Not Now, Not Ever

by Lily Anderson

  And since we’d all seen the play a thousand times, most of the time someone knew the next line to keep her going. No one wanted to say it, but it was a compulsion. Like knowing the answer when the teacher isn’t looking at you.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t going to be all summer,” I told Mom, pressing the phone hard against my ear. Mom refused to video chat. She said she didn’t want to have to do her hair every time she checked up on me. I never pointed out that, with air force dress regulations, her hair was pretty much always done anyway. “But I won’t even have homework to distract me. I’ll end up getting dragged to every performance. They’ll make me work the concessions stand again.”

  There were no tips in the concessions stand. All tips went back into the theater to keep the lights on. Community theater doesn’t pay anyone but directors and technicians. Everyone else is supposed to be there for the love of the craft.

  Love couldn’t gas up my car.

  “You can’t choose your deployment, baby girl. You can tough out one more summer in Sacramento. It’s your last one,” Mom said. She liked to forget that I wouldn’t be moving the second I left high school. Sometimes, I liked to live in that fantasy, too. “Soak up all those creature comforts while you’ve got them.”

  I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and spent another week quoting pieces of the play back to Beth as I skipped past her on my way to school and when I helped prep dinner.

  And then the envelope arrived with “Elliot Lawrence Gabaroche” stamped to the front and the USAF wings printed in the top left corner.

  Subtlety has never been one of my mom’s accomplishments.

  The pamphlet was for the summer program at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, for high school kids who wanted all of the fun of cadet life minus the flying. And since Mom happened to work at the academy, it’d be only too easy to get me a last-minute placement.

  Beth understood all of this in the instant that it took to take the envelope out of the mailbox. I could see it in the flinty way she looked at me over the dining room table.

  Even after a decade of experience, I’d never learned how to translate Beth’s eyes. They were blue and always seemed to be saying a lot in a language I didn’t know. Dad’s eyes were oaky brown like mine and Ethan’s. Brown eyes said yes or no. Beth’s eyes had subtext. She meant well, but the motives were churning around in all that blue. Translating her would require a degree in meteorology.

  She had made it her mission to find me a summer distraction that wouldn’t end in me joining the reserves. She and Dad liked to imply that the armed forces had stolen my mother from me. Which wasn’t true. The air force didn’t have rules about being married to shallow narcissists who got whiny about not being the breadwinner. She wasn’t stolen. She just went. If she’d been a teacher or a pharmacist or something, maybe someone would have stopped and asked her why she didn’t want to be my mom every day.

  But Beth started talking about me volunteering at the theater and Dad started rumbling about some mock trial program down south—leaving the door wide open for me to choose his career over Mom’s.

  I didn’t want to go into law like my dad. I didn’t want to sell real estate. I didn’t want to enlist the second I left high school.

  I wanted the one thing that would unite all of my parents against me. I wanted to go to Rayevich College, the only school in the country with a science fiction literature program. I wanted four years of classes on Octavia Butler and Sheri S. Tepper and biomechanics and astrophysics.

  I wanted what both sides of my family would call “an expensive waste of time.”

  Lawrences went directly into the air force. Gabaroches got degrees in something “useful,” like law or business. Beth didn’t get the military—in that way that a lot of people didn’t get it. Maybe someone somewhere in the tangle of her ancestors there’d been a great-grandparent who had been drafted, but her dad—who insisted that Ethan and I call him “Poppy”—had been a conscientious objector to the Korean and Vietnam wars. They both talked about the military like everyone would be better off if it just disappeared. Beth’s dream was for me to go to one of the local state schools.

  “If you went to Davis, you could spend more time with your mother’s family,” she’d say, grinning with all of the ignorance of someone who had never had to watch Isaiah eat.

  I’d given up hope of ever seeing Rayevich for myself, until the day that the Air Force Academy packet had shown up. I couldn’t go to Colorado, but I could go somewhere. I could go see Bunbury.

  See, in the first act of The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon tells his family that he has to visit a sick friend named Bunbury, whenever he needs to peace out from their bullshit.

  For some reason, that really spoke to me.

  Getting admission to Camp Onward wasn’t easy. I’d sat through a two-hour-long test while I was supposed to be at my last ACLU club meeting of the school year. I’d crafted an essay about why I was the perfect candidate for Rayevich College. I’d emptied my savings to pay for my train ticket. I’d changed all of my social media profiles to a picture of a sunset.

  And then I’d spent weeks plotting out how to cover my ass. I’d learned from Algernon’s mistakes. I wasn’t looking for a comedy of errors to ensue. One fictional sick friend wasn’t enough.

  Dad and Beth thought I was going to stay with the Lieutenant on base in Washington. Mom thought she was paying for me to take a CrossFit boot camp class. My cousins thought Dad and Beth were shipping me down south to mock trial camp at UCLA.

  Elliot Gabaroche was everywhere and nowhere.

  Ever Lawrence, seventeen-year-old girl and newly certified genius, was going to summer camp.

  *

  From my vantage point in the parking lot, Rayevich College seemed like so much more than it had in the pamphlet stuffed under my mattress. In person, the low brick buildings were concealed behind clumps of giant trees. The cement pathways that cut swathes through the tidy lawns were unscuffed and snowy white. Everything smelled green. Not fakey pine spray green like those cans in your friends’ bathrooms. Real fresh-and-alive green. The smell of things growing.

  I leaned against the Prius and raked my hands over my hair. It didn’t seem to be possible for it to be both summer and not face-meltingly hot.

  Did everyone in California know about this “north” thing? Why did we keep suffering through months of triple-digit hell when there was all this livable space above us?

  “They close up most of the residence halls for summer,” Cornell-the-counselor said, popping the trunk and looping my laptop case over his shoulders before I could argue. He wheeled my suitcase over the sparkling cement. “So, it’ll only be other Onward kids with you. It’s better than it would be if class was in session. At least,” he shuddered, “that’s what I keep telling myself.”

  I swung my backpack over my shoulder as I skipped to keep up with him. He might have been a bit shorter than me, but he wasn’t bothering to sightsee. “You’re in the dorms, too?”

  “Supposed to be. I’m a townie.” The suitcase caught a crack in the cement and skidded onto one wheel. He shook it back into place without slowing down. “I mean, my parents live here. I technically live in New Hampshire now.” He plucked at his dark green shirt. “I go to Dartmouth.”

  “Cornell,” I said slowly. “At Dartmouth?”

  “Trust me, I know. My mom was so disappointed when I wouldn’t apply to my namesake. She thought it’d be cute. But my girlfriend and I agreed on Dartmouth, so that’s where we went. She has bets against all of us who signed up to work this session.” He said “girlfriend” with an apologetic weight. Like he was used to girls falling helplessly in love with him within seven minutes of shaking hands. Maybe Dartmouth girls went bananas over him blaring NPR in his hybrid car. But he had “future fed” written all over him. He would have been right at home with the interns that swarmed around the Capitol Mall back home.

  And he was wearing loafers.
I couldn’t get my swoon on for a guy who didn’t wear socks.

  He cleared his throat and picked up the pace toward the tallest of the buildings. It had giant greenish glass panels built into the bottom, windows and doors blending together. “Well, she’s only betting against those of us who went to high school together. Half of the counselors actually go to Rayevich. But three weeks is a long time to go back to dorm life. Dining hall food and curfew and communal bathrooms—”

  “Is this your version of a get-psyched speech?” I interrupted. “Because you kind of suck at it.”

  He grinned again. “Sorry. You’ll be fine. You aren’t used to having your own apartment like we are.”

  Brag.

  We made it to the glass doors. I caught Cornell’s eye in the reflection as I darted forward to grab the handle. He was hauling all of my stuff. I didn’t need him proving what a gentleman he was. He frowned at me as he passed into the lobby and toward the elevator. He pushed a button and stood at attention in front of the closed metal doors.

  “How much time do I have before the meet and greet?” I asked.

  He swished my laptop out of the way of his pocket and checked his phone. He made a hissing sound of apology. “Two hours. Sorry, most of the out-of-towners are coming in from the airport shuttle.”

  “No, that’s great,” I said.

  “It is?”

  The elevator dinged and we stepped in, my suitcase standing between us like another person. Cornell pressed the Three button and I leaned against the wall, bracing as the floor pushed against my feet.

  “I’ve been on a train for twelve hours,” I said. “And now I have an entire campus to myself. I can get a run in before I have to get my Melee on.” He cut his eyes at me. I frowned in response, gripping the strap of my backpack. “What? Is my newb showing?”

  His lanyard jingled as he swung his head. It didn’t quite seem to mean yes or no.

  The doors swept open again. The wheels on the suitcase were muffled by the thin layer of taupe carpet on the floor here. There were half a dozen closed doors covered in black chalkboard paint. Cornell reached into his pocket again and produced a key from inside of a tiny manila envelope. He stuck it into the first door on the left and turned the knob.

  It wasn’t much to look at. Plain white cement walls. Two narrow beds on opposing sides of the room. Two desks with Camp Onward folders and plastic-wrapped Tshirts waiting on them. Two narrow pressboard wardrobes that were less Narnia, more IKEA.

  I tossed my backpack onto the left bed. Cornell carefully disentangled himself from my laptop case and set it on the desk chair. He flopped a hand toward the folder.

  “If you need anything, all of our phone numbers are in there,” he said. “I’m down on second. It’s the boys’ floor. Or, it will be once everyone else gets here.”

  I sat down on the edge of the mattress. It was much smaller than I’d been picturing it.

  “Don’t be late to the meet and greet,” Cornell said, edging toward the door. He reached into his back pocket, pulling out a chalk pen. He shook it before uncapping it with his teeth. “Your RA is kind of a hard-ass.”

  I tugged at the knots of my shoelaces. I was aching to set my feet to the pavement. I was going to make the most of this whole beautiful weather thing. “Yeah? What did your girlfriend bet against her sticking it out in the dorms?”

  The pen cap fell out of his mouth as he laughed. It was a wheezy hiccupping sound that bounced off all of the bare walls and into the hallway. He bent down and scooped up the cap. “No one would bet against her. She’s—well, you’ll see.”

  He pressed the chalk pen to the door and wrote “Ever” in looping cursive.

  I kicked off a shoe. “Can you work on being comforting, too? Or, like, less cryptic?”

  He capped his pen and nodded to me. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  3

  Every building sprouted out of the ground like a Lego model of a university, all red brick and opaque glass with perfectly manicured trees set between. The schools back home were prison-like cement fortresses compared to this.

  The campus was eerily empty as I cruised through it. The paths that curved between buildings were endless stretches of bare benches and clean trash cans and absolutely no signs of life.

  I turned up the volume on my running playlist. Pop music never lets you feel alone. There are people and parties and someone turning up the bass until everyone’s heart thumps in time with the 808.

  My room key was warm in my pocket. I couldn’t shake how bizarre it was to have my own place, hundreds of miles away from any of my parents. Blowing my allowance on sheets too small to fit my bed at home felt less ridiculous now that they had a place to go. My dorm. Well, my slice of my dorm. There was still the roommate thing to deal with.

  And even that was exciting in a stomach churning sort of way. New people. New space. Not another month of Beth knocking on my door in the morning to ask me to drive Ethan somewhere. Or long-distance phone calls from my mom, where I kept from asking when she was coming out to visit next because I didn’t want her to feel guilty. Or going to hunt for public air-conditioning with my friends and ending up sneaking into crappy movies or sipping expensive smoothies.

  I’d broken out of the time loop of Elliot Gabaroche’s life. I was Ripley waking up in Aliens, fifty-seven years in the future and away from the monotony of before.

  Except without the PTSD and the being chased by Xenomorphs part.

  Hopefully.

  I turned a corner, following the path behind the dining hall, back to my building. Cornell’s warning about not being late to the meet and greet poked at me. Now wasn’t the time to meander, no matter how nice it was to be moving under the cloudless sky and not stuck in a metal tube. Somehow, getting lost at genius camp seemed worse than getting lost anywhere else.

  Ahead, off of a fork in the road and tucked back behind some trees, was one of the closed residence halls. It was taller than mine, with dark windows. The buildings around it threw shadows onto the bricks. Tucked into a corner of the cement steps, there was a boy sitting alone. His black hair was a shaggy approximation of a Beatles bowl cut. It flopped into his eyes as he leaned over a typewriter.

  A typewriter.

  Pencil lead gray and perched on top of a small suitcase. Or a typewriter case, I guess. I’d never had to consider how people transported typewriters. I honestly couldn’t say that I’d ever seen one in person before. It was like a rotary phone or dial-up Internet. You heard stories, but they always followed the words When I was your age …

  Typewriter Guy’s fingers flew over the keys. The sunlight was bouncing off all of the shiny metal parts on his writing contraption, making him squint. The pad of his thumb went between his teeth for a second before he cranked up the paper, slid the top to the left, and resumed typing.

  Hipster or ghost?

  The only way to know for sure would be to take out my headphones and try to hear the clicky-clack of the keys. I really didn’t want to start off the summer by announcing to all of the campers that we had a wannabe Jack Kerouac specter haunting the closed dorms.

  Sure, ghostbusting would be more interesting than the off-brand academic decathlon we were supposed to be here for. But it would raise all kinds of ethical issues. Which would open the door to debating the legal rights of the dead-but-not-gone. If we exorcised one ghost, we’d have to start an ectoplasmic genocide, finding all of the other ghosts on campus to eradicate them.

  I veered into the quad and picked up my pace.

  Peace out, Casper. Happy hauntings.

  *

  The residence hall had come to life while I was out. As I paused at a drinking fountain, voices hummed against the walls and I could hear faucets running in the communal bathroom. Every door had been decorated with acid-green chalk. Trixie, RA. Perla and Kate. Avital and Yuri. Itzel and Kayla. Fallon and Meuy. Allison and Annie. My door had “Ever” in Cornell’s white cursive, but another name had been added under a flowery a
mpersand: Leigh.

  The writing on the door to the left of mine was in a third hand, this one sloppier and sharper. It read “Her Imperial Majesty Margaret Royama, supreme overlord.”

  I jumped back as the door opened, revealing a tiny girl with short, dark hair. She had a cell phone pressed to her ear. Her hand slapped against the door with a thwack, right on the M of Margaret, which she set to erasing with the heel of her palm.

  “You are setting a fucking terrible example,” she said to the person on the other end of her call. Her voice was a cartoonish squeak. She pulled a chalk pen out of her jeans and scrawled “Meg” where the Margaret had been. “Of course it was you. Your handwriting is chicken scratch. Do not teach your campers that they’re allowed on this floor. If I catch you up here, so help me, Benedict, I will destroy you. I’ve done it before…”

  I reached for my doorknob and was relieved to find it unlocked. I slipped inside before the teensy, raging RA could notice me.

  There was a skinny girl sitting on the bed across from mine, cross-legged on top of zebra print sheets. It took a second for me to see anything other than her hair. It was shaved down to a fine fuzz and bleached so unnaturally yellow that it looked like she’d painted it with highlighter ink. It matched the Onward folder that was open in her lap. She blinked up at me as the door clicked shut, her dark eyebrows bushy and stark against her rosy skin.

  Brown-eyed roommate. Score.

  “Ever?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You must be Leigh.”

  We both twitched as the windows rattled with the force of a door being slammed in the hall. Leigh glanced at the wall and then back to me.

  “Meg finally noticed that the other RAs rewrote her door?”

  I collapsed onto the bare mattress on my side of the room. “If Meg is an Asian girl who wants to murder someone named Benedict, then yes.”

  “Yep. That’s her,” Leigh said. “Lucky us, we get to sleep next door to one of the weirdo RAs.”