Sometimes It Happens

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “Don’t talk to him,” Ava instructs, “He doesn’t even deserve your acknowledgment. What a jerk-off.”

  She’s right. He is totally getting ignored. Who even cares if he’s in this homeroom? It doesn’t matter, because that is really of no concern to me anymore. In fact, of all the bad things that could happen today, this shouldn’t even rank. La, la, la, not caring.

  But then Sebastian slides into the seat next to me, his hair all floppy and cute, wearing his favorite black jeans even though it’s about eighty-five degrees outside. He taps me on the shoulder, and Ava’s eyes widen in shock.

  “Hey, Hannah,” he says. “Can I talk to you?”

  The First Day of Summer

  My phone rings at nine o’clock the next morning, and I reach over and look at the caller ID, wondering if Sebastian couldn’t sleep, like me, and is calling to explain/apologize/beg to take me back. But it’s only Ava.

  “Hellooo,” I say morosely into the phone. I’ve been up all night crying. Big, sloppy, wet tears that pooled on my pillow and made it hard to sleep since my pillowcase became a disgusting, sopping mess. Although I have to admit Ava was right—the making out with Jonah Moncuso did kind of help. And so did the three beers I drank. But definitely not enough to erase the fact that Sebastian never called me to see how I was doing, or to ask me why I spent all night making out with Jonah Moncuso, or to tell me why he was making out with some other girl, or even to at least break up with me properly. I mean, who does that? He obviously knows that I know that he cheated, and he knows that I was making out with Jonah. Everyone knows I was making out with Jonah. It was kind of creating a buzz at the party, if you want to know the truth.

  “I knew you’d be awake,” Ava says. “Get out of bed.”

  “No thank you.” I roll over and bury my head into my damp pillow. The sun is streaming in through the windows, and I calculate how much energy it would take to get up and close the blinds. Too much, so I decide to just keep my eyes shut extra tight.

  “I’m coming over and taking you to Starbucks,” Ava says.

  “You are?” This is a supreme sacrifice on Ava’s part. She hates Starbucks. She thinks coffee stains your teeth, plus her psycho ex-boyfriend, Riker, works there, and sometimes Ava thinks he might, like, slip something into her drink. Like poison or a laxative or something. She thinks this not because she’s paranoid, but because one time after she ordered, Riker actually said, “You want some poison or a laxative with that?” She totally complained to his boss, but the boss didn’t care. That’s because the boss, this college girl named Britney, is having sex with Riker.

  “Yes,” she says. “And we’re going to order breakfast sandwiches and cookies and whatever other overproduced, disgusting, addictive things Starbucks has to offer.”

  “Will you even get whipped cream on your coffee?” I ask her.

  Pause. “Yes.”

  “Ava, I love you!” Things are suddenly looking up, and I throw the sheets off and jump out of bed, heading to my dresser to pull on a tank top and shorts.

  But when Ava gets there ten minutes later, I’m depressed again. And when we get to Starbucks fifteen minutes after that, I’m really, really depressed.

  “I loved him,” I moan once we’re sitting at a table in the back, an assortment of muffins and breakfast sandwiches in front of us.

  “No you didn’t,” Ava says. She’s making my coffee for me just the way I like it, with tons of cream and sugar. It’s actually making me feel better that she’s treating me like an invalid. I’m glad she knows I’m having a hard time and that I need to be coddled.

  “Yes, I did,” I say, as she slides my coffee across the table to me. “I really did, I thought he was the love of my life!” Even I know this is a little dramatic. I mean, I didn’t really think Sebastian was the love of my life. But he could have been. You know, like when he matured. But now I’ll never know. It’s totally sad.

  “Well, you need a new life plan then,” Ava says. “And pronto.” She hands me a breakfast sandwich, melted cheese oozing out of one side. “Eat,” she instructs. I take a bite obediently, and Ava nods in satisfaction. Then she says, “Anyway! I have news!” She claps her hands and looks excited.

  I immediately drop the sandwich back onto my plate and look at her. “What?” I ask, my heart soaring. She might be about to tell me that Sebastian loves me after all! That he heard about my hot make-out session with Jonah and now he’s realized what he had. Of course, I couldn’t take him back after he cheated on me. Could I?

  “I’m going to Maine!” Ava declares. She takes a dainty bite of her raspberry cheese Danish, then delicately licks her fingers, all without making crumbs or getting any kind of mess on herself.

  “A road trip?” I ask hopefully. I love road trips! It’s exactly what I need, too! I’ll stay away from Facebook, my phone, and all other communication devices. Like my instant messenger and my front door. (A front door is totally a communication device! What if he decides to show up? You know, to communicate.) “Where in Maine? What should I bring?” I’m standing now, and almost jumping up and down. An old man sitting in the corner is looking at me like I’m crazy.

  “Uh, no,” Ava says, looking nervous. “Not a road trip. Um, I’m going to Maine. For the summer.”

  I sit back down. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you just said you were going to Maine for the summer.” That can’t be right. Ava never goes anywhere for the summer. She likes to relax and stay right here. “Wait,” I say. “Is your family going on vacation?” If so, maybe I can go with them! Ava’s mom loves me. Like, for real. Whenever Ava and I would get into fights in middle school (or, let’s face it, high school), she would always email me and be like, “You and Ava should be friends again.”

  “No,” Ava says. “I’m getting a summer job there. I’m, uh, going to be a camp counselor.”

  “You’re what?” I ask, looking at her incredulously. “But you and I decided we weren’t going to get summer jobs!” It’s true. Ava and I decided we’d rather spend the summer hanging out by the pool, so we didn’t look for summer jobs. Ava’s philosophy was that we’d have to get jobs next summer before we went to college, and probably every summer after that, so it was our last chance at freedom. And even though I kind of sort of wanted to spend the summer working so I could get a car when school started, I figured she had a point. Although the logic did seem slightly flawed, because the freedom a car brings is totally better than the freedom of one summer. But whatever, I’m all about the instant gratification.

  “Hello, ladies,” Riker Strong says, walking over to our table. He’s in his Starbucks uniform, and holding a tray of cut up bagels. “Would you two like to try a free sample of our new cranberry vanilla bagels?”

  “Sure.” I take one off the tray and pop it into my mouth. I guess depression hasn’t affected my appetite.

  “Hannah!” Ava yells. “Don’t eat that!” She holds out a napkin. “Spit it out immediately.”

  “No,” I say, chewing and swallowing. “It’s good.”

  “Ava?” Riker asks, grinning and holding out the tray.

  “No, thank you.” Ava turns away and refuses to look at him. When he’s gone, she looks at me. “You can’t just eat things he offers, you have no idea what he’s done to them!”

  “He didn’t do anything to them,” I say. “He didn’t know what bagel I was going to take. Look, he’s over there giving them to the other customers now.” I watch as the old guy in the corner who was staring at me earlier takes three samples off the tray and gobbles them down. Geez, talk about greedy. Doesn’t he know it’s one per customer? “So unless he wants to poison us all . . .”

  “He probably does want to poison us all,” Ava says. “And besides, I didn’t say poison. He could have done anything, like spit on them, or . . .” She trails off, leaving me to imagine all kinds of gross bodily Riker functions that could have been released on or near those bagels.

  “Ava,” I say, “that’s disgusting.�
�� But I kind of wish I’d spit it out now, and I take a big drink of my coffee to get the bagel taste out of my mouth. “Now can we please get back to talking about how you’ve lost your mind?”

  “I haven’t lost my mind,” she says. “My mom’s friends with the camp director, and he called her early this morning saying they were one counselor short, and asked if I’d be interested.” She shrugs, as if to say, what could I do? (Answer: Um, say no because your best friend is heartbroken and needs you here, and besides, even if the aforementioned heartbreaking hadn’t taken place you guys still had plans to spend the summer together.) Then she looks at me like she’s expecting me to be happy for her.

  But all I say is, “We said we weren’t going to have summer jobs this year, remember?”

  “I know that’s what we said,” Ava says, waving her hand like that was so five years ago, even though we just talked about it last month. She takes off her sunglasses and sets them down on the table, then shakes out her ponytail, letting her long, blond hair pool around her shoulders. “But I couldn’t pass this up! This isn’t, like, a summer job, Hannah, this is an experience.”

  I stare at her blankly. “But what about me?” I ask.

  “We-ll,” she says. “I asked the director if you could go too, but they only need one person.” She smiles, as if to show how nice it was of her to ask about me.

  “No, I mean, what about me? What am I going to do without you?”

  “Hannah, you’ll be fine,” Ava says.

  “No, I won’t!” I say. “I’ll be all alone all summer with no car and no friends and no anything!”

  “Hannah,” Ava says, “you’re acting kind of hysterical. What about Krystal Shepard? You like her, call her up and see what she’s doing this summer.”

  “First of all,” I say, “I am not acting hysterical.” Not really true, but if there was ever a time to be hysterical, this is definitely it. “Second of all, Krystal Shepard is going away to some pre-college program in Spain this summer. And third of all, Krystal Shepard is not you! No one is!” It’s true. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like Krystal, she’s just not a close friend. In fact, besides Ava, I don’t really have any close friends. In middle school we used to hang out with a lot of different girls, but there always seemed to be fights and drama, and eventually, after girls had been circling in and out of our group for years, our group became just me and Ava. Which, looking back, was actually really stupid since now I’m stuck with no friends for the summer.

  “And what about Noah?” I rush on, starting to get really panicked. “How can you just leave him like that?”

  “Noah,” Ava says. “doesn’t rule my life.” She takes a bite of her brownie, and then she says, “Hannah, I’m really sorry about the timing of everything. I am. You know I was planning to spend the summer with you. It’s just . . . I don’t know, I think it would be good for me, to challenge myself. And you can come and visit me anytime you want.”

  I don’t point out that, without a car, there’s no real way for me to get to Maine, and I don’t bother protesting anymore because I know her well enough to realize she’s not going to change her mind. What I really want to do is ask her how she can leave me here all by myself when I’m totally broken-hearted, and what she thinks I’m going to do all summer with my boyfriend hooking up with someone else, and me with no other friends and no car to go anywhere even if I did have friends to go places with.

  But it won’t make a difference. Ava’s willing to get up at nine on the morning after a party to take me to Starbucks, and she set me up with a rebound hook up, like, five seconds after I caught my boyfriend cheating. . . . But I know her well enough to know that when she makes up her mind, she makes up her mind. And if she’s set on going to Maine, then she’s going to Maine.

  So I just smile sadly, and tell her I’m going to miss her. Then I try not to think about how horrible the summer is going to be without her.

  And three days later, after Ava and I have spent countless hours at Super Walmart, picking out all the things on her packing list, she loads up her car and pulls out of my driveway, on her way to Maine. And I return to my bed, where I stay for the next four days.

  The First Day of Senior Year

  “Can I talk to you?” Sebastian asks again. He’s asking again because the first time he said it, I totally ignored him.

  “No, you cannot talk to her,” Ava says. “You’re not even in this homeroom, so get out of here.” She’s turned toward him in her seat now, looking vaguely threatening even though she’s wearing a very girly purple dress.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Ava,” Sebastian says. “So mind your own business.” Yikes.

  “Look,” I say. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” Wait. So Sebastian isn’t in this homeroom? He came in here just to talk to me? So Jessica Conrad was telling the truth. Wow. He made a special trip down from the third floor just to talk to me, even though the second bell’s going to ring any second. Not like Sebastian cares about being late for class. But still.

  Whatever. It doesn’t matter if he’s not in this homeroom. I mean, it doesn’t change the fact that, when it comes down to it, I really don’t have anything to say to Sebastian. He’s pretty much been ignoring me all summer, except for a couple of weeks ago when he randomly showed up at my house around one in the morning causing kind of a big scene, and then when he showed up at the diner causing an even bigger scene.

  “You have nothing to say to me?” Sebastian asks, sounding pissed, and a little bit surprised. “Does this have anything to do with Noah?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say quickly, rolling my eyes and turning back to Ava, hoping she gets the point that Sebastian is a raving lunatic who has no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Is that why he was at your house the other night at one in the morning? And why he almost punched me?” The warning bell rings, signaling homeroom is going to start in one minute, and Sebastian stands up. “I’ll wait for you after homeroom,” he says to me. He shoots Ava a dirty look, and then takes off.

  “Noah almost punched him this summer?” Ava asks. “Why?” She’s turned completely toward me now, her eyes wide and questioning. Shit, shit, shit. Damn that Sebastian. Seriously, what is with him? Like he hasn’t ruined my life enough.

  “Oh, um, it was nothing,” I say. I uncap my pen and open my notebook, trying to look normal and like my biggest priority is writing down any important info we’re going to get in homeroom. “Sebastian stopped by the diner, you know, and he was being a jerk as usual.”

  “And Noah punched him?”

  “No. I mean, he almost did, but it didn’t really come to that.” I say it like there’s a big difference between actually punching someone and almost punching someone, which I guess there kind of is. I mean, you can’t get arrested for almost punching someone, even though the intent is the same.

  “Was he messing with Noah or something?” Ava asks.

  “No,” I say, shifting on my chair. This part, at least, is true. But luckily, I don’t have to say that, or explain it, because Mrs. McGovern walks in and starts taking attendance. Which is good. Because there’s no way I want Ava to know the real reason that Noah almost punched Sebastian. And that’s because of me.

  The Summer

  “It’s definitely broken,” my mom says, looking down at our washer with a frown on her face. Ava only left three days ago, and already my life has hit a new low. Friday night. And I’m doing laundry. Although I guess it’s not technically night. I mean, it’s five o’clock, which is more like evening. And I guess I’m not technically doing laundry, because as soon as I put my clothes into the machine and tried to start it, the whole thing made this ridiculously horrible noise with lots of shuddering and shaking and then just . . . died.

  “Maybe it’s unplugged or something,” I say hopefully. I look behind the washer, but the cord is plugged right into the wall outlet. It stares back, taunting me. I think it might be pissed off. The wa
sher, I mean. It could probably sense that it wasn’t going to get much use this summer, since in my depressed state my hygiene habits have so far taken a backseat to other, more important endeavors, like stalking Sebastian online.

  “Honey, it’s broken,” my mom says. She sounds like she’s trying to break it to me gently. I can’t really blame her. The other day she told me there was no more vanilla ice cream, and I burst into tears right in the middle of the kitchen. She obviously knows I’m fragile.

  “But I need clothes!”

  “Well,” she says. “I’ll drive you to the Laundromat on my way to the hospital.” My mom’s a veterinary technician, and she works nights at the emergency animal hospital in Grafton, which is about forty minutes away. She wants to be a veterinarian though, which means that when she gets off her shift, she takes classes at Tufts’ veterinary school. Which means she’s never around. Which means I should be throwing lots of parties and having fun and kicking people out all panicked when my mom pulls in the driveway unannounced. But I can’t do that since Ava’s not here and I have no boyfriend and I’m too depressed to clean my clothes, let alone plan and throw a whole party.

  “The Laundromat?” The only thing worse than spending your Friday at home doing laundry is to spend it at the Laundromat doing laundry. “Forget it.” I close the lid of the washer, leaving the clothes in there. “I’ll just find something else to wear.” What, I don’t know. Everything I have is dirty, but I’m sure I can figure out something. Maybe I can make a dress out of a garbage bag. Lady Gaga wore that meat dress to the VMAs, so I should be able to dress in garbage bags. I’ll get black ones, to symbolize my current state of mind. Like performance art or something.