Page 10 of I Would Stay Forever
This was the first time in my life I was looking forward to school starting again and it was all because of this. If I had reasons to be out of the house—which I was short on for all of August, what with no friends to see—then this panic couldn’t take me over. I needed out. Out of my house, and once that diploma was in my hand, out of this cursed town.
six
Parkhurst Prep had never feltas big as it did on the first day of school that year, and I was grateful for it. The school, with its stone walls, iron-wrought gates, and gorgeous marble stairs felt like the kind of place I could get lost in. A place where I wouldn’t feel like I was sticking out or being stared at. I was just one of the many girls in a navy blue uniform, completely ordinary andnotfeeling like her life was crumbling around her.
I weaved my way through crowds of other students, all of them yelling out each other’s names and asking about how their summers went. On any normal first day, I would have been doing the same, but right now, there wasn’t anyone I wanted to see aside from Zoey.
I hadn’t seen her since that night. That fateful night, that felt like both eons ago and like it was yesterday. I never did explain exactly what happened in the alley. For the couple of days after, I told her I was sick and wouldn’t be able to see her before her trip to see her grandparents. While she was gone, we texted, but not as much as usual. When she eventually asked why I was constantly missing, I broke down and told her the short version—that my parents had a bad fight and my dad moved out. After that, she stopped prying, just like I knew she would. Maybe shedeserved to know more, but I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to utter the words.
“Lavender!”
I froze at the sound of my name, mumbling an apology to the guy who ran straight into my back. I barely had time to step out of his way before Zoey appeared out of thin air and threw her arms around me. We were standing in the middle of the hallway, so I heard a few people grumble as they had to swerve past us, but I ignored them as I hugged my best friend back.
“How have you been?” Zoey asked breathlessly. She leaned back and grabbed my face in her hands, turning it one way and then the other like she was inspecting me. “You look good. Have you been good?”
I’d gotten up early this morning to do my makeup and hair. It was a tradition for me to look as good as possible on the first day of school, before oversleeping and showing up in a rumpled uniform became my norm within a few weeks, but it was especially important to me this year, because I didn’t want anyone to question how I was. I wasn’t sure how many people knew about my parents’ divorce, and I imagined even less knew about the reason behind it, but it was easy for something to spread like gossip across the school, and I refused to look weak if it did.
I must have been doing well at giving off that look because Zoey’s compliment sounded genuine. That also told me that I must have really undersold how bad the divorce had been, because she didn’t seem concerned about me. Zoey’s parents got divorced a few years back and it had happened so seamlessly—her parents sat her down to say their marriage wasn’t working, her dad got a new house in the same neighborhood, and she had the choice of the custody schedule—that she probably figured that aside from the major fight, it was the same for me too. I hadn’t done anything to make her think that wasn’t the case,including not telling her that I hadn’t heard from my dad since that night. I knew it would come up eventually, but I guess a piece of me was hoping to delay the inevitable.
“I’m great,” I promised her. Her eyes were bright and a huge smile was crossing her face. It didn’t take a genius to see that she’d had a good summer, and even if I wanted to tell her about everything going on, I wouldn’t ruin her good mood by telling her right now. “How have you been? How was the beach? Tell me everything.”
“It. Was. Amazing.” She grabbed my hand and started tugging me down the hall toward the guidance office where we had to pick up our schedules for the semester. “Did I tell you about that boy who lived down the beach from them year-round? Well…”
She started telling me all about him, in a way that made it clear she was totally over Sam from Crofton—and thank goodness for that, because it gave us one less reason to go to Gold Plate Diner. I would still need to come up with a convincing reason for why we couldn’t go back—I was thinking food poisoning, which went along with why I was throwing up in the alley that night—but at least I wouldn’t be pulling her away from getting to see her current crush.
“So, are you going to see him again?” I asked Zoey as we turned the corner into the office hallway.
“I hope so.” Zoey sighed. “The beach is just so far away, you know? And I…”
She was still talking, but her voice faded out like background noise as I looked down the hallway and sawhim.
Just like with Zoey, I hadn’t seen Dean Graham in over a month. But unlike her, it wasn’t because he was out of town.
We’d spent three nights at the Graham’s before going back home and finding Dad gone. When I left, I promised myself that I would not be speaking to Dean Graham again. I couldn’t bringmyself to face him, not with everything he knew. And besides, there was no reason for us to continue talking. We hadn’t been friends before that night, and there was no reason for us to be friends after. He was just Sebastian’s best friend who had happened to see me at the lowest point of my life. It didn’t have to mean anything, right?
Dean was leaning against a locker and surrounded by a group of guys I recognized but didn’t know, probably some of the other guys on the football team. I knew I should have kept my eyes forward and tried to focus on Zoey’s story, but as we walked by, I couldn’t help but study him. His messy brown hair that he’d pushed out of his face. The tight blazer that was hugging his muscles so perfectly. The serious look in his eyes as his gaze locked with mine.
Seeing him now transported me back to that night in the alley, and the sadness on his face as he told me what my father had done. As he apologized as if it was somehow all his fault. In the weeks since, I’d laid awake at night thinking about him more often than I had any right to. It seemed like he was the only person who worried about how I felt. Maybe it was because everyone thought the divorce was my fault or maybe it was because they were all too busy drowning in their own grief of the situation, but nobody else in my family had checked to see if I was all right in the aftermath.
But Dean—he was there. He had cared. And even though he was Sebastian’s friend, not mine, I found myself wishing I could talk to him right now.
But then Zoey tugged me into the guidance office and I lost sight of him. I felt like I’d just been forcibly pulled out of a dream and I blinked a few times, trying to remember where I was.
“Imagine if we have all the same classes,” Zoey said as we came to a stop at the end of the short line. “Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
“Perfect,” I echoed.
The line moved up and we shuffled forward, stepping deeper into the reception area of the guidance office. It was a small wing in the corner of the basement floor of the school that was clearly designed to try not to be depressing despite the lack of large windows. The walls were covered in motivational posters with quotes like “You will never fail unless you stop trying” and “Mistakes help you grow,” which I supposed might be helpful in theory, but instead made me feel like guidance counselors thought we were all doomed to fail over and over again throughout our high school careers. The reception area was dominated by a white desk and a bookshelf of pamphlets for local universities, and there were wooden doors branching off to various offices. Despite the “open-door policy” the school promoted, every single door was closed. I guess it was more metaphorical.
“Next!” the receptionist called. The boy in front of us stepped out of the way. He looked like a terrified freshman, clinging on to his backpack strap with one fist and his schedule with the other. It was hard for me to believe that it was one three years ago, that I’d been in the same position as him, starting at a new school and terrified for my life. And now, I was only a year away from going through it all again, only at a university instead of a high school. I wasn’t sure if the thought made me excited or scared. Maybe both.
“What’s your name, dear?” the receptionist asked me as we walked up to the desk. Even though she was sitting on an office chair at a regular height desk, the wall of the desk reached up to about my chest, making me feel like I was leaning over the wall of a cubicle to see her.
“Lavender Novak,” I said. I saw the usual flash of surprise on her face as she heard my British accent, but then she quicklyturned her attention to a folder in front of her, mumblingNovakunder her breath.
As she looked, Zoey nudged me and tilted her head toward the university pamphlets on the shelf.
“Got your eye on any?” she asked.
