Once and for All

by Sarah Dessen

  “Want to dance?”

  I turned, taking him in: the short hair, those blue eyes, the black bow tie I’d picked up earlier loose, but not undone, around his neck. “No, thanks.”

  He looked surprised and—I realized, horrified—embarrassed. “Oh. Okay.”

  “I’m working,” I said quickly, stepping over his last syllables. Now we were both blushing. “For the wedding planner. So I can’t—”

  “Oh, right.” His face relaxed. “I didn’t realize—”

  “I know, it’s fine.” I looked at the floor, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “Thank you anyway.”

  He smiled then, and there was something about the way it changed his face, taking it from cute to outright charming, that suddenly made me wish I could say yes. To a boy, and a dance, and also to having that chance, one night, to be away from everything. We stood there a minute, until the bridesmaids nearby opened up their circle, whooping, and pulled him in. I walked over to the ledge I’d seen earlier, collecting the glasses and putting them on a nearby tray. Underneath one of the chairs was another penny card, face down, and I picked it up, rubbing my finger over the coin. When I looked back at the dance floor, the boy and the bridesmaids were gone.

  That could have been it. And sometimes, on my worse nights when I couldn’t sleep for all the tears, I wished that it was. Because then, Ethan wouldn’t even have been Ethan to me, but just a guy I said no to at one wedding among so many in a long summer. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing to lose.

  As it was, a few minutes later I stopped by to check in with William and my mother, who were standing off to the side of the dance floor, watching one of Margy’s aunts dance suggestively against a heavyset man in a sport coat.

  “The power of champagne,” he said as the woman turned, bumping her ample rear against the man’s hip. “She’s told me twice tonight she never drinks it, each time with a mostly empty glass in her hand.”

  “Weddings are a different world,” I replied, using one of his favorite phrases.

  “Indeed they are.” The couple were now outright grinding each other. “And right now, I want to go home.”

  “My eyes,” my mother said in a low voice, fake-horrified at the spectacle. “I’m too old for this.”

  “They’re senior citizens!” William said, and they both cackled.

  “And I was promised an early night off,” I said, looking at my mom. “Can I go?”

  “Wait, Louna gets to leave? How is that fair?”

  “Because she’s seventeen and paid poorly,” my mom told William. “Her bosses are awful people.”

  “I have heard that,” he agreed. He smiled at me. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever I want?”

  “Look at our girl, single and ready to mingle at the beach. She’s acting like a real teenager!” He beamed at me, then looked at my mom. “I so hoped this day would come.”

  “Stop,” my mom said, pretending to fan her eyes. “I’ll get emotional.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” I said, and they laughed again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You are young and so is the night! Carpe diem!” William called out after me as I walked across the patio.

  “That means day, William,” my mom said.

  “Carpe night, then!” They dissolved into more laughter.

  Fine, I thought, as I started across the patio, to the lobby. So what if I did go back to my room and be non-epic, by Jilly’s definition? It had been a long day and weekend, and I was tired. I had all of senior year and college to throw down, if I so chose, and maybe I would. If I didn’t though, it wasn’t my mom and William’s business by any stretch. And really, I was only what they had made me.

  As I thought this, the DJ began another song, slower this time. As some couples began to leave the dance floor and others headed in that direction, I stepped out of the way. On the other side of the crowd, my mom and William were still talking, occasionally breaking into bouts of laughter. Finally a path cleared inside to the ballroom, but instead of taking it, I went down the steps to the dark beach below. Later, I’d think of this as the true, real start of that night, where everything began. Maybe that was why halfway down I kicked off my sandals, stepping into the sand with my feet bare.

  CHAPTER

  4

  “I CAN’T believe you waited until now to buy an outfit for graduation,” Jilly said from outside the dressing room. “You don’t leave anything until the last minute. That’s my thing.”

  “True,” I told her, pulling my shirt over my head. “But I’ve been busy. And I told you, I didn’t think I needed something new, anyway. My gown will be over whatever I wear.”

  “At the ceremony.” Her voice grew closer, along with her feet, toes dark red, in platform espadrilles, now just under the door. “But what about all the parties afterward?”

  There was that word again. I made a face in the mirror, hearing it.

  “And don’t think you’re getting out of being social this time,” she said, as if she had actually seen this reaction through the door. “We’re Making Memories, remember?”

  Now I groaned aloud, and she laughed. A couple of days earlier, we’d stood in line to pick up our yearbooks during lunch period, one of what felt like endless senior year milestones in the days leading up to graduation. The books themselves were heavy and smelled of leather, with this year’s theme embossed in big yellow letters across the cover: MAKING MEMORIES. It was cheesy and ridiculous, which was why Jilly had claimed it as our summer rallying cry, starting, well, now. No longer was it enough to Do Things and Make Stuff Happen. It all had to be memorable, as well.

  It was also imperative, apparently, that I have a new dress for graduation, even though because of work I had more than enough options in my closet. So here I was, at one of Jilly’s favorite boutiques, only hours before the ceremony, with her twin eight-year-old sisters, Kaitlyn and Katherine—collectively known at KitKat—hunched over her phone nearby bickering as they played Igloo Melt.

  “It’s my turn,” I heard Kitty say. Although they were identical and often dressed alike by choice, their voices were the dead giveaways. Kitty was loud, boisterous, while Kat often didn’t speak above a whisper unless implored to do so. She must have responded, because Kitty said, “Okay, but then I get an extra-long one. And your bonus cubes.”

  “Pipe down, loudmouth, we’re in public,” Jilly told her. There was a clank, and another dress appeared over the top of my dressing room door, this one cobalt blue. I pulled the first she’d picked, a bright pink dress with a short skirt, off the hanger and stepped into it, reaching behind me for the zipper. One glance and I knew it wasn’t me, but still, I opened the door.

  “Nope,” she announced from the seat she’d taken on a polka-dotted chaise directly across from the dressing rooms. “Too much. I was going for pert and perky, but it’s more like startling.”

  “This from a person who is basically the brightest thing in the room right now.”

  She looked down at her yellow romper, which out in the actual sun had almost blinded me. “Yes, but I like color and can therefore pull it off. Try the next one.”

  “I like color,” I grumbled. As I turned back to the room, a salesgirl studying a laptop by the register gave me a sympathetic smile.

  “My turn!” Kitty bellowed. “Now!”

  “Work it out or nobody plays,” Jilly told them in a tired voice, then said to me, “Try the A-line next. That’s the blue one.”

  “I know what an A-line is.”

  “Do you, though?”

  I rolled my eyes at my own reflection, reminded again why I always hated being on this side of the dressing room door. I was used to tagging along shopping with Jilly, who believed strongly in the power of retail therapy. But things always worked better when I was flipping through magazines w
aiting for her to model the looks. Our friendship worked because we each knew our strengths, and now I felt like we were both miscast.

  The blue dress was better color-wise, but it made my boobs seem sort of pointy. This seemed strange to opine aloud, however, so I went back outside without comment.

  “Nope. Your boobs look weird.” She squinted at them. “Although it is kind of interesting; torpedo-like. You’d definitely get attention.”

  “That’s not the kind of attention I want.” I went back to the dressing room, shedding the dress, then eyed my last selection, a deep plum sheath with a V-neck. “Are you serious with this purple? Really?”

  “It’s eggplant, and very much in fashion right now,” she replied. “Put it on.”

  I did, glancing at my watch as I pulled my arm through. It was just after three thirty, which meant I didn’t have long to stop by my mom’s office to check in, then get home and change before meeting her and William at school for the ceremony. They were coming straight from a meeting for Bee Little’s wedding, about which everything, it seemed, was happening last minute.

  Bee was lovely, which was good, because her event, despite William’s initial confidence, had become your basic wedding planner nightmare. First, the venue—a gorgeous old house with expansive gardens and a pond—had caught on fire just after she put down a hefty (last-minute) deposit on it. Then the caterer she insisted was her only deal breaker in terms of vendors had a nervous breakdown, although not over this wedding. (My mother was not yet convinced of this.) All this would have been bad enough even if her own mother’s event—which had gone so well, her son’s vanishing act aside; oh how we loved a third wedding!—had not resulted soon after the honeymoon in a separation due to “incompatibility issues.” (Even my mother and William had been blindsided: they didn’t bet on third weddings, feeling that by then you should know what you’re doing.) The upshot: with nine weeks to go, they now found themselves in the busiest part of the wedding season with no venue, no caterer, and a mother of the bride who was even more cynical about the process than they were.

  I pulled on the last option Jilly had chosen for me, slipping it over my head. When I glanced in the dressing room mirror, it did seem awfully purple, although I liked the plain yet classic neckline and the way the skirt’s hem flared up and out at the bottom. I had just stepped out to see what Jilly thought when the salesgirl gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.

  We both looked over at her. “What is it?” Jilly asked.

  She looked up at us, startled, like she’d forgotten we were there. “Sorry. I was just . . . it’s the news. There’s been a shooting.”

  I felt a prickle at the back of my neck, hairs raising up. Immediately, Jilly glanced at the twins, who were still absorbed in their game, then put a hand on my arm. “This one looks good. Who knew eggplant was your color?”

  “What kind of shooting?” I asked the salesgirl, although I could swear I already knew. There was something in her face I recognized.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. She dropped her hand, shaking her head. “It’s a school. In California. Just breaking news, right now. They don’t have any—”

  “Come on,” Jilly said, her voice firm as she steered me back into the room, shutting the door behind me. From outside she said, “You don’t really need a dress. Like you said, you have tons. Let’s just go.”

  I stood there a second, looking at my reflection. I could see myself blinking, quickly, before I turned away, fingers fumbling to pull the dress up over my head. Ignoring the hanger, I left it in a heap on the bench in my haste to put my shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops back on and grab my purse. Outside, Jilly was waiting, reaching down wordlessly to take my hand. As we walked behind the counter, with the twins in tow, the salesgirl was still focused on her computer, and I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t see the screen. But I knew what was most likely there, as well as to come. A long shot of a flat, nondescript building, maybe with a mascot on the side. People streaming out doors, hands over their heads. The embraces of the survivors, mouths open, caught in wails we were lucky not to hear. And, in the worst case, pictures of kids just like the ones in my own yearbook, lined up neatly, already ghosts.

  By the time I got to my mom’s office, I’d somewhat calmed down. Jilly had helped, turning up the radio loud as she drove us through town, now and then taking glances at me she thought I didn’t notice. It was gorgeous out, with a bright blue sky, and people were out on the sidewalks and in their cars, windows down—while elsewhere, someone’s worst nightmare had only just become real. It seemed wrong, like there should have been a stain on the day or something.

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to hang out for a few minutes?” Jilly asked me as she pulled into the lot of my mom’s office, where I’d left my car parked earlier. “All I have left to do is to pick up Crawford’s new glasses and then grab him from Tae Kwon Do.”

  “Another pair of glasses?” I asked.

  She glanced at the twins in the rearview, each looking out a separate window, sitting close to each other. “The kid got suspended this time. We’ll see if it makes a difference.”

  Although I found Crawford’s monotone and awkwardness appealing, it made him a huge target for the bullies at his school. Martial arts had made him strong, but not made much of a difference in the lunch line, at least not yet. In the meantime, the Bakers spent a lot on replacement eyewear.

  “I’m fine, you should go,” I told her. “I’ll see you at the amphitheater.”

  “Here’s hoping Steve passes out and doesn’t make it.”

  “Fingers crossed.”

  She laughed, and I did too, if only to convince her I was, in fact, okay. With her Baker and me Barrett, we’d spent our lives in this small town with Steve Baroff wedged between us for every alphabetical occasion, except when he was too stoned to show up for school. We’d long hoped this would happen for graduation, if only for the continuity of us being on the stage at the same time. Making memories, indeed.

  As she drove off, already cranking the radio, I started toward my mom’s office. Natalie Barrett Weddings was located in the center of a modern office building with a dentist’s office on one side, a high-end stationery store called RSVP on the other. Entirely too much of my paycheck had gone to the latter due to my weakness for cards, writing paper, and, especially, blank books. Life seemed so much more manageable when you could write it down neatly on paper, which was probably exactly why I could only do it for a day or two, and hadn’t even tried in the last year. When I looked through those old barely begun journals now, the events on the pages seemed too small to even fill the lines, that inconsequential. Thinking this, I had a flash of the salesgirl and her computer, and felt a chill come over me. I pulled open the door to my mom’s office, where the A/C was always blasting and I wouldn’t notice my own drop in temperature.

  William saw me, though, immediately getting up from his seat at the conference table across from Bee and coming over. “I had a news alert on my phone,” he said in a low voice. Distantly, I heard my mom, also at the table, saying something about head counts. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I said automatically. “Go back to your meeting. I just came to drop off the tickets.”

  He nodded, but still waited a beat, as if I might change my mind, before returning to the group. Meanwhile, I slipped into the back office, where I reached into my pocket, pulling out the two passes I’d picked up for the ceremony. You were allowed up to six, but it wasn’t like I needed any more. I slid them into my mom’s purse, which was sitting on her side of the big desk they shared, then went back out into the main room.

  “. . . were supposed to meet me a half hour ago,” Bee was saying to her brother Ambrose, who had joined the group in my brief absence. Dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved blue button-down shirt, and tennis shoes, he looked freshly showered, as if just beginning his day at this late hour. Maybe this was why his
sister, usually so pleasant, seemed annoyed. “It’s no wonder you can’t get a job if you’re incapable of getting places on time.”

  “My watch is broken,” he said. “And then I had to get here, so . . .”

  Bee’s cheeks were flushed. “You have a phone, Ambrose. And there are clocks!”

  An awkward silence settled over the room, during which he spotted me and smiled, waving energetically, as if we were longtime friends finally reunited. His complete lack of caring for the trouble he’d caused would have been impressive if it didn’t seem so demented. I was still deciding how to react when my mom said, “So, Louna. How does it feel to be almost free from the compulsory education system?”

  Now everyone looked at me. Even when I wasn’t working, I was working. “I won’t believe it until I flip my tassel,” I replied.

  “Louna’s graduating tonight,” William explained to Bee. “High school.”

  “Really?” She smiled at me. Beside her, Ambrose noticed William’s fancy stainless-steel tape dispenser—we were both suckers for office supplies—and pulled it toward him. “Congratulations!” Bee said. “What a milestone. I remember every minute of my commencement.”

  “Me, too,” Ambrose said. I noticed that his hair, although damp, was in full effect, that one curl pushed away from his face but about to tumble down again.

  “You didn’t graduate,” his sister pointed out. To us she added, “It was one of those leave-quietly-and-we-won’t-expel-you kind of situations. Classic Ambrose.”

  “I was talking about yours,” he said, pushing the button on the dispenser. It whirred, spitting out a single piece of tape. “And it was never proven that I brought the cow in, if you’ll recall.”

  My mother raised that one eyebrow. “Cow?”

  “So what are you doing next year, Louna?” Bee said quickly, turning her attention back to me. Whatever had happened with farm animals, she didn’t want to dwell on it.