When It Happens (24 page)

So I write on his napkin and slide it back to him.

CHAPTER 38

room 523: the right words

february 14, 6:41 p.m.

I rented a room for us at the Short Hills Hilton. I didn’t tell Sara where we’re going. Just that she won’t be sleeping at home and she had to think up an excuse for being gone tonight. Sara told her mom she’s sleeping over at Maggie’s, and my parents think I’ll be at Mike’s. So they’re all oblivious to the fact that we’re about to spend the night together for the first time.

There’s a slight chance that Sara will hate me for this. I might have to stay at Mike’s for real. But I don’t think so.

“No peeking,” I say.

“Are we almost there?” Sara’s fidgeting in the passenger seat. Blindfolded with the only tie I own.

“We’ll be there in, like, ten minutes.”

She giggles.“Where are we going?” she says in a please-tell -me voice.

"Ten minutes,” I say, "is all the information you get.”

I park the car and grab our bags from the backseat. I go around to Sara’s side to open her door. I consider leaving her blindfold on until we get to the room, but I don’t want to draw attention to the fact that we’re still in high school. I felt ridiculous enough making the reservation. But I decide to leave the blindfold on until we get to the front door.

I hold her hand while we walk.

“Tell me if I’m about to step off a cliff or something,” Sara says.

“That’s what I’m here for.”

In front of the glittery entrance, I take off the tie.

“Oh my god,” she says.

I examine her face for signs of disgust. But all I can see is excitement.

“We’re staying in a hotel?” she says.

“Only if it’s okay with you.”

Sara smiles. “It’s okay.”

I push open the door to our room and say, “After you,
ma chérie
,” as if I own the entire hotel. “As you can see, I’m still renovating the kitchen. Excuse the mess.” I pull Sara into the room. The door swings shut behind her. “But the living room is done. I’ve expanded it to twice the original size.”

“Impressive.” Sara goes over to the windows. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” She moves the curtains apart.

I go over and stand next to her.You can see city lights for miles. Just being away seems to make Sara come alive. She told me that she feels better in a city atmosphere. More like herself. I know she’ll love being at NYU. I just hope I get to be there with her. I won’t know how my audition went for at least another month. Sara keeps saying I have to visualize the outcome, imagine getting the acceptance letter, see the exact words that tell me I’m in. Only sometimes when I try to do this, I visualize the letter saying how much I suck and how they wouldn’t take a reformed slacker like me if I were the last applicant on earth.

We order room service and watch movies until midnight. We’re both in a good mood, laughing a lot and making up alternate story lines for the characters in the movies. Sara already opened her gifts. I made her another mix CD of all the songs she likes now from us listening to them so many times. I also gave her the plastic ring I won at Skee Ball. I put it in a ring box, all serious. She loved it.

Sara gave me a scrapbook. She said it’s to document us. There’s one page covered with song lyrics. Another page has stuff from Music Theory, like Dots.Then there’s a black-and -white photo of us that someone on yearbook took. Sara wants me to do the next few pages and then give it back to her.Then we’ll keep handing it back and forth until the whole thing is done. Mike and Josh would tease me about it for the rest of my life if they ever found out. But it’s a cool idea.

After the movie we’re watching ends, there’s a shift between us. Night. Possibility.

I try to act casual. Since Dave was such an asshole about sex, I want to make sure I’m not.

We’re both lying back against the pillows. I have to tell her. It’s now or never.

I open my mouth to say it, and all of a sudden Sara pulls me on top of her. And after a while, she’s only wearing her underwear. I just wish that wasn’t the only thing in my way.

CHAPTER 39

room 523: this horrendous jealousy

february 15, 12:41 a.m.

I’m totally freaking out.

I thought we were sleeping over at Tobey’s house, like maybe his parents were going away for the weekend or something. So this hotel room is way more than I expected. And I’m freaking right now because everything was so relaxed and I felt so comfortable all snuggled up against him watching movies and then I just
had
to kiss him. And now he’s trying to take my panties off and I’ve never been that naked with a boy. But if there was ever a good time to do it, now works for me. And I was going to do it that night his dad walked in on us anyway. And of course I’m nervous, but when won’t I be?

But then Tobey pulls away from me. He moves over to his side of the bed and puts his hands over his face.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

“I just . . . I’m getting too worked up.” Tobey turns on his side to look at me. “You get me all worked up.”

“Isn’t that the point?”

“Yeah, but . . .” He holds my hand so his fingers are in between mine. “I have to tell you something. Something hard.”

“Okay.” But it’s not okay. I’m scared and nervous about what he’s going to say.

“I’m not . . . I’ve . . .”

“Tobey. Whatever it is, it’s okay. Just tell me.”

“I’ve had sex before.”

Did he just say that? He didn’t just say that. I can list at least ten different reasons why he didn’t just say that. One, he told me he’s never felt this way about anyone before. Two, we haven’t even had sex yet. Three, so it doesn’t make sense that . . .

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“Huh?”

“How is that possible?”

Tobey squints at me and shakes his head. “Is it that hard to believe someone would want to have sex with me?”

“What? No! It’s not—no! It’s because you said . . . I thought you said you’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well . . . then . . . how could you sleep with someone if you felt less than this?” I feel like I’m going to cry.

“Oh,” Tobey says. “No, it’s . . . it wasn’t like that. It didn’t mean anything.”

I never get when guys in books or movies say it didn’t mean anything when they talk about sleeping with someone. It means
everything
. What could be more personal and intimate and enormous than that?

“What do you mean it didn’t mean anything?”

“It was just sex,” Tobey says. “No emotional attachment. ”

“Then why did you do it?”

Tobey looks at me. “Come on. I’m a guy.”

“Oh, so you’re a guy so . . . you’d have sex with just anyone?”

“No. It’s different now.” He squeezes my hand. I pull my hand away. “I’m with you now. You mean everything to me.”

“How many girls did you sleep with?”

“Just one.”

“Was it just one time?”

“No.”

“Like, how many times?”

“I don’t know. I already told you I was seeing someone for a while.”

“Yeah. You just forgot to mention that you were also sleeping with her.”

This horrendous jealousy builds up inside my chest, right next to my heart. It makes it hard to breathe. I want to know who. I need to know who.

“Was it Cynthia?”

Tobey looks at the wall. “No.”

“Who was it?”

“No one you know.”

“From school?”

“Sara.”

“Was she from school?” My voice is loud, panicked at the possibilities.

“Look . . . that part of my life is over. I just wanted to be honest with you.”

Um, yeah. So now he feels better after dumping that all over me. And I get to feel hurt and jealous.

I
hate
that there was someone before me.

I move over to my side of the bed and get under the covers. I know I shouldn’t be mad and I know he did the right thing telling me this. But I still can’t believe it. I’ve always imagined what our first time together would be like for both of us. Now I have to imagine what it’s going to feel like to be with a boy who’s already had his first time. Without me.

If it wasn’t Cynthia, who was it?

That’s the thing with jealousy. It chews at your soul. And it doesn’t stop until you let it go.

“Hey,” Tobey says.

I don’t answer him. I spend the rest of the night on my side of the bed. Far away from what I eventually have to deal with.

CHAPTER 40

so much more

march 13, 5:25 p.m.

The fact that I’m in Sara’s room studying for my history midterm is astounding enough. But the fact that being with Sara still makes me want to study is incredible. Since it’s the middle of March, I’m assuming the Manhattan Music Academy people have pretty much made up their minds about me. What I do from here on out isn’t going to have much of an impact on their decision. But Sara’s making me keep my grades up anyway. And I’m fine with that, as long as I take frequent breaks.

Sara got over the whole sex scandal thing after a while. It wasn’t like there was this whole big makeup scene. She just gradually warmed up to me, opening back up a little more every day. Now we’re back to where we were before the hotel fiasco . . . but we still haven’t gone all the way.

I still feel bad about lying to her, but she doesn’t need to know it was Cynthia. Especially because Cynthia has a reputation for being easy. Sara wouldn’t understand. Plus, Cynthia asked me out last week. The girl is relentless. Sara doesn’t know this, either, and I intend to keep it that way. I’ve had to spend the past month convincing her that I don’t care if we don’t have sex. And I really am okay with it. Even though sex takes up the largest allocation of my pie-chart brain.

I take a surreptitious peek at her clock. We’ve been studying for over an hour. Time for a break.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” Sara says. She doesn’t turn around from her desk.

“We didn’t even have a snack.”

“How old are you? Five?”

“You know I always have a snack after school.”

“Well, I’m not hungry,” Sara says. “But you can get something if you want.”

“How can you not be hungry?”

“I’m just not.”

"Jeez. Well then . . . let’s take a break.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Tobey.” Sara puts her pencil down. She turns to look at me. "Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to be ready for midterms?”

“So . . . what, we can’t take breaks anymore?”

“Not after only an hour!”

"Oh. I wasn’t aware that we were following an itinerary.”

“There’s no—” Sara turns back to her pile of papers and books and notebooks and tons of other boring things. If we don’t do something fun in the next five minutes, I may snap.

“Look, let’s just go to the playground real quick. We could play with that ball-catcher thing.”

“Huh?” She shuffles some papers.

“You know. That thing on the pole where you throw the ball in it and it has those four tubes the ball comes out of? And the tubes are all different colors?”

“I think—”

"It’s the best. It’s the most exciting thing ever. There’s no way to know which tube the ball’s coming out of, and the suspense is the best part. I’m going. You have to come with me. You must come with me.” I go over to her chair and scrunch down next to her. “Please come with me?”

Sara sighs. "I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“It’s not very responsible.”

“Responsible?” Why can’t she ever be more spontaneous? It’s like we can never do anything unless it’s been penciled in her day planner for a week. She’s always studying. Like she’ll even remember this stuff by next year. But the things I want to do are experiences she can remember for the rest of her life. "Fuck that! What do you really want to do?”

“I want to ace my midterms! NYU’s going to look at these grades.”

“You’re still worried about that?” Sara is so getting into NYU. They’d be absurd not to take her. But ever since she sent in her application, she’s been stressing. She tried to apply early decision, but they didn’t get her SAT scores in time or something. Sara was devastated because she did everything she was supposed to, but someone else messed up. So now she’s paranoid other things might go wrong. As if worrying about something you have no control over helps anything.

“Okay,
that
? Is my future. It’s my first-choice college, Tobey. I think you know what that feels like.”

I get up and stand there, uncertain. Should I leave and let her work? Or should I stick around and try to smooth things out?

“You’re stressing too much. I think you’d feel better if you took a break with me. That’s all.”