Don't Ever Change

by M. Beth Bloom

“Oh, smile,” my mother says. “It’s Saturday!”

  I force a smile and then leave to meet Shelby for lunch at Roxy’s Famous Deli. Shelby always picks the place, and she always gets there early so she can pick the booth. She’s already eating from a basket of cheesy fries when I slide in beside her.

  “Did you get contacts?” she asks. “They look so good.”

  “Contacts are gross.”

  Shelby offers me a fry, then remembers the cheese and takes the offer away.

  “I’ll wear my glasses when I can get glasses that suit me,” I say. “I have to, like, grow into the look.”

  “Glasses make everyone look smarter, and I know you, you want to look smarter than everyone.”

  “I want to look sexy.”

  “Guys will have sex with you even if you don’t look sexy,” Shelby says. “Fact.” She licks cheese and grease off her fingers. “Lasik?”

  “Gross.”

  Shelby shrugs and moves on. “Well, are you crazy excited, like, overflowing with anticipation for Boston?” she asks.

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “Oh, stop moping, Eva,” she tells me.

  That’s the word she uses—“moping”—and when she says it, she rolls her eyes and waves me off like that’s also part of my rep, that I’m some Eternal Moper. Shelby says she moped for five straight days after she and Zack broke up, but she’s done with moping now.

  Shelby’s a good friend—not a close friend, but a good one—and she does this thing my dad calls Telling It Like It Is, which really just means she doesn’t hold back on honest details, even if a person might not want to hear them. What I like about Shelby is that she’s always had such a different agenda from everyone else. She never wanted to go to college or move away, she just wanted to do people’s hair for a living and run her own salon in this very posh part of Pasadena. Shelby’s very ambitious, which I think is on my level, but her ambitions aren’t to be this Important Person or to Make It, which my parents would probably say is some totally different level from mine. Shelby’s also the only real adult in our graduating class, because she’s always had a job and birth control pills and a silver nose ring, and because she was always dating Zack, who’s like six years older.

  The breakup happened two months ago, at the food court in the Thousand Oaks Mall. They were eating Sbarro’s and talking about the future when Zack invited Shelby to move into his bachelor apartment after she graduated in May. He said he cared about her, and how amazing it would be to live together, and if she did want to move in, maybe they should buy some new furniture together. Gradually, though, the conversation turned into a discussion of space issues—not issues regarding their own personal space but issues of where to physically put all this new furniture, like into what space. Zack suggested packing some stuff in a storage unit if necessary, or keeping extra furniture at his mom’s place, where he still sort of had a room. But Shelby didn’t like that idea; she thought the only way it’d work was if they got something bigger, like a one-bedroom or even a two-bedroom, even though that was kind of a huge commitment, since she was only eighteen and her summer job wasn’t going to pay much. Still, she told him she didn’t want to move into a place where she didn’t have space for her photography and her haircutting, so maybe the best thing to do was to just wait and figure it out later in the year. Zack proposed something else: renting a two-bedroom apartment in the Valley they could move into in June. Money wasn’t a concern to him; he loved her and would pay whatever she couldn’t cover. And as long as they’d be living together, why not get married too? He smiled, asked her what she thought of the idea.

  That’s when Shelby pushed away her slice of pizza. She couldn’t take another bite. She left the food court, left the mall, and left him there with no ride home.

  “Really, you’re lucky with that guy Elliot,” Shelby says. “At least he’s not bugging you about marriage, about being some teen bride.”

  “Shelby, I like barely know him. He’s only called me once since he left.”

  “Ugh, you’re being like Zack,” she tells me—which means being something I shouldn’t be.

  Coincidentally, on the drive home from Roxy’s, Elliot calls, from somewhere in the middle of the country. He tells me their drummer, Marcus, threw a bottle at Chelsea, the bassist. He tells me things have been getting crazier on the road because the whole band’s been drunk so much, except for him, and now the whole band’s angrier, and everything’s changing. Elliot thinks maybe Marcus had sex with Chelsea. I never knew Elliot had a girl bassist, because he never told me, and now I’m wondering if Elliot has had sex with Chelsea.

  He wants to know if camp’s ruling. I say it isn’t. He wants to know if I’ve started packing. I say I haven’t and don’t really feel like talking about it. But I do tell him Courtney’s packing, that she packs for Amsterdam a little bit each day.

  “Where’s Amsterdam?” Elliot asks.

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “Where’s Amsterdam?”

  “Holland?”

  “Holla!” Elliot laughs. Then he says, “You were rushin’ but now you’re peein’.”

  “What?”

  “You were Russian but now European,” Elliot says, laughing harder.

  It’s like the worst joke ever, so I hold my forehead in my hands, trying to remember if Elliot’s told me other bad jokes or if this is the first one. Is his rep as some Joker? Because I can’t stand that. Elliot asks what I’m wearing in this fake-sleazy way—another joke, because he knows it’s two p.m. and that I’m driving—and I tell him I’m completely naked and that makes him laugh again.

  I’m trying to picture what Marcus looks like, and what he looks like with a bottle in his hand, about to throw it. Then I try to picture Chelsea, and every image is like a Mara sister or some Hollywood celeb. And then I hear a match strike on the other end, and a deep inhalation, exhalation. Elliot’s smoking—he’s smoking again—so I just hang up.

  Back home, I lie there for a while before realizing I guess now I am moping, even though Shelby told me not to. She also told me not to be like Zack, but Zack’s older, drives a yellow motorcycle, and has his own dog, which I always thought was cool, Classic even. I always kind of liked Zack in general; he’s not some Joker who smokes. In fact, he’s not funny at all, which seems like it could be boring but probably in the long run means he’ll be stable and respectable.

  Normally only Shelbys can get Zacks, which is important to remember, but normally Evas can’t get Elliots, so maybe the rules are changing.

  Not that I necessarily want a Zack, obviously. It’s just that a part of me can’t help but be curious what it’d feel like to have one, and by extension, what it’d feel like to be a Shelby: Ready for the World. A girl who’s intriguing to actual men because she can shop and go the movies alone, and already has errands and responsibilities, and knows how to live and doesn’t have to leave a note for her parents when she goes out. A Pre-Woman, an Almost Adult. But the trick is that Shelbys are born, not made, which means I never had a shot.

  But if for the sake of argument I did have a shot at Shelbydom, at becoming this evolved, elegant female presence, my only hope would be to add someone like Zack to my résumé.

  And I do know someone like Zack—Zack.

  This is all just a train of thought; I’m not trying to greener-grass the situation. But it might be interesting to at least experience being a tourist over there, to get my passport stamped, take a quick, harmless sightseeing trip. It might be interesting to at least call him.

  Call it Evalving.

  I should call him.

  24.

  THE FIFTY-FIRST STATE

  COURTNEY DOESN’T HAVE any other plans, but she swears that’s not why she wants to spend her Saturday night with me. She says it’s because she’ll be gone soon and I’ll be gone soon and we’re sisters and isn’t that enough? I’m on the tail end of moping—I can actually feel the mope fading—because I don’t miss Michelle and Ste
ph, because I decided not to miss them, which is the mature thing to do: pack it up and move it on. “Just remember these four words,” my father said one time, probably misquoting somebody. “Forward, forward, forward, forward!” And also, Courtney was right: they’re high school friends, and I’m not in high school anymore.

  “Okay, but that’s not really what I said,” Courtney tells me. “I just said you might not be friends forever, and that there’s nothing wrong with that, but I didn’t tell you to let one annoying thing they do end your friendship just because you’re moving away and who cares. Stop being so dramatic, Eva. You don’t always have to be this dramatic.”

  “Am I supposed to miss them or not miss them?” I ask. “Is this supposed to bother me or not bother me?”

  “I don’t know,” Courtney says. “Not bother you, I guess.”

  “Not bother me because I’m moving away, or not bother me because I’m above it and it doesn’t really matter?”

  “The second one.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’m above it then.”

  “How’s Elliot?”

  “Ehhh,” I say.

  “How’s that Foster guy?”

  “He was seconds away from asking me on a date to this reading, but some kid interrupted him,” I say.

  “Some kid,” Courtney says. “And how are your campers?”

  “Brilliant,” I tell her. “I mean, basically brilliant.”

  “Like you,” she says.

  “Ha-ha.”

  “It’s only been one week. Give them time for brilliance.”

  “Yeah but we only have five weeks. A month now.”

  “You should go to that reading,” Courtney says. “Just show up.”

  “That seems sort of loser-ish, doesn’t it?”

  “You don’t care,” Courtney says. “You’ve never cared what anyone thought.”

  “I care about other people’s feelings.”

  “That’s not the same thing, Eva. This is what I mean about dramatic.”

  After flipping around for a while, Courtney and I settle on an old movie on AMC about this sort of nerdy, plainly dressed woman who gets discovered by a fashion photographer when he’s doing a photo shoot in the bookstore she works in. Audrey Hepburn is the star, and it’s called Funny Face, because that’s what Fred Astaire says she has, this sort of unconventional, funny face. Obviously she has a movie-star face, one of the most glamorous faces ever, but that’s not the point. The point is once she’s discovered and invited to do a photo shoot for a super-prestigious fashion magazine, she’s able to leave New York City for Paris, a city she’s always wanted to visit because her favorite French writer/philosopher gives lectures at a bar there and she’d give anything in the world to meet him.

  No one in the movie can understand why in a million years she’d skip out on all the tourist attractions of Paris for some dirty hipster bar in some seedy part of the city where some Beat lunatic is giving lectures. No one gets that they chose her specifically because she’s smart and unique and unlike the other fashion models because of her funny face, and that wanting to go to this seedy bar is all wrapped up in why they picked her in the first place. But this is also a movie where everyone acts like her underground bookstore in Manhattan isn’t the coolest spot ever, that it’s really grungy and dull and not at all what little girls who dream of moving to a glamorous city would think of as glamorous. And that’s what makes Courtney so mad.

  “God!” she groans. “This movie! This is why there’s all those idiot backpackers and tourists wanting to go abroad, because they’re brainwashed by Hollywood that Europe’s so much more exciting than America. Nobody cares about the history or the art, not really.”

  “Audrey Hepburn cares,” I say.

  “And she’s totally mocked for it!”

  “I thought everyone wanted to go to New York,” I say. “Everyone I know thinks New York is a huge deal.”

  “Except for you,” Courtney says.

  “Including me. New York just also seems really scary and gross. It’s like a Split the Difference kind of thing,” I say. “If I’m from LA and I don’t want to go to New York, then that’s pretty limiting. What’s left for a famous writer—Boston, Chicago, maybe like San Francisco? I know there’s the rest of the country, but I have a list of reasons, like a long list, of why each city isn’t going to work.”

  “If only there was another state, some fifty-first state, just for you,” Courtney says, and then snaps her fingers like, shucks.

  “You can mock,” I say, “but it’s true! You know when we go to Whole Foods with Mom and we stand around the produce section, wishing there was just like one more vegetable, just a different kind of vegetable, for us to try? Or just one more channel on TV, even though we have a trillion channels and they’re all fine, but just one more that we haven’t already seen or skipped past?”

  “This is existentialism,” Courtney says. “Now you don’t have to take it in college.”

  “I just want there to be another choice for me to choose from,” I say. “I want there to be something new.”

  “Everything’s new! You haven’t done anything yet!”

  “I know,” I say.

  Eventually we finish the movie. It’s pretty good, actually, and some parts do feel real, like how even if you’re given this interesting opportunity, you’ll still do it Your Way, sort of stubbornly and without keeping your mind open. I don’t know if the mind is the same as the brain, but it seems like you can have this giant brain and be a really smart person but still have a straightforward, totally closed-off mind. If you took out the silly music numbers and the stupid church wedding at the end, Funny Face could be this really serious short story about Making It but not really Getting It, about trying something new but still not truly being open to the newness.

  NEWNESS, I write down. FUNNY FACE. MIND/BRAIN. FOSTER. BOOK SOUP. GOING, GOING, GOING.

  25.

  SO WHAT

  WHEN I GET to Book Soup, there’re no chairs left, so I stand at the back of the room, half paying attention to the reading and half staring at Foster’s hair. Since I arrived a little late, it’s hard to understand the context of what’s being read, so instead I try to think of what to say to Foster afterward. Then the writer finishes, closing her book, and the crowd starts clapping really loudly and the people sitting down stand up. Even though I came late and haven’t read the book or heard of the writer, I can still feel the awesome energy in the room, and to me it feels like Making It.

  That energy carries over into the Q & A portion of the reading, where anyone who wants to can ask the writer if her characters are based on real people or if it was more difficult to write this book than her first or second one. Foster raises his hand, but by then the Q & A is winding down and the writer moves over to start signing books by the front door. The store’s so crowded I can’t just casually bump into Foster, so I have to ditch the low-key approach and walk right over to him. He’s alone.

  “Foster,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder.

  “Eva,” Foster says, “you came to the reading!”

  “It was great.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “It was really great.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” Foster says. “We could’ve come together.”

  “I don’t have your number,” I tell him.

  “Give me your phone,” he says, and types his number in my contacts. Then he hands me his phone and tells me I should add my number to his contacts too.

  This is the thing about Foster: he’s so amazingly direct that he can say stuff like “We could’ve come together” and then, no big deal, get me to program my number into his phone. Being with Foster is too easy, but in a good way; like, it’s effortless, but not effort free. For instance, I’m still conscious of working hard to get Foster to like me—like really like me—and that means doing something as shameless as pretending I read the book.

  “I like her imagery,” I say, staring pas
t Foster at the writer shaking hands with fans. “It’s simple but kind of vivid, and I also like the way she writes her characters; they’re really three-dimensional, don’t you think?”

  “Actually, I haven’t read it,” Foster says. “I’ve never even heard of her. I just thought it would be a cool thing to do.”

  “Oh my God,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Hey, are you doing anything now?”

  “Uh, I’m going to buy a copy of the book and get it signed, I think.”

  “I’ll come with you,” I say.

  Luckily, there’s not much of a line anymore, but the line area is narrow, so Foster and I have to stand really close. Foster actually smells like camp, like sun and sunscreen and chlorine. He’s such a perfect counselor that Sunny Skies literally permeates his skin. I even notice a knotted leather bracelet around his wrist that’s so ugly it could only have been made by one of his campers.

  When we’re next in line, about to meet the writer, I whisper to Foster that he should ask her the question he was going to ask earlier during the Q & A. I nudge him and he laughs and then we’re up, standing in front of the writer, whose eyebrows are raised, her pen ready to sign. She doesn’t look that much older than Courtney, or all that brilliant. She is wearing glasses, though, frameless ones sort of floating in front of her face, and I think they’re really helping with the overall Writer Image, and I’m definitely taking note of that. I’m reminded of what Alyssa said (“I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, but isn’t that what a cover’s for?”), and this writer’s cover says: Sort of Bookish, Regular Person Who Wrote a Book. And the book’s cover says: Sort of Sad, Sort of Sweet, Regular Book.

  “Hello,” Foster says.

  “Hello there,” the writer says. She holds her hand out to take Foster’s copy of the book.

  “We really liked the reading,” Foster tells her.

  “You’re sweet,” she says.

  “We just graduated from high school and we’re writers. We’re both going to major in creative writing in college.”