How It Ends

by Laura Wiess

  Yes.

  Chapter 22

  Helen

  It’s done.

  The truth I’ve never dared speak to anyone but Lon is actually down now, in writing. It was Lon’s idea to send it away and make it into a real book because Hanna always borrows those.

  The thing is, she doesn’t read nonfiction, and so I had to think further.

  I wanted her to listen.

  I wanted her to understand.

  And because I was doing so poorly and missed her so much, the fear of losing her fell under the need to sit with her through this story just like I had when I’d told all those other stories.

  This was the one that counted, and so I sent my words, my secrets, to a narrator, and they came back as an audiobook.

  Chapter 23

  Hanna

  We spent the rest of the day in Phil’s backseat.

  My yes did something, unlocked him somehow, and he dropped his distant-Seth self and turned into…I don’t know, a sweet, sexy Seth who wrapped me in his arms and blew my mind. All those pent-up emotions came out in sighs and whispers, in touching and stroking and murmuring each other’s names and laughing softly and being able to lean against him the way I’d wanted to for so long, to feel his arms holding me so tight it was like he would never let me go, hearing him say things like, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” and they came out kind of hesitant at first, like he was wondering at it, and his bewilderment made me a little sad for him and also love him all the more.

  We talked some, too, during those up-for-air moments, and I told him all kinds of important things about my life because I wanted him to know about me and I wanted to know about him, too.

  I told him about my parents separating when I was little but how they were okay now, and the sub shop robbery, how Gran had come to be my grandmother, and about how she and Grandpa had met. I told him about her stray-cat condos on the porch, and he said, “So she’s a crazy cat lady,” and I said, “No, not at all,” and tried to explain why taking care of them mattered and how we had kind of a sanctuary there for deer, too, but halfway through he started kissing my neck and I lost track of everything but him, which I think, when it comes to true love, is exactly how it should be.

  I don’t know what I love more: being Seth’s girlfriend, or the surprise on peoples’ faces at school when they see us with our arms around each other.

  Sammi’s been tracking all the reactions, and in these last two days it’s ranged from bets that we won’t last a month to some sophomore wearing blue eye shadow crying in the bathroom after we walked by on that first day with our arms around each other.

  Bizarre.

  We met between classes, used each other’s lockers, ate together, hung out together, and were pretty much inseparable. It felt amazing being able to walk into the caf and meet his gaze, to be able to write Hanna & Seth TLF all over my books, to be able to turn to someone and say, “Have you seen Seth?” when I was looking for him or have somebody in class nudge me and to look to the door to see him standing out in the hall, smiling and waiting on me.

  On our one-week anniversary Seth bought a blue secondhand SUV. He had to get a job to pay for gas and insurance, so he’s going to be working in a bowling alley out near his house four nights a week and, unfortunately, Saturday daytime—but, we now have a place of our own where we can be alone, as long as we can find a private place to park it.

  Making out in lust is great, but making out in love is stellar, the two of us wrapped together in the backseat, his hand slipping under my jacket, under my shirt, pushing up my bra and finally closing around me, all the while straining against me and me against him, wanting but not taking because it wasn’t just something to do but me and him, and it mattered what we thought of each other when it was over.

  At least it did to me, because what he’d said to me that day—how I knew how to play the game, how I’d been around—had never actually left me, and sometimes when I saw him smiling at other girls or walked up on him joking around with them, or he walked up on me joking with other guys, I thought about that, about the difference between a guy’s reputation and a girl’s, and yeah, it bothered me.

  So even though all I really wanted to do was say I love you and rip his clothes off and let him rip mine off, I went slow, and I have to say it was a blast.

  We had our first fight.

  I guess it was my fault, because he’s right, I know how he is and I shouldn’t have come up on him and that blue-eye-shadow-wearing sophomore Lacey McMullen with such a bitch attitude, but it’s too late now.

  You know how you can look at the same thing every day for weeks and think nothing of it but then all of a sudden something in your mind clicks, and you realize there’s something very wrong with this picture? Like while you were busy thinking nothing of it, your subconscious knew otherwise and was connecting dots so you would finally realize the threat?

  Well, what I noticed was Lacey McMullen, with the giant, sparkling cow eyes rimmed in bright blue eye shadow, a substantial set of boobs, flushed cheeks, a perky, eager smile, and a very strange tendency to be hovering on the outskirts every time I turned around.

  No, not every time I turned around.

  Every time I was with Seth and turned around.

  And the worst thing was…I knew that look.

  It was anticipation, even though the odds were against you.

  It was being ready and waiting for that instant, unexpected opportunity.

  That did not bode well, especially after I pointed her out to Sammi, who said, Yeah, she’s the one who was crying in the bathroom when she found out you two were going out.

  Great.

  The only good part was that he didn’t seem to know she existed, or so I thought until I got out of gym early, walked into the caf, and saw him leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and her standing in front of him, laughing and wrapping his necktie around her finger.

  I strode over, eyebrows high and wearing a serious bitch face because flirting was one thing but touching quite another.

  She saw me coming, let go of his tie, and stepped back but didn’t leave.

  That irritated me even more, so I looked at him and said, “Am I interrupting something?” which turned out to be the absolute wrong thing to say.

  “Well, yeah, actually you are,” he said coolly, and that was like knives in my stomach because she was still standing there soaking it all up, so I gave her a look that said, Get the hell out of here now.

  She looked past me at him.

  He nodded and said, “I’ll catch up with you later,” and then she sauntered off.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Take a walk with me?” I said with a tight smile.

  “Sure,” he said with absolutely no warmth in his voice at all and ambled out of the cafeteria after me, not even trying to catch up or hold my hand.

  “So what was that all about?” I said, pushing open a door and stopping in an empty stairwell.

  He shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Really,” I said and hated the shaky hurt in my voice.

  He must have heard it, too, because his remote expression faded. “What do you want me to say, Hanna? Oops, you caught me talking to another girl? C’mon.” He pulled me into his arms and I went, stiffly and filled with frustration, but I went. “It was no big deal. She’s just a kid—”

  “Who has a crush on you,” I mumbled, and bingo, that was another wrong thing, because he laughed and said, “Yeah, I know, but so what? That doesn’t mean I have a crush on her.”

  “Hmph,” I said, unwinding enough to put my arms around him.

  “So I hang out with her sometimes, so what? It doesn’t mean anything,” he said, tilting my face up and catching sight of my tear-filled eyes. “Oh, c’mon, don’t.” He kissed me. “Shh, c’mon. Don’t you know that I love you?”

  I went still and searched his gaze. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” he said, laughing as I threw my arms up around his neck. “Y
eah, yeah, yeah, Hanna, baby. I do.”

  Two nights later, parked in our spot, he slid a hand down into my jeans and put my hand into his, and it was tight maneuvering on both parts, so we actually unzipped, and I got my first real feel of him. He put his hand around my hand and showed me how to move it and then he slid his hand back down into my pants and started kissing me wildly. My hand was moving and his was moving and both of us were breathing loud and his hand hit the right spot on me in passing and I arched up into it and I guess that really made him crazy because maybe four seconds after that he totally lost it and collapsed on me, gasping and laughing. He brushed my sweaty hair from my cheeks and looked into my eyes and said, You’re so beautiful, and then, with his hand still down there, said, Now you, but I got shy and would have said no if he hadn’t started kissing me again.

  It got so hot that I actually put my hand on his and showed him where and how, and when it happened, he was exultant and said he’d never done that for anybody before.

  I said, Me neither, and that meant we had a real first together.

  My father was called back to work and my mother says that when there’s more money coming in, maybe we can start fixing up the basement so me and Seth can have a place to hang out.

  Plus, my mother says Gran has discovered books on tape, and now Grandpa goes to the library for her and brings home as many audiobooks as he can check out. She’s still into books about Parkinson’s, back to the land, or homeopathy, but she’s been branching out to old-time biographies, too.

  I haven’t been to see Gran in a while—too long actually—and while I’m really not into the audiobooks, she does still have bookcases full of regular novels I haven’t read yet. They’re going to come in handy, because Seth practices the guitar a lot when we’re together, so I have a feeling I’ll be reading just to pass the time.

  It’s kind of cool to be that comfortable with each other so quickly.

  We had Gran and Grandpa over for dinner Sunday and it was quiet as my father was tired from working overtime and my mother was concerned about Gran, who was having trouble forming words fast enough for anyone to connect them into a sentence.

  Grandpa stayed close by her now, always there in case she needed him, doing some kind of stepping thing in front of her when her feet froze in position and she couldn’t make herself walk, supporting her when she first got up because her balance was getting really bad, and the sight of her made me want to cry, which I did but not until later when I was alone.

  I think I’m going to go over to Gran’s and ask her if she knows why my parents separated way back when. I mean, I get the idea that it wasn’t because of cheating, but then what else could it have been? Money? We’ve never had a lot and they worry about the bills and stuff but that doesn’t seem like such a big deal, either.

  So why, then?

  I called first to see if she was up for a visit and I could tell just by how long it took her to form each slurred word that it was not a good day, so when she finally said no, I was disappointed but not surprised.

  “Then can I ask you a quick question?” I said, getting up off the bed and shutting my bedroom door just in case my mother came upstairs.

  “Sure,” Gran said after a moment.

  “Okay, well, remember back when my parents separated? Do you know why they did? I don’t need all the details or anything, but nobody ever told me why.” I sank to the edge of the bed and waited, gazing at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the closet door.

  “Ask them,” she said after a long pause.

  I shook my head. “No, I can’t. That’s, like, never talked about. I mean, what if I bring it up and it starts something bad all over again? I don’t want to do that. Can’t you just tell me? Please?”

  “Why dig up the past?” she said finally.

  “Because it’s my past, too; it’s my family history and I think I’m old enough to know,” I said promptly, because I was ready for that one.

  “Then ask your mother,” she said, struggling hard with each word. “It’s not my story to tell.”

  I pulled back, looked at the cell phone, and stuck it back to my ear. “What?”

  “Only they know the real reason,” she said. “Do you understand?”

  “No,” I said, because I couldn’t believe that out of all the stuff we’d talked about, this was the one thing she was not going to tell me. “C’mon, Gran. Please?”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  Oh my God. “Well, then, why do you think they split up? I mean, can you at least give me a clue?”

  “Hanna.” She said my name on a sigh, like the conversation was ending.

  “Wait,” I said frantically. “Was it because of cheating?”

  “No,” she said. “Life.”

  “What? What does that mean? I don’t get it.”

  “Ask your mother,” she said, sounding exhausted. “I have to rest. Bye.”

  “But…okay, bye. I guess.” I sat there for a long time after she hung up, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Gran had never put me off, never not answered my questions—any question, especially an important one like that. Why had she told me to go ask my mother? I couldn’t ask my mother, it was too dangerous a subject and could cause some type of subterranean rumble beneath what had felt like pretty solid ground ever since they got back together.

  I didn’t know what to do, so finally I just got up and tried to shut the closet door but it was too jammed with stuff so I gave up, leaving the door cracked open, and went downstairs to set the table for supper.

  Chapter 24

  Hanna

  I swear to God, I could kill him.

  I can’t believe he did this to me.

  I was still off the stupid mandatory community service list—and was happy about it because my plans to do it all in senior year had not changed—and stupid Seth finds out and decides that’s irresponsible of me so he goes and talks to Mr. Sung, my guidance counselor. There was this big mess and now I have to do my sophomore and junior community service this second, instead of in senior year when Seth would have already graduated and been at college and I wouldn’t have missed any time with him.

  He told on me.

  I can’t believe it.

  So then I had to tell my parents, and my father sided with him, but my mother said, yes, it was irresponsible, but it wasn’t Seth’s business to fix her daughter. That set off a big argument about how I was spending an awful lot of time with him and maybe that should change, too. I was like, oh my God, if he had just minded his own business, none of this would have happened in the first place.

  The most hurtful part is that with him doing his community service out in his town and then working at the bowling alley, and me now having to do double time, there’s no way I can spend time with him, too, not any decent time besides at school. He said it was worth the sacrifice because his parents were on him now that it was senior year, and his father wanted him to go to his alma mater and his mother to hers, and he was holding out for Rutgers because it meant he would still be near enough to see me on weekends and all, but it just really pissed me off because if I’d overstepped my bounds and done it to him, he would’ve had a serious fit.

  He brought me a rose to school, though, and acted really sorry, but there was something off about it…

  I don’t know, maybe it was me.

  So now I have to make up, what, sixty hours of community service before winter break?

  That’s just great.

  Without saying anything to anyone but my parents and the Schoenmakers, I designed my own community service idea and presented it to Mr. Sung, who I like very much because he’s a big supporter of the rights of the individual and the pursuit of happiness.

  But most important, Mr. Sung never gives me a pain about my cut slips. (Him: “Too many this week, Hanna. You had more free time than classes again, I see” Me: “Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Sung, but if I went to all my classes, I would have never
seen Seth” Him: “You are going to end up shoveling manure for a living someday, Hanna” Me: “I already do that here every day, Mr. Sung”) and then he cracks up and so do I. He tries to look at me like I’m a grave disappointment but is no good at it because his eyes are always merry and he just seems so glad to be alive.

  It’s refreshing.

  So anyway, I knew my idea was going to be a tough sell, so I bought a smoothie and a bagel with cream cheese from the caf and went into guidance with a big smile and a very obvious bribe. “Hey, Mr. Sung, you look happy this morning,” I said, setting my offering on his desk. “Here, I brought you a present just because you’re so splendid.” I pulled up a chair and sat down, grinning because I knew he knew what I was doing, but that was okay. “Have I mentioned how handsome you look in burgundy? You should always wear it. I hear the nuns go crazy every time you walk by. But don’t tell them I told you or I’ll get in trouble.”

  Mr. Sung leaned back in his chair, lips twitching. “Ahhh, Hanna, every year I’m blessed with a challenge, a student who somehow manages to circumvent the rules, flaunt the requirements, ignore the classes, and who still leaves the faculty not only happy to see her but willing to find ways to help her squirm through. Congratulations on making it two for two.” His grin widened. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to set some sort of St. Ignatius school record.”

  “Well, I try,” I said demurely, making him laugh. “No, but seriously, this stupid mandatory community service thing: I need to complete, what, sophomore and junior service by winter break?”

  “That’s sixty hours,” he said. “I don’t see how—”

  “Well, actually,” I said, and then made an apologetic face for interrupting him. “Sorry, but I already found a perfect worthy cause that would work really well and it’ll give me all the hours I need. Since I have to do it and there’s no way around it, I mean.”