First There Was Forever by Juliana Romano Page B

Hailey said irritably. “But you’re a big girl. Figure it out. You’ll be fine.”
    And then she just started walking away, not even acknowledging Meredith. I jumped up after her and touched her shoulder. She turned to face me. I felt suddenly enraged. What happened to all that closeness we had felt the other night?
    “Are you okay?” I asked. My heart was pounding.
    “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’m being weird. I’m just beyond
tired. I’m on, like, another planet of exhaustion.”
    I tried to look in her eyes but all I could see was my own insect-like reflection in her big black glasses.
    I wanted to say something, to tell her it wasn’t fair that she kept turning our friendship on and off like a light switch. But I couldn’t find the words.
    “Lima,” Meredith called from behind me. “Are you going to finish this?”
    I turned to Meredith, who was holding up my half-eaten apple.
    “No, you can have it,” I said. I looked back at Hailey, who was looking at her phone. I felt the moment dissolve away.
    • • •
    Clean the Bay was different without Hailey. For one thing, I got to sit in the front and talk to Leo on the way there. He told me what it was like to get around in LA on buses and bikes. It sounded like a ton of work to me, but I was impressed. I thought about how much Dad would like Leo. Dad secretly wished he was the kind of guy who rode bikes and boycotted cars instead of a lawyer who watched football and drove a Lexus.
    It was cold on the beach that day. And there wasn’t very much trash. Maybe another group had come before us. I found myself sort of meandering, waiting for the hour to pass. I wove in and around the pillars under the pier. Years of ocean water splashing against them had transformed the wood into a black, sooty material. I wondered how long the pier had been there. It had probably been a real pier for fishermen before it got turned into an amusement park for tourists. I was so busy imagining this history that as I rounded the final pillar, I practically walked right into Nate.
    “Whoops, sorry,” I said quickly.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “Have you found any trash?”
    “Not really.”
    He stood there for a second looking like there was something he wanted to say.
    “I’m sorry about the other day,” I said before he got the chance.
    He didn’t look surprised. “It’s fine.”
    “It is?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    Nate started walking toward the water, and I followed.
    “Why’d you sign up for Clean the Bay?” I asked after a while.
    “Lizzie did it,” he replied simply.
    I thought it was cute that he called his older sister Lizzie. I had only ever known her as Liz.
    “Do you miss her now that she’s at college?” I felt a little shy asking him more questions, but I was gripped with curiosity. I wanted to know everything about him.
    He snorted. “No. She’s fucking nuts.”
    And then he broke into a run and dove into the sand and grabbed the only piece of trash either of us had seen all day. It was a tiny silvery gum wrapper, and he waved it over his head, victorious. “Finally! Trash!”
    We both laughed.
    Even though he had said he didn’t miss his sister, something about the way he said no made it clear he was lying. I knew he missed her a lot. It was like I was starting to figure him out. He was made up of a million noes that were actually yeses.
    On the bus ride back to school there was traffic, so I read from
Great Expectations
, and Nate sat next to me with his headphones on. The air between us was soft.
    Back at school, Mom was waiting for me. I descended the bus and headed in her direction, not saying good-bye to Nate. But before I had walked away, he reached out and flicked my shoulder. I turned and looked at him, and his eyes were full of a message I couldn’t quite decipher. Something mischievous.
    In the car, Mom said, “Who was that boy?”
    I groaned. “What boy?”
    “That boy who just said good-bye to