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