First There Was Forever Read online

  chapter

  three

  “Lima, oh my God, I miss you,” Hailey said, throwing her arms around me. We were halfway through the second week of school and this was the first day Hailey had showed up at our meeting spot.

  “I’ve been here at break every day,” I said. “Where have you been?”

  The year was off to a bad start. Hailey was impossible to pin down at school, and my time at home was being devoured by hours of nightly homework. I’d been so busy I had neglected to take care of my garden, and last night I discovered that my strawberry plants had wilted and died. I’d tended to those plants all summer, watering them and pruning them and watching them transform from a packet of seeds to perfect living organisms. There is an indescribable joy that comes from seeing a plant you have grown yourself produce actual edible fruit. Each strawberry, even if it was small and lopsided and soft, had felt like a miracle.

  “I know it’s totally my fault that we haven’t seen each other lately,” Hailey confessed. “It’s just that now that we have off-campus privileges, I leave at, like, every single break.”

  “Just ’cause we’re allowed to go off campus doesn’t mean you have to go,” I said softly. As the words came out, I could hear how lame I sounded.

  “You’re right. I’ll probably get sick of it soon. But it just feels exciting. And Nate is usually there. And you know me: when it comes to Nate, I have no self-control. Actually, when it comes to anything, I have no self-control.”

  We both laughed, and I felt comforted by Hailey’s honesty. She wasn’t avoiding me. She was just chasing something else.

  “Come out to lunch with me and Skyler today,” she said. “You might like her more than you think.”

  • • •

  It turned out “going out to lunch” with Skyler and Hailey meant getting iced coffees and driving in circles around the neighborhood. I was starving. I couldn’t believe we weren’t actually going to get food.

  “Slow down,” Hailey yelled as Skyler swung a sharp turn and the car fishtailed. “I’m gonna mess up my makeup!”

  Hailey was sitting shotgun and using the flip-down mirror to smudge cover-up onto the circles under her eyes.

  “Don’t put so much on. It looks fake,” Skyler ordered.

  “Yeah, but I look worse without it,” Hailey replied. “And Nate is in my fifth period.”

  “Nate’s not that cool,” Skyler said. “Don’t be so into him. He thinks he’s the shit.”

  “There’s more to him than you think.”

  Skyler moaned. “There is so not more to him than I think.”

  Hailey laughed.

  “Whatever, I’m sure if you actually hooked up with him, you’d stop liking him,” Skyler continued. “That’s how I am. I just like guys until I get them. What do you think about Hailey and Nate, Lima?”

  “I don’t know,” I said lamely. “I don’t really know Nate. But she likes him.” I wished I hadn’t agreed to come. I was so hungry I could hardly think.

  Skyler laughed. Her nails were painted a midnight blue. “So,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me, “who do you like?”

  “I don’t like anyone,” I said.

  “You must like someone,” she tried. I couldn’t read her expression behind the hard black shells of her sunglasses. “Not even Ryan? He’s so cute. I mean, I could never be attracted to him because we’re basically like brother and sister. But he’s definitely, like, boy-band cute.”

  Ryan Masterson had always been the best-looking guy in our grade, with movie-star dimples and silvery eyes that reflected light like mirrors. I’d gone to school with him since pre-K and he’d always been nice, but I’d never had anything even close to a crush on him. I tried to imagine being alone with Ryan, maybe even kissing him, but those thoughts didn’t make me feel anything. It was like pinching myself somewhere that had been numbed.

  When I realized Skyler was waiting for me to respond, I said, “Oh, no, I seriously don’t like anyone.”

  “Really?” Skyler asked, glancing at Hailey for confirmation.

  “No, she genuinely doesn’t,” Hailey said, patting lip gloss onto her lower lip. “Lima never likes anyone.”

  “Lemme use that when you’re done,” Skyler commanded Hailey. “Want some, Lima?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Lima doesn’t need to wear any makeup,” Hailey said. “It’s insane. She just looks like that all the time. It’s weird. If we were living in medieval times, like pre-makeup and blow-dryers, Lima would be, like, the only person who would still be pretty. She’s the only person who would look the same!”

  “Thanks a lot, biatch!” Skyler snapped. “Are you calling me ugly?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know how hot you are,” Hailey retorted drily.

  Hailey always had a way of giving me compliments that made me feel small and almost ashamed. I had looked exactly the same since I was five years old. My hair had turned gradually from platinum to a darker blond, the color of sand or dust. I had blue eyes and skin that freckled or burned but never tanned. For the last few years, I had been waiting for my soft features to give way to harder, more grown-up ones, but they never had. Even my smile hadn’t changed because Mom didn’t let the orthodontist give me braces. She said my slightly crooked teeth gave me character.

  “Well, whatever,” Skyler said. “I don’t wear makeup ’cause I have to. It’s just fun.” She twisted the volume knob on her stereo so the music thumped violently through the car.

  When we were in elementary school, Hailey invented the every-other rule. Every other day is good. Every other birthday is perfect. Every other test is easy. Even though we stopped talking about it in middle school, and even though I knew it was just a silly superstition, part of me still believed in it. Eighth grade had been miserable, but ninth grade had been okay, which meant that, according to the every-other rule, tenth was destined to be terrible.

  chapter

  four

  Going to Hailey’s apartment on Fridays was one of our rituals. But this week Skyler, Ryan, and Nate came, too. Skyler had made the arrangements a few days earlier, and since then Hailey had been talking about it nonstop. She went on and on about what she would wear, what kind of drinks she should have, and whether or not Nate would think her room was cool.

  Yellow afternoon light cut sideways across us where we stood on her balcony. “Dare me to walk on the railing,” Hailey said, taking a big gulp of her vodka and soda.

  “I dare you, Hailey,” Skyler said, sounding bored. She was leaning her whole body into Ryan’s side, his tan, smooth arm slung around her shoulders. My mind flashed on my conversation with Skyler earlier in the week. She was right: Ryan was good-looking.

  “Nate, do you dare me?” Hailey asked.

  Nate was standing a little separate from the rest of us, leaning against the wall with a beer in his hand.

  “Hailey, please don’t,” I said. I was the only one not drinking, so maybe I was the only one who realized what a stupid idea walking on the railing was. “You’re being insane.”

  Hailey lived on the sixth floor of an apartment building a few blocks east of the 405 freeway. The sprawl of West LA stretched out beneath us: rooftops, backyards, artificially blue pools, the intricate crisscross of sagging telephone wires, and somewhere, lurking behind the city, the blurry smudge of the ocean.

  “Don’t worry, Li. I got this,” Hailey said, hoisting herself onto the railing. It was no wider than a gymnast’s balance beam, and she crouched on it for a second before unfurling into a standing position. She stood toe-to-heel, her arms extended like a tightrope walker’s.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, afraid to watch, and when I opened them, Nate was looking at me. He wasn’t smiling, but his expression wasn’t unfriendly. It was like he was just contemplating me or something. I glanced quickly at my shoes, and then looked up
at him again. I expected him to turn away, but instead he held my gaze steadily, the way you might hold a glass brimming with water that you didn’t want to spill.

  Maybe it was because of the color of his T-shirt, or maybe it was the way the afternoon light was hitting him, but I had never realized until then that Nate’s eyes were so blue. Our gazes hooked together and everything around me seemed to grow quiet.

  “Oh my God, Hailey, I can see everything from where I am.” Skyler laughed, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Get down.”

  Everyone’s attention snapped up to Hailey. A gust of wind had made Hailey’s skirt float up above her waist, suspended in midair like a hot-air balloon.

  When the sun slid down behind the wall of the ocean, we went inside. Hailey turned on her stereo and blasted a synthetic pop song. The apartment was dark and Hailey was too drunk to switch on the overhead lights.

  “Come here, Li. Dance with us!” Hailey called out to me. She and Skyler danced with their arms wrapped around each other’s necks.

  “In a minute,” I said. I slipped into the kitchen. Doing dishes was the perfect excuse to be alone.

  I was washing out a glass when Nate came in.

  He passed behind me, where I stood at the sink. He didn’t say anything or offer to help. I didn’t turn around, but I felt his eyes on my back, felt him moving across the room to the trash can and crossing back to the door. Right before he left, I turned and looked at him and our eyes met. For the second time that day, something passed between us.

  And then he sort of winced, and said, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I stammered, suddenly embarrassed.

  He stared at me for another second like I was crazy, rolled his eyes, and left the kitchen.

  chapter

  five

  Hailey and Skyler passed out in a sticky drunken sleep as soon as the boys left, but I wasn’t tired. The alcohol emanating from their bodies gave the room an antiseptic scent, like hand sanitizer, or the way it smelled right after the janitor had passed through the hallways of school with his industrial cleaning supplies.

  I had only been drunk once. Last fall, Hailey and I broke into Dad’s fancy liquor one morning when he and Mom were out at brunch. Before then, I had taken sips of alcohol at parties, and sometimes Mom shared her glass of Chardonnay with me at dinner, but I never drank enough to feel anything. So when Hailey and I started swigging from Dad’s whiskey, we got drunk fast.

  Dad kept his whiskey in the room he called his office, which was really just his private hangout room. He had a record player, a vintage typewriter, and a framed Bob Dylan poster on the wall. There was also this really pretty black-and-white picture of Mom on his desk. In the picture, the wind was whipping her blond hair across her face, but you could still see her freckles and her strong eyebrows and the shape of her straight nose. She’s smiling in it, but there’s sadness to her expression, too. Something about that photo always looked like love to me. Like that’s what being in love would look like, if it could look like something.

  Being drunk made Dad’s office look different. The walls warped. The room swarmed around me, and everything grew rubbery and funny. We played Dad’s records and danced sloppily, falling onto the floor and knocking into the bookshelves.

  I remember Hailey was laughing so hard at my drunken rendition of “Livin’ on a Prayer” that she actually peed in her pants. She stood there with her legs crossed, her face beet red, as she laughed and cried at the same time, and the dark liquid spread across her pajamas. I convinced her she needed a bath; she convinced me I needed one too, and the next thing I knew we were taking off our clothes and stepping into a bubble bath in our bras and undies.

  By the time Mom and Dad came home at two p.m., we were already napping on my bed.

  When I woke up, my bedroom was full of this dusty end-of-the-day light. My mouth was dry and I felt stiff and unsettled. We all ate dinner on the back porch that night, which was usually my favorite thing, but that night, I couldn’t shake my irritability. Nothing that had seemed funny that morning seemed funny anymore. Even the memory of Hailey peeing in her pants, which had made me laugh so much, just seemed depressing.

  That same year, Hailey had smoked pot a bunch of times, and I finally decided to do it with her.

  “Listen,” she told me as she pulled a pair of black jeans off her floor and inspected them for stains, “we’ll smoke this joint and then we’ll call a taxi and go to Skyler’s party. You’ll love being high, it’s amazing.”

  “What’s it like?” I rolled the joint around in my palm. I knew a lot of people who smoked pot. Even grown-ups. My aunt Caroline had a medical marijuana prescription because she had breast cancer when we were in elementary school. Her cancer was in remission now, but she still kept her prescription, and I suspected that even Dad got stoned with her occasionally.

  “Ugh, my favorite jeans are dirty,” Hailey said, tossing the jeans back onto the floor. Then she looked at me. “I can’t explain it. It makes stuff funny. Just try it. It’s even less of a big deal than getting drunk.”

  We smoked the joint on the balcony, and Hailey made me hold my breath for three full seconds to be sure I inhaled.

  “Are you high?” Hailey asked me after a few minutes. Behind her, the red polka dots of brake lights on the 405 freeway flickered on and off.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. But my voice sounded far away, and I had a sudden craving for something sweet.

  “Are you ready to go?” Hailey asked. Her eyes looked like they were dipped in honey.

  “I can’t go to a party,” I giggled. “I think I might be stoned. Let’s just go to the kitchen and make root beer floats.”

  And then I started laughing uncontrollably, because it dawned on me that even the kitchen seemed far away at that instant. “The kitchen is literally—and I mean literally—as far as I can go.”

  Hailey laughed a little. Sweets must have sounded good to her, too.

  We didn’t have the right stuff for root beer floats, but we made all kinds of other creations. We put chocolate ice cream in the microwave and drank it out of straws. I made a cookie sandwich out of graham crackers, peanut butter, and Froot Loops. Then we watched an old Saturday Night Live on Hailey’s laptop and passed out on her bed.

  The next morning, Hailey’s mom knocked on her door.

  “Can I talk to you out here, Hailey?” she asked.

  Brenda’s dyed blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, and I could see a full inch of her dark roots. She was wrapped in a fluffy pink terrycloth robe. Every time I saw Brenda she looked a little older.

  Hailey stepped into the hallway with her mom, and I could hear them arguing, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  “We have to clean the kitchen,” Hailey said when she came back in, and her eyes slid all over the room without meeting mine.

  The kitchen looked terrible, but I was a good cleaner, so it went fast. Hailey was super quiet while we did dishes.

  “Look at this fork!” I said, laughing. “There’s a Froot Loop stuck in it!”

  Hailey didn’t crack a smile. “I feel so fat,” was all she said.

  I sucked my lips between my teeth. I hated when Hailey was in a bad mood, and I felt guilty that it was partly my fault.

  “Your mom won’t stay mad, Hailey,” I offered quietly.

  “I don’t care about that,” she said. “I got, like, a million texts from Skyler asking me where I was. She’s pissed at me for not going to her party.”

  “She’ll get over it,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Hailey.

  • • •

  I hadn’t smoked pot or been drunk since then. It wasn’t that I didn’t like how it had felt, but both times it left me feeling emptier than before. Like it dug something out of my insides and left a hollow, quarter-sized vortex behind.

  chapter

&nb
sp; six

  The following Friday, Mom and I spent the afternoon making peach cobbler from scratch. Mom showed me how if you drop peaches in boiling water for thirty seconds and then take them out, their skin comes right off in your hands. Easy as taking off a piece of clothing.

  After we cleaned the kitchen, I went upstairs to pack. We were leaving the next day to go to Santa Barbara for my grandmother’s birthday. We’d pick Hailey up early on Saturday morning and head out before traffic. That’s how we always did it when we went to Nana’s.

  Outside my window the sky was a pale blue, but the moon had already appeared. It looked yellow and disproportionately big, like it had been painted onto the artificial backdrop of the sky.

  My phone lit up with a text message from Hailey.

  Can’t go to Santa Barbara. Sad face.

  I perched on the edge of my bed and called her.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’m so sorry, Li. I just really can’t go away this weekend,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay. Why?”

  Hailey sighed. “I have so much homework. I have three quizzes on Monday, and I’m already behind in everything. It’s just, like, I have to stay.”

  “You can do homework at Nana’s,” I said. “I’m gonna bring mine.”

  Hailey paused. “Well, there’s also, like, this party at Skyler’s friend’s house from outside of school on Saturday.”

  My heart sank. That’s what this was about?

  After we got off the phone, the silence in my room felt loud. I gazed out the window at the fake-looking sky, trying to ignore the disappointment that spread through my chest like sand.

  chapter

  seven

  Nana lived with Dad’s sister, Caroline, in a huge, mustard-colored Spanish-style house overlooking the ocean in the prettiest part of Santa Barbara.