said. “Hang on.”

  There was fumbling on the other end of the line, and then he came back. “Hey, Lima. Yeah, I called you earlier.”

  “I know,” I stammered. “I’m calling you back.”

  “I’m glad,” he said. “What’s up? Where are you?”

  I unclenched my eyes and took a breath, starting to relax a little.

  “I’m in Santa Barbara, at my aunt’s house,” I said. “It’s really nice here.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” he said. “Yeah, there was some party tonight, and I was gonna see if you were going, but I guess not.”

  “No, not tonight,” I said. “Are you going?”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t feel like it. I’ve just been riding my bike around.”

  There was a moment of quiet, and then I asked, “Is this a good time to talk?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just sat down on the sidewalk. I can talk.”

  Then there was another pause, but it felt warm and full. Almost the way it was when we were together.

  “I don’t really have anything interesting to say,” I confessed.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Tell me about your aunt’s house.”

  I stood up and walked out onto the balcony, then rested my elbows on the railing. “I know Santa Barbara isn’t, like, technically rural or whatever, but it feels really remote out here.”

  And then we just started to talk. I told him about Caroline and Emily, and I told him about the amazing super-garlicky salad dressing I made for dinner. He told me about how he had video chatted with his sister earlier, and all the complaints she had about her school. I asked him if he wanted to go to an East Coast college like Liz, and then we talked about the future. College. Going versus not going. California versus New York. Traveling in Europe. Family vacations.

  “My sister is probably the funniest person I know,” he said. He told me about how they smoked pot together, and she made up songs about this hamster they had when they were in elementary school that Nate had accidentally killed. And he told me stories about the soccer team and riding his bike through his neighborhood at night, and I told him about how I was always afraid of the ocean. We talked about everything. Everything except Hailey.

  “I’ve always wanted a dog,” I said at one point. “But my mom’s allergic. I’d want to name it Almond.”

  Nate laughed a little. “Almond. Good name. My stepdad named our dog Buster.”

  “That’s a cute name,” I said.

  “It’s the most popular dog name in the world,” he said. “Liz said he named it that so he could just buy the collar and the bowl and everything with the name already on it. He’s really cheap.”

  Our conversation unfurled in unexpected ways, like taking a hike on a new trail, and I felt alive and curious, just the way I would if I were actually exploring.

  “Lima,” he said finally. “I should go. I still have to bike home.”

  I liked how he said my name. “Okay.”

  “Thanks for calling me back,” he said.

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t speak.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  “I’m here,” I said softly.

  I heard him take a sharp breath, and we fell into another silence. This one felt heavy.

  “Okay, see you at school?” I said finally.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  chapter

  forty-six

  “What makes something wrong?” Hailey asked.

  We were sitting in her mom’s parked car in the big gated parking lot of their apartment complex the following weekend. Hailey and I always hid out in the car to talk in private when her mom was home.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Hailey put her hands on the steering wheel and glided them around as if she was driving. “Like, why is it wrong for me to drive without a license? I know how to do it. I’ve already finished driver’s ed. So is it wrong just because it’s illegal?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, nervous about where this was going.

  “It doesn’t hurt anyone,” she said, “to break that kind of rule.”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “But, cheating on your boyfriend or girlfriend,” she continued, “is wrong because it can hurt people.”

  I couldn’t look at her.

  “Like, all the lying and stuff that must go into an affair,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Like, it’s not just the big lie of ‘Oh, yeah, I’m, like,
fucking my secretary,’ but the millions of little lies. Like, when you ask someone about their day, and they just leave out this whole part of it because it involved the other person.”

  I knew she was thinking about her dad and Rachel, but it felt as if she was talking about me and Nate. And she was so right. That was how I felt all the time, buried in the small lies.

  I turned and looked right at her, and I braced myself for her to tell me that she knew. Maybe Ryan had told Skyler that Nate and I had disappeared that night at the twins’ house.

  Hailey looked at my expression, and something twisted and inscrutable passed over her face. Suddenly, she grabbed the car keys, stuck them in the ignition, and turned the car on.

  “Hailey, what are you doing?” I practically shrieked.

  Hailey started laughing while the engine roared. After a few long seconds, she turned the car off again and dropped the keys in her lap.

  “Sorry, I’m just messing with you. You looked so serious all of a sudden!”

  I tried to smile, but my heart was racing. All of her actions seemed motivated by her knowing the truth.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” she said. Her voice had turned suddenly soft. “I’m a mess right now. I’m so, like, ugh about my dad.”

  “I know,” I squeaked.

  “It’s just confusing,” she said. “I’ve been thinking so much about him and Rachel because of this whole wedding thing. You know how I’ve always hated him for being a cheater?”

  I nodded.

  “The thing is,” Hailey said, “even though Rachel is a zero, she and my dad really love each other. I mean, they’re getting married. They’re, like, for real in love. I think they’re, like, more meant-to-be than my mom and my dad.”

  Hailey was doing that opening up thing again that made me feel all stiff. Like anything I said would sound trite and awkward.