Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid Page 0,43

let you kids get to studying,” he said, and Dave’s head

almost exploded when his dad winked at him slyly before turning away.

They took the stairs up to Dave’s room. When he pushed open the

door, he wished he’d spent those fifteen minutes tidying up instead of

wondering whether or not to shower. Gretchen plopped her backpack

down by Dave’s desk, which was set against the wall by the door and

mostly bare, save for his laptop and about six or seven pairs of tangled earphones. His bed was unmade, thanks to his dad’s very lax policy on

142 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

bed making. His laundry was mostly contained to the hamper in the

corner, though a few shirts and socks hung on the edge like prisoners

making a break for it.

“Sorry for the mess,” Dave said, brushing the nest of headphones

into his drawer, instead of into the trash can, like he should have done months ago.

“My room’s worse.” Gretchen looked around, her hands on her hips.

“You don’t do the whole hot babe and sports posters on your wall,” she

said. “That’s refreshing.”

One wall was blank, painted the same dull green it had been since

Dave was a kid. Another two walls were technically blank, too, but one

had the window that faced out at the big, pretty jacaranda tree in their yard, and the other was mounted with Dave’s TV, so they didn’t feel

blank. The fourth wall had a whiteboard hanging above his desk, and it

wasn’t until now that Dave remembered he’d written a little better than you found it on his whiteboard after their date at the harbor. Gretchen sat herself on the edge of Dave’s bed, her hands clasped between her

thighs, staring at the board.

Dave wanted to smack himself for not erasing it. New to this whole

pursuing-girls thing, he had no idea how to play it cool. He did know

that writing a girl’s life motto down on your whiteboard after only one

date was not playing it cool. On the spectrum of coolness, it was way

too close to building a shrine in her honor, which was way too close

to collecting a bag of her hair. How had Dave so quickly turned into

a hair collector?

DAVE 143

“That’s really cute,” Gretchen said, then she lay back on Dave’s bed,

her hair and arms sprawled out beside her. Dave let out a sigh of relief.

“I have a confession. I have very little interest in studying AP Chem

tonight.”

Was it weird to burp out of excitement? That was his first instinct,

but he managed to suppress the burp, thankfully. Add that one to life’s

long list of mysteries. “You don’t?”

“No. I’ve had very little interest in doing any studying at all, actually.”

“Ah, you have it, too. Senioritis.”

“Guilty,” Gretchen said. She sat up, and Dave caught a flash of

cleavage that he felt simultaneously guilty and blessed for having seen.

“I have an idea.”

“Is it a prank?”

“Not this time.” She propped herself up on his bed, her elbows

locked, the plunging V-neck T-shirt making it impossible to not at

least glance in her direction. “Could we maybe watch a movie instead?

Will your academic life survive if we do that? I want to watch a movie

with you, but I don’t want to be responsible for your downfall.”

“You know,” Dave said, getting up from his desk chair, “since it

seems like tonight’s one of those nights where I can’t stop certain

things from spilling out of my mouth”—he walked around to the far

side of the bed, grabbing his remote off the nightstand, not entirely

believing that he was allowing himself to say what he was saying,

that he even had the ability to speak like this—“I don’t think I’d

mind if you were my downfall. Not one bit. A movie with you sounds perfect.”

144 NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

Gretchen smiled and kicked her shoes off and adjusted one of

Dave’s pillows so she could lie back comfortably. Dave had had

daydreams a lot like this. Since when did real life act this way? “You

get to choose the movie,” Gretchen said, “but it has to fall within one

of two categories: cute, or ridiculously bad.”

“You don’t happen to know of any that fall in the ‘both’ category,

do you?”

“Too many, actually.”

They chose a B-list horror movie about sharks in the woods and

turned off the lights. Gretchen’s foot laid against his before the opening credits had even finished.

“Who do you think is going to die first?” Dave asked, leaning just a

little bit in her direction.

“The smartest character,” Gretchen said with no hesitation.

“Really? Why?”

“You can’t have smart people lingering around for too long in horror

movies. Otherwise they come up with solutions and not enough

people die.”

“Good point,” Dave said. The movie’s