have any paper in there? I have an idea.”
THE KIDS WALKING past Dave seemed to be in some other universe. They moved too quickly, they were too animated, they talked too loudly. They held on to their backpacks too tightly, checked themselves in tiny mirrors hanging on the inside of their lockers too often, acted as if everything mattered too much. Dave knew the truth: Nothing mattered. Nothing but the fact that when school was out for the day, he and Julia were going to spend the afternoon at Morro Bay.
No one had told him that March of senior year would feel like it was made of Jell-O. After he’d received his acceptance letter from UCLA, high school had morphed into something he could basically see through. When, two days later, Julia received her congratulations from UCSB, only an hour up the coastline, the whole world took on brighter notes, like the simple primary colors of Jell-O flavors. They giggled constantly.
Julia’s head appeared by his side, leaning against the locker next to his. It was strange how he could see her every day and still be surprised by how it felt to have her near. She knocked her head against the locker softly and combed her hair behind her ear. “It’s like time has ceased to advance. I swear I’ve been in Marroney’s class for a decade. I can’t believe it’s only lunch.”
“There is nothing in here I care about,” Dave announced into his locker. He reached into a crumpled heap of papers on top of a history textbook he hadn’t pulled out in weeks and grabbed a single, ripped page. “Apparently, I got a C on an art assignment last year.” He showed the drawing to Julia: a single palm tree growing out of a tiny half moon of an island in the middle of a turquoise ocean.
“Don’t show UCLA that. They’ll pull your scholarship.”
Dave crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it at a nearby garbage can. It careened off the edge and rolled back to his feet. He picked it up and shoved it back into the locker. “Any notable Marroney moments today?”
“I can’t even remember,” Julia said, moving aside to make room for Dave’s locker neighbor. “The whole day has barely registered.” She put her head on Dave’s shoulder and let out a sigh. “I think he ate a piece of chalk.”
It was pleasant torture, how casually she could touch him. Dave kept exploring the wasteland of his locker, tossing out a moldy, half-eaten bagel, occasionally unfolding a sheet of paper with mild curiosity, trying not to move too much so that Julia wouldn’t either. He made a pile of papers to throw out and a much smaller one of things to keep. So far, the small pile contained two in-class notes from Julia and a short story he’d read in AP English.
“Still on for the harbor today?”
“It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane,” Julia said, pulling away. “Come on, why are we still here? I’m starving. Marroney didn’t offer me any of his chalk.”
“I do not care about any of this,” Dave repeated. Liberated by the absence of her touch, he walked over to the trash can and dragged it toward his locker, then proceeded to shovel in the entirety of the contents except for the books. A USB memory stick was wrapped inside a candy wrapper, covered in chocolate, and he tossed that, too. A few sheets remained tucked into the corners, some ripped pieces stuck under the heavy history textbook.
But something caught his eye. One paper folded so neatly that for a second he thought it may have been a note he’d saved from his mom. She’d died when he was nine, and though he’d learned to live with that, he still treated the things she left behind like relics. But when he unfolded the sheet and realized what he was holding, a smile spread his lips. Dave’s eyes went down the list to number eight: Never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school.
He looked at Julia, recalling the day they’d made the list, suddenly flushed with warmth at the thought that nothing had come between them in four years. She was holding on to her backpack’s straps, starting to get impatient. Everything about Julia was beautiful to him, but it was the side of her face that he loved the most. The slope of her neck, the slight jut of her chin, how the blue in her eyes popped. Her ears, which were the cutest ears on the planet, or maybe the only cute ones ever crafted.
“David Nathaniel O’Flannery, why are we still here?”
“How have we been best friends for this long and you still don’t know my full name?”
“I know most of your initials. Can we go, please?”
“Look at what I just found.”
“Is it Marroney’s mole from sophomore year?”
“Our Nevers list.”
Julia turned around to face him. A couple of football players passed between them talking about a party happening on Friday. She was quiet, studying Dave with a raised eyebrow. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, O’Flannery? I could never forgive you.”
“Gutierrez. My last name is Gutierrez.”
“Don’t change the subject. Did you really find it?” She motioned for him to hand the paper over, which he did, making sure their fingers would brush. The linoleum hallways were starting to empty out, people were settling into their lunch spots. “I was actually thinking about this the other day. I even wrote my mom about it,” Julia said, reading over the list. A smile shaped her lips, which were on the thin side, though Dave couldn’t imagine wishing for them to be any different. “We did a pretty good job of sticking to this.”
“Except for that time you hooked up with Marroney,” Dave said, moving to her side and reading the list with her.
“I wish. He’s such a dreamboat.”
Dave closed his locker and they peered into classrooms they passed by, watching the teachers settle into their lunchtime rituals, doing some grading as they picked at meals packed into Tupperware. Dave and Julia wordlessly stopped in front of Mr. Marroney’s room and watched him try to balance a pencil on the end of a yardstick.
“This is your one regret from high school?”
“There’s a playful charm to him,” Julia said, in full volume, though the door was open. “I’m surprised you don’t see it.”
They stared on for a while, then made their way out toward the cafeteria. The line was at its peak, snaking all the way around the tables and reaching almost to the door. The tables inside the cafeteria and out on the blacktop had long since been claimed. “Kind of cool that we never did get a permanent lunch spot,” Dave said, gesturing with the list in hand. “I hadn’t even remembered that it was on the list. Had you?”
“No,” Julia said. “The subconscious is weird.” She reached into her bag and grabbed a Granny Smith apple, rubbing it halfheartedly on the hem of her shirt. “How do you feel about the gym today?”
He shrugged and they walked across the blacktop to the basketball gym tucked behind the soccer field. They had a handful of spots they sometimes went to,
