Adi Alsaid - Never Always Sometimes

“Well,” he said, and he took a seat on the leather couch behind them. Gretchen sat down next to him, the space between them hard to distinguish because of how her dress fell onto his jeans. “It’s about this guy named...” He struggled for a name, then grabbed the book from Gretchen’s hand and flipped to a random page. “A guy named Californian Tort Law.”

“He sounds cute.”

“So cute.”

“Is there a girl?”

Dave smiled at her, at the way she’d positioned herself to face him, at the way she was smiling back, at all the unexpected turns his night had taken, normal as it may have been to everyone else at the Kapoor house. He wondered only briefly about how Julia’s night had gone since they’d split, whether she’d discovered some of the same things he had about their classmates.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to give it away. You’ll just have to read it yourself.”

“No! Don’t be like that. I want to hear the whole story tonight.”

“I don’t think there’s much left of tonight,” Dave said, looking back toward the living room, which had definitely quieted down. The party was emptying out. Julia must have left to go home by now, and he should probably do the same soon.

“Come on. Tell me about the girl. What was her name?”

“Her name,” Dave said, looking down at the open book in his lap, “was Section 16520 of the Family Code.”

“Interesting name.”

“Swedish,” Dave explained.

Gretchen beamed a smile at him and gave him a head nod to continue. With a quick, appreciative thought for the Nevers list he’d found stuck in his locker, Dave continued his story.

o o o

When Dave walked out of the Kapoor house, it was past three in the morning. Tiredness was starting to dull the edges around the thrill of the night, a faint headache building up as payback for all that beer. He was so ready to go to bed that he almost missed Julia sitting on the curb in front of the house, her head on her knees, arms curled around herself. He leaned over and could hear her softly breathing, asleep.

“Julia,” he said, putting an arm on her shoulder. When she stirred, eyes darting, confused, he asked her how long she’d been waiting for him.

“I don’t know. An hour, maybe. Where the hell did you run off to?”

“Nowhere. I was in the den downstairs.”

“You weren’t answering my calls.” She put her hands on either side of her and stretched her back out. “What gives?”

“My phone died, sorry.”

“Fuck, Dave, you couldn’t have come to tell me that?”

“I tried.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them. He hated making her upset. “I couldn’t find you anywhere, so I thought you’d left.”

“Without you? Please.” She yawned. “You know you’re an awful human being for letting your phone run out of battery. Come on, David Montgomery Burns, it’s the twenty-first century. Stay plugged in. You made your friend worry.”

“Why didn’t you go home?”

“Again. Without you?” She let out a groan and then reached her hand out. “Help me up, you forsaken supposed friend.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said, pulling her up gently. “I feel like shit.”

“Good. Wallow in that for a second.”

They started walking down the middle of the road, the streetlights casting hazy shadows. Earlier in the night, it had felt so bizarre to be walking toward a party. Now the fog was starting to roll in and the trees looked beautiful. Julia’s arms were crossed in front of her chest, her jaw tense. He tried to read her silence, just how angry she was at him. But the booze was interfering, making his mind return to the wonders of street lighting at three a.m. Feeling guilty, Dave cast his eyes down at his shoes.

“Well, don’t look so freakin’ glum,” Julia said, rolling her eyes when he looked up. “Come on, let’s go have coffee at the diner.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Julia said. “If you buy me a slice of pie, all is forgiven. We still have to exchange stories from the night.”

Dave thought of Gretchen, the strange appeal of those crooked teeth. It felt weird to bring her up, though; he’d never talked to Julia about girls. She’d talked to him about the few guys she’d fleetingly dated, and had on occasion tried to pry out from him some admittance of a crush on anyone. But for obvious reasons he’d always said there was no one he was interested in. Bringing it up now felt somehow wrong. Plus “a girl and I talked for a while” was not much of a story, so the next thing that came to mind was the flip-cup tournament. He chuckled to himself, though a distinct feeling of shame goose-bumped up his arms. “Embarrassing is good, right? We were here to fit in in an almost gross way?”

“Oh God, what’d you do?”

“Let’s say I really embraced the spirit of the Kapoor party.”

“Eww, Dave, did you buy a polo shirt? I’m going to have to cut you out of my life, aren’t I?”

Dave put his hands in his pockets, turning the corner toward the street where the diner stood, lit up against all the darkened storefronts. “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” Dave said, adding a chuckle.

HOMEROOM & HAPPY HOUR

THERE WAS NO greater proof of an underlying human connection than the universal hatred of Monday mornings. Everyone wore it on their faces: students with hair sticking out in every direction, as if trying to get away. Teachers sat at their desks scowling at their lesson plans. The principal looked as if he was suffering a nervous breakdown. The halls were practically an obstacle course with people lying down with their legs sprawled out, backpacks tossed in front of their lockers as pillows.

Dave had slept in most of the day Saturday and then stayed up on Sunday night supposedly trying to do homework, but really just rebelling against the thought that they were still assigning homework to seniors in March. He’d gotten into college—couldn’t they just accept that he’d succeeded at this whole high school thing and leave him alone?

He’d slept less than four hours, and when Ms. Romero took attendance in homeroom, saying “here” physically hurt. Julia arrived a couple of minutes late, her earphones still in, a yellow tardy sheet from the office in hand. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajama pants, and her hastily combed hair made Dave think of what it would be like to wake up next to her. She gave the tardy slip to Ms. Romero wordlessly and then plopped down next to Dave, pulling one of the earphones out and handing it over, as per tradition.

Julia hated talking in the mornings, and so Dave knew to listen to the music until she was ready. Neko Case crooned beautifully for a while as Ms. Romero struggled to put the morning’s announcements up on the projector. This was how to combat the awfulness of Monday mornings. The PA went off, but no one cared to listen. A succession of yawns made its way across the room, knocking a couple of heads down to rest on their desks.

“I’ll be right back,” Ms. Romero said, at which point the silence in the room started coming apart. Bouts of isolated whispering grew into all-out conversations that filled the room.

Neko Case’s voice stopped abruptly, and Dave heard Julia’s sandals fall to the floor. He kept the muted earphone in, always happy to be tied together to her.

“How was Carmel?” Dave asked. She’d left early Saturday morning with her dads to go visit her grandparents, returning on Sunday when Dave was knee-deep in unjust homework assignments.

“Pretty. It’s always pretty.” She put her arms on her desk and lowered her head down, looking up at Dave with tired eyes. “I was thinking more about the party.”

Dave raised an eyebrow at her. At the diner after the party, Julia had told him about her misadventures while they were split: a couple of guys’ awful attempts to make out with her, their worse attempts at interesting conversation. She’d ended up playing video games in the basement with a group of juniors—stoner clichés that she hadn’t expected to run into at the party, but clichés nonetheless. They’d joked about Dave’s embarrassing flip-cup skills. Throughout the weekend, Dave’s thoughts had returned to Gretchen, how he’d kind of fallen in love with the mood of the party. He’d assumed Julia had talked it all out of her system, though.