want to go?”
Again, I think there has to be a right answer to this question, and that if I get it wrong, I will ruin everything. He wants something from me, but I’m not sure what.
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
He takes his hand off my arm and I think, okay, wrong answer. But then he takes my hand.
“Come on,” he says.
There’s an electricity in his eyes. Power. Light.
He closes the locker and pulls me forward. I don’t understand. We’re walking hand in hand through the almost-empty halls. We never do this. He gets this grin on his face and we go faster. It’s like we’re little kids at recess. Running, actually running down the halls. People look at us like we’re insane. It’s so ridiculous. He swings us by my locker and tells me to leave my books here, too. I don’t understand, but I go along with it – he’s in a great mood, and I don’t want to do anything that will break it.
Once my locker’s closed, we keep going. Right out the door. Simple as that. Escape. We’re always talking about how we want to leave, and this time we’re doing it. I figure he’ll take me out for pizza or something. Maybe be late to fifth period. We get to his car and I don’t even want to ask him what we’re doing. I just want to let him do it.
He turns and asks, “Where do you want to go? Tell me, truly, where you’d love to go.”
Strange. He’s asking me as if I’m the one who knows the right answer.
I really hope this isn’t a trick. I really hope I won’t regret this.
I say the first thing that comes to my mind.
“I want to go to the ocean. I want you to take me to the ocean.”
I figure he’ll laugh and say what he really meant was that we should go to his house while his parents are gone and spend the afternoon having sex and watching TV. Or that he’s trying to prove a point about not making plans, to prove that I like being spontaneous better. Or he’ll tell me to go have fun at the ocean while he gets lunch. All of these are possibilities, and they all play at the same time in my head.
The only thing I’m not expecting is for him to assume it’s a good idea.
“Okay,” he says, pulling out of the parking lot. I still think he’s joking, but then he’s asking me the best way to get there. I tell him which highways we should take – there’s a beach my family used to go to a lot in summer, and if we’re going to the ocean, we might as well go there.
As he steers, I can tell he’s enjoying himself. It should put me at ease, but it’s making me nervous. It would be just like Justin to take me somewhere really special in order to dump me. Make a big production of it. Maybe leave me stranded there. I don’t actually think this is going to happen – but it’s possible. As a way of proving to me that he’s able to make plans. As a way of showing he’s not as afraid of the future as I said he was.
You’re being crazy, Rhiannon, I tell myself. It’s something he says to me all the time. A lot of the time, he’s right.
Just enjoy it, I think. Because we’re not in school. We’re together.
He turns on the radio and tells me to take over. What? My car, my radio – how many times have I heard him say that? But it seems like his offer is real, so I slip from station to station, trying to find something he’ll be into. When I pause too long on a song I like, he says, “Why not that one?” And I’m thinking, Because you hate it. But I don’t say that out loud. I let the song play. I wait for him to make a joke about it, say the singer sounds like she’s having her period.
Instead, he starts to sing along.
Disbelief. Justin never sings along. He will yell at the radio. He will talk back to whatever the talk radio people are saying. Every now and then he might beat along on his steering wheel. But he does not sing.
I wonder if he’s on drugs. But I’ve seen him on drugs before, and it’s never been like this.
“What’s gotten into you?” I ask.
“Music,” he says.
“Ha.”
“No, really.”
He’s not joking. He’s not laughing at me somewhere inside. I am looking at him and I can see that. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s not that.
I decide to see how far I can push it. Because that’s what a needy girl does.
“In that case . . .” I say. I flip stations until I find the least Justin song possible.
And there it is. Kelly Clarkson. Singing how what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
I turn it up. In my head, I dare him to sing along.
Surprise.
We are belting it out. I have no idea how he knows the words. But I don’t question it. I am singing with everything I’ve got, never knowing I could love this song as much as I do right now, because it is making everything okay – it is making us okay. I refuse to think about anything other than that. I want us to stay inside the song. Because this is something we’ve never done before and it feels great.
When it’s done, I roll down my window – I want to feel the wind in my hair. Without a word, Justin rolls down all the other windows, and it’s like we’re in a wind tunnel, like this is a ride in an amusement park when really it’s just a car driving down the highway. He looks so happy. It makes me realize how rare it is for me to see him happy, the kind of happy where there isn’t anything else on his mind besides the happiness. He’s usually so afraid to show it, as if it might be stolen away at any moment.
He takes my hand and starts to ask me questions. Personal questions.
He starts with, “How are your parents doing?”
“Um . . . I don’t know,” I say. He’s never really cared about my parents before. I know he wants them to like him, but because he’s not sure they will, he pretends it doesn’t matter. “I mean, you know. Mom is trying to hold it all together without actually doing anything. My dad has his moments, but he’s not exactly the most fun person to be around. The older he gets, the less he seems to give a damn about anything.”
“And what’s it like with Liza at college?”
When he asks this question, it’s as if he’s proud that he’s remembered my sister’s name. That sounds more like Justin.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “You know we were more like sisters living under a truce than best friends. I don’t know if I miss her that much, although it was easier having her around, because then there were two of us, you know? She never calls home. Even when my mom calls her, she doesn’t call back. I don’t blame her for that – I’m sure she has better things to do. And really, I always knew that once she left, she’d be gone. So I’m not shocked or anything.”
I realize as I’m talking that I’m getting close to the nerve, talking about what happens when high school
