Once and for All

by Sarah Dessen

  “That’s how you sum me up?” he asked, and I smiled. “Dog stealer and conga dancer?”

  “And wish maker,” I added. “I’m just not. That’s okay, right?”

  He held my gaze for a second, and I had the fleeting thought, out of nowhere, that he might say it wasn’t. Instead, though, he came over and bent down, then closed his eyes, blowing out the row from one end to another. When he was done, he gave me a smile, then walked off to the next table. It wasn’t until later, driving home, that I realized he’d never answered my question. But I knew the real reply to his. My last birthday, I’d closed my eyes and thought of nothing when I leaned over my cake. You stop believing in wishes when the only one you want to make can never come true.

  CHAPTER

  18

  THAT MORNING, I texted Ethan as soon as I woke up, like I did every day. I never got out of bed until I saw his return message pop up on my screen.

  MORNING, LULU. HAVE A GOOD ONE.

  With that, I pushed back the covers, getting to my feet, and went to take a shower, dropping my phone onto the speaker just outside the bathroom on my way. I didn’t listen to Lexi Navigator that particular day, even though it was my go-to rise and shine music. Instead, it was news, just headlines, none of which I remembered after toweling myself off.

  Once dressed, I grabbed my backpack and headed downstairs, where my mother was still in her bathrobe watching Daybreak USA, her favorite morning show. For the two hours it was on each day, she’d keep up a running commentary on the four hosts, weighing in on their hair and makeup, their reactions as they interviewed guests, and their interplay with each other. Everyone had something, I guess, and my mom’s was a morning news program.

  “Melissa is just too thin these days,” she said to me, as I popped a bagel in the toaster, checking the clock. “I know she’s going through that divorce, but she needs to take care of herself.”

  I glanced at the screen, where Melissa Scott, in a teal dress, was reporting on the stock market. She looked fine to me. “What do you and William have going on today?”

  “Just prep for Rachel Quaker’s rehearsal dinner, and the wedding tomorrow,” she replied. During the school year, I only worked on weekends, so I was less up to date on the various events we had planned. This one, though, I remembered, if only for the unique last name.

  “This is the one with the bucking bronco, right?” I asked.

  She sighed, closing her eyes. On the TV, Drew Tate, the meteorologist, was now pointing at a weather map. “It’s a mechanical bull, and I can’t believe you’re bringing it up when it’s not absolutely necessary.”

  “Sorry,” I said, stifling a laugh. It wasn’t easy to throw something at my mom she wasn’t experienced with, but Rachel Quaker, a native Texan, had done just that when she requested a rodeo-themed rehearsal dinner. Besides the bull, there would be special-ordered barbecue and ribs trucked in from her home state, complimentary cowboy hats for all guests, and beribboned baskets full of wet naps. My mother had been complaining about it for weeks. The only upside was that the wedding itself was as traditional as the dinner was not: big church, big guest list, really big money. If my mom had a price for dealing with electronic animals, they’d clearly met it.

  “Mark my words, someone will break their neck. We can only pray it is not the bride or groom,” she replied, which had been her mantra since the planning had gotten underway months earlier. She took a sip of her coffee, nodding at the TV. “Look at Patrick Williams. He’s had so much Botox he can’t even look concerned for those poor people on that wrecked ferry.”

  My bagel popped up and I grabbed it, taking another look at the screen. This time, I could see her point. Patrick Williams had never met a cosmetic procedure he didn’t like, and HD kept no secrets. “I gotta go. I told Jilly I’d meet her early to study for that Spanish quiz.”

  “Be sure to eat that whole bagel,” she called after me as I started for the door. “I’ve got enough worries with Melissa.”

  In the car, I ate half as I headed out of our neighborhood, then turned onto the main road to school. At the first stoplight, my phone beeped. It was Jilly, driving KitKat and Crawford to school, like she did every day.

  LUNCHBOX FAIL. BE THERE ASAP. COURTYARD?

  I glanced at the light, still red, then quickly replied with a thumbs-up. As traffic starting moving again, I heard my ringtone.

  “Hola, niña bonita,” Ethan said when I picked up. “¿Estás lista para la prueba?”

  “I think the fact that I have no idea what you are saying does not bode well for this quiz today,” I replied.

  “I asked if you were ready for the test,” he said, laughing. “Also I called you a pretty girl.”

  “Well, that’s nice.” I smiled. “And the answer is clearly no.”

  I heard someone’s voice in the background; he drove to his own school every day with three of his buddies, and the collective volume was always high. “Will you guys shut up? I’m trying to talk to my girlfriend.”

  I felt my face flush. That never got old.

  “You’re always talking to your girlfriend,” someone said. “And aren’t we stopping for doughnuts? It’s Friday.”

  “No can do, I said I’d meet Coach in his office before the late bell,” Ethan said. To me he added, “Still not sure what this is about. Got me kind of in knots.”

  “It’s got to be good,” I told him, as I had the night before, and the day before that. Getting called in for a special meeting with his lacrosse coach could only mean something really good or bad, according to Ethan. My money was on the former, but I understood his worry. “Be sure to text me, though. I’m curious.”

  “You and me both.” Another chorus of laughter from the background. “I’d better go, we’re almost there. Talk at lunch?”

  “Yep,” I said, as school came up in the distance. Usually I got to mine first, as he and his buddies were always stopping for food en route. “I can tell you how badly I bombed that quiz.”

  “Vas a hacer bien,” he replied.

  “I don’t know what that means!”

  “You’ll do fine,” he told me, laughing. “Love you, Lulu.”

  “Love you, too,” I told him. “Talk soon.”

  I pulled into the lot, then wound around, looking for a parking space. By the time I found one, in the lower part dotted with dusty potholes, my console clock said 7:55. I had twenty minutes to find Jilly, cram like crazy, and then hope for the best for the quiz.

  When I got to the bench in the courtyard where we always met, she wasn’t there, so I sat down and pulled out my book to go over verb tenses. I thought about Ethan, going to his coach’s office at probably right that same moment, and closed my eyes, thinking a good thought for him.

  By the time the bell rang, Jilly still hadn’t shown up. So much for studying, I thought, although I wasn’t exactly surprised. Everything at the Baker house was nuts, but the mornings were especially so, which was why Jilly had such a low grade in Spanish: she was always late. I was just bad at it. Apparently.

  When I got to class, Señor Richards was already giving out the quizzes. I slid into a seat and opened my bag, taking out a pen and checking the door again for Jilly as he handed me mine. I scanned the first question: no idea. Great.

  The late bell rang, and after the normal amount of backpack zipping and general settling-in noises, the room fell silent around me. As I worked down the page I realized I wasn’t entirely clueless, which was encouraging. Up at the front of the room, Señor Richards was on his laptop, brow furrowed as he scanned the screen.

  By the time I’d finished the quiz as best I could, it was eight forty-five and I was one of the last ones to hand in my paper. As I did, I glanced outside for Jilly. A half hour was late, even for her. A few moments later, Señor Richards got to his feet, coming around to lean against the desk, and told us in Spanish to open our b
ooks to page 176. THE SUBJUNCTIVE, the title heading said in English. The upshot seemed to be that you used it when you weren’t certain. Well, I thought, that would come in handy for me.

  Just then, outside the half-open door, I heard someone running down the hallway. For a minute I thought it was Jilly, but then they passed by, a blur in my side vision as Señor Richards directed our attention to the board, where he was busy writing something in his boxy print.

  At 9:05, when the bell rang signaling the end of the period, I immediately pulled out my phone, expecting to see a string of increasingly panicked texts from her over the last fifty minutes. But there was nothing except a bunch of news alerts, which I didn’t bother to read. I had a long way to go in the five minutes we were given between classes if I wasn’t going to be late myself, to Art History.

  As usual, everyone seemed to be moving super slowly when I was in a rush. The hallway was packed with people on their phones or talking loudly to each other as I wound through bodies and backpacks, trying to get to the one staircase that was usually less crowded than the others. By the time I got downstairs, I only had two and a half minutes until the bell. I did notice a lot of people standing around the TV in the main office, looking at something, but it didn’t occur to me to see what it was.

  Once outside, I passed a couple making out and two guys walking super slowly with instrument cases as I headed for the steps that led to the Art and Theatre building. I pulled my backpack closer and started up them, taking the last couple two at a time, then popped out right by my classroom’s back door, which Ms. DiMarcello, bless her, kept propped open because she knew it was a valued shortcut.

  “Louna!”

  When I heard Jilly’s voice, some aspect of it—tone, volume, a trembling—made me stop where I was. I turned around to see her coming toward me across the grass, where you weren’t allowed to walk, her footsteps leaving prints in the dew. She had one hand to her mouth, and her eyes were wide. Without even knowing why, I suddenly felt cold.

  “Oh, my God,” I said, rushing over to meet her. “What happened? Are you okay? Is it one of the kids?”

  The bell rang then, loud and piercing. She reached out, her fingers clamping my upper left arm. “No, it’s not . . . Louna, there’s been a shooting.”

  “A what?” I said. Just behind me, I could hear my teacher rapping her hand on the wooden desk to quiet everyone down, just like she always did. “I don’t understand.”

  In response, she pulled out her phone. BREAKING, it said in yellow block letters on the screen, above an image of a flat, cinderblock building with a flagpole out front, a tiger painted on its side. SHOOTER CONFIRMED AT HIGH SCHOOL, BROWNWOOD, NEW JERSEY.

  I just looked at the words, trying to make sense of them. “Oh, my God,” I said, immediately pulling out my own phone, fingers shaking as I selected Ethan’s number. It went straight to voicemail, but that wasn’t unusual: he wasn’t allowed to have his phone out in class. Still, I fired off a text—YOU OK???—for when he would see it. Because Ethan was fine. He had to be. What were the chances?

  “I was late, with Crawford’s stupid lunchbox thing, and I heard them break in on the radio,” she said. She was still holding my arm. “It was in the gym, at least that’s what they were saying.”

  Ethan’s first class was English: I knew this as well as, if not better than, the fact that Spanish was my own. “He wouldn’t have been in the gym,” I said. “He starts in the main building.”

  “Oh, good,” she said. She eased her grip, finally, letting her hand drop. “I just, when I heard Brownwood, and they said there were fatalities—”

  I looked back at my screen and the two words I’d sent, willing the dots to appear beneath them that would signal he was typing a response. Nothing.

  “Louna?” I heard Ms. DiMarcello call from the door behind me. “Time to come in. We’re starting.”

  “One second,” I called over my shoulder. I looked at Jilly. “He’s fine, right? It’s a huge school, he always says so.”

  “I’m sure he is,” she said. “And it sounds like he wasn’t even near there.”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed, looking at my phone again. “I should . . . I guess I’ll go in to class?”

  “Okay,” she said. Neither of us moved. “I’m sure he’ll text you any minute.”

  I heard footsteps and looked behind her to see a school resource officer coming toward us. There were two: one was wide and muscular, built like a fireplug, the other skinny and tall. This was the skinny one. “Ladies, it’s past late bell. Move along to your second periods.”

  “I’m going,” Jilly told him, then looked at me again. “Text me. The minute you hear.”

  “I will,” I said. He was still standing there, watching us. I slipped my phone in my pocket and went inside.

  For the next fifty minutes, Ms. DiMarcello stood in front of the board, lecturing about the Surrealists. Not that I could have told you then, or now, what she said: I wrote not one word on the empty white page of the notebook in front of me, my eyes instead on my phone’s screen, which I had hidden under my coat in my lap. Our school, like Ethan’s and most others, had a strict in-class no-screen policy that I usually followed. But that day, I would have fought someone to keep it close and on. By the time the bell rang, there was still no word.

  The minute I got back outside, I dialed him again. This time, it went straight to voicemail without even ringing. Clearly, I was not the only one calling. I pulled up my texts.

  PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU ARE OKAY

  No dots. I felt suddenly sick, and lurched over to a nearby trash can, pulling my hair back. But nothing happened. Just people pushing past, talking, on their way to class, like any other day.

  Then, a beep. Thank God, I thought, tears springing to my eyes.

  ANY WORD?

  Jilly. I typed her back NO, then started walking down to the main building, still gripping my phone in my hand. My next class was Western Civ, all the way down by the bus parking lot. It wasn’t until I was about halfway there that I remembered something about my conversation with Ethan that morning.

  Said I’d meet Coach in his office before the late bell.

  I stopped walking right where I was, causing someone to bump me from behind. They exhaled, then cut around me as I opened my news app. The latest wasn’t hard to find: it was right at the top. BREAKING STORY: SHOOTING AT NJ HIGH SCHOOL. I clicked the link, which took me to a picture of that same school building and flagpole, this time with cop cars parked all around the front of it. Three bullet points, designed for scanning quickly, were below.

  SHOTS FIRED JUST BEFORE FIRST PERIOD, AROUND 8:20 A.M.

  MULTIPLE VICTIMS REPORTEDLY IN GYM AREA

  SHOOTER BELIEVED TO BE CURRENT STUDENT, ACTING ALONE

  8:20, I thought. I’d just gotten my Spanish quiz. Ethan should have been in English, trying not to look at the hair of the girl in front of him, which he maintained was so greasy it literally dripped onto his desk. I knew this. I knew everything about him. So how did I not know if he was all right?

  The hallway was emptying as everyone went into classrooms and down the nearby staircase. Moments earlier, it had been packed, elbow to elbow, with me just one of a sea of people. Now I stood there, staring at my screen, until all the doors around me shut and I was the only one left, standing alone. I told myself I wasn’t moving until I knew something, that I’d stop time in this interim. Later, it would seem silly that I thought I could do this, have some control over events already unfolded. But I believed in a lot of things, before. I never heard from Ethan again.

  CHAPTER

  19

  “DO YOU want a tissue?” William said to my mother, in an attempt at humor. He nodded at Mrs. Lin’s ample bosom, where a Kleenex was indeed poking out, at the ready. “Because I know where to find one.”

  In response, my mother just blinked, trying to hold b
ack the tears of frustration that were brimming in her eyes. Just moments earlier, she’d found out via text that the next week’s wedding, for which we’d done tons of legwork and put down multiple deposits, had been called off. Then, as she was absorbing that news, Mrs. Lin approached and unloaded a loud, shrieking tirade about her sudden, strong dislike of the tulle bows tied on the backs of the chairs, which had been her idea in the first place. It was the latest in a long day of similar takedowns over tiny details; anyone else would have cracked hours earlier. It took my mom until now, almost eight p.m. and three hours past the ceremony, but finally, she’d gotten there.

  As William patted her shoulder, moving his hand in that familiar soothing circle, I forced myself to take a deep breath. I hated to see my mother upset. Mostly because it never happened, so it was kind of scary, like the world—or my world—was tilting the wrong way on its axis.

  “Louna, I’m fine,” she said to me now, clearly aware of this. “I’m pissed off, not sad. And it’s mostly about the Marlo Wagner cancellation. At least now we know why she bailed on the photo shoot.”

  “Being yelled at about the chair bows did not help matters, though,” William said, moving his hand now in the other direction. “Considering we were clear we were against it from the start. Who wants their chair gift wrapped? And then she takes her bad decision out on you? Unacceptable.”

  “I hate this wedding,” my mother grumbled, wiping her eyes with a tissue not snatched from someone’s chest.

  “And I hate that woman,” William told her. “But let’s look at the upside, shall we? No Wagner wedding next weekend means we can actually go on that freebie trip to check out St. Samara for the Kerr wedding.”

  “Oh, God,” my mother groaned. “Are you still even thinking about that? We don’t do out of town weddings. And now you want to try one on an island?”