Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid Page 0,31

hear Julia and Brett breathing heavily beside

him. While Brett made a run to a nearby deli for a huge thermos

of coffee and a box of bagels, Julia and Dave added the finishing

touches: applying a coat of varnish on the outside, sanding away

the rough edges on the counter that faced out at the entire school,

arranging an armory of pillows purchased at a Goodwill store and

sprayed with disinfectant before being spread around the tree house

floor. Everything was now ready for seniors in their last two languid

months of school before freedom.

They broke it in together, spilling grains of sugar and drops

of creamy coffee over their work and talking giddily, despite the

accumulated exhaustion. Dave and Julia were an hour or so away

from having to sit through class, but there was a sense that they’d

done something lasting and meaningful.

“Hold this pen with me,” Julia said, pulling out the Nevers list

from her back pocket.

DAVE 105

“Have you seriously been carrying that with you every day?”

“Shut up and hold this pen,” she said. He wrapped his fingers

around the pen and then Julia’s hand covered his own. She moved the

pen across the page. “There. We have a lunch spot now.”

Brett swallowed down a bite of bagel. “Shit, I wish I would have

gotten that on tape. That would have been perfect.” He wiped some

cream cheese from the corner of his mouth and went to get the

camera. “Say it again.”

Julia laughed and shook her head, folding the list away as if it were

a treasure map. “Too late, man. It’s done.”

Brett folded up his camera, then turned on his stool to admire the

work. “Not too shabby.”

They joined him, identical threefold smiles on their faces. “Thanks

for doing this, Brett. This was really cool of you.”

Brett nodded, took a sip from his coffee. After a moment or two,

he stood up, folding his gloves into his back pocket. “It was fun

hanging out with you guys,” he said, and he extended his hand for

Dave to shake, which he did. It struck him that Brett might have been

one more person he’d mistakenly assumed he knew all about. He

wondered how much he missed their mom, whether he, too, wished

his dad were better at bringing her up. “Thanks,” he said, the word

suddenly inadequate for what he was feeling.

Brett nodded, then offered his hand to Julia, who looked at it and

chuckled. “A handshake? Please.” She put her coffee down on the

counter and rose to give Brett a hug. “I underestimated how cool you

are.”

106 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

“I think I did, too,” Brett said, pulling away from the hug somewhat

awkwardly.

“But I still don’t think you know what ‘artsy’ means.”

“Fine. I’ll call you a pyromaniac from now on.” He smiled, then

disappeared down the staircase.

A few minutes after Brett’s pickup had pulled away from the

blacktop, the first of the teachers started showing up, their classroom

windows sliding open, their silhouetted heads looking down at their

desks, most of them not even looking outside. “How many more

Nevers to go?” Dave asked.

“I’m not counting Marroney or prom king yet, so three down,

seven to go.”

Dave drank from his coffee, thought about the last Never. At the

start of it all, he probably wouldn’t have said anything. But now that

he was liberated from certain things, his curiosity got the best of him.

“What about the last one? We’re not going to date each other, are

we?”

Julia smirked, looping a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’d actually

thought about that already.” She spun around on the stool she’d

taken, one of the dozen that lined the edge of the tree house. The sun

was getting to ready to peek out from behind the hills, though the

morning fog would probably make for an unimpressive sunrise. “We

were always gonna go to prom together, right? We can just call that a

date. Our one and only date.”

“Okay,” Dave said simply, finding a sort of comfort in the words

being spoken out loud.

DAVE 107

By lunchtime, Brett had sent the video through his system of friends,

many of them still closely linked to current SLO High students.

Everyone knew who was responsible for the tree house that had

sprung up magically over the weekend, and when Dave walked into

the courtyard, the assembled seniors broke into applause. Julia had

gone to nap in the library, but she insisted that Dave continue his

ploy to get in with the popular crowd for the sake of his campaign. He

might have shied away from going alone if he hadn’t seen Gretchen

climb the stairs he’d helped build.

“Dave!” Vince Staffert called to him from the corner of the tree

house. “I saved a spot for you, man.” He stood and waved him over,

a bag of