Sometimes It Happens

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “This,” she says, and leans over the counter, pushing her head closer to me.

  I’m still not sure what she means. So I just say, “Yeah, wow, you have very pretty hair. Is it natural?” I kind of want to ask her why she’s not wearing it up—the last thing I want is hair in my milk shake, eww—but she might be some kind of wacko, so I keep my mouth shut.

  “Not my hair,” she says. “My neck.”

  “Um . . . you have a very pretty neck?” I try. It’s not even a lie. She has great skin, really smooth and fair.

  “No,” she says. “The spot.”

  “What spot?” I ask, deciding to try a different tactic and get some clarification.

  “The one behind my ear.”

  I peer closer. “Oh, yeah,” I say. “What about it?” There’s a tiny, miniscule little spot behind her ear. Looks like a freckle. It’s kind of cute, actually.

  “Are you sure?” Lacey asks. She rushes back to the mirrors on the wall and starts twisting all around, trying to get a better look at it. “I just noticed it when I bent down to get your ice cream and . . . it’s not bleeding or anything?”

  “Um, no,” I tell her. “It’s just a very small orange freckle.”

  “Orange,” she repeats. “Hmmm.” She’s muttering to herself (something about checking out Web MD on her break) as she heads back over to the ice cream, and I watch her closely as she scoops a bunch of chocolate ice cream into the blender.

  Noah comes out from the back then, looking dejected.

  “Told you it was bad,” Lacey says sadly. She pours a bunch of milk into the blender and then adds chocolate sauce and a few scoops of some kind of powder. I hope she’s making it malted, and the powder isn’t arsenic or something she pulls out when she gets all worked up about orange spots that are probably just mosquito bites.

  “Yeah, it’s bad.” Noah plops down onto the stool next to me.

  “Why, what’s wrong?” I ask as Lacey sets the glass down in front of me.

  “I just have a lot of hours,” Noah says. “Like, forty-five this week.” He sighs and starts twirling a ketchup bottle back and forth between his hands.

  “Isn’t that good?” I ask. “More hours equals more money?”

  “Yeah, except it ruins your whole summer. It’s better to have a balance—about thirty hours is good money, and then you still have time to have fun.”

  “So you’re kind of lazy,” I say. “Got it. Do you want some of my milk shake?” I’m doing it to be nice and cheer him up, but secretly I’m hoping he says no. Not that I want to be all selfish, but I really do need the chocolate.

  “Thanks,” he says, leaning over and taking a long pull from the straw.

  “No problem,” I say, watching him carefully to make sure he doesn’t take too much. When he’s done, I take the glass back and take my own sip, letting the chocolately goodness explode in my mouth. Ohmigod. It’s amazing. So amazing that when Noah reaches for another sip, I pull the glass away from him.

  “No way,” I say. “One sip is all you get. Have Lacey make you your own.”

  “Sure,” Lacey says, “You totally deserve it if you’re going to work forty-five hours next week.”

  She gets to work making the shake, and I glance around the diner. There’s, like, hardly anyone in here. One college-aged kid sitting in the corner, reading a book and sipping some coffee. And one old man, over in the back booth, slurping down a bowl of soup and looking out the window.

  “It doesn’t seem that busy in here,” I say. “Why does everyone have to work such long hours?”

  “Well, right now’s the dead time,” Noah says. “See, for breakfast and lunch this place gets crazy. But then after, say, two o’clock, it’s pretty dead until we close at seven.”

  “You guys close at seven?” How ridiculous. I mean, that’s like, the prime time people go to dinner. You can never get a reservation anywhere for seven o’clock. One time Sebastian and I tried to get into this Italian restaurant in the North End for our anniversary, and they were so booked we had to make our reservation for nine. And that place wasn’t even that popular. Thinking of Sebastian causes a knot to form in my throat, and I quickly take another sip of my shake.

  “Yeah,” Noah says. “Most of the, uh, dinner crowd is out of here by then.” It takes me a second to realize what he’s talking about, but then I get it. Old people. The majority of their customers must be old people, and everyone knows old people are done with dinner by six and in bed by, like, eight thirty.

  “Right,” Lacey says. “And Cooley doesn’t want to hire any more people, because everyone wants the day shifts so they can make good tips. So he just schedules me and Noah to stay, for, like, ever.” She rolls her eyes and then gathers her long red hair up into a ponytail with a hair tie that she picks up from behind the counter. “I keep telling him he needs to hire more people. Especially since it’s probably, like, illegal for him to make us work so much since we’re minors. But does Cooley care about that? Nooo. He just wants the hours covered.” She looks at me nervously. “Are you looking at my freckle?” she asks.

  “Uh, no,” I say, quickly averting my eyes. “Definitely not.” I was kind of staring at her, but not at her freckle. Just her hair, which is gorgeous. My own hair is kind of . . . greasy, if you want to know the truth. Shampooing and conditioning has not been high on my list of priorities. Like, at all.

  “Hey!” Noah says. “Hannah, why don’t you work here?”

  “Me?” I almost choke on my shake.

  “Yeah,” Noah says. “You’d be perfect. And Ava said you wanted to get a summer job, right?” Is Noah blind? Does he not see that I am completely incapable of doing even the most mundane tasks, such as, you know, showering and doing laundry? How am I supposed to work? Not to mention interact with people. I hate people right now.

  “No, thank you,” I say. I decide not to mention the fact that my mom would love it.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to spend my summer in some super greasy, hot diner.”

  That seems like an acceptable answer, but apparently not to Noah, because he says, “You’d rather spend it in bed eating ice cream?”

  “I’m not going to spend it in bed eating ice cream,” I say. “What makes you think that?”

  “Because you’re wearing pajama pants with ice cream stains on them,” Lacey says. I look down. Sure enough, there’s a stain of chocolate ice cream on the knee of my cotton GAP pants, along with some kind of cheese smear. Probably from the whole box of Cheez-Its I inhaled. My face burns with embarrassment. Oh. My. God. What have I become? At the rate I’m going, I’ll probably end up being a four-hundred-pound shut-in. I saw a special about it on Discovery Health. People get depressed and don’t leave the house for a few days, then it turns into a few months, then it’s a year, and finally they have to lift you out with a crane so they can take you to the hospital.

  “I’m fine,” I say to Noah for what feels like the millionth time.

  “Then take the job,” he says. He raises his eyebrows, challenging me.

  And that’s how it starts.

  The First Day of Senior Year

  It turns out that Lacey’s in my first period math class, but after we meet in the hall to compare schedules, she sends me ahead and into the math room, because she “has something to take care of.” So I go in and find a seat, and a few minutes later, she comes breezing in, chatting into her phone.

  “Yes,” she says, “three thirty would be perfect, thank you so much for seeing me on such short notice.” It takes me a second to realize what that probably means, since I’m focused on trying to catch my breath (I sprinted here from my homeroom in an effort to avoid Sebastian. People thought I was crazy. Or maybe a freshman.)

  “Who was that?” I ask Lacey as she slides into the seat next to me. Even though of course I already know. I should have put a stop to this right after she supposedly hurt her neck in the car accident, but I was too distracted by my own drama.


  “Dr. Friedman,” she says. She’s off the call now, but still on her phone looking up some directions on Google Maps.

  “And who is Dr. Friedman?”

  “My new doctor,” she says.

  “Lacey!”

  “What? I need to get my neck checked, and they just happened to have an appointment available after school.”

  “What happened to Dr. Ferguson?”

  She slides into the seat next to me and gets really busy pulling her notebook out of her bag. “Lacey?” I prompt.

  “She . . . um . . . Dr. Ferguson and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

  “You’re not seeing each other anymore?” It’s not like they were dating. You can’t just not be seeing your doctor anymore. Unless you’re a total hypochondriac like Lacey, who goes to the doctor for every little thing, and then doesn’t believe said doctor when they tell her she’s fine. “What does that mean?”

  “It just means that I’ve decided to go in a different direction.” She pushes a stray red curl behind her ear.

  “A different direction?”

  “Yeah, you know, with my medical needs.”

  “So basically Dr. Ferguson told you you couldn’t come back?”

  “Well, she was kind of difficult,” Lacey says. “I mean, whoever heard of a doctor that turned people away? I have insurance and I’m a good patient! It’s really not a good business practice when you think about it.”

  “And this would have nothing to do with the fact that when your blood test for anemia came back normal, you demanded a retest, saying you didn’t trust the phlebotomist or the lab?”

  “Nothing whatsoever,” Lacey says, obviously lying.

  But I don’t have time to push her on it, because at that moment, Noah walks into the room. Heat and longing rush through my body, and tears prick the backs of my eyes. I quickly look away, even though it feels like torture to take my eyes off him. He looks amazing. He’s wearing a green sweatshirt, because the classrooms on this side of the school are always kind of cold, and without even having to see it, I know he probably has a T-shirt on underneath, one with the name of an indie band on it. Baggy jeans, his hair still floppy because he was supposed to get a haircut last night until we ended up—

  He walks right by me, not saying anything, and the tears that pricked my eyes threaten to spill down my cheeks, so I squeeze my eyes shut tight, and tell myself there will be no crying, no matter what. Not here, not in school. Of course, I expected this a little bit, I knew that he might not want to talk about what happened, but I at least figured he’d be friendly, say hi. Keep up some kind of appearances. But apparently not.

  “What’s up with Noah?” Lacey asks. She’s leaning forward in her chair, and we both watch as Noah takes a seat on the other side of the room, his long legs sliding under his desk.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, hoping that I sound like it’s totally normal for Noah to be ignoring us, even though it’s so totally not.

  “He walked right in and didn’t say hi to either one of us. Did we do something to piss him off?” She’s playing on her phone, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she checks her Facebook page.

  “I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “You know how boys are, he probably thinks he’s too cool for us now that school started back up.” I roll my eyes and laugh. “So tell me about this Dr. Friedman, is she any good? Did you look her up on Rate My MD dot com? Because—”

  But before I can stop her, Lacey leans over the aisle and yells across the room, “Hey, Noah! We’re over here, come and sit with us.”

  He hesitates, I can see him hesitating, even though it’s probably not obvious to anyone else, including Lacey. I know he’s weighing what would be worse—having an awkward interaction with me by coming to sit with us, or tipping Lacey off that something’s going on by not coming. But then finally, he gathers up his stuff and walks over to our side of the room, settling into the seat in front of Lacey. He puts his books on the desk and swivels around so he’s facing her, his back to me.

  “Long time no see,” Lacey jokes, even though, of course, we both just saw him yesterday.

  “Yeah,” he says, then turns slightly in his chair. “Hey, Hannah,” he says to me.

  “Hi,” I say. The longing washes over me again, and it’s so overpowering that I look down at my desk and try not to let it completely overtake me. I force myself to take deep breaths, to not give in, wondering if this is how it’s going to be from now on, if Noah is always going to have this kind of effect on me, if I’m ever going to be able to be normal around him again. You have to, I tell myself. You have to do it, somehow you have to figure out how to do it.

  “I hate math,” Lacey says. “Are either of you any good at it? Because I might need help.”

  “I’m not bad,” Noah says.

  “I’m pretty good, too,” I say. I cannot believe the three of us are talking about math! It’s enough to drive me crazy, just the fact that the subject is even being brought up! I mean, math! How ridiculous! How did this become my life? Seriously, I cannot even take it anymore.

  “Oh, look,” Lacey says, looking out the door of our classroom. “It’s the car smasher.” On the other side of the hall, the girl from this morning, Jemima or whatever, is loading her books into her locker. She turns around when she hears Lacey’s voice. “Hi, Car Smasher!” Lacey says. “How’s your morning going? Have you gotten embroiled in any more lawsuits?”

  Jemima opens her mouth to say something, then thinks better of it and scuttles away.

  “Lacey!” I say. “You have to stop scaring that poor girl.”

  “Why?”

  “Because!”

  “Lawsuits?” Noah asks, looking confused. “What are you guys talking about?” He’s looking at me, his eyes locking onto mine, and for a second, I’m afraid I won’t be able to speak.

  “That . . . she hit my car this morning,” I say.

  “More like slammed into the back of it without even looking,” Lacey says. She holds her phone out to me. “That’s Danielle Shapiro’s vacation house,” she says. “Isn’t it ridiculously ostentatious? I can’t believe she posted a picture of it.”

  “Jesus,” Noah says. “Is your car wrecked?”

  “No,” I say. “It’s just a little scratch. But that girl is freaking out about it for some reason.”

  “She’s probably afraid you’re going to try and get revenge,” Noah says.

  “Revenge for what?”

  His eyes crinkle in the middle and get all serious, and suddenly, I feel nervous. Probably because I can tell I’m not going to want to hear whatever he’s about to say. Besides, “revenge” is one word I do not want to hear today. Like, at all. “Hannah, that was Jemima Marshall.”

  “Yeah?” I ask. “So?”

  “So you know she’s the one that was hooking up with Sebastian that night, right? In Jenna’s pool?”

  I slide my head down onto my desk. Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.

  The Summer

  Honking. Outside my bedroom window. At five forty-five a.m. That’s, like, earlier than I get up for school. Well, not always. During the three-month period I was hoping Sebastian would ask me out, I got up at five every day. It took me a while to get ready: I had to shower, deep condition, shave my legs, blow-dry my hair, and then coordinate my purse with my outfit. I was always tired and broke due to the fact that I was getting no sleep and spending all my money on clothes and makeup. So eventually that madness had to stop.

  Now I grab my bag, shove my feet into my black Sketchers, take one more look at myself in the mirror, and run out to the driveway.

  “Hey,” I say, sliding into Noah’s beat-up old Corolla.

  “Hi.” He indicates the cup holder between us, where there are three steaming cups of coffee. “I remembered that you like lattes,” he says as he pulls out of my driveway. “But I didn’t know how you take it, so I got you tons of Splenda and sugar on the side. Oh, and there’s a ba
g of muffins in the back.”

  “Muffins?” I ask, reaching behind me and grabbing the bag.

  “Yeah,” Noah says, “Lacey likes to have muffins in the morning.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “I’m starving.” I pull out a carrot muffin and take a bite, wondering how this whole thing happened. I mean, one minute I was sitting in the Laundromat, not sure I even had the mental capacity to wash my clothes, and the next I somehow had a job at Cooley’s. The whole thing was actually pretty painless when it comes to job interviews.

  Not that I’ve had that many job interviews. In fact, I’ve had zero. But last year in Home and Careers we did a whole unit on how to act in an interview, and they made it seem super complicated, with all these smart things you were supposed to do, and we practiced questions like, “what makes you an ideal candidate for this job?” It was actually pretty pointless, since all the answers they told us to give were complete and total bullshit. Plus we had to role-play with other people, and it was hard to imagine that my partner, Kristin Wiggins, was some kind of high-powered executive interviewing me, since she’s a total alcoholic and I’d just seen her puking in the bushes outside of Jenna Lamacchia’s the day before.

  Anyway, when it came to getting a job at Cooley’s, there was hardly even any kind of formal interview. Noah and I just hung out at the diner that day, talking to Lacey, and eating fries until Cooley showed up about an hour later.

  “This girl wants a job,” Noah said to Cooley. Which wasn’t exactly true, but I’d learned enough from my Home and Careers training to know better than to appear ambivalent.

  “Hmm,” Cooley said, looking me up and down. He’s a huge man, at least six three, with a lot of chest hair and gold chains that he wears over an open white shirt and tight white pants. He’s very scary, because he looks like a drug lord or something. So even though I didn’t really want the job in the first place, I was nervous.