The Education Of Hailey Kendrick Part 12

"Unlike you, I'm not a karaoke pro. It would take more than one song to make me feel comfortable."

"I'm not a pro. I've never done this before just now."

The chip I was eating fell out of my mouth. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I've never done it. I saw the flyer at the Laundromat that they do karaoke here, and it sounded like fun." Drew noticed my expression. "You've heard of Laundromats, right? It's where the average people go to air their dirty laundry, instead of in tabloid magazines."

I looked down my nose at him. "Ha, ha. Yes, I've heard of Laundromats. I'm just surprised you haven't done this before. You jumped up there like the stage was your second home."

"I'm a big believer in faking it until you make it. If you're going to do something, you can't always sidle up to it. You have to jump in with both feet."

"No guts, no glory, huh? Not everyone has that kind of courage. Some of us have a normal sense of fear."

"You know what courage is, don't you? It's not a lack of fear. It's being scared and doing it anyway." Drew put his feet back on the floor and leaned forward. "Like asking your friend what's up with her and Tristan, instead of letting it eat you up inside."

I choked on my Diet c.o.ke. "Now you've lost your mind. There's nothing going on between them."

"You don't need to convince me. You're the one bothered by it."

"I'm not bothered by it," I yelled. The people at the tables near us turned to see what was going on. Hanging out with Drew was turning me into one of those people who hangs out in cheap bars and has screaming matches in public. I pressed my mouth into a smile, lowered my voice, and repeated myself through clenched teeth. "I'm not bothered."

"I can see that." Drew pulled the straw out of his gla.s.s and chugged his c.o.ke.

"I'm not."

"Okay. You're not. My mistake." Drew took another long drink. "All I'm saying is that life is too short to sit back and wait to see what happens, what everyone else decides. You're in charge of your own life. If your dad is ticking you off, then you should tell him. If you don't want to see Tristan anymore, then break up with him. If you think your friend is dating your boyfriend, then ask her."

I shook my head. "You're reading too much be-all-you-can-be poetry. That, or all that sucking the marrow out of life has resulted in an oxygen shortage. It's not that simple. In polite society we don't always do whatever comes into our head." I glanced down at my watch. "I should get back. I need to sneak back into my room before eleven."

Drew shrugged and pulled his coat on. I followed him out into the parking lot. The silence seemed jarring after the loud music in the bar. I could hear the squeak of my shoes in the fresh snow.

"I suppose you always do what you want," I said. "You go out and seize every day like some sort of motivational speaker."

Drew pulled on my jacket to make me stop. "If you don't seize the opportunity, how do you know what will happen? Sometimes you have to take the chance."

I started to disagree with him, but Drew leaned in and kissed me. Not a friendly peck on the cheek, but a full-on tongue-in-my-mouth face-sucking kiss. My mind went completely blank. Before Tristan the only person I had kissed was Wilbur Trent in seventh grade. Wilber sat behind me in cla.s.s, and his mom had invited me to his birthday party, where he kissed me in the living room while we were supposed to be watching a movie. He had tasted a bit like the Juicy Fruit gum he was always chewing. There was no tongue with Wilbur. That summer his dad was transferred to Colorado and our young love affair never had another chance. Once at Evesham, I started dating Tristan the fall of freshman year and hadn't kissed another soul until Joel had planted one on me that night by the statue. Now Drew was kissing me out of nowhere. I couldn't tell what was going on in my life that suddenly people felt the urge to kiss me without being invited. I must have been giving off some kind of hormone scent that made people think I was easy. I could feel the sharp brush of Drew's stubble as it ground against my face. He pulled back and stared at me. I knew he was waiting for me to say something. I waited for the words to form, but my brain was blank.

I slapped him hard across the face. The crack of my hand against his skin sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet parking lot. Drew's face went bright red in the perfect shape of my hand.

"Well, that answers that question," Drew said.

"How dare you." I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down. "I don't know what gave you the idea that that was something I wanted. I've enjoyed getting to know you, and I appreciate all the help you've given me over the past few weeks, but I don't have those sort of feelings." I hoped he wouldn't leave me in the parking lot, but what did he expect? You can't just kiss people.

"Easy, Prima Donna. It was a kiss. It wasn't an unending declaration of love or a marriage proposal. I took a chance, and not all chances can turn out as good as karaoke."

I didn't know if I should be relieved that he wasn't upset, or ticked that he was comparing kissing me to karaoke. "What do we do now?" I asked.

"Well, if we're going to get you back to the dorm on time, we should leave." Drew climbed into the truck. I watched my exhaled breath fog in the cold air. For someone who was always advocating that people should talk about things, he'd picked a fine time to go silent. I climbed into the pa.s.senger seat and slammed the door. Men.

We drove back to campus in silence. Drew pulled the truck to the side of the road behind the administration building. He got out and trudged up to the stone wall that circled the campus.

"You coming?"

If he thought playing it cool was going to upset me, he was wrong. I'd perfected acting like nothing was wrong for a good part of my life. I stomped through the deep snow. Drew bent over and cupped his hands. I stepped into his palm, and he hefted me up onto the wall. I sat on top and spun my legs around so that I could drop onto the campus side.

"Thanks for bringing me back to campus," I said. I dropped to the ground, the pile of snow cushioning my fall. I took a quick glance around to make sure no one had seen me.

"Hey, Hailey?" Drew's voice drifted over the wall.

I considered pretending that I hadn't heard him and just walking away, but I couldn't do it. "Yeah," I called back softly.

"I still think it's a wonderful world."

25.

Joel was sitting outside my door in the dorm hallway working on his math homework when I got back. I wondered how long he'd been waiting. When he saw me, he stood.

"Where were you?"

"Studying," I said, before I realized I didn't have any books or notes with me. Joel looked me up and down, noting the clumps of snow on my socks. "I took a walk to clear my head."

"Through the snow?"

"It's winter. Sort of hard to avoid the snow. Besides, I like fresh air." I unlocked my door and went in, leaving the door swinging behind me. Evesham allowed people of the opposite s.e.x to visit the dorms, but you had to leave the door open. It was supposed to prevent people from having s.e.x. Clearly the administration didn't have the imagination that the student body did. Evesham was full of places where couples could hook up. "What's up?" I asked, sitting down on my bed so I could pull my wet socks off. My legs were red from the cold. The bright red skin made me think of Drew's face. I shoved that image out of my head. I wasn't prepared to deal with Drew right now. I was having a hard enough time figuring out what to say to Joel. I was suddenly aware we hadn't spent much time in each other's company by ourselves since the whole statue incident.

"I tried to call you, but you didn't pick up your phone," Joel said. "You're supposed to keep it on so that I can get in touch with you. I'm responsible for making sure you're meeting the conditions of your punishment."

"I didn't think about it." I shrugged.

"I needed to talk with you about your punishment."

"That's good. I needed to talk to you, too."

"Dean Winston is getting flack from people's parents about the restriction rules."

"He can always decide to lift it." I pulled on a pair of hot pink fleece socks that my grandma had given me for Christmas last year. I wiggled my toes to get the blood moving.

"He isn't going to give in," Joel said.

"If you're worried that I'm going to tell on you, I'm not. It's up to him what he chooses to do about that. He can keep me on restriction for the rest of the year if he wants."

"I feel bad," Joel said.

I pushed down a wave of annoyance. I couldn't remember if Joel had always been this pa.s.sive or if this was something new. Wasn't it enough that I was the one in trouble? Did I also have to make him feel okay about it? I couldn't imagine Drew ever talking about how he felt bad. If he felt bad, he would do do something, not just talk about it. something, not just talk about it.

"If you want, you can help me out with something else," I said. "I need you to get me off the cleaning crew. Isn't there something else I can do? Wash dishes in the cafe? Maybe shelve books in the library? I like the library."

"I don't think Winston's going to change his mind about the cleaning. I think he would see the library as too easy."

"Can you get me a.s.signed to work with someone else?" I avoided Joel's eyes. "That guy, Drew . . . He and I aren't getting along. I don't want to work with him anymore." It wasn't that I disliked Drew, but I had more awkward friend-kissing situations than I could handle already.

"How well do you have to get along? You're cleaning cla.s.srooms. I didn't figure the two of you would become friends or anything."

"He hit on me, okay?" My voice came out flat. "It's a bit awkward working with him." I stood up and began bustling around my desk. I stacked my books and folders back in order. I'd forgotten about an essay due for English. I was going to be stuck staying up late.

"Oh." Joel sat staring at his math book. "I can see what I can do. It's completely inappropriate for him to try anything with a student. He's asking for trouble. You would think he would know enough not to take advantage of the situation." He touched the back of my hand.

My hand froze in place, and then I yanked it back to dig through my backpack, looking for my book. "It's not that he's creepy or anything. I don't want to get him fired. It's not that big a deal. It's just uncomfortable. He likes me and I don't like him. That's all." I pulled the book out and flopped into my desk chair. "Like, today, he said this bizarre thing trying to make me jealous. Get this. He said he thought Tristan and Kelsie were seeing each other." I snorted to show how absurd I thought the whole thing was. "Talk about a transparent bid to get my attention."

Joel was silent. His face was frozen as if I were pointing a pistol at his head instead of just looking at him. His Adam's apple was bouncing up and down. My stomach sank to the floor.

"What's going on?" I whispered.

"It's not really my place to say anything." Joel wiped his hands on his pants.

"Don't pull that 'I'm neutral' act with me." I crossed the room in two steps and grabbed hold of Joel's sweater. I was prepared to shake the truth out of him if I had to. "Are they a couple?" I held the sleeve tighter in case he had any plans of making a run for it.

"I don't know." He held up his hand as if he thought I might hit him. "I swear, I don't know. Right after everything went down, Kelsie was around a lot. More than usual, or maybe it seemed like more because you weren't there too. Tristan was really upset, and, I don't know. They've been hanging out. Doing stuff just the two of them. You know Kelsie's always had a case of hero worship for him."

"And Tristan?"

"I think he likes that Kelsie likes him. She's always telling him how great he is and building him up," Joel said.

I let go of Joel's sweater. "I don't get it. I never even imagined the two of them together." I pushed down a feeling in my gut that I had imagined it before, that some part of me had suspected for a while.

"They have a lot in common, you know. Kelsie wants to go into acting, and Tristan's a part of that world, with his folks and all." Joel shrugged as if he were overcome by the destiny that was pulling Kelsie and Tristan together.

"That's a lot in common? That's one thing. What about the fact that Kelsie's a vegetarian and Tristan's favorite food is a rare steak? He never met a living animal that he wouldn't kill and grill. He would eat a kitten burger if it came with pickles. Or how about the fact that Kelsie can spend hours debating the shape of her eyebrows and Tristan hates that high maintenance stuff? Oh, wait. I forgot they both have a connection to acting." I smacked myself in the forehead. "How stupid of me not to see that they're meant for each other. I feel so foolish having stood in the way of true love all this time."

I realized I was crying, which made me mad. I dragged my sleeve across my face to wipe away the tears.

Joel touched my shoulder. "Don't be upset."

"I'm not upset!" My voice snagged in my throat, giving a hiccup sob. The tears came faster. Joel put his arm around me and had me sit on the bed. He knelt on the floor in front of me. Tristan and Kelsie didn't have much in common, but Joel and I did. We were both overachievers, we liked to watch the news and debate the issues, and we both preferred books versus anything on TV. In theory he and I were perfectly matched, but I'd never thought of him that way before that night. Now I couldn't tell if I was confused because I did like him, or that I liked that he liked me. Maybe I was only afraid of being left alone, especially if Tristan was picking Kelsie.

"I don't think Kelsie or Tristan want you to be hurt," Joel said.

"They should have told me. I know I'm in no position to be angry with Tristan, given what happened, but sneaking around means they think it's wrong too. If Kelsie thought dating Tristan was fine, she would have said something. She and I are supposed to be best friends."

"She's hurt that you didn't tell her who you were kissing that night." He cut me off before I could protest. "I know why you didn't tell her, but she doesn't understand. Neither of them knew what to say, so they didn't say anything."

I sniffed. My nose was running. "Why didn't you tell me? You could have warned me. I shouldn't have had to hear that from Drew."

Joel took both of my hands in his. He was on his knees, and I had the sudden fear he was going to propose.

"You're right. I should have told you, but it was complicated. What happened between us that night? It wasn't an accident. I've been in love with you for a long time. I should have told you about Tristan and Kelsie, but I think part of me wanted them to get together. I didn't want to get in the way of it. I hoped that if they were a couple, you wouldn't spend any more time worrying about him. I figured you wouldn't feel bogged down with guilt. That maybe you would see me with new eyes."

My heart sped up. I wanted to pick up my wet socks from the floor and shove them into Joel's mouth to keep him from saying anything else. "We've been friends a long time," I said, trying to remind him. Weren't the best relationships supposed to be based on friendship? Was that enough?

"You know freshman year? I liked you even then. I remember how your dad had ordered the wrong size uniform for you. Those first few weeks you were always having to hitch your skirt back up and roll the sleeves on your sweater up until your new uniform arrived."

"You never said anything to me. You never acted like you liked me," I said.

"The first time I got up the guts to talk to you, you asked about Tristan, my roommate."

I flinched. "Sorry."

"Can't say I blame you. Tristan was already, you know, Tristan, and I was such a dork back then. I weighed, like, eighty pounds. Remember how everyone called me the beanpole?"

I smiled, but if I had been honest, I would have told Joel that I didn't have a lot of memories of him from freshman year. I'd been so homesick at first. I'd felt lost among all these people who seemed totally comfortable living without their parents. I hadn't wanted to screw anything up, and then suddenly in the middle of all of that there was Tristan. He always seemed so confident and was so good-looking. Tristan always teased me about how hard to get I'd been in those first few weeks, but I hadn't been playing at anything. It had never occurred to me that he would actually like me. The fact that he'd been flirting with me had sailed right over my head.

"I never knew," I said. "You never said anything, even after what happened at the statue."

"I guess I hoped you'd realize it wasn't an accident. Then when you didn't, I didn't want to push things. I hoped that eventually you would look around and notice me." Joel shrugged. "I think I was hoping you'd think it was destiny."

"You can't do that. You can't sit back and wait for life to happen to you. You should have said something." As the words came out of my mouth, an image of Drew flashed into my mind. I touched my lips lightly as if I expected to feel the burn of his mouth on mine.

"I couldn't do that. Not to Tristan. What was I going to say, 'Hey, guess what? I have a crush on your girlfriend.' I always figured you guys would eventually break up and then after a decent amount of time I would step in. Who would have thought you guys would stay together for all of high school?"

The idea that Joel had been spending the past four years just waiting for something to happen made me sad.

"So when Kelsie and Tristan got together, you didn't mind at all. It must have looked like your opportunity was finally here."

"I swear I never planned it." Joel raised his hand as if he were taking the Boy Scout pledge. Joel was a good guy. I suspected he was right. He never would have done anything to try to get a chance with me. He would have sat back and waited forever if he needed to. He wouldn't have wanted to upset anyone.

"Hailey, I love you. I've loved you for a long time. I know this must seem sudden to you, but it's not. You're right. We have been friends for years. Maybe now we can see if it might grow into something more."

"You don't love me," I said, pulling my hands back, suddenly sure.

"How can you say that?"

"If you loved me, you would have taken the chance. You would have risked having everything go wrong because the slim chance that it might go right would have been enough to make it worth it. Love is risky."

Joel leaned back on his heels. He was like one of those giant inflatable parade balloons that had sprung a leak. "You want to be with Tristan," he said.

I sighed. "Not everything is a compet.i.tion between the two of you. I thought I wanted to be with Tristan, but I don't know. Maybe I wanted to be with Tristan because it's easy." I shrugged. "It might not even be up to me. It sounds like he and Kelsie are an item now."

"I bet he would drop her if he knew you guys could work it out."

"Then, that's a shame. Kelsie deserves better than that." I touched the side of Joel's face. "You do too. You deserve someone who's crazy about you."

"But that's not you," he said, his eyes filling up.