Little Do We Know

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  “And spending the next five months apart is?”

  I reached down for a pebble and played with it. “Maybe.”

  “Well, I disagree.” He shook his head dismissively. “I think this—us—is all worth it, and I’m not giving up a single day because if I do, I know I’ll regret it when it’s over.”

  When. I felt that squeeze on my heart again, tight and painful, like someone gave the vise another crank or two.

  “Think about it this way,” he continued. “Years from now, when you look back, will you regret this?”

  I pictured a future me, thinking back to my senior year at Foothill High School. I’d remember my friends, and the diner, and all the time I spent in the theater, but I had a feeling that the first image that popped into my head would be of Luke. I’d remember Calletti Spaghetti with his family, and the two of us going to the movies, and doing homework in his room, and him sneaking in my window. I’d remember this night, going to his first lacrosse game, and I’d remember the parties I always dreaded but, in the end, never really minded that much. And all I could think was, I’m so in love with this guy. Crazy, giddy, stupid, silly in love with this guy.

  “Never,” I said.

  “See? Neither will I.”

  His words were perfect. He was perfect. Aside from Hannah, I couldn’t think of anyone else in my life who got me the way he did.

  “Say that again. I need an entry for today.” Day 278 was still blank.

  “I will never regret this.” He gave me a small kiss. And then he said, “I know your problem.”

  “I don’t have a problem.”

  “Sure you do. There are all these events coming up, but each one marks the end of something, right? Prom. Graduation. Your mom’s wedding. We need something to look forward to. Something that’s just for us.”

  “Like what?”

  He got this weird look in his eyes. “You’ve never been camping.”

  I crinkled my nose. “God, no.”

  “See, that’s a problem. You know how much I love camping. I’m going to make that my parting gift to you: I’ll turn you into a camper.”

  “Parting gift? Dude, you’re not helping.”

  “We’ll pack up the Jetta and take off. We can drive along the coast—take the slow route.” He traced his fingertip in the air like he was visualizing the map. “We’ll camp on the beach and hike in the woods. We can sleep under the stars.”

  Those summer trips to Guatemala with Hannah’s church youth group had been my only experience with “roughing it,” but at least we had clean floors and bunk beds with actual mattresses. Camping was totally different.

  “No, you’ll love this. Wait.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a nearly empty roll of Mentos. He handed one to me and popped the last one into his mouth, and then he peeled open the empty wrapper. He used the side of his hand to flatten it against his jeans. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Um. No. Maybe ask the garden gnome.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He went into the diner and returned with a pen. He drew a jagged line down the long end of the wrapper and then made a little dot. “We’re here in Orange County. All we have to do is drive straight west and pick up PCH.” He drew a line from the dot to the Pacific Coast Highway. He drew little waves to indicate the ocean, and then drew another dot on the coast.

  “We’ll stop here first. There’s this great beach in Santa Barbara and you can camp right on the sand. And then from there, we’ll head to Big Sur.” He made another dot. “It’s about a ten-mile hike in, but there are these great hot springs back in the woods.”

  That actually sounded pretty cool. Maybe even cool enough to make me forget about bugs crawling over us at night and snakes slithering outside the tent.

  “And then we’ll go to Santa Cruz. We can stop at the boardwalk and ride the roller coasters and play Skee-Ball, and then we’ll camp a few miles down the coast in this town called Capitola. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I’ve been dying to see it again. My mom has pictures. I’ll show you when you come over for dinner next week. There are these little cabins on the beach painted blue and orange and yellow. You’ll love it.”

  “When are we doing this?” I laughed like this was all a big joke, a fun dream, but he looked at me in all seriousness and said, “I don’t know. How about the week after your mom’s wedding?”

  “You’re not kidding?”

  His eyebrows pinched together. “I don’t kid about camping, Em.” And then he went right back to his sketch.

  I watched him, realizing, maybe for the first time, just how much he loved me. He must, because he somehow knew how much I’d need him next summer, and that I was going to need to disappear after the wedding, without me even telling him why.

  He kept going, creating little dots and lines, until he drew a star and wrote SF underneath. “And if we’re not ready to head home once we hit San Francisco, we’ll keep going all the way to the Oregon border. We can stretch our little road trip out for at least two weeks or more.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Yep.” He looked at me. “Prom. Graduation. Road trip.” I liked the way he looked at the whole thing: little moments adding up to something bigger, rather than a series of events counting down to the end. “And the best part? It’ll just be us. No one else.”

  I saw the image so clearly in my mind: The two of us driving along the coast with the windows down and the music blaring, my hand resting on his leg and my feet on the dashboard, tapping along with the beat.

  I turned my head, taking in the view on the other side of the window. His friends. My friends. We were always surrounded by people, except when Luke climbed a ladder and slipped into my room in the middle of the night.

  It reminded me of what Charlotte heard D-bag say in my room earlier. I’d forgotten all about it, but now I felt my whole face come to life.

  “What’s that look for?” Luke asked.

  “My mom has that big catering gig in the city on Friday. It’s going to go late. So late that D-bag happened to mention that she’s planning to crash at his apartment afterward.”

  He smiled. “Really?”

  “Really.” I pictured Luke walking through the front door. “You won’t have to sneak in through the window. And you don’t have to leave until morning.”

  “Can we make pancakes?” he asked.

  I started cracking up. “Yes, we can make pancakes.”

  He kissed me in that way that made the whole world disappear, and for a moment, all that sadness I’d been bottling up began melting away.

  Luke pulled away and rested his forehead against mine. “Let me be sure I have this straight. We’re going on a road trip, having a sleepover on Friday, and you don’t want to break up with me anymore?”

  “Not right this second. Ask me again next week.”

  I started to kiss him again, but he leaned back and shook his head. “Nope. I’m not asking you again. This is your last chance. After this, you’re stuck with me until August twentieth.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

  I shook it. “Deal.”

  “Wait. You’re doing what?” Alyssa asked.

  I let out an irritated sigh. “I’m helping Aaron gather a few testimonials for one of the videos he’s doing, that’s all. It shouldn’t take long.” I shut my locker door. “I’ll meet you in the quad when I’m done.”

  Apparently, Alyssa was still stuck on the first part of what I’d said. “You’re spending lunch with Aaron?”

  “Yeah, it’s this video for Admissions—”

  She cut me off. “I can help. Let me, like, hold the microphone or something.”

  It didn’t seem right to bring anyone else. “These guys might be nervous as it is. I don’t want to make it a bigger deal. I’ll tell you everything he says, okay?”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  I shut my locker and took off for the Grove. When I arrived, Aaron was already settin
g up the video camera and Skylar, Kaitlyn, and Kevin were talking with one another at the picnic table. I slid in next to Skylar. Bailee arrived a minute later.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Aaron began. He explained the video and what he was hoping to get from each one of them. “We’re only going to use a small piece of your story, but just talk. Say as much as you want and we’ll edit as needed. We don’t want you to sound scripted.”

  The way Aaron said “we” wasn’t lost on me. It made me feel good to be part of something that might help the school. And it made me temporarily forget how angry I was about the fact that he was here in the first place.

  “I’m going to start rolling,” he said, taking his place behind the camera. “This is perfect. Just stay where you are and talk. Hannah will ask the questions.”

  The five of us spoke while Aaron filmed, and before I knew it, the lunch bell rang. After the others gathered up their stuff and took off for class, I stayed behind and helped Aaron put all the equipment back in his bag.

  “You’re good at this,” Aaron said as he threaded his head through the camera strap and adjusted it across his chest. “You have a way of drawing people out. You let them speak without talking over them, and when they’re done, you’re right there with the next question, encouraging them to keep going.”

  “I didn’t really think much about it.”

  “Exactly.” He nodded. “You’re a natural.”

  The bell rang.

  He tapped the video camera. “Want to help me edit this after school? I’ll show you how it’s done. Then when you’re at BU next year you can start your own investigative journalism show on YouTube. You’ll be famous.”

  “I don’t want to be famous.” I grinned. That BU part still made me feel like I wanted to punch something. But unlike the day before, I no longer wanted to punch him. “But yeah, I can help,” I said. “Why not?”

  After school, the sound booth door was locked and Aaron was nowhere in sight, so I waited on the first pew in the balcony, leaning on the railing overlooking the sanctuary and checking my Instagram feed.

  I scrolled past a selfie of Alyssa in her bedroom, another of Logan and his dog at the park, and a bunch of posts from all my old friends from middle school, who were now all at Foothill High. And then Emory’s face blurred by and my heart started racing. I backed up.

  She was standing on the stage in the theater with her arms outstretched at her sides, like she was mid-monologue, delivering important words to a rapt audience. Her hair was piled up on the top of her head and her cheekbones looked even more pronounced than they usually did. She looked beautiful. Then again, it was kind of impossible for her not to.

  I was careful not to like the photo. Even though she probably knew I never stopped following her—just like I knew she hadn’t stopped following me—I didn’t want to make things more awkward than they already were.

  “Hey, sorry I’m late!” I looked up. Aaron was jiggling the key in the bolt. “Staff meeting went long. Come in.”

  I dropped my backpack next to the shelving unit and followed him.

  “Grab a soda from the mini fridge,” he said. “I’ll get everything set up.” Aaron sat on the stool and kept talking. “I imported all the raw footage after lunch and started working on it a bit, cutting out the obvious stuff. Now we need to figure out what to keep.” He tapped on an icon and our little lunch in the Grove came to life on the screen. “We’re looking for sound bites. We don’t need long stories, just short, punchy, grabby sentences.” He slid a notebook and a pen over to my side of the desk. “When you hear something you like, mark the time.”

  Then he pressed PLAY and we sat there, watching and listening, pausing when we heard something interesting and taking note of the time stamp. When we got to Skylar’s story, I found myself listening even closer than I had during the others’. It wasn’t her story about her struggle with her mental health, it was the other things she’d said in the interview, about how the people at Covenant made her feel welcome, even though she wasn’t religious.

  When she’d said it in the Grove that day, Bailee had turned to her in disbelief. “You’re not a Christian?”

  “Nope,” Skylar said matter-of-factly. “Never have been.”

  “What are you?” Kevin had asked.

  “Nothing, I guess. Why? Does it matter?”

  Everyone looked away from her, shifting positions, and I could tell it was getting uncomfortable. Faith, or rather, lack thereof, was one of the things people at Covenant were especially judgmental about. If Skylar hadn’t noticed, it was because people had kept their opinions to themselves, not because they didn’t have any.

  Now, Aaron laughed under his breath as he paused the tape. “Maybe we cut that part.”

  I smiled. “Yeah, I doubt Dad would consider that a key recruiting message.”

  Aaron highlighted that section of the video and pressed the delete button, and Skylar’s words were gone, as if they never existed.

  “I wonder what that’s like.” I hadn’t meant to say it. I was thinking aloud. I wasn’t really looking for an answer, but since Aaron was the only person in the room, he obviously took it that way.

  “What, to not be a Christian?”

  “No, not just that. Everything. How can you listen to Dad in Monday Chapel, and hear all the things our teachers tell us in class, and not believe in any of it?”

  “Skylar seems comfortable with the whole thing.” Aaron opened a new file and started pulling all the segments we’d flagged into an empty video screen. “I’ve always been kind of fascinated by what other people believe. Or the fact that they don’t believe anything at all. Haven’t you?”

  I never would have used the word fascinated. Curious, maybe, and if I was being totally honest with myself, not even that until recently, when Emory and I got in our fight and she accused me of never having an original thought of my own.

  As soon as I let Emory’s words in, the rest of them flooded in, too, swirling around in my mind, growing louder and louder.

  It’s easy to just agree with your dad, isn’t it? Why think for yourself when you don’t have to?

  My heart started pounding faster.

  You have a blind spot when it comes to your dad, Hannah. You’ll believe anything he says. Believe anything he believes. When was the last time you had an opinion that was entirely your own?

  My stomach knotted into a fist, and I twisted in my seat, trying to loosen it.

  You’re a fucking sheep.

  “You okay?” Aaron asked.

  My eyes snapped open, and I realized my hands were pressed into the sides of my head. “Yeah,” I said, slowly lowering them.

  “Hey. It’s okay. Whatever it is.”

  I nodded, even though it wasn’t okay. Nothing she’d said to me that morning was okay.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  I could feel the blood rising into my chest, past my cheeks, and settling into the tips of my ears. I shook my head, but deep down, I wanted to tell him. I hadn’t talked to anyone about what happened between Emory and me that day. Not Mom. Not Alyssa. And even though I couldn’t tell him the big reason we’d fought, I was dying to release the words she’d said, because they’d been trapped in my mind for months and sometimes they felt like they were multiplying and preparing to take over.

  Aaron twisted on the stool, facing me, and leaned in closer. I stared at him, realizing I wasn’t quite as angry with him as I had been earlier that week. After all, I’d known him for months but I’d only been mad at him for a week. And in all fairness, I didn’t have much reason to be. He might have been the reason I lost my tuition, but he was still Aaron. I liked him. I trusted him. And I really needed someone to talk to.

  “It’s about my neighbor, Emory. You don’t know her.” I glanced around the sound booth to be sure we were alone, even though I already knew we were. “We’ve lived next door to each other all our lives. We’ve been best friends since, well, forever. But we go
t in a fight a couple months ago. It was horrible. And I said something I shouldn’t have said, and she said something she shouldn’t have said….”

  I played with my fingernails nervously. Aaron was watching me, waiting patiently, silently giving me permission to keep going.

  “Anyway.” I took a deep breath. “What she said to me that day made me start questioning things. My faith mostly. I started seeing my life a little differently. I started hearing my dad differently. And I stopped praying, because…well, I don’t really know why. It just didn’t seem to be doing any good anyway.”

  The room got silent. I glanced up at him, wishing I hadn’t said anything. What was the point? I knew what Aaron was going to say before he opened his mouth. He was going to tell me that prayer works. That I needed it now more than ever. That my faith was my foundation, and all I had to do was believe that God was working on it. I just had to be patient.

  Aaron leaned in closer, resting his elbows on his knees. “You know it’s okay to question this stuff, right?”

  He took me by surprise. “It is?”

  “Sure.”

  Dad wouldn’t think any of this was okay. Mom wouldn’t think it was okay either.

  For we walk by faith, not by sight. —2 Corinthians 5:7.

  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I said.

  “But I bet you will when you find it.”

  He smiled at me.

  I smiled back.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Anytime.” He reached for the mouse, returning to our project. “I think the world would be a better place if people stopped every once in a while and questioned everything they thought they knew.”

  After dinner that night, I was in my room, trying to finish an essay for English class, but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Aaron had said in the sound booth.

  I stood and walked over to the window, peeling the curtain to one side, and looked out.

  Across the grass, I could see Emory in her bedroom, standing in front of her full-length mirror, talking and pacing and gesturing with her hands, and I could tell she was rehearsing. If things had been different—the way they used to be—I would have been sitting on her bed with my legs folded underneath me, script in hand, reading other characters’ lines.