Right of Way

by Lauren Barnholdt

  I sigh. “But, Mom,” I say, “I’m going to be so bored. And you and Dad—”

  “Peyton,” she says. “You’re going. And that’s final.”

  “Fine,” I say. I consider adding, You’ll be sorry, but I’m old enough to realize that would be pretty immature. Of course, if I thought it would make a difference, I’d say it anyway, immature or not. But it won’t. She’s made up her mind, and that’s that.

  So instead, I walk toward another rack of dresses. If I’m going to have to see Jace Renault, I might as well make sure I look amazing.

  Saturday, May 22, 1:21 p.m.

  Sarasota, Florida

  I’m hanging out at my friend Evan’s house when my phone rings. The caller ID flashes a number I don’t recognize, and so I hesitate. Usually I don’t pick up numbers I don’t recognize. It’s almost never a good idea. Bill collectors, girls you don’t want to talk to . . . these are the kinds of people who call from blocked numbers.

  But since Evan just informed me that he wants to jump off the roof of his house and into the pool, and I don’t necessarily feel like dealing with that, I answer it.

  “Jace?” a girl’s voice asks.

  “Who’s this?” I ask, deciding it’s best not to give too much away just yet.

  “Who is it?” Evan asks. He’s busy fastening some kind of ramp together on the other side of the pool. I have no idea why he needs a ramp if he’s going to be jumping off the roof, but whatever.

  “Who is this?” I ask again, motioning for Evan to be quiet. Like it’s going to do any good.

  “It’s Courtney,” the girl says.

  “Oh,” I say, relieved. “Hey, Courtney.”

  “Courtney!” Evan abandons his ramp and runs over to where I’m sitting on the patio. Cold water drips from his hair onto the pavement. He’s wet because he cannonballed into the pool as soon as I got here, so he could “figure out how deep I’ll end up.”

  “Dude,” I say, shaking my head at him. “No offense, but you’re kind of disgusting.”

  “Courtney,” Evan says, grabbing the phone away from me without even asking. “Do you want to come over? I’m building a ramp and I’m going to either skateboard off it into my pool or possibly jump off the roof, and then I’m going to send the tape into MTV so they can—What? No, this is Evan. . . . Yeah, I know you have a boyfriend, but didn’t that douchebag Jordan break up with you?” He snorts. “Right, and you really think he’s changed, huh? . . . Well, whatever. If you change your mind, let me know.”

  He throws the phone back to me and then does another cannonball into the pool. Freezing water splashes into the air and lands all over my shirt.

  “Hey,” I say to Courtney. “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. I guess you could say Courtney and I are friends—her parents and my parents have been best friends for like five years. They tried to hook us up once when we were fourteen, but it didn’t work out. At all. Mostly because it just wasn’t right. Courtney’s cute and smart, but we just didn’t click in that way. There were no hard feelings, though, and we’ve always been friendly. But we’re not the type of friends who just call each other out of the blue, so there must be something she wants to talk to me about.

  “So what’s up?” I ask. I stay on the patio but move as far away from the pool as possible. I need to be able to see Evan just in case he needs to be rescued from some sort of calamitous situation.

  “So this might be weird,” Courtney says, “and I really don’t want to come across like I’m being a bitch or getting involved in your business.”

  “Is your mom still mad about the Christmas party?” I ask, sighing. I really do not want to get all caught up in that again.

  Courtney’s parents got divorced not that long ago, which was this huge scandal, because my mom wanted to stay friends with Courtney’s mom, but then Courtney’s mom said she wouldn’t be friends with my parents unless they stopped hanging out with Courtney’s dad. Everything came to a head when Courtney’s dad threw this Christmas party, and my parents went, and Courtney’s mom got all mad at them. The whole thing is completely ridiculous, if you ask me. Which, of course, nobody ever does.

  “No, no, it’s not about that,” Courtney says. “It’s, um . . . look, I know this is probably none of my business, and you can feel free to tell me to screw off. But Jace, what happened between you and Peyton?”

  “Peyton?” I take in a deep breath through my nose. I don’t want to think about Peyton. I don’t want to talk about Peyton. I don’t even want to hear Peyton’s name.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing happened.” I shrug, even though Courtney can’t see me. “I hardly even remember her. What’s she up to now, anyway?”

  “Okkkayy,” Courtney says, not sounding convinced. And who would blame her? I’m not even convincing myself.

  “Hey!” Evan calls from somewhere over my head. “Up here! Look at me!”

  I shade my eyes from the sun with my hand and peer up at the roof. Evan’s standing there in a bathing suit and a pair of neon-green goggles, a huge grin on his face. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask. “Are you fucking crazy? Get down from there.”

  “Go get the camera!” he yells, pointing over to the side of the pool where he’s left the camcorder.

  “No way.” I shake my head. “You’re going to split your head open.”

  “Courtney!” he screams. “This one’s for you!” And then he starts pounding his fists against his bare chest like he’s Tarzan or some shit.

  “What’s going on over there?” Courtney asks, sounding worried.

  “Nothing,” I say, sighing. “It’s too much to get into right now. But, um, I kind of have to go. Is there anything else?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I just wanted to let you know that Peyton’s going to be coming to the wedding.”

  “Whatever,” I say, shrugging again. Apparently this has become my thing. Shrugging without anyone there to see it. I am now shrugging for my own benefit. What will be next? I wonder. Shaking my head no when I want to get a thought out of my head? I try it. But I’m still thinking about Peyton. Her long hair. The way she would bite her lip when she was thinking about something. The way her body was curvy and perfect and made me want to hold her close and protect her. Jesus. All this for a girl I’ve only met once.

  “So it’s all good then?” Courtney’s asking. “You don’t mind that she’s coming?”

  “Of course I don’t mind that she’s coming,” I lie. “She’s your cousin.”

  And then something occurs to me. If Courtney’s calling me to see how I feel about Peyton being at the wedding, she’s probably called Peyton to see how Peyton feels about me being at the wedding. It only makes sense. It’s like girl code or whatever. (Which I’ve never understood, by the way. Girls going around screaming about girl code, when girls are the ones who’ll stab each other in the back the first chance they get. Dudes aren’t like that. Take Evan, for example. He’s up on the roof, shirtless, wearing green goggles and getting ready to possibly kill himself, and what am I doing? I’m sitting here, like a good friend, trying to talk him out of it, while at the same time being willing to film the whole thing if it comes down to it. Now that’s what’s called being a good friend.)

  “Why?” I ask Courtney. “What did Peyton say about me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” From up on the roof, there’s the sound of something sloshing around, and then a bunch of water comes sliding down and onto the patio.

  “Yes,” Courtney says simply. “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask accusingly. “She said nothing?”

  “She just said she didn’t care if you were there.”

  “She didn’t care if I was there?”

  “That’s what she said.” I want to ask Courtney what exactly Peyton said, but then I realize that hearing Peyton doesn’t care is probably enough, especially if I want to protect my mental state.

  “Well,
whatever,” I say. “I’m coming to the wedding. And you don’t have to worry about me and Peyton.”

  “Great,” she says, sounding relieved.

  We hang up and I look toward the roof warily. Water is still pouring down in rivulets, pooling on the patio in front of me. “Evan?” I call.

  “Yes?” He appears at the top of the roof, dripping wet, an empty plastic milk jug in his hand.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I told you,” he says. “I’m going to be jumping off this roof and you’re going to be filming me.”

  “But why are you soaking wet? And why are you holding an empty milk jug in your hand?”

  “Because,” he says, looking at me like I’m the stupid one, “I needed to get my body accustomed to the water by wetting myself with it. I can’t just jump in without knowing what I’m getting myself into it. I might get hypothermia or something.”

  “So you brought a jug of water up and poured it over your head?”

  “A jug of pool water,” he reports proudly.

  “But you were already in the pool,” I say. “Why did you have to wet yourself all over again?”

  He frowns. “I don’t know.”

  “Listen,” I say. “I think you should—”

  But before I can stop him, he jumps off the roof and into the water. He does a huge cannonball, and the splash soaks me.

  He surfaces at the side of the pool. “Holy shit,” he says. “What a rush!” He hoists himself up and onto the patio. “That was just practice, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” I ring out the bottom of my T-shirt.

  “Now you’ll film me, right?” He picks up the camera and shoves it into my hands, then starts heading back to the front of the house so he can get back on the roof.

  I flip the camera’s power switch to on, and the little red light starts blinking. I sigh. Maybe there’s something to that girl code bullshit after all.

  Saturday, June 26, 10:47 a.m.

  Siesta Key, Florida

  Jace is so obviously trying not to let me hear the phone call with his mom, but I can still tell that it’s not going so well.

  The conversation, a summary:

  Jace: Oh, hi, Mom, I just wanted to let you know that I’m with Peyton in her hotel room. The thing is—

  Jace’s mom: What?! You’re with a girl in her hotel room? What are you doing in there? Leave at once!

  Jace: No, no, it’s fine, we’re not doing anything. The thing is, Mom, her parents kind of abandoned her here, and so I’m going to be driving her home.

  Jace’s mom: Oh, okay, honey. That sounds fine. Where does she live?

  Jace: Connecticut.

  Jace’s mom: WHAT?! (Begins to freak out and maybe even swear.)

  At this point, Jace leaves the room and walks outside. Of course I can’t really be sure of what his mom is saying since I’m hearing it through Jace’s cell phone from where I’m changing in the bathroom. So that conversation is pretty much made-up. But still. It’s what I imagined, and it’s probably scarily accurate.

  I look at myself in the huge mirror that’s mounted over the double sinks, then run a brush through my hair before changing into a pair of shorts and a soft pink tank top. I take a deep breath, then another and another, trying to calm down and force my heart to stop beating so fast.

  It’ll be fine, I tell myself. You’ll have Jace drive you where you need to go, and then you can ditch him at a rest stop or something and take a cab to the place you’re going to be staying in North Carolina.

  Of course, it’s definitely kind of weird to be going without Brooklyn, since I don’t know anyone in North Carolina. But there’s no way I can go home. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  I grab my purse and set it down on the marble countertop, then pull out the brochure from the rental condo that the listing agent sent us a few days ago. The condo was one of the only places that would let you rent if you were under twenty-one, and even then Brooklyn had to sign the rental agreement, since she’s eighteen and I’m not.

  CREVE COEUR it says on the front of the brochure, and I run my fingers over the letters, over the name of my new building. “Creve Coeur” means broken heart in French. Brooklyn and I both agreed that was a weird name for a condo complex, especially one that’s touted as “relaxing and tranquil; only a short drive to the shore!” But whatever. In a way, it was actually pretty fitting. Almost like a sign or something.

  When we came up with the plan to go away, Brooklyn had just broken up with her boyfriend, Trevor, who she’d been with for a year and a half. She broke up with him because she said the two of them had nothing to talk about anymore. She cried in her room for two days straight, and I comforted her, although I couldn’t figure out how broken her heart could have been when she was the one who broke up with him. If she was so hurt, then why didn’t she just call him up and tell him she wanted to get back together?

  It wasn’t like me and Jace. He had been the one who wanted to end things—not that there was even a thing to end, because it wasn’t really like that—so I always felt like my broken heart was a little more serious than Brooklyn’s.

  Not that I ever told her that. And to her credit, she had been with Trevor for a year and a half, while I had only ever seen Jace, um, once. Which is horribly embarrassing when you think about it. That I’d gotten all worked up over a guy I’d only ever spent time with once.

  But I read a very smart thing in a self-help book (don’t judge—they can actually be very comforting) about how sometimes the people you don’t spend that much time with are actually the ones you can end up getting the most hurt by, because you can get attached to the idea of them, as opposed to who they really are. You don’t get enough time to really get to know them and their flaws, which is why you can sort of create this fantasy of who they are, and therefore indulge all your hopes and dreams of who you wanted them to be.

  It was a very smart book.

  Anyway, Brooklyn had just broken up with Trevor, and even though I didn’t exactly understand how she could be so upset, it ended up working out to my advantage. Because when I came up with the idea of going away for the summer, Brooklyn immediately jumped on it, getting all excited, and even suggesting North Carolina. Which was fine with me. I didn’t have a preference about where we went, just as long as it was far away from Connecticut.

  Brooklyn knew a boy in North Carolina, a boy she’d met on a vacation to Myrtle Beach a couple years ago, a boy she’d somehow kept in touch with. They’d been talking a little since she broke up with Trevor, and I think she was looking for a rebound.

  So North Carolina became the plan, and I let Brooklyn believe I wanted to go just so I could get away from thinking about Jace.

  She still has no idea what the real reason is that I wanted to leave home. I thought about telling her, I did. I thought about telling Brooklyn, or my sister, or maybe even my dad. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  “Peyton?” Jace knocks on the bathroom door.

  I shove the Creve Coeur brochure back into my purse. “Yes?” I open the door.

  “We’re all set!” he says with a smile. “I’m ready to drive you back to Connecticut.”

  “Are you sure?” I push by him and into the room. “Because it didn’t sound like your mom was all that thrilled about it.”

  “My mom was fine with it.”

  “Really? Because it sounded like you two were fighting.”

  “We weren’t fighting,” he says. “And why were you spying on my phone call?”

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping on your phone call.” I sit down on the bed and then slide my feet into the flip-flops that are sitting on the floor. I really want to wear my sparkly sandals with the low heel, but they’re probably not road-trip appropriate. Not to mention I don’t want Jace to think I’m trying to impress him. Or that I’m high maintenance.

  “If you weren’t listening, then how do you know what my mom was saying?” Jace asks.

  “I don’t know for sure,
” I say. “But I could hear her voice all the way in the bathroom, so I kind of got the gist.”

  “I’m a grown man,” Jace says, puffing out his chest. “I can take my car wherever I want.”

  “Really?” I ask. “And who pays for that car?”

  Jace glares at me. “Whatever,” he says. “Forget it. You can find your own way home.”

  And that’s when I panic. “Hey,” I say. “Look, I’m sorry.” But he’s moving toward the door, and as much as I don’t want to, I follow him. I grab his arm just as he’s about to walk out, and little sparks zip up my fingers. “Don’t go.”

  He stops, and then, after a beat, he turns around. “Are you going to stop being such a brat?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry.” It’s not the complete truth. I’m kind of sorry I was a jerk to him, but at the same time, he really does deserve it. On the other hand, just because he broke my heart doesn’t mean I should be a bitch to him. I should rise above it, two wrongs don’t make a right, you catch more bees with honey or whatever and blah blah blah. Besides, like it or not, right now I need him to take me to North Carolina.

  “Truce?” I say, and hold my hand out.

  He takes it, his fingers wrapping around mine, making the electricity that’s already zinging through me multiply. “Truce,” he says.

  He holds my hand for a few seconds longer than is really necessary, and we’re just standing there, staring at each other, my hand in his, and oh, my God, I want to kiss him so badly it’s almost painful.

  “Peyton,” he says, and he’s running his finger over my hand in a little circle, and it’s making my body freak out in all the best ways. And for a second, I think he’s going to tell me that he’s sorry, that he can’t believe he ever let me go, that he thinks we should just start over and maybe even be together, that he made a mistake and can I ever forgive him? But then he drops my hand.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asks.

  I nod, and he moves past me and back into the room, picking up the bags that are sitting on the floor. I feel like a balloon that has been deflated. Get yourself together, Peyton, I tell myself as I shoulder my bag and follow Jace out of the room. Jace Renault is not for you. He’s bad news. And thinking anything different, even for a second, is just going to get you hurt.