Reunited

by Hilary Weisman Graham

  “You never know,” Tiernan said gleefully. “A bird could fly into the windshield.”

  Summer was about to respond when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Jace again. She didn’t much feel like talking to him, but given the conversation in the van, it seemed like the lesser of two evils.

  “H-hey, it’s you.” Jace sounded surprised that she answered.

  “What’s up?” Summer kept her voice all business.

  “I’ve been trying to call you for the last half hour.”

  Summer didn’t reply. Why was it any concern of his whether or not she answered her phone?

  “S-S-Summer?” Jace stammered. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” Summer kept her voice low. “I’m here.”

  “Well, the reason I’ve been trying to call you”—Jace paused dramatically—“was to say that I made a mistake.”

  Summer felt her blood rush down her neck and arms.

  “I acted like a fool,” Jace continued. “And I’m calling to say I was wrong. I want us to be together again, Summer.”

  Summer waited a good five seconds before she spoke. Let him suffer. “So, what happened between today and yesterday?” she whispered angrily. Up in the driver’s seat, she could see Alice trying her best to pretend she was concentrating on driving as opposed to, say, blatantly eavesdropping.

  “Maz was talking trash about how I needed to be free my last summer before college,” Jace explained. “And I’m not blaming Maz. I know it’s not his fault. I’m the one who listened to him. But I just thought, well . . . your parents started dating in high school, and then they got married. And I started thinking that if the same thing happens to us, then we will have only been with each other, and, well, you know what I mean. . . .” Jace let his voice trail off.

  Even right now, mad as she was, whenever Jace mentioned marriage, for some strange reason, Summer couldn’t help but smile. It was completely lame. Not to mention delusional. She hated the idea of people marrying their high school sweethearts. And it wasn’t like Summer ever took Jace’s talk of getting married seriously—they were only eighteen, for God’s sake. But something about it made her happy—knowing that he wanted to marry her, someday, even if she didn’t want to marry him.

  “I know it was stupid, Summer. I was stupid. But I want you to go to the Vineyard with me on Friday. I just want everything to be back to normal again.”

  The thought of going to the Vineyard made Summer snap back to reality. On the one hand, at least Jace was admitting he’d made a mistake. But dumping her on graduation day just so he could spend his last high school summer hooking up with randoms? It was gross. Not to mention demeaning.

  “Well, it can’t be normal again,” Summer hissed. “You humiliated me. Not to mention ruining my summer plans. You can’t just change your mind on a whim and expect me to come running back to you.”

  “I love you,” Jace pleaded. “I said I was sorry.”

  “I’m on a road trip right now,” Summer said coolly. “I’ll be home in ten days. We’ll talk then.” Jace had just started to speak when she snapped the phone shut.

  Up in the driver’s seat, Alice whistled a Level3 tune, trying to act nonchalant. Proof that she and Tiernan had heard absolutely everything.

  “Hey, you guys.” Alice kept her voice extra casual. “Remember how the van has electrical outlets? Well, if you want, we can plug in my iPod dock . . .”

  Summer knew Alice was just trying to lighten the mood, but the last thing she wanted was Alice’s help. Although . . . if they cranked up the music loud enough, at least she’d be spared from Alice’s inevitable onslaught of probing questions about Jace. Stupid Jace. Summer had barely wrapped her head around the idea of being without him, and now here he was, trying to pull her back in.

  “Summer? Summer!” Alice was commanding her to do something, but she didn’t know what. “I said the iPod dock’s in the cabinet above your head if you want to go ahead and grab it.”

  Summer nodded and did as she was told. It was strange to see such sleek audio gear in the Pea Pod when they used to listen to CDs from Alice’s crappy old boom box. Their technology may have been upgraded, but in that same amount of time, the people inside the van seemed to have hardly changed at all.

  “Backseat gets to deejay,” Tiernan said, handing back her iPod. Of course, Summer was “allowed” to deejay, as long as the songs were from Tiernan’s music library. Typical.

  Most of the bands Tiernan listened to, Summer had never even heard of. But it didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. The only Level3 album on Tiernan’s iPod was their first, but it was just the hard-driving, angst-ridden music Summer wanted to hear. She pressed play and the baseline of “Jackie Needs New Glasses” filled the van.

  NOW YOU’RE PROMOTING—YEAH, YEAH

  PROTECTIVE-COATING—YEAH, YEAH

  AND I’M JUST NOTING,

  THAT IT MIGHT CHANGE THE VIEW.

  Yesterday when Jace dumped her, Summer felt nothing but anger. But now that he wanted her back, it was all she could do to not break down and cry. Not that she’d ever let that happen in front of Tiernan and Alice.

  Maybe Jace was right. Pretending like the whole thing never happened would be the easiest thing to do. Then again, Summer wasn’t exactly the type to forgive and forget. But what was there to forgive Jace for, really? All guys thought about being with other women. And there was a difference between thinking about something and actually doing it.

  “Up ahead, take the motorway,” a British voice blasted out of nowhere, making Summer jump.

  Alice put a hand on her heart. “That was a wake-up call.”

  “In eight hundred yards, take the motorway.” The voice was coming from Summer’s GPS.

  “Sheesh!” Tiernan snatched it off the dash, randomly prodding the touch screen with her finger. “How do you turn this thing down?”

  “Give it to me,” Summer said.

  “Turn right!” the GPS commanded from her hand. Just what Summer needed, one more voice in her life trying to tell her what to do.

  “You know who that thing sounds like?” Tiernan asked.

  Summer thought for a second. The voice was oddly familiar. “Coach Quigley!” she and Alice shouted simultaneously while Tiernan chuckled to herself.

  The real Coach Quigley, their first soccer coach, was a former professional “football” player from Manchester, England, who had the rather unseemly habit of barking at the Walford Girls Age Eleven and Under as if they were playing Brazil in the final game of the World Cup.

  “So, should I change the voice?” Summer asked. “It has other options.”

  “No way!” Alice whined. “Coach Q was the best!”

  From the backseat, Summer could only see Alice in profile, but it was enough to make out the self-satisfied expression on her face. Ever since she’d known her, Alice had been a sucker for nostalgia. None of them would be here right now if she weren’t.

  “Look.” Tiernan pointed to a sign for 84 WEST—HARTFORD/NEW YORK CITY. “You guys want to stop in the city for lunch? I know this place in the Village that makes a killer broccoli-garlic pizza.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Summer said. She’d been to New York one other time, on their seventh-grade class field trip. But she’d only made it as far as the Statue of Liberty, never to Greenwich Village, once home to such greats as Allen Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Dylan Thomas . . .

  “We can’t,” Alice said matter-of-factly. “Manhattan has way too much traffic. By the time we get in and out, there’s no way we’d still be able to make it to West Virginia by tonight.”

  “So?” Tiernan asked. “What’s the big hurry to get to West Virginia?”

  “Well, for one thing, we already lost time this morning, and I don’t want to end up rushing to Austin at the last minute because we’ve wasted time in a city that’s not even four hours away from where we live . . .”

  Summer closed her eyes and let out a sigh. Even Coach Quigley see
med irritated by Alice’s blathering, shouting directions over her as she talked. It took some trial and error, but Summer finally figured out how to adjust Coach Quigley’s audio level. Sadly, Alice didn’t come with volume control.

  “. . . which I’ve calculated specifically so that we’d spend an average seven hours on the road each day . . .”

  Tiernan turned around, pretending to adjust her seat belt, and shot Summer a knowing smile. Summer smiled back. Maybe they still had something in common after all. Alice was still a control freak. And it still bugged the crap out of them.

  “Anyway, I’m not taking Route 84,” Alice continued. “I’m taking Route 91.”

  “So, should I just turn it off?” Summer asked, gesturing to her GPS.

  “I guess for now, if you want to,” Alice said.

  Summer shoved Coach Quigley into her purse and pulled out her phone. She had four new text messages. The first was a mushy apology from Jace. The second three were from Melanie, Claire, and Jocelyn asking, “Where r u?” and “Jace still luuuvs you,” and “Austin, TX! WTF?” Summer hadn’t told anyone other than her parents she was going on this trip. Then again, she hadn’t decided whether to come on this trip until this morning. What did her friends expect her to do—post her entire life on Facebook?

  When she’d left her house a few hours ago, getting some distance from the grapevine of gossip back in Walford seemed like a great idea. Of course, that was before she knew Jace wanted her back.

  Summer’s cell phone buzzed in her hand with yet another text from her oh-so-remorseful ex-boyfriend. And as good as it felt to know she was wanted, part of her couldn’t help but wonder—as she read Jace’s fifth sappy apology—if the only reason he wanted her back was because she’d actually gone away.

  “HEY, STRANGER”

  I OVERHEARD PEOPLE

  TALKING ’BOUT YOU.

  I DIDN’T KNOW THEM,

  BUT YOU SOUND LIKE A STRANGER.

  THEY SAID THINGS ABOUT YOU

  I KNEW WEREN’T TRUE

  EVEN THOUGH THEY SOUNDED JUST EXACTLY LIKE YOU.

  —from Level3’s second CD, Rough & Tumble

  Chapter Seven

  TIERNAN OPENED HER EYES AND CHUGGED A LARGE GULP OF HER lukewarm blue Gatorade. Shortly after scarfing down lunch at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop (ugh!) she’d slipped into a long, fast-food-induced coma. Either that, or being forced to listen to the Queen Bee blabbing to her drones back in Walford had rendered her unconscious.

  One hundred fifty miles later, Summer was still going strong. Apparently, her breakup with Jace (if it even was a breakup) was happening by committee.

  “Are we there yet?” Tiernan asked groggily.

  “Nope,” Alice answered. “Still in Pennsylvania.”

  In the backseat, Summer flipped her phone shut, then immediately opened it back up and dialed another number. “Hi, Melanie? It’s me. Listen to what Sierra just told me.”

  Tiernan raised her eyebrows and shot Alice a look. This 90210-style drama was definitely not how Tiernan’s posse rolled. Then again, Tiernan could actually make decisions all by herself.

  “Hang on a sec, Mel. Claire’s beeping in.”

  As long as Tiernan could remember, Summer was all about the boy drama. Even back in fourth grade, when the only boys in their lives existed in Level3 fantasy world, Summer could get bent out of shape if she and Travis failed a compatibility quiz in Seventeen magazine. Once, Summer saw a video of Travis kissing a Victoria’s Secret model on tmz.com and had actually cried real tears.

  It wasn’t as if Tiernan had never crushed on a rock star before. As a kid, she’d had a major infatuation with Luke from Level3. Hell, she’d still jump his bones in a heartbeat, given the chance. But, unlike Summer, Tiernan always knew the difference between a celebrity crush and reality.

  “That’s weird,” Summer whispered. “Jace didn’t tell me he went to your party.”

  Tiernan gave Alice another sidelong glance. If even Alice knew, then everyone at school had to know about Jace and that perky sophomore chick. Everyone, that is, except for Summer. The girl had an army’s worth of blond frenemies back in Walford, and not one of them had the cojones to tell her Jace was stepping out on her. Not that Tiernan was about to drop that bomb.

  “I thought you said you didn’t go to Melanie’s party. . . .” From the sound of things, Summer was back on with the cheater himself.

  Tiernan leaned in toward Alice and cupped a hand over her ear. “Well, Bob,” she whispered in the nasally voice of some old-timey sportscaster, “Dalton started out with a weak first quarter, but now it looks like she’s turning her game around.”

  “Bob?” Alice asked with a chuckle.

  “That doesn’t make sense, Jace. How do you forget to tell me something like that?” Summer was growing impatient, louder.

  Tiernan held up a fake microphone this time. “The defense is giving it everything they’ve got, but wait—it looks as if Dalton has rallied and—hang on—she is heading into the end zone and—oh!—out of bounds!”

  “Shhhh.” Alice gave her a reprimanding look Tiernan interpreted as lower your voice, not stop altogether.

  “I have to say, Bob,” Tiernan went on. “Dalton looks determined to take that ball to the goal line even if it means going into overtime.”

  Somewhere in northern Maryland, Summer (halle-frickin’-luyah!) lost cell service. If Tiernan had still been sportscasting, she would have declared it a tie.

  Part of her felt a little guilty for mocking Summer’s breakup. She’d had her own share of guy trouble over the years. She knew how much it sucked. Then again, it wasn’t as though Tiernan had been the one yammering on the phone for the past two hours with no regard to the bleeding ears of the two other people in this traveling sardine can.

  Plus, someone needed to cheer Alice up. Maybe Summer was too self-absorbed to notice, but it was pretty obvious to Tiernan that being left out of the loop was still Alice’s number-one pet peeve. And the fact that Summer had now shared her trauma with five zillion or so of her closest friends back in Walford, and specifically not with the two people who were actually in the car, had to be driving her crazy.

  “Hey, Summer.” Alice’s voice was tentative. “I just wanted to make sure you’re . . . that everything’s . . . okay.”

  Summer stopped to think, like she was pondering this for the first time. “I don’t know,” she finally said. Then she put Level3 back on—loud.

  Good old Level3—more emo than 30 Seconds to Mars, less poppy (and decades younger) than U2, and just enough edge to get play on both the Top 40 and the alternative radio stations. Tiernan hadn’t listened to Level3 in years, but in honor of the road trip, she’d loaded their first album (and their best, as far as she was concerned) onto her iPod last night. Surprisingly, their music still held up.

  But even Luke Dixon’s hard-core drum solo couldn’t break through the walls of tension between them. And as much as Tiernan tried to kick back and enjoy the music, she couldn’t help feeling twitchy and restless, like she wanted to find the nearest mosh pit and dive in headfirst. The shrink Judy forced her to see after the divorce always used to tell Tiernan that being angry was just a way people protected themselves from feeling hurt. But as far as she was concerned, the only thing that hurt was her butt from sitting on it for the past eight hours straight.

  They listened to the album twice and not one of them spoke a word.

  Back when they were young, Tiernan always had a knack for snapping Summer out of one of her sulky moods. It wasn’t like Alice didn’t try. The girl was constantly going out of her way to do something nice if Tiernan or Summer was sad, like when Tiernan told them her parents were getting divorced and an hour later Alice showed up on her doorstep with a plate of her famous chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies, still warm. But as much as Alice tried to break through to Summer, Tiernan was always the one with the magic touch. She wasn’t sure how it managed to work out that way, but she figured it probably had someth
ing to do with the way Alice took things way too seriously and Tiernan never took anything seriously at all.

  Not that Tiernan thought for a second that she still had that power over Summer. And even if she did, there were certain unwritten rules for the three of them being together again: invisible DO NOT ENTER signs; topics they dared not mention.

  They finally crossed into West Virginia and Alice broke the long silence. “Check it out! We’re here!” She pointed to a large WELCOME sign at the border. “What do you say we find a cheap place to stay and call it a night?”

  “Works for me!” Tiernan said enthusiastically.

  Summer just nodded.

  At the bottom of the off ramp, they followed the blue signs toward a strip of fast-food restaurants and chain hotels.

  “Just so you know,” Alice began. “I’d rather stay in places that are small and locally owned, as opposed to, say, corporate and franchised.”

  Tiernan had to hand it to Alice—the girl not only talked the talk, she actually walked the walk. It wasn’t as if Tiernan didn’t have strong beliefs about things; it was just that she showed them more in a bumper-sticker kind of way.

  “Well, I don’t think any of these chain hotels can take us anyway.” Tiernan pointed out the window. “The Red Roof Inn says ‘no vacancy.’ Same with the Travelodge across the street.”

  They drove past four more hotels, each with a NO VACANCY sign.

  “Since when did West Virginia become such a vacation hot spot?” Summer asked, suddenly perking up.

  “They’re probably just here for the free HBO,” Tiernan offered.

  Alice shook her head. “There has to be something going on. I mean, it’s a Monday night.”

  Soon they were past the big-box stores and strip malls into a less-developed area. But even the locally owned fleabag had a NO VACANCY sign.

  “Maybe we should get back on the highway and try the next exit,” Alice suggested.

  “Hang on.” Tiernan turned to Summer. “I think we should see what Coach Quigley has to say about this.”