I call her name a second time, more loudly than before, they’ve reached the end of the driveway, the two metal gates that cars can’t slip through after a certain hour, but bodies easily can. “Never mind,” I add without waiting. “Have a good night.” Only then does Aubrey turn and give me a halfhearted wave.
“Oh, hey, sorry! I didn’t see you there,” she lies. “We’re studying for Stout’s test if you want to come.”
My heart does this little flip at the possibility, but my brain knows better. She’s being polite. There’s no way she wants me to join. Even if she does, the other two girls don’t. They make it clear, Niccole leaning in to say something, then throwing her head back in an exaggerated laugh, and Meghan tugging at her arm.
I cut my eyes up to the blue sky, the white puff clouds drifting by. No need to go where I’m not wanted. Besides, Max will be here any minute. So how come tears spring to my eyes?
“Thanks!” I call. “But I’m good.”
At that, Niccole laughs a second time, and Aubrey slaps her arm, and then they’re in motion again, the occasional burst of laughter drifting back like a knife in my direction.
I lie back on the wall, and stare up at the clouds. When we were in middle school, Aubrey and I once spent a week trying to grasp all the things we didn’t understand about the world. Like why the sky is blue, or clouds are white when water is clear, or how sound can travel through telephone wires, or be wrangled and contained when there are no wires at all? Or how the ocean stays in the places it stays instead of all that water spilling over the edge? We knew the answers would be things like the scattering of molecules, or because gravity holds it there, but we really wanted to understand how.
But, after days of trying, I still found the answers impossible to comprehend. Each explanation only led to more questions of why or how. Like, the sky is blue because when sunlight reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, its light is scattered in all directions by the gases and particles in the air. And blue light is scattered more than other colors because it travels in shorter and smaller waves. But why are those waves shorter, and why does that make it so those are the waves we see?
It all seemed random to me—to us—and ridiculously hard to hold on to, and for the next few days after that, I felt sad and depressed, until Aubrey decided our next mission was to learn all of the movies that were made into TV shows and I forgot about the more obtuse questions altogether.
I sit up and glance at my phone. Max should have been back twenty minutes ago. I hoist my backpack onto my lap, and rummage for the folder with the US History study packet, my mind wandering to Max, to the money, to my mother. To my father’s text message that appeared like kismet a few days ago:
Idea: How about you visit this summer when school is out?
Last chance. I’m home for good in September.
How could a month on the beach in Malibu possibly be bad? Think about it!
I stared at his words, my thoughts racing. I could make this work. Tell a few lies. Say I’m flying in, but travel with Max instead, have him drop me off at LAX when we get there.
Yes. Maybe. Good idea! I wrote back, my heart thrumming with excitement. After all, this was a sign, right? This would make everything possible.
So how come I still hadn’t mentioned it to Max?
I slip the packet from the folder. We have a unit test tomorrow, and I’m seriously behind. I turn to the first page, called “The Road to World War One,” to the cartoon of Theodore Roosevelt with his walrus mustache and round glasses, and the caption Big Stick Diplomacy underneath. But already my mind is back on Max, what it might feel like to have a whole bunch of days alone with him. Just the two of us, on the back of his bike, headed to California. No more Mom and her craziness; no more Nana and her forced cheerfulness; no more Aubrey pretending to give a crap.
Max and me, alone. Two people in love doing whatever we want to.
I put the folder down and lie back again, my mind drifting away from the hard, confusing things