Right of Way

by Lauren Barnholdt

“I guess.” Like I said, it’s been nice. But not anything amazing. And the weird thing is, I kind of get the sense she feels that way too. That we enjoy each other’s company, but that there’s nothing deeper going on.

  “So what’s the problem, then?” Evan asks. “Forget about Peyton, man. Girls like that are bad news.”

  “Girls like what?”

  “Girls who break your heart.”

  “Good point.”

  “And who live hundreds of miles away,” Evan goes on. “If you ask me, you need to make this thing with Kari work. She’s a great girl.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Kari is a great girl. And she has one thing that Peyton doesn’t have—Kari’s never broken my heart.

  “Of course I’m right.” He finishes his sundae, then tips the plastic bowl up to his mouth and slurps down the rest of the melted ice cream. “See, the problem with you, Jace, is that you always want to make things more complicated than they are. You always want to analyze things and think about them. It’s simple. One girl doesn’t like you and makes you feel miserable; one girl does and makes you feel good. End of story.”

  I look at him in shock. “That actually might be the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”

  “Really?” He grins at me. “Thanks, man.” He tosses his plastic bowl into the garbage. “Come on,” he says. “It’s time to meet the girls.”

  • • •

  When we get to the bumper boat place, Kari and Whitney are already there, waiting. I give Kari a hug when I see her, determined to give this a real shot. Peyton Miller who?

  “Evan,” I say as I hand the cashier money for two admissions, one for me and one for Kari, “why is your camera in your back pocket?”

  “It’s not,” he says.

  “Yes, it is. I can see your pocket cam right in your back pocket.”

  The cashier gives me two paper bracelets, and I hand one to Kari.

  “Thanks,” she says and wraps it around her wrist.

  Evan sighs. “Okay, fine,” he says. “I was going to wait until we were actually on the boats to tell you this, but I was thinking that we could all do a flash mob.”

  Oh, dear God. I close my eyes and force myself to take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths.

  “What’s a flash mob?” Whitney asks, grinning. Apparently she likes the fact that Evan is completely crazy, which is good for Evan, but not so good for the sane people on this trip.

  “It’s when people all do a dance or something at the same time,” Kari says. “Like out in public. And people look at them like they’re crazy. Right?”

  “Right.” Evan nods.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I’m not doing a flash mob. No way.”

  The girl at the gate checks my bracelet and gives me a smile. “Hey,” she says as I push through the turnstile. She’s cute. Long blond hair. Nice smile.

  “Hey,” I say, grinning back. And then I instantly feel guilty. I’m here with Kari. Kari, who is perfectly nice and cute and fun. Kari, who I’ve been making out with for weeks. Kari, who is here with me, on this date, and probably doesn’t appreciate the fact that I was just semi-flirting with the girl working the gate.

  Although if Kari minds, she’s definitely not showing it.

  “I think a flash mob could be fun,” she says. “But how can we really do it at a bumper boat place? And besides, aren’t you supposed to plan those things out way in advance?”

  We all file into the line that’s forming in front of the entrance to the boats, waiting for the ride that’s going on right now to be over. I take Kari’s hand in mine, to make up for smiling at the girl working the gate. Kari seems a little surprised that I’m holding her hand. Probably because we haven’t really done that much PDA.

  And honestly, it’s kind of awkward. We just kind of stand there, holding hands like kids or something. We’re not relaxed, or loose, or romantic or anything. We’re just gripping each other’s fingers, like we’re thirteen again or some shit. Very strange.

  And then Peyton’s face floods into my mind. Peyton. Who I’m going to be seeing tomorrow night at the wedding.

  “Yes, technically you’re supposed to plan things out in advance, but I didn’t want to bring it up before because I knew Jace would flip out,” Evan says. And then he starts going on and on about flash mobs.

  I tune him out, trying to figure out why I’m so tense. Can it really be just because I’m going to see Peyton tomorrow? Or is it because of graduation on Sunday? It’s just a dumb speech, I tell myself. And she’s just a dumb girl. As soon as I think it, I instantly feel guilty. Yes, it is a dumb speech. But Peyton is not a dumb girl.

  “Jace?” Evan’s asking.

  “What?” I ask, struggling to pay attention to what he’s saying.

  “Are you listening?” He’s holding Whitney’s hand as the line moves forward, but unlike me and Kari, they actually look like they want to be holding hands. Whitney’s leaning into his chest, and he’s rubbing his thumb against the outside of her hand. Who knew Evan could be so comfortable around girls?

  Although I guess when you have a girl that you really like, who you can be yourself around, it’s easy. Not that I can’t be myself around Kari. I mean, why wouldn’t I be able to? It’s not like I’m hiding something from her. Well, besides the fact that I can’t stop thinking about another girl. Another girl that I’m going to be seeing tomorrow.

  “Of course I’m not listening,” I say, shrugging and trying to make light of it. “You’re talking about some kind of flash mob at a bumper boat place. Why would I want to listen to that?”

  “Because you might get famous from it,” Evan says. “I’ll bet Peyton would be sure to notice that.”

  He realizes his mistake as soon as he says it.

  “Who’s Peyton?” Kari asks, frowning.

  “No one,” Evan says quickly.

  Whitney’s eyes narrow, and I can tell she’s going to be grilling Evan about this later. Girls are always so protective of their friends. Guys would never do shit like that. Yeah, we look out for each other, but we also know when to stay out of each other’s business. Damn. I’m going to kill Evan.

  “Okay, fine,” Evan says. “I’ll tell you.”

  “Evan—” I start, but he cuts me off.

  “It’s Peyton Manning.”

  Kari laughs, but Whitney looks confused.

  “He’s a quarterback,” Evan explains. “He keeps getting injured, and he’s, like, kind of old, so . . . ”

  “Right,” I say, surprised that Evan was able to come up with such a good lie so quickly. “I’m obsessed with him.”

  Evan nods sadly. “Poor little Jacey here keeps writing him letters and tweeting at him, but Peytie Pie just won’t pay him any attention, will he, Jace?”

  “Nope.” I say, and shrug. “So anyway, about the flash—”

  “Jace was even thinking about pretending to be a Make-A-Wish kid, weren’t you, Jace?”

  “No,” I say through gritted teeth. “I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were,” Evan says. “It was right after that time you wanted me to film you with I LOVE PEYTON MANNING written across your chest while you ran up and down the hallways at school.”

  “You were going to do that?” Whitney asks, giggling.

  “Of course not,” I say. “It was just, um, a thought. I was joking.”

  “It seemed serious to me,” Evan says, and shrugs.

  Luckily, at that moment the line lurches forward and we all start to get herded into our boats. I slide onto the seat next to Kari. “You can drive,” I tell her.

  “Oh, no.” She shakes her head. “I’m kind of horrible at it.”

  I shrug as she climbs over me and into the passenger seat.

  “You’re going down!” Evan screams from the boat next to us and honks his horn a bunch of times. A dad with two kids looks at us nervously, and I can tell he’s thinking that he shouldn’t have come to the bumper boats on a Thursday night, and that he can’t believe how crazy tee
nagers are these days.

  “Evan,” I say, “relax. There are kids here.”

  “Sorry.” He looks sheepish, and then he whispers, “You’re going down.”

  “Sorry Evan’s being crazy,” I say to Kari.

  She smiles. “I like it,” she says. “At least he keeps things interesting.”

  She’s right next to me, and even though the boat is really small, there are still a couple of inches of space between our legs. She’s sitting up ramrod straight, and I realize that I’m sitting up straight, too. Which isn’t really how you should be sitting when you’re on a date.

  I shift my leg over a little so that it’s touching hers, but now we’re just sort of sitting there with our legs touching. After a few seconds, she shifts away.

  The ride begins before I have a chance to think about what that even means, and we immediately start chasing Evan around the big pool of water. He’s definitely acting crazy, driving the boat back and forth in looping circles, slamming into the wall and seemingly not caring if he and Whitney get completely soaked.

  Whitney doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with this, and in fact, she seems to actually like it. I wonder if maybe she’s secretly as crazy as Evan.

  “You’re going down!” Evan yells again, and then slams into us. The other people in the bumper boats look at us kind of in disgust. But at least we’re leaving them alone and just focusing on each other. That should count for something, especially since not everyone does that. One time I saw this guy wearing a Budweiser tank top begin terrorizing the children on the boats, getting them all wet and laughing gleefully. He even made a girl cry.

  “No, we’re not!” Kari yells at them. “You’re going down!”

  “Oohh, this girl wants a fight!” Evan turns the boat around, driving the wrong way around the pool, and tries to smash into us head-on, which he knows is against the rules.

  We’re about to hit, but at the last moment, I yank the steering wheel hard to the left so that we miss them. Instead, we slam into the wall.

  “Ha ha!” Evan yells from behind us, happy that he won his game of chicken. “Suckers!”

  “Why’d you do that?” Kari asks me, sounding disappointed.

  “I didn’t want to crash into them that hard,” I say. “We would have gotten all wet.”

  “It’s bumper boats,” she says. “That’s kind of the point.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not really supposed to be slamming into people like that.”

  “I guess.”

  There’s an awkward silence, and I wonder why it was so important to her that we win the game of chicken. Then I wonder why I’m acting like kind of a dick about it. It’s probably just my bad mood. I do that sometimes—get into a bad mood and then just not want to have any kind of fun.

  But fuck that. I’m done letting myself get all worked up about Peyton. So I’m going to see Peyton. Big fucking deal. It’s a stupid thing to be getting all weird about. Sunday is graduation, and then I’ll have the whole summer in front of me before I’m off to college in the fall. And once I’m at Georgetown, I’m not going to be thinking about Peyton. She’ll be just some girl that I knew in high school.

  “It’s okay,” I say to Kari, shifting into reverse and backing our boat out from where it’s wedged in the corner of the pool. “We’ll get them now.”

  It’s a sneak attack. We come up behind Evan and Whitney and slam right into them, shooting a spray of water over the back of their boat and soaking both of them instantly.

  “Oh, that’s it,” Evan says, glaring at me as Whitney shrieks in glee. “Now it’s on.”

  We spend the next hour riding the bumper boats over and over, and I do my best to get into it and to forget about Peyton. By the end of the night, it seems to be working.

  Well. Almost.

  Thursday, June 24, 5:02 p.m.

  Greenwich, Connecticut

  “Did you bring a bathing suit?” my mom asks as I slide my suitcase down the hall toward the front door. It’s the night before the wedding, and we’re about to head to the airport for our flight to Florida. My dad was supposed to be in charge of bringing our bags out to the car, but he and my mom got into some huge fight a few minutes ago, and so now he’s just sitting out in the car, pouting and waiting for us to load up our own stuff.

  “Yes, I brought a bathing suit.” I brought three bathing suits, actually. Because I’m going to be spending the summer in North Carolina, although my mom doesn’t know that yet.

  Brooklyn and I have spent the past two weeks crafting a plan. A plan to get away from Connecticut for the summer. A plan that will allow me to spend my summer away from my parents and their maybe-divorce, away from my mom and her lies, away from my obsessive Jace thoughts. (Not that I know for sure I won’t be having obsessive Jace thoughts in North Carolina, but I figure it can’t hurt.)

  Here is our brilliant plan:

  Stage One: I will go to the wedding and pretend nothing weird is going on. I will pose for pictures like a good girl and act like I’m having a great time. If Jace approaches me, I will smile and then act as if we are just acquaintances, and not like he is a boy who broke my heart. I will be like a Peyton made of stone, smiling and pretending everything is okay.

  Stage Two: The morning after the wedding is over, Brooklyn will fly to Florida to meet me at the Sarasota Airport. We will then rent a car and drive to North Carolina, where we’ve rented an apartment for the summer. (Well—where Brooklyn’s rented an apartment. She had to put it in her name, since she’s eighteen, and I’m not. But I’m on the lease as a tenant.)

  It’s a surprisingly simple plan. And it was surprisingly easy to get Brooklyn on board with it. I just told her that I wanted to get away—that my parents had been fighting more, and I needed a break from being upset about Jace. North Carolina was even her idea—she knows a boy there, and I think she wanted an adventure.

  Of course, we’re going to have to find jobs when we get there, and figure out how to get around—we can’t afford to keep the rental car for more than a few days.

  But I can’t think about any of that right now. I can’t worry about the long term. Right now I just need to focus on the short term, on getting through this wedding and getting to North Carolina. I can worry about the rest of it later.

  “Why do you have so much luggage?” my mom asks, staring at my bags. “You have more than I do.” She says it slightly accusingly, like not having as much luggage as her daughter is going to make her seem like a loser or something. Which is completely ridiculous. Who cares who has more luggage?

  “I just wanted to make sure I have enough for my college visits,” I say. My parents think that after the wedding, Brooklyn and I are going to spend some time looking at colleges in Florida. They have no idea that I’m going to North Carolina and not coming back.

  “I thought we went over what you’re going to wear,” my mom says, sighing. She and I spent almost two hours the other day going through a bunch of my clothes so that my mom could pick out what she thought I should wear when I make these imaginary college visits. It was a completely pointless exercise, but I pretended to go along with it, turning this way and that as she dressed me up in a bunch of business casual clothes as if I was her own personal Barbie doll.

  The whole time I was resisting the urge to come out and yell at her about what she did. If I ever do confront her about it, I’m not sure what will happen. Maybe she’ll deny it, maybe she’ll beg my forgiveness, maybe she’ll tell me I’m being silly, maybe she’ll offer to pay it all back. But who really cares? The bottom line will still be the same. I need to get away from her.

  “We did pick out what I was going to wear,” I say, “but I packed a few other things, too. Casual stuff, in case me and Brooklyn end up hanging out with any of the students.”

  My mom nods, like this makes sense. “All right. Just make sure you don’t drink.” She shudders. “College kids these days are always getting drunk and making fools of themselves. And don�
�t even get me started on college boys. They’ll drop a roofie in your drink like it’s nothing.”

  “Thanks for the moral lessons,” I say sarcastically. It comes out sharper than I intended, and she looks up from tying her shoes. (Which, by the way, are these ridiculous Coach sneakers that cost two hundred dollars, and which she bought just for the plane. Who buys shoes just for a plane ride?)

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.

  “Nothing.” I shrug. Actually, come to think of it, I probably bought those plane shoes for her. Get it? Since she probably put them on her/my credit card? The thought sends me into hysterical giggles.

  My mom frowns and then opens her mouth to say something, but before she can, the front door opens and my dad reaches in and picks up a bunch of our bags, then slams the door behind him as he heads back out to the car. Yikes. I guess he got sick of waiting.

  “Thanks, Joe!” my mom calls after him sarcastically. She shakes her head. “Well, that was the last of them,” she says. “So I guess we’re all ready.”

  “Yup,” I say. “I guess we’re all ready.”

  I traipse out to the car, stick the earbuds of my iPod into my ears, and zone out until we get to the airport.

  • • •

  I’ve never been a fan of flying. Being stuck in the airplane, never knowing if it’s going to hit turbulence, wondering what will happen if it crashes, not having any leg room, worrying that the person next to you is going to fall asleep and drool all over your shoulder . . . it’s a whole big thing.

  Unless you’re flying first class, which my mom always wants to do, and which we used to do until the economy tanked and my dad got all concerned about money. Sure enough, my mom starts as soon as she gets on the plane.

  “I really wish you would have let us fly first class, Joseph,” she says. My dad hates being called Joseph. It’s what my mom does when she’s trying to shame and/or annoy him.

  “Well,” my dad says, giving her a tight smile, “if you’d like to earn the money to pay for the first-class tickets, I’d be more than happy to fly that way.”

  I tune them out, something I’m getting quite good at doing. I don’t know why my dad even came on this trip—actually, that’s a lie. I do know why my dad came on this trip. He came on this trip because my mom knew it would look weird to her family if he didn’t come. People would ask questions.