Once and for All

by Sarah Dessen

“Louna, however, doesn’t believe in wishes,” Ambrose added.

  “I don’t believe in making one every time you blow out a candle,” I corrected him. “But this is kind of nice, for the couple. People seem to like it.”

  Maya put the box down, then picked up the cake topper again. “I can see the appeal. I mean, Roger didn’t want to do any of this, but. . . .”

  I looked at Ambrose, who raised his eyebrows. Lauren said, “But you didn’t either, right? I mean, you’re good with the simple plan?”

  “Oh, sure,” Maya replied quickly. “I mean, it’s just about us being together with the people we love. It doesn’t matter where we are. And that patio seems nice. You said we could put some flowers out, and then bring them up to the Incubator and put them on the picnic tables outside there. That sounds good.”

  “It’ll be great,” Lauren said.

  “Perfect,” Ambrose added. Maya just stood there, holding the cake topper. “Um . . . are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, just fine.” Her voice cracked, clearly, on this last word. She looked at me. “Do you have a restroom I can use?”

  “Down the hall to the right,” I told her, pointing. She nodded, releasing the topper, and then went that way. A moment later, we heard the door shut, then lock, behind her.

  Lauren looked at Ambrose. “Oh, my God. I had no idea she wanted any of this . . . I would have helped her.”

  “She didn’t tell you she did.” He put an arm around her, and as I watched how effortlessly, easily, she leaned into him, I thought of myself doing the same thing. Then, quickly, of something, anything else. Ambrose said to her, “Weddings are emotional, even the small ones. I’m sure that’s all this is about.”

  “I mean, I asked her if she was sure about the patio, if she didn’t want to do it somewhere nicer, but they’re both students and don’t have much to spare. Leo offering Jump Java seemed like the perfect solution. And the Incubator . . . well. . . .”

  “It’s a very thematic name,” Ambrose assured her. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Maya . . .”

  “With a baby in an incubator?” She looked stricken. “Now I want to cry.”

  “What’s wrong with incubators? They save lives!”

  “Ambrose,” I said quietly.

  “I should go check on her,” Lauren said. “She seemed really upset.”

  “Here, take a water.” I reached over to grab one off a nearby table. “It always helps.”

  She did, then started down the hallway, her flip-flops thwacking against the carpet. When she was gone, he looked at me.

  “Okay,” he said. “You have to do something.”

  “Me?” I asked.

  “A bride is in distress! That’s your specialty.”

  “A bride,” I corrected him. “Not our bride. She said herself all this”—I gestured at the stuff still piled around us—“wasn’t what she wanted.”

  “Come on. I’ve only worked here a few weeks and even I can recognize a CG when I see one.”

  I blinked, surprised he’d learned this abbreviation. “A Controlling Groom is only our problem if it’s our event. And this isn’t.”

  He looked at the tables again, then at me. “Okay. But what if it was?”

  “But it’s not.”

  “But it could be,” he said. “If we decided to help, maybe find a better place, donate some of this stuff. It could totally be.”

  “You want to get my mother involved in this?” I asked. “Are you insane?”

  “No, no. I’m not talking about her. I mean us.” He moved his hand, fingers wiggling, back and forth between us. It reminded me, instantly, of that first night we’d met at his mother’s wedding, when he wanted me to heal. It seemed like ages ago now. “You and me. We could do this.”

  “But I don’t want to,” I said.

  “Did you not just see that?” he demanded, pointing at the bathroom door. Lauren must have joined her cousin inside, as I couldn’t see anyone. “This is the only wedding that girl will ever have. Do you want to be responsible for it taking place among ashtrays and the sound of coffee grinding?”

  “Or,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper, “it is a first marriage, soon regretted, and she does everything exactly to her heart’s desire the next time.”

  He just looked at me. “I can’t believe you just said that. And by the way, whispering didn’t make it any less heartless.”

  I sighed. “Ambrose. I know you like to save things. Dogs, children, the day. But not everybody wants it. Or needs it.”

  “But some people do,” he shot back. “And those cases, if you can help, you should. Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because it’s not your problem? Or responsibility?”

  “I don’t see it that way.”

  “Then you plan the wedding,” I told him. “You know enough by now. Take this stuff and go nuts, if that’s what you want. It’s fine with me.”

  Hearing this, he studied my face, saying nothing, for long enough that I started to get self-conscious. “It must have really been awful,” he said. “What happened to you.”

  I swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do, though. A boy, a great love lost, the only sunset walk you’re allowed.” He shook his head. “You can’t even see the hope in anything.”

  “I see plenty of hope,” I retorted, feeling defensive. “But this is a business.”

  “Which is built on the whole idea of people wanting to mark publicly the very moment they agree to be together forever, once and for all.”

  “And it’s lovely when it works out that way,” I said. “Once and for all, and all. But sometimes, it doesn’t. I’m part of this kind of thing enough. I don’t need to do it on my free time, as well. Don’t you get that?”

  He didn’t answer this question. In fact, he said nothing, and then, distantly, I heard the bathroom door open. By the time the girls returned, I was back at work wrapping a candle like it was my job, which, in fact, it was.

  “Sorry about that,” Maya said to us. “Pre-wedding jitters, I guess.”

  “We’re going to do a wish wall,” Lauren told Ambrose. “It won’t be hard to pull together, right?”

  “You can use this one,” he said, nodding at the box of cards on the table. “Louna said so.”

  At this, both Lauren and Maya turned to me. “Oh, wow, really?” Maya asked, her face flushed. “That’s so nice! Thank you.”

  I nodded, this time staying silent myself.

  “And I was thinking,” Ambrose said, “that while the patio idea is nice, I think you can do better. Why don’t you guys come back to my house and take a look at the backyard? Bee’s garden is awesome and we have plenty of space for tables.”

  The girls looked at each other. Maya said, “Really?”

  “Why not? At least there won’t be ashtrays.”

  “Or incubators,” Lauren said. “Oh, and we could put flowers in mason jars! Those are cheap, right?”

  “I think so,” Maya replied. “And you know what else isn’t expensive? Those little white lights, like Christmas ones, that we could string up. I wonder if they sell them in summer.”

  “Even if they don’t,” Ambrose said, “someone has to have some in their attic. We’ll ask around.”

  “Oh, I love this!” Maya said, clapping her hands, a smile on her face. “I mean, I know we wanted to keep things simple, but . . .”

  “. . . this will be simply beautiful,” Lauren finished for her.

  Maya looked like she might tear up again, or already was. “Thank you,” she said to Ambrose, clearly meaning it. Then she looked at me. “Seriously.”

  “Oh,” I said, holding up a hand. “This is all him.”

  And it was. I was acutely aware of this for the next forty-five minutes, as I finished the work
day with them so close by, excitedly planning away. I focused on my packing, getting the tissue wrapped just right, clearly labeling each bin with its contents. Everything in its place, just as it should be, even as this crazy, last-minute event came together only steps away. But as they left at five, still chattering excitedly, and I locked up alone, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d lost. What, though, at least this time, I couldn’t say.

  CHAPTER

  21

  WHAT DO you say when there’s nothing left to tell? Just the final details, the flimsy bits, or maybe not so flimsy at all, that round out the end of the story. This is the part no one ever wants to share. But here it is anyway.

  I ditched school after first period the day of the shooting. I just couldn’t stay there, looking at my phone’s screen, empty of messages and calls from Ethan. The guard wasn’t at the school parking lot gatehouse when I left, but if he had been, I don’t even know what I would have said, what magic words I could have summoned to win my release. I was speechless, silent, and all I could do was cry. And I didn’t even know anything for sure yet.

  That would come later, hours after I showed up tear-stained and shaky at the office, giving William what he would later call, when he told his part of this story, “the scare of his life.” He was not a news person, and my mother never paid attention to anything on TV or radio other than Daybreak USA, which she’d cut off early that morning. So they’d had no idea what was going on, instead immersed in the details of their bucking bronco wedding. We’d had to go next door to the stationery store, where they had a TV in the back, all of us crammed into their tiny office watching live coverage. I remember my mother kept looking at me, her face more worried than I had ever seen it, while William held my hand, his other arm over my shoulder. So close, and yet nothing, and no one, could get to me.

  I tried calling Ethan every few minutes, and checked his Ume.com page, where other people were also begging him to update. He’d last logged in the night before, posting a picture of his cleats after a particularly muddy practice. I’d look at them a million times.

  Later, at home, after a pizza arrived that no one ate, my mom and William kept leaving the room for huddled conversations of which I caught only a word here and there: “contact,” “question,” “interfering,” “necessary.” They asked if I had a number for Ethan’s parents, an address, anything. I didn’t. But even if I had, I wasn’t sure I could have called at that point. Ethan would never have made me worry. He would have gotten in touch, somehow, as soon as possible. So I knew, by then. But I didn’t want to know.

  It sounds so weird now. All of this, in retrospect, seems tear-streaked and damp. How I could sit so silently in front of a TV for hour upon hour, fingers gripping my own fingers, until that moment early the next morning when the names of the victims were released. There were four before him, and, I knew by the math, two after. I didn’t hear those, though. When I saw his name on the screen, everything went black.

  It would be days later that I’d finally piece together the whole story. Partly from a friend of the family who answered the phone at the Carusos’ when William finally got through and explained who he was. Some from the news stories that put together timelines, marking the exact spot in the gym where Ethan had come running after hearing the shots that killed two female volleyball players. He’d tried to talk the guy into putting down the gun, witnesses who looked to be in shock themselves told Patrick Williams, who went to Brownwood to report live on location. I’d sat with my mother watching Daybreak USA so many mornings, and now, suddenly, they were talking about someone I knew. Someone I loved. The picture of Ethan all the news outlets showed, provided by the family, was one I hadn’t seen, a candid from junior prom the year before. Every time it went up on-screen, I wanted to believe, somehow, it wasn’t him after all. Like if I didn’t know that Ethan, it couldn’t be mine who was gone.

  I watched everything I could, even after the major networks moved on. Nothing about the shooter, though. His name and details were of no interest to me, not deserving of a single breath I was still struggling to take. But the special reports on the victims, details true or not (“Ethan Caruso loved soccer, lacrosse, and, his friends say, Lexi Navigator”) I soaked in like water. And when they weren’t on, and I was alone, I ran over our own story, that one night, again and again in my mind. Every bit, from the minute I stepped into the damp sand until he drove away, a flash of red through those whirling revolving doors. Like if I repeated it enough, I could conjure him up, bring him back, and this would all be the bad dream I wished it was.

  I wanted to go to the service. When it was announced on the memorial page his friends had put up, I immediately made plans to make the trip, William and my mother offering to come with me. The night before we were to leave for the airport, though, I started throwing up, the sickest I had ever been. It was like my grief was toxic, turning my very body against me. After I passed out walking from the bathroom back to my bed, my mom put her foot down and told me I had to stay home. I didn’t speak to her for three days.

  They had a group memorial that was televised, a “healing event” for the community. Students held candles, teachers linked arms, everyone cried. The lacrosse coach, between his own sobs, talked about how, on that morning, he’d asked Ethan to his gym office to tell him about some interest from a college recruiter. When Lexi Navigator, in a plain black dress and minimal glitter, was introduced to sing her song about loss, a favorite of one of the victims, I held my pillow to my mouth and screamed.

  There were more details. Like how I missed a full week of school, staying in my bed and sobbing. The way Jilly came by every afternoon and crawled in beside me, her arms around my waist, holding me as I tried to sleep. The brightness of the sky outside, the filtered sunlight through the tree just past my window, the most beautiful fall, everyone agreed. It probably was. But even though I was there, and lived it, I couldn’t have said so. The dead aren’t the only ones who vanish: you, too, can disappear in plain sight if enough is taken from you. I was still missing, in many ways. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to be found.

  CHAPTER

  22

  I KNOW YOU WANT NO PART OF THIS, BUT I NEED A PUNCHBOWL.

  This was the third text I had gotten from Ambrose, and it was only nine a.m. So much for my bonus, unexpected non-working Saturday. I picked up my coffee, taking a sip, and reminded myself that Jilly and I had an entire day planned at the pool together. It wouldn’t be relaxing—nothing was with Crawford, KitKat, and Bean in tow, as they would be—but at least I’d be off the clock. If I turned off my phone.

  NOBODY LIKES PUNCH, I texted back. DO PITCHERS OF SOMETHING INSTEAD. LESS MESSY/GERMY.

  In response, he sent me a thumbs-up, the same response I’d gotten when called earlier to advise on one of those plastic aisles you roll out for everyone to proceed down (they never stay put and look awful) and the merits of mushroom appetizers versus meatballs (as one of our favorite caterers, Delia, always said: vegetarians aside, everyone loves meatballs). It was clear that in the last fourteen hours or so this impromptu, easy backyard wedding had morphed into something more complicated. And who needed that?

  Not me, I thought as I found my bathing suit and pulled it on, then tied my hair up in a ponytail. I was searching the hall closet for some sunscreen when my phone rang. I sighed, not in the mood for more questions, but then I saw it was my mother.

  “Hey,” I answered, “how’s life in the tropics?”

  “Wonderful,” she replied. I blinked, surprised, then looked at the screen again, confirming it was in fact her I was talking to. “It’s just so relaxing and gorgeous. I should have done this years ago.”

  This time, I looked at the clock. With the time difference, it was just after ten, which meant either she was still loopy from a late night before or she was already hitting the mimosas. When in Rome, I thought. “Wow,” I said. “I have to say I’m surprised, with how much you res
isted.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, batting away days of complaints and stress as easily as a circling gnat. “Classic workholeic behavior. I’m textbook, according to John.”

  Okay, she was clearly drunk. “Do you mean workaholic? And who’s John?”

  “Oh, sorry.” She laughed, the sound surprisingly . . . tinkly. Which was a word I had never associated with my mother, well, ever. “John Sheldon. He’s a former CEO and author we met on the plane. Wrote an entire book about the overworked business, corporate, obnoxious mentality all too prevalent these days. Workholes. Like assholes, but worse.”

  “Right,” I said. “So you know this guy now?”

  Another light laugh. “Well, we ended up chatting the entire flight, and then he invited us to dinner at his place. He keeps a second home here, to recharge and get away from the Nothing Olympics.”

  “What?”

  “It’s another one of his terms in his book. The competition we’re all in daily, so fiercely, to climb ahead of each other. And what’s the final prize? Nothing.”

  Now I was getting concerned. “Is William around?”

  “Sure. He’s right here. Hold on.”

  Something rubbing the phone, followed by a muffled voice, sounded in my ear. Then William came on, sounding perfectly normal. Thank goodness. “Hey, Lou. Everything okay back home?”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “How’s it going there?”

  “Oh, great,” he replied. “I mean, everyone thinks I’m a concierge. But at least the tips are good.”

  They both laughed at this. Normally, I would have, too. But I was distracted. “Mom sounds kind of crazy.”

  He laughed. “I know, right? She’s a smitten kitten. You should see her when she’s actually with this guy. It’s like the cartoons, hearts in her eyes.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Totally.” I heard my mother say something, to which he replied, “Oh, please, it’s totally true and you know it. If I didn’t love you so much I’d be jealous to the point of depression. Also, all the drinks are included.”