All the Forever Things

by Jolene Perry

  She’s in a lot deeper with him than she’ll even admit to me. Bree’s smarter than to fall for someone like him. I’m going to have to really watch out for her.

  Chapter 8

  I stand in front of my closet Monday morning, the weirdness with Bree still clinging to me. I run my fingers over the little turquoise ModCloth dress. Okay, I can wear this bright color. I totally can.

  When I slip on the dress, it looks as sickly as my pale skin under the fluorescent lightbulbs Mom got. If I didn’t have to be awake before the sun came up, I wouldn’t feel so grossly pale in the morning.

  I turn on my bedside lamp and then turn off the overhead light.

  The dress isn’t bad, but wearing only one layer when I’m not in something dark is…exposing. I grab a black cardigan and push my arms through it, tugging the soft fabric over my shoulders. My whole body almost tingles in relaxation, and the dress doesn’t feel as far outside my normal.

  I tap my foot on the floor and scan my shoes. I could wear Dad’s old ones with this, but…

  Maybe—I reach down and pull out a pair of black wedges that Bree talked me into—maybe these. She’d be so proud of me. And making Bree proud of me will maybe gain me some leverage with the whole Bryce situation. Sitting on my bed, I buckle the straps and stand. My foot immediately tilts to the side, my stomach leaps into my throat, and I sit down.

  “Definitely not those…” I toss them back into the closet. “Clumsy girls should never wear heels.”

  I slip on my over-the-knee black socks and then shove my feet into the familiar worn leather of Dad’s old shoes.

  Makeup takes forever because of my sore face and stupid bruise. After five minutes messing around to make my foundation cover the discoloration, all I bother with is mascara, liner, and red lips. I really hope this shiner goes away fast.

  I jog down the stairs and see Mom and Dad sitting in the kitchen doing that gross googly-eyed thing at each other.

  “You’re not sixteen. Knock it off,” I tease as I pull open the fridge.

  “Well, don’t you look cute?” Mom teases back. “Who’s the guy?”

  My cheeks heat. Did I overdo it? “No guy.” I make a face. “I’m trying to take attention away from my bruise.”

  Dad stands and stretches, his tie still hanging loosely around his neck. “You’re looking far too grown-up.”

  In that case, I’m for sure wearing this today.

  His eyes narrow as he studies my face. “The bruise is a little better.”

  “Half a bottle of foundation later,” I say.

  “Are you really heading down to work already?” Mom asks, tugging her bathrobe more tightly around her.

  Dad rubs his forehead. “Farmers will be by in about an hour. We got a new body in last night, and Matthew wanted to ask me something before he started. We also need to check on our shipment. I think we’re out of eye caps and a few other things. And there’s the new…” He pauses as he gives Mom a knowing look, a dead giveaway that he doesn’t want me to hear something.

  That’s fine. I’ve already shuddered thinking about eye caps. Worse would be the eyes of the deceased looking all sunken in, but still…Thinking about setting eye caps and sealing eyelids crawls under my skin like nothing else we do.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Mom says. “You really should have told the family that we’re not open until after nine.” Mom’s voice echoes the same worry it does every time Dad does special favors for people, which is all the time.

  “It’s fine. They’re picking family up from the airport and…” He shrugs.

  It’s convenient for the family to come at this time, so Dad’ll make sure it can happen.

  Mom glances at her phone. “I should wake Mickey up for school soon.”

  Dad kisses Mom’s head and squeezes her shoulder. I shouldn’t be subjected to this kind of display before seven in the morning.

  I grab a yogurt. “I’m gonna head out.”

  “Eating on the run?” Mom asks.

  “Yep.”

  “You have more meetings after school for your project?” she asks. “Tomorrow? Or do you and Bree have things going on?”

  I shake my head.

  “Anything else going on?”

  I shake my head again. “Wait. Today or tomorrow?”

  Mom sighs. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Do you need me to be gone…” but I clamp my mouth shut. Matthew usually warns me when we have a kid in because Mom and Dad both act strange and don’t always want me to help. “I’ll hole up in the library after school until you give me the okay. And I can get Mickey from school if you need.”

  Mom gives me a small smile.

  “Infant or kid?” I ask.

  Her smile disappears. “Does it matter?”

  “I always know, Mom. It’s not like you’re saving me from something by asking me to hide in the house.”

  She nods once. “I know, but it makes me feel better. He was ten. Died when his bicycle weaved in front of a truck.”

  I flinch and then tug a corner of my mouth up. “And here you thought I was crazy for having no interest in learning to ride bikes.”

  Mom’s face is unreadable for a moment, and I freeze, wondering if I’ve gone too far. “Please don’t,” she says. “Being alive is only worth it if you’re actually living.”

  She says this a lot, and I only half understand what she means. I’m living right now. Breathing up the air in our kitchen. I’m about to go to school. Breathe in the air there. Talk to people. Or, well, talk to Bree. I’m so very living right now.

  I cut through the football field, even though some of the more serious jocks are out here running in the morning.

  “Gabe!” Bree waves from the bleachers.

  This doesn’t compute. At all.

  When did Bree turn into one of the bleacher bunnies, the girls who sit and ogle the jocks? Meghan and Jessica are here watching their boyfriends—junior class royalty this year. Senior royalty next year.

  “You look soooo cute, Gabe! Come ’ere!”

  I shift my messenger bag higher on my shoulder and walk toward Bree. The spring rain feels more like mist, but my guess is that she’s internally having a panic attack over the frizz that’s going to start wreaking havoc with her smooth hair.

  “Why are you here?” I ask as I hit the bottom step.

  Bree is smiling so widely and so fully, and she’s so happy that I’m smiling back before I realize it. “Bryce just asked if I’d come. No biggie.”

  But it is a big deal. This isn’t our routine. Our routine is to hang at her locker or at my locker until school starts. That shifts a little when Bree’s dating someone, but here? The football field? This is a different world of people than…I guess, us.

  Bryce and the guys are doing tag football this morning, and way more than half of them have their shirts off, so they’re not doing shirts and skins, they’re just showing off. Of course Bryce is without his shirt. So’s his friend Jeremy, who Bree used to crush on, and Theo, whose dark skin and big muscles make everyone else look like skinny, little white guys.

  “He’s just…” She lets out a sigh as we lean against the half wall next to the field. “Look at him. He has abs, Gabe. Abs.”

  “Yep.”

  Abs really aren’t my thing. Everyone has them—some are just buried more deeply than others.

  She leans closer to me, her perfume as overwhelming as flowers sometimes are, but I hold in my sneeze.

  “Gah!” She grips the top of the half wall. “So much hotness in one person.”

  I watch the guys laughing and then setting up in lines again. I mean, they’re cute for sure, but I can’t get past the fact that some of them act subhuman in school. Without his looks, Bryce would just be another egotistical asshole who’d be sent to the counselor to make sure he was stable.

  “I’m kind of getting excited about the possibility of him.” Bree’s attention is on the mess of bodies in front of us. “He’s not what I expected
. Sometimes we have to pause our conversations so he can help his mom with his baby brother, and…I don’t know. He’s more than a pretty face.”

  I turn my attention toward the guys, but there’s yelling and grunting, and they’re all shiny from sweat or the small bits of rain. It doesn’t much matter which, because it’s gross either way. I’m totally baffled by the idea that my friend might start dating this guy.

  But I recognize the far-off look on her face. It happened with Jamal and again with Peter and sometimes with the lifeguards at the beach who are far too used to starry-eyed looks.

  There’s really no good way for me to tell her again that I don’t trust him, but I don’t want to see Bree get hurt.

  “How’s your mom?” I ask instead of saying anything about Bryce.

  Bree goes very still. “I don’t know,” she mumbles.

  Now I feel like a jerk for asking. Bree would have said if anything had changed. “Sorry.”

  She stares at the ground for a minute. “And my dad is really busy with his new job, in case you were wondering. My check hasn’t come again this month, so he must have had to renew his golf club membership or needed a new car, or who knows what else.”

  My stomach shrivels. I get annoyed with how involved my parents are, but I can’t even wrap my head around how I might feel if they split and then left me behind. “I can see if Mom and Dad need more help,” I say quietly. Her grammy lives on social security and Bree said something about property taxes going up again, so money has to be tight.

  Bree would never say she needed more hours outright. She’d just laugh it off or shrug and ask if I wanted to work on our website.

  Bryce grins at Bree from the field, kisses two of his fingers, and then points at her. She gives him a smooth smile back and shifts her weight a little—almost like she’s posing.

  He may not have kissed her yet, but kissing his fingers is a pretty big sign of how he wants her to think he feels about her.

  “You ready to go in?” I ask, not wanting to see any more Bryce displays of pretend affection.

  She shakes her head, still smiling. “I’m gonna stay out here for a bit.”

  “You sure?” I ask.

  Bree’s gaze is firmly planted on Bryce. “I’m sure.”

  I bet she’ll be tardy. These guys all have PE first hour. I know this because they all have government second hour, and they come in smelling like either BO or too-thick cologne.

  “Okay, see you.” I pause, waiting for her to say something, but she’s still totally focused on Bryce.

  Happy flippin’ Monday.

  Chapter 9

  My morning pain medicine has kicked in by second period, so my nose just aches instead of throbs.

  I stop at the door to US government when I see Hartman standing at the front of the room talking to our teacher. He probably has a lot to sort through since he transferred so close to the end of the year. That must suck for him. He turns a bit to the side. Bow tie today. Skinny black pants. Same curly, messy hair. I forget to breathe for a moment. His style at the library wasn’t a fluke.

  Bree giggles to my right, and I look just in time to see Bryce grinning at her while sitting sideways in his seat across the aisle.

  Could he be any more obnoxious?

  I sit in the seat behind Bree, and she turns to face me almost immediately.

  She’s giving me a look that I can’t decipher.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Two things,” she whispers.

  I lean forward on my desk and whisper back. “One?”

  “Bryce asked me to prom.”

  What?

  Bree blinks. “Come on, Gabe. You need to show the proper amount of excitement instead of looking like I just ran over a puppy.”

  We had a plan. The whole night planned out to hang together. We don’t do school dances. Ever.

  Bryce leans in to our conversation. “Excitement over what? You flaking on prom already?”

  Bree pushes on his shoulder with a wide smile until he slides back in his seat.

  “You’re still giving me that look.” Bree leans in. “This has nothing to do with sisters before misters, Gabe. This is prom.”

  Instead of arguing that backing out of plans with your sister for a mister is totally putting misters before sisters, I figure it’s best to move on. We can discuss the horrible way she’s letting me down later.

  “Two?”

  Bree sits a little taller. “I got a text from Jill.”

  “At Audrey’s?” I ask.

  Bree rolls her eyes. “Is there another one?”

  I shrug instead of answering something that doesn’t need to be answered.

  “Big shipment this week. We cannot miss seeing the new stuff.”

  I plop my notebook on my desk. “Of course.” I can’t remember the last time we missed shipment day at Audrey’s.

  Hartman folds himself into the chair behind Bryce.

  He gives me a quick nod, and Bree’s eyes are suddenly on him. And then me. And then him. And then me. And now him.

  The air leaves my lungs in a rush. Oh no.

  “How you settling in?” Bree asks Hartman with a too-big smile.

  He shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”

  “His mom just found them a house, which is cool,” Bryce says. “Or my mom did. Or something.”

  Bree leans over my desk again, and I almost lean away because I’m pretty sure I do not want to hear whatever she’s about to say. “You could at least think about him,” she whispers. “Bryce already knows him, and we could double to prom! It would be perfect!”

  My heart pounds in my throat. That’s not really my idea of perfect. My idea of perfect was to hang with crazy Aunt Liza and try on everything in her closet with Bree. We figured that since we gave ourselves a while to work up to spending that much time with my crazy aunt, we could handle her for a few hours—especially if we could talk her into a few glasses of wine. We already had a prom-night plan. A perfect Bree-and-Gabe prom-night plan.

  “Come on, Gabe!” Bree whisper-yells. “He’d be perfect for you!”

  “Bree,” Mr. Sandstrom says. “We’re trying to start class.”

  “Sor-ry!” she sings.

  My poor heart flutters at the thought of actually going on a date with Hartman, and my thoughts turn fuzzy. Wonder if this is how people feel just before they have a heart attack?

  I’ve only sort of dated before. There were a couple weird hookups at beach parties, and last summer I was on and off with this guy up here from San Diego, but people go their separate ways after that kind of thing. Starting with prom? That’s like learning to swim by being dumped in the middle of the ocean. Not really my style. I mean, I’ve kissed a couple guys before, but nothing that stilled the earth, much less my heart or any other organ worth mentioning. I glance at Hartman, pretty sure that the world would still for whatever girl he kissed.

  My neck and cheeks burn.

  I have no idea what’s discussed in class because all I can do is stare at Mr. Sandstrom and count the minutes in my head. The way I feel makes no sense.

  Maybe just for today, I should try to avoid Bree. Just until I can figure out how say no to her prom double-date scheme.

  But it turns out I don’t have to be careful about avoiding Bree. She’s only at her locker for seconds between classes. She doesn’t meet me at our corner next to the cafeteria.

  I sit off to stage left and search the cafeteria for her orange dress. Bree and I love to sit here. The theater kids rarely bother us, and the cafeteria is spread out below us so we can watch everyone and poke fun at their sheep-like tendencies.

  A squeal pierces the gym, and my attention snaps to the right.

  Oh.

  No wonder I didn’t see Bree. Her orange dress is covered up by Bryce’s letter jacket. Not two weeks ago, she was laughing at how Jeremy’s letterman jacket looked on Jessica, and how primitive that kind of “branding my girlfriend” is. And now…

  I crumple my sack lun
ch and dump it before walking off the stage.

  Chapter 10

  At the end of the day, I lean against my locker waiting for Bree to show up so I have a ride home. And I wait. And I wait.

  Where on earth is she? I flip my phone over in my hand before starting a text to her. Just before I hit Send, I have a text from Bree. Got caught up in something. Sorry! Distracted in a fab way! Sending a replacement driver…

  Oh no. It’ll be one of the costume kids from the theater department or maybe someone from her photography class. Or worse, one of Bryce’s lackeys.

  I can just walk home. That would be totally fine. I head for the front of the school and then stop at the front doors.

  The rain is coming down so hard that it’s bouncing off the cars in the parking lot, creating a sort of watery halo around each of them. I need to step out in that to get home, and the rain will create a watery halo around me as well. I’d really, really rather not have a watery halo today. Or any day, really. Why didn’t I wear my trench coat today?

  I lean against the glass door of the school, wishing that I could blink myself home. That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. I’m just one person. I wouldn’t abuse that gift by robbing banks or anything, just for minor inconveniences and maybe a few trips to Paris.

  “Hey.”

  I jump at the sound of a male voice and slam my hand over my chest. “Geez.”

  “Sorry,” Hartman says. He points outside with a long finger. “Is this normal for here?”

  “It’s not totally abnormal but pretty unusual.”

  I glance at his plaid button-down and wonder if he has abs—not that it matters.

  He shifts his shoulders underneath his old-man cardigan and pushes his glasses up on his nose.

  “Can I give you a ride?” he asks.

  Bree totally put him up to this. “You just happen to show up when I need a ride?”

  “Bree said she’s your normal ride, and she got caught up.”

  Of course she did. So Hartman’s her replacement, and this is probably because she wants me to go to prom so I won’t be mad about her ditching me. She’s so getting a text later. She probably didn’t give me a ride just to force this situation.