ten

“It’s gonna be so much fun,” Danielle said as we approached my locker on Friday after school. “Morris said he’s having Jefferson seniors only. Totally exclusive.”

“Cool,” I said, starting on my lock. “Can’t wait.”

The truth was, I couldn’t focus that much on tomorrow night’s party. In about ten minutes Danielle and I would both be on the bus to Crestwood High for the county tournament, which would determine our ranking for the state championships. Melanie would be there, too—and even though I probably wouldn’t be playing her, I had to get myself psyched up. The girl couldn’t resist trash-talking every time she saw me. All I wanted was to have some comebacks ready and to win a higher seed than she did.

“You’re going, right?” Danielle said, flicking something from underneath one of her long fingernails. “I mean, you’re not going to let this whole Zach thing keep you from partying. It is your senior year.”

“No. I’ll be there,” I replied, grabbing my tennis bag out of my locker. “I promise.”

By tomorrow night this round-robin tournament would be over and I would be more than ready to kick back.

“Hey, Noelle!”

We both looked up to see Trent loping down the hall toward us. His blond hair was a bit tamer than usual, and he’d also added a couple new colors to his rubber bracelet collection.

“Hi, Danielle,” he said, just before laying a quick kiss on my lips. A quick kiss that, nevertheless, tossed all thoughts of Melanie and tennis right out of my head. “Just wanted to wish you luck.”

“Thanks,” I told him, giving him a little squeeze.

Trent leaned back against the locker next to mine and fished a piece of gum out of one of the many pockets in his cargo pants. “So, what were you ladies talking about? Tennis strategy?”

“Please. We don’t need strategy,” Danielle said with mock cockiness, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “We will beat all comers, for we are the mighty Jefferson High Patriots.”

“I like your attitude,” Trent replied as he popped the gum into his mouth.

I laughed. “Actually, we were talking about this party that Morris Robinson is throwing tomorrow night,” I said. “Hey! Do you want to come with?”

It wasn’t as if I was actually nervous about attending a party that Zach would be at, but how cool would it be to walk in there with my brand-new almost-boyfriend?

“Noelle, I told you. It’s seniors only,” Danielle said pointedly. Then she smiled at Trent. “No offense.”

“None taken. You guys were juniors a few months ago, too, you know.” He blew a bubble. “Anyway, we can’t go, Noelle. We already have other plans.”

I blinked as I slammed my locker. “We do?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow night’s the rally at the college, remember?”

My heart completely dropped. How had I spaced on the rally? It was pretty much the only thing Trent talked about.

“What? Noelle, you cannot miss this party,” Danielle began.

I bit my lip and looked from Trent to Danielle and back again. Trent and an environmental rally or Danielle and one serious party. I knew which way I was naturally leaning—toward Danielle and enjoying the end-of-the-year festivities. But I had told Trent I would go with him, like, two weeks ago.

“Come on, Noelle. You can go to a party anytime,” Trent said, taking my hands and giving me a cute little pout. “This is for a good cause.”

Did he really have to look at me, all pleading eyes, like that?

“So’s the party!” Danielle yelled.

Trent slipped an arm around my shoulders and faced Danielle. It was as if he already knew I was going to cave. “Really? What cause is that?” he asked.

“The Noelle Deserves to Have Some Fun Foundation,” Danielle announced, her expression defiant.

“The rally will be fun!” Trent countered. “They’re having this guitar trio all the way from Milwaukee.”

“Oh, well, then, I submit,” Danielle said sarcastically. “I mean…Milwaukee. We all know that’s the epicenter of fresh music.”

I laughed and took a deep breath. “Danielle, I’m sorry, but I told Trent I’d do this with him a while ago.”

“Come on! You’ve gotta be kidding me! This is a seniors-only party! Everyone’s gonna be there.”

I looked up at Trent. “Not everyone.”

Trent smiled and kissed me, and I beamed.

Danielle threw her hands up and groaned. “Fine. I’ll meet you at the bus. I gotta go get my stuff,” she said, walking off.

I felt bad, but I knew Danielle would forgive me. It wasn’t as if she’d be going to the party alone. She always had Jonah. And as much as I wanted to go to Morris’s and chill, I also wanted to be there for Trent. Clearly it meant a lot to him, so I was willing to compromise. Wasn’t that what people in relationships did for each other? Compromise?

However, before I got to either the rally or the party, I had to get through a Saturday afternoon of working with Ryan—who I hadn’t seen since our kiss.

 

“Can I get a black-and-white cookie over here?” Ryan called out on Saturday afternoon with none of his usual playfulness.

“Sure.”

I opened the pastry case and plucked out a cookie with the metal tongs. All I could feel was my pulse pounding in every inch of my body—which it did pretty much every time Ryan acknowledged my existence these days. Neither one of us had mentioned the kiss since it happened, and the longer we avoided it, the more awkward the whole thing became. At this point it was almost like there was a hot-air balloon called “The Kiss” filling the entire coffee-house and using up all the oxygen.

“Thanks,” Ryan said.

He didn’t even make eye contact as he took the plate and handed it to his customer. I couldn’t stop stealing glances at him. Under his apron he wore a formfitting white T-shirt and a brown suede studded belt holding up his perfectly faded jeans. I might have chosen Trent, but Ryan was still the hottest guy I knew.

I still could not believe he wasn’t gay—

Stop it, Noelle. So he’s hot. Big deal. You chose Trent. Now you have to concentrate on getting your friendship back on track so that you don’t have to dread coming into work all the time.

Ryan slammed the register closed, and I took a deep breath. Sun poured in through the front windows, and every time the door opened there was a burst of sweetly scented, warm spring air. We should have been in good moods. We should have been chatting and laughing and making our shift fly by. Instead, the clock was dragging.

All right. Just say something! I told myself.

“So…have any big plans for tonight?” I asked finally.

“I have this gig in the city with my band,” Ryan mumbled, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms over his stomach. He looked at the floor, not at me. “A preliminary audition for this competition. It’s kind of a big thing.”

“Really? How so?” I asked.

Ryan shook his head. “I don’t really want to talk about it, actually.”

My heart twisted in my chest. “Ryan—”

“I just don’t want to jinx it,” he said, grabbing a plastic cup and rolling it between his palms. “What about you? Anything going on this weekend?” He finally looked at me, and his green eyes seemed almost hopeful. What he was hoping for, I had no idea.

“Actually…I’m gonna be on campus tonight,” I told him. “I’m going to this environmental rally with Trent.”

Ryan’s face went slack. “No, you’re not,” he said incredulously.

I blinked. Sorry?

“Yeah, I am,” I said, confused.

“Come on! That crap?” Ryan said vehemently, tossing the plastic cup onto the counter.

Whoa. Step back. What was with the sudden anger here? One second I barely exist, and the next I’m being attacked?

“What do you mean, ‘that crap’?” I shot back.

“Noelle, those people have no idea what they’re talking about,” Ryan said, suddenly sounding much older. “The state wants to build low-income housing on that land they’re trying to ‘save.’”

“Really?” I said. I wrinkled my nose. Why hadn’t Trent mentioned this?

“Yeah. It’s not like we’re gonna let some corporation come in to build an office complex or something. We’re trying to help people,” Ryan told me. “Plus, the acreage was decimated by a forest fire a couple of years ago. The groupies keep talking about all the wildlife, but all the wildlife fled a long time ago and never came back. It’s uninhabitable.”

“Come on,” I chided. “How is that possible? Why would all these people be freaking out?”

“Because they don’t bother to listen,” Ryan said adamantly. “They don’t do their research or care about the facts. They just hear that some parkland is going to be sold off, and they start a crusade.”

I turned around and hoisted myself up to sit on the back counter, my hands pressed down on the Formica surface at my sides. “Are you sure?” I asked him uneasily. “I mean, how do you know all this?”

Ryan scoffed. “Because unlike this Trent kid, I pay attention.”

“Don’t be mean,” I told him.

Ryan’s jaw clenched. “I’m sorry. It’s just…this is all anyone at school has been talking about. And I think people should get their facts straight, that’s all.”

“Well, maybe you don’t have all the facts,” I replied, shrugging. “Maybe…maybe in a couple years all the wildlife will come back.”

“Yeah, and in the meantime hundreds of needy families will be living on the streets so that the land can be there when Thumper returns,” Ryan said flatly.

Okay. He had a point.

“Look, Noelle, everyone’s entitled to an opinion,” he said, his tone softening. “I just know you, and…I know you’d want to hear all sides before putting yourself on the line for a cause.”

I smiled. There was definitely a compliment in there somewhere. “Thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” he replied grudgingly. The front door opened, and a gossiping gaggle of middle-aged women walked in. “I got this,” Ryan said, tossing a towel over his shoulder. “Good afternoon, ladies! What can I get you?” he asked.

I laughed as the women reacted to the gorgeousness before them, one of them even blushing at the very sight of him. Part of me felt ten times better. It looked as if there was still a chance for our friendship. But another part of me was completely unnerved.

Why hadn’t Trent ever mentioned this low-income housing thing? Did he even know about it? Did he know all the facts about the cause he was so adamant about? Or did he just not care?

 

“I feel very super-spy right now,” Danielle said, glancing up from her computer monitor at Mr. McSwiggen, our computer lab teacher.

“Just tell me if he’s coming my way,” I said.

I had minimized the window I was supposed to be working on so that I could search the Web for information on Trent’s rally. Ever since my conversation with Ryan I had been dying to find out which one of these guys was right—but when I’d gotten home from work, I’d been too exhausted to even turn on my computer. This was my first chance.

“Ah. Here we go,” I whispered.

Google had come up with several articles on the subject, mostly from local papers. I opened the first one and started to scan it.

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

“What?” Danielle asked out one side of her mouth. She clicked her mouse a few times and kept her eye on the pacing McSwiggen.

“It’s right here in the second paragraph,” I said. “‘Local officials had hoped to utilize the land for a low-income housing project that would provide homes for hundreds of citizens, but the development has been put on hold as environmental lobbyists dispute the plan.’”

“Ha! I knew that Trent kid was up to no good.”

“It’s not that he’s up to no good,” I corrected her. “I mean, he has a good cause, too. Right?”

“Personally I’d rather see needy families getting homes than let some dead trees rot in peace,” Danielle replied.

I sighed and opened the other articles. Almost every one of them mentioned the potential benefits of the housing project. How could Trent not tell me about this?

“McSwiggen alert,” Danielle mumbled.

My heart skipped a beat, and I maximized my work window. McSwiggen gave me a sour look as he strolled by, but he kept walking. I let out a breath.

“So. What’re you going to do?” Danielle asked me.

I thought of Trent’s earnest face and of how excited he was about the rally. The last thing I wanted to do was disappoint him.

“Maybe I should just go with him and hear his side,” I suggested. “Maybe I’m missing something.”

“That’s very sensible of you,” Danielle said with a nod.

“Thanks,” I replied.

I just hoped it turned out that Trent and his friends were doing the sensible thing, too. Otherwise this could get mighty confusing.

 

“How amazing is this?” Trent asked, taking me by the hand as we navigated the crowd that had gathered on the great lawn on campus. He was wearing a homemade SAVE THE FOREST T-shirt and gripping a rolled up tube of flyers in his free hand. “Look at all these people! Corey and Tag really got the word out!”

“Corey and Tag?” I shouted to be heard over some random chanting that was going on around me—then ducked as a soft Frisbee whizzed by.

“They’re the people we met last time we were here,” Trent told me, glancing over his shoulder. “They’re so dedicated to their cause. I could definitely learn a lot from them.”

Yeah? Like the fact that this whole campaign of yours might be totally bogus?

“Uh, Trent? Could I talk to you for a second?” I asked as we emerged into a small open space.

“Sure.” He stood on tiptoe to scan the crowd, taking it all in.

“Trent! Over here!” I waved a hand in front of his face.

“Sorry,” he said. He shook his head and turned his attention to me, which had to be difficult, considering the mayhem around us. On a covered stage at the top of the lawn some girl was shouting about cruelty to animals, while off to my left a group of chicks in flowered skirts danced around in a circle. “What’s up?”

“Listen, have you heard anything about what the state wants to do with the land?” I asked.

Trent scoffed. “No. But I’m sure they want to throw up another Home Depot or something. Which, by the way, no one needs.”

My forehead wrinkled. He knew what he was rallying for, but he had no idea what he was rallying against.

“Actually, they want to put up low-income housing,” I told him. “They want to get needy families off the streets and out of the rundown areas of the city.”

“Really?” Trent said vaguely, looking around again. “I didn’t hear anything about that. It’s probably just propaganda, you know? Some crap they made up to silence us.”

“And we will not be silenced!” some shirtless dude shouted, overhearing us.

“We will not be silenced!” Trent called out in return.

Everyone around us clapped and cheered.

I flushed and grabbed Trent’s hand. “Don’t you think you should know all the facts before getting behind a cause?” I whispered through my teeth. “I mean, you might be keeping a bunch of worthy families from having homes!”

Trent looked at me blankly for a moment as if trying to process that. Seconds later he smiled. Apparently he had rejected my argument before the processing was complete.

“Come on, Noelle! It’s fine! We’re doing something good here,” he said, slipping an arm over my shoulders and turning me around with him. “Look at all these people! Why would they all be here if it wasn’t a good cause?”

I looked into Trent’s wide blue eyes, at his optimistic smile, and suddenly realized something that I couldn’t believe I had missed all along. Trent was a follower. A “true believer.” He was into his cause, yeah, but even more than that, he enjoyed being part of something. Even if he wasn’t entirely certain what that something was.

I looked away. Clearly I was not going to get through to him. He wasn’t going to hear anything he didn’t want to hear. But I brushed it off—relationships are about compromise. This was his thing, and we still had my thing coming up, which reminded me it was time for a change of subject anyway.

“So, listen, I wanted to talk to you about the prom,” I said, leading him toward a huge oak tree. “Danielle’s going to host the pre-party so we can take pictures and everything, and Jonah priced out the limo, but if you want to go with Aurora and Drake, we can talk about that.”

Trent tore his eyes away from the action long enough to wince. “Actually, the prom is June eighth, right?”

“Yeah…?”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to tell you…I’m not gonna make it.”

The Earth suddenly stopped rotating. A group of kids playing hacky sack nearby cracked up laughing. It felt as if they were laughing at me.

“What?” I said, shocked.

“Yeah, there’s gonna be this campout in Springfield that night, and I need to be there,” Trent told me. “We have to have our voices heard, Noelle.” He picked up one of my hands and laced his fingers through mine, apparently not noticing that I was now stiff and cold. “I was actually kind of hoping you’d come with me.”

I laughed. It was an automatic reaction. And it sounded almost like a bark.

Trent leaned back and looked at me, confused. “What?” he said.

“You’re seriously asking me to skip my senior prom to go camp out in the state capital?” I asked.

Trent’s brow creased. “Yeah. You can go to a dance anytime, Noelle. We’re talking about saving the world.”

I stared at him, and suddenly everything became perfectly clear. Trent and I were not meant to be together. He was a sweet guy, but if he thought he could just offhandedly dismiss my senior prom—a night I’d been waiting for my entire life—then he didn’t know me at all. And he definitely didn’t see the world the same way I did. I mean, calling the senior prom just another dance you could go to anytime? Was he nuts?

“Save the forest! Save the forest! Save the forest!” a group of kids around us began chanting, pumping their fists in the air.

It was like a wake-up call. I looked around at all the unfamiliar faces, some painted with little flowers, others pierced in places no sane person should ever be pierced. I felt as if I was coming out of a deep sleep. What was I doing here? This wasn’t me. I was no activist—at least not for this cause. If Trent was a follower, what did that make me? I had been trailing around behind him just like he was trailing around behind these people. This wasn’t a relationship compromise, it was me giving in to what he wanted. I was completely losing myself.

It was about time I did something I wanted to do.

“Trent, I’m sorry, but I have to go,” I told him, standing up straight.

“What?”

“And, to be honest, I don’t really think we should see each other anymore,” I added.

His face completely fell. “What?” he repeated, letting go of my hand.

“Look, you’re a really nice guy, but I don’t think we’re compatible, you know?” I said. I was so ready to escape and be free that I wasn’t even feeling all that nervous. I just had to get these words out so I could leave.

Trent squeezed his rolled tube of fluorescent-colored flyers with both hands. “I…I guess I can see that.”

“I mean, you want to be here, and, if I’m being really honest about it…I don’t,” I said with a shrug.

He nodded, his eyes on me. “I see. Well, if that’s how you really feel…”

“I do.”

“Okay. If you’re not feeling it then you shouldn’t stick with it,” he said. “You’ve gotta be true to yourself, right?”

I smiled. He was still very cute. Someday he was going to make some wide-eyed hippie girl a perfect boyfriend.

“Thanks for understanding,” I told him, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek.

“No problem,” he replied. He looked confused, but I had a feeling he’d get over it once that guitar trio from Milwaukee took the stage.

“I should go,” I said. “Do you think you can get a ride home?”

Trent smiled and spread his arms as if to encompass the crowd. “Hey, I’m surrounded by a thousand of my closest friends.”

You go, nut-ball, I thought, and almost laughed. But I controlled myself. “Okay. Have fun!” I told him. Then I gave him a hug and got the heck out of there as fast as I possibly could.