Golden (7 page)

“I
was
listening,” I say. “Your plan has something to do with ditching school, lying to our moms, and me somehow avoiding being grounded for the rest of my life, right?” It's a guess, but those are usually the core elements of her schemes. I don't need to listen to know that. Instead, I'd been thinking about Julianna and Shane, and what it must've been like to be that wrapped up in each other.

“You were not listening,” Kat says, taking a sip of her mocha and scanning for Lane. “If you were, you wouldn't have missed the part about this being the best plan I've ever come up with and you not being allowed to say no. Which means you're in by default now.”

“Fine,” I say, “whatever.” I stir the contents of my mug into a spiral of whipped cream and chai. We've never actually carried out one of her plans, anyway. It's just talk.

“Really? You're in? What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” I say. And it's true. Nothing's wrong, I just know she won't take no for an answer, so the best way to get back to my house and Julianna's journal is to go along with it. “So wait—what did I just agree to?”

A mischievous smile spreads across her face. “To ditching Senior Ditch Day next week, telling your mom you're
staying at my house for the night, and then taking a little road trip with me instead.” I nod, and she pauses before adding, “And possibly bringing Trevor Collins and Lane with us.” Now she sits back, arms crossed over her chest, beaming at the genius of her plan.

I laugh. “Sure, yeah. That'll totally work. Nothing wrong with that plan at all.”

“There's not.” She shrugs. “Just depends on you having enough guts to actually do it. We won't get caught, but if we do, what's your mom gonna do at that point? Ground you from college?”

“Where would we go on this road trip?” I ask, just for fun.

“Anywhere.” She leans forward on her elbows and grabs my hands. “That's the
point
, Parker. It'd be a couple days of freedom to get out of here and go wherever we want. Personally, I vote for the beach.”

“What beach?”

“Oh my God.
Any
beach that we could drive to. Use your imagination.” She drops my hands and sits back in her chair again. Takes a deep breath. “Come on. Say yes. You owe it to yourself and me to do this before you leave.”

“It's not much of a plan—”

“It's a wide open plan. With room for possibilities. We can figure out the rest as we go.”

I look at her, my best friend, and think of how, just like Shane with Julianna, a lot of who I am right now I owe to Kat. She's the one who pushes me out of my comfort zone when I let her, who forces me to do things I wouldn't have the guts to do when I don't, and who is always asking me her
own version of the question Mr. Kinney put on the board for Julianna and her class. The same one I'd asked myself this morning.

“Maybe,” I say finally. “But we'd have to figure out an
actual
plan first. Like with money, and a schedule, and maps.”

Kat grins triumphantly. “Which is where you come in. That's the lame but necessary stuff you're good at, so it's perfect.”

We spend the rest of the afternoon holed up in Kat's bedroom, planning our last-ditch senior trip, which I still don't really see us taking. I search every beach we can make it to and back from in two days. She looks through magazines and picks out scandalous clothes and tiny bikinis for us to bring. I compare motel prices at every one of the beaches I find, and she plans how we'll get the boys to come along, and where we can all get fake IDs. By the time I get home, our plan has us leaving the day the rest of the senior class ditches to go float the river south of town and driving up the coast to San Francisco for a night out before we come back home the next day and my mom has not the slightest clue that I was out of town. Seizing the day. Sure.

When I walk through my door and stomp the snow off my boots, the same quiet from before greets me. It's past five, when she said she'd be home, but Mom is still gone at her shop, or maybe having a drink with Lucy, who's her grown-up version of Kat, and who's going through a nasty divorce for the third time around. I turn up the thermostat, slide out of my coat, and think maybe Kat was right. Maybe
my mom wouldn't notice at all if I left for a day, or even two. Except the scholarship reception is so close I know she'll be in hyper-preparation mode, which would be the biggest problem to get around. I'd have to have my speech written, practiced, and in the bag for her to even consider letting me stay at Kat's the weekend before.

In the kitchen the roast in the Crock-Pot looks overdone and unappetizing, so I settle on my second bowl of cereal today, this one eaten standing in the kitchen. I eat fast, because I don't have any time to waste. I need to get started tonight, for sure. No more putting it off. I repeat this to myself all the way up the stairs to my room. But once I change, and light my candles, and settle in, it's not with my own words.

May 23

Shane and I skipped seventh period today and drove out of town, down to the creek where we could tangle ourselves together under the sun and sky and forget the rest of the world existed. “I miss you,” he whispered into my neck. I watched the aspen leaves dance above me in the breeze that kissed as much of my bare skin as he did, and then I closed my eyes and answered back without any words. After, we lay there for a long time, watching the clouds drift by, listening to the sound of the trees, and feeling the freedom of being just us together.

I've missed him too. Lately it seems like I've been fighting the pull of everyone else for him. His friends, who have this sudden renewed need to hang out every weekend at the same parties we've been going to since freshman year. He can't tell them no, so we go, but a night spent watching them play quarters isn't really time together. Then there's baseball, which he loves, and watching him play is fine, but I don't count it as being together either.

The biggest pull is his family though. They're a whole other journal entry on their own. It's a given that being a Cruz comes with a lot of expectations, but being the girlfriend of one seems to have just as many. I love them dearly, and I know how important they are to him. And they already treat me like I'm one of them, like it's settled that we'll be together, which is amazing and so sweet. Being with Shane and becoming a part of his family are probably the most perfect things I could ask for. But sometimes I wish he was just any guy instead of next in line for the whole mountain empire. He'd have more freedom in life that way. We'd have more freedom.

I've never asked, but I wonder—if he actually had a choice between going straight into what they've got planned for him and doing something completely different, which would he choose? It doesn't matter, I guess. He'd be crazy not to choose the life that's right in front of him. Just like I would be.

Today, under the trees and a sky we watched turn from blue to gold, we chose each other over everything else, and that's what really matters. We followed the trail past the Grove, where everyone carves their initials into the thin bark on the aspens, and hopped across the rocks in the creek to our own secret clearing where Shane carved ours when we were freshmen, holding hands and stumbling through the trees together.

It was the day he first told me he loved me, and I was so surprised I couldn't say anything back in that moment. Then when I finally pulled him in close and whispered that I loved him too, he smiled and said, “I know that.” And he showed me the tree he'd already carved our initials into. It sounds silly, but I remember thinking how they'd always be there, no matter what. How, even long after we're both gone, there will be some little memory that we were once there, just the two of us, and that we were happy.

I shut the journal and try to picture them as freshmen, laughing and weaving their way through the aspens to the tree Shane had carved their initials into. Saying I love you for the first time. And then, four years later, still going back to that same place together when they needed to get away from everything else. I wonder where the spot was. Is. If maybe their tree is still there, near the Grove, but separate from the rest of the marked-up trees. I've been there a few
times, passed them all and thought how the random names and the graffiti-like carvings looked crude and ugly on the trees. For some reason, though, it seems to me that Shane and Julianna's names would be more like a memorial. More like a beautiful scar.

I wonder if, after all these years, it might still be there.

“A Serious Step Lightly Taken”

—1942

It's early and the hall is mostly empty. Julianna's journal is safe in my backpack, my place now marked with my folded-up scholarship letter. The irony of having the journal of the girl the scholarship is named for hasn't escaped me, and I'm starting to think maybe it's fated somehow, that I have both. I shove my shaky hands in my pockets. Take a deep breath to ready myself for what I'm about to do. Then I walk into Mr. Kinney's classroom, as casually as I can.

He looks up from a stack of essays and nods at me. “Morning, Parker. I didn't get a chance to ask the other day—how'd you do with the journals?”

“Huh? Oh. Fine,” I manage. “But, um . . .” I hesitate, scared.
But now is my chance if I'm going to do it. “I think . . . I think I may need to go to the database at the town library to find some of the addresses. There were a lot I couldn't find, and the school blocks so many sites . . .” I stop. It sounds less believable out loud than it did in my mind. Mr. Kinney is frowning down at an essay, red pen poised to scribble something in the margin. Apparently only half listening.

It gives me courage. I clear my throat. “Mr. Kinney?”

“I'm sorry, Parker,” he says, looking up. “These freshman essays are a sad, sad lot for this point in the year. It's like they've forgotten everything I taught them.” He puts his pen down and takes his glasses off. Looks at me with his full attention. “Anyway. What was your question?”

My words come out fast, smashed together in one nervous rush. “Oh—just that I need an off-campus pass for this period, and maybe next, so I can go through the city database for the journal addresses.”

It's quiet for a few seconds, and I'm not sure he understood what I just said. He scrunches his brows together. I panic.
Oh my God. He knows. He knows I just lied and now I'm going to be in huge trouble and disappoint the teacher I respect most out of everyone, not to mention be reamed by my mom for trying to get away with something like this.

“Sure,” he says after too long a moment. “Why don't I write it for the rest of the week, just in case? That way you can take care of the postage and sending them off, too.”

“Really?”
Shut up now
.
Don't sound so surprised.
“I mean, thank you. That's . . . that's perfect.”