Something Like Fate (12 page)

It is such a major relief to not have any homework for the next two months. What would we do without summer vacay? Revolt, probably. It feels so decadent to have the entire summer ahead of me, a whole two months of staying up late and doing whatever I want. Like today, how I’m lazing in the hammock out in the backyard, reading the glossy magazines I love and drinking fresh watermelon juice. I should be totally blissed out.

There’s just one problem.

I miss Jason.

It’s been five days since I wished for my sign. Nothing’s happened yet. Maybe nothing will. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. It just feels like something’s missing. Like there’s more to life that I haven’t found yet.

“Transatlanticism” plays on my iPod for the third time.

The porch door slides closed, snapping me out of my day-dreams. Mom wants me to get some things at the supermarket. Dad’s not home, so I can’t take his car. Which means I have to take the ancient stick shift.

I
hate
driving stick.

Dad’s a patient guy. But when he was teaching me how to drive, there was this one time when he almost lost it. I was still learning how to shift without stalling in the middle of the street. Merging was completely hopeless. I’m terrified of merging. Merging is for people who can go out into the world and take charge. Merging is for people who laugh at fear. Merging is
not
for people who truly believe a truck will ram into them and flatten their car right when they get on the highway.

The day Dad almost lost it, I was creeping up on the road that feeds out onto the highway. He was like, “Get some speed going here.”

I reluctantly pressed down on the gas pedal. I wished really hard that I was at home instead, but I was still in the car.

Then it was time to merge. My heart rattled.

“Get ready to merge,” Dad went. Like it was nothing. Like he was saying, “Get ready for school.” I wondered why he didn’t know how traumatic merging was for me.

My arms and legs were shaking. My pulse raced.

I couldn’t do it.

“What are you doing?” Dad yelled. “Merge!”

“I can’t merge!” I yelled back. Cars honked behind us. We were next in line to merge. I just couldn’t move into all of that speeding traffic.

“What the—? Pull over up here,” Dad instructed. When we were pulled over, he went ballistic, saying how I could get myself killed if I’m too tentative. I’ve never seen him lose his temper that bad.

All the streets to the supermarket are tame, so my stress level remains tolerable. Even though it’s an easy drive, I still manage to stall twice. At least no one’s around to witness my lacking stick skills.

Mom’s grocery list is all last-minute barbecue stuff. We have a party every summer for our neighbors. I usually hang out with this girl who lives up the street. We’re not really friends. Everyone else who comes is either way older or way younger. It’s not exactly a rager.

Most of the vegetables we’re using for the salad and for grilling are from our garden. But there are a few things Mom doesn’t grow, like cucumbers. So I’m inspecting the cucumbers for ones that are firm and medium green.

Someone comes over and picks up a cucumber. He taps it against the one I’m holding. This flash of annoyance cuts through me. I hate when guys bother me in random places. Especially creepy ones.

Then I realize that the cucumber tapper is Jason.

“Is this a good one?” he says. “I can never tell with these things.”

“Cucumbers can be tricky.”

“Is
that
what these are? I’m in the wrong place then.”

“You got lost in the supermarket?”

“Must have taken a wrong turn around the Pop-Tarts. I was looking for raspberries.”

“What?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard of raspberries? They’re awesome. How could you not know about them?”

“I know about them.”

I must look totally freaked out. It’s just so weird for him to say
raspberries
out of all the possible things he could have said. When I was just standing in the middle of all those raspberries a few days ago, wishing that my fate would reveal itself.

Obviously, it just did.

Jason’s like, “Are you okay?”

I nod. There are no words.

“You sure?”

I nod some more.

“So . . . I have news,” Jason goes.

“Is it good news or bad news?”

“Um, I’d say it’s relative.”

“How is it relative to me?”

“Hopefully, good news.”

“Then I’m ready.” I put the cucumber I was squeezing into my cart. I never knew being this nervous was possible.

“Okay, well . . . have you heard from Erin lately?”

“Yeah.” I’m trying to remember when I got her letter. She’s been gone for less than two weeks and I’ve only gotten one letter so far. I’ve sent her two already. “I got a letter from her three days ago.”

“So she didn’t tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Jason’s eyes go dark green. “We broke up.”

“Oh.”

“So . . . yeah.”

I want to ask things like who broke up with whom and why and when and how.

I ask none of these things.

Is he telling me this because he wants to go out with me? Doesn’t he know that’s impossible?

“Anyway,” Jason says, “I just thought you should know.”

I nod some more.

“We should hang out sometime.”

“Yeah.” I really want to. “Definitely.” I really,
really
want to. But what would I tell Erin? In her letter she said I should hang out with Jason since she knows how you can get so isolated around here, but now everything’s different. There’s no way she would have written that now.

“Hey, so, can you explain about these cucumbers?” Jason says. “How do you know which ones are good?”

“Just don’t pick any squishy ones and you’ll be fine.”

“Wow. I never knew it was that simple.”

I check my list. “I have to get mayonnaise,” I inform my shopping cart.

“I can watch your stuff if you want.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I leave my cart with Jason and go hunt down the mayonnaise. He must want to talk some more. Why else would he stay with my cart like that, when I could just wheel it over here myself?

The Energy is definitely bringing us together. Even when I was getting dressed this morning, it was strategizing. I live in these little sundresses all summer. I wear either a dress or shorts and a tank top pretty much every day. Today, I didn’t reach for just any dress like I usually do. Something told me to put on my cutest one, which I hardly ever wear.

When I get back, Jason holds up a cucumber. “I found the best one.” He looks extremely proud of himself.

I test the cucumber. “You’re right. It is the best one. I better get it.” I drop it in my cart. “Well . . . I should—”

“No, I have to go, too. It’s not like I can stand around selecting produce all day.”

I bite my lip.

“Jase, can you give me a hand?” his mom says, wheeling her cart over. I remember her from when we went to Jason’s to make certificates after mentoring. “Oh, hi Lani. How are you?”

“Good,” I say. I can’t believe she remembers my name. I’ve only seen her that one time.

“One sec, Mom,” Jason goes. Then he says to me, “So . . . I’ll see you around?”

“Okay.”

I lurch the car home in a daze. I unpack the groceries in a daze. I’m half unpacking, half staring out the window. Dad’s in the backyard trying to figure out how the new environmentally friendlier barbecue works.

When I lift the cucumbers out of the bag, a piece of paper falls on the counter. I have no idea what it is.

After I unfold it, everything is clear.

There’s no way to fight this anymore. I don’t even want to.

I dial his number. He answers right away.

I say, “I miss you, too.”

“Are you sure
trains don’t come this way?”

Jason keeps insisting that this part of the train tracks isn’t used anymore. I keep asking if he’s sure. Every few minutes it sounds like a train’s coming, even though none ever do.

“Don’t worry,” he assures me again. “This branch hasn’t been used since the seventies.”

I stumble over some splintered wood.

Jason clutches my arm. “Do you really think I’d bring you anywhere that wasn’t safe?”

“No.”

“Trust me.”

Electricity zings from where Jason’s touching my arm, shooting in all directions. He must be feeling it, too.

Or not. He just goes, “There’s a cool bridge up here.”

We’ve already walked about two miles. I can see why Jason loves walking the tracks so much. There are all these cool secret areas in the woods and old signs and hidden trails that you’d never see unless you were on this side of things.

“I used to play in that playground,” Jason says.

“What playground?”

“See it? Through there?” Jason moves behind me. He points to where he’s looking.

I only see endless green leaves. “Um . . .” I’m pressed up against him. I can smell the fabric softener in his shirt.

We swelter together in the heat.

I forget what the question was.

“Right there.” He takes my hand and points with it.

Then I find snippets of the playground. Part of a sandbox. Some water spritzing from a fountain. A yellow Tonka truck.

“Oh!” I recognize it now. I’m just used to seeing the playground from the road, so it was hard to tell what I was looking at from way over here. “I used to play there, too!”

“Whoa.” Jason backs away from me. He looks spooked.

“What?”

“Did you used to play in the sandbox?”

“I loved the sandbox.”

“Did you have a red bucket and shovel with . . . some kind of pattern on them?”

“Smiley faces.”

“Yes! Exactly!”

“How do you know that?”

“We played together. You let me borrow your bucket.”

“Wait.” I totally remember Jason now. He used to borrow my bucket to move like half the sand from one end of the sandbox to the other. Then he’d get water from the fountain and build these gigantic sand castles. Well, they seemed gigantic at the time. “Did I ask you why you didn’t have your own bucket?”

“I think so.”

“What did you say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Me neither.”

“But you remember me.”

“Yeah. I really do.”

This is too much. It’s like we don’t even have a choice about being together. Fate decided about us a long time ago.

Before I started learning more about concepts of fate, I would always be blown away when things like this happened. But the more I noticed them, the less surprised I was that these connections exist. Connections are all around us, and if we’re open to them, we become more aware of them. So while I’m amazed, I’m not as shocked as Jason is. Of course we played together when we were little. It all makes sense now.

Some people think things like this only happen in movies. Like in
Broken English
when Parker Posey goes all the way to Paris looking for this guy and right when she gives up and she’s taking the Metro to the airport, he gets onto her subway car. Doubters of fate see something like that and complain how those things never happen in real life.

But they do.

“So . . . why haven’t we been friends this whole time?” Jason says.

“I don’t know. I guess people grow up and go their separate ways.”

“But we go to school together.”

“Yeah, but how many classes have we had together?”

“But you were always . . . there.”

I think Jason is starting to understand the power of fate. Or maybe he already knew, like I did, that the person he’s meant to be with has been here this whole time.

We walk for two more miles, all the way to Green Pond Road. This is Jason’s street.

“Do you feel like ice cream?” he says.

“When
don’t
I feel like ice cream?”

“I’m guessing never?”

“Hey, you’re good at this game.”

There’s an old-school ice-cream parlor near Green Pond called The Fountain. Since I’m doing stuff with Jason and, apparently, not trying to avoid him anymore, I can finally go there without worrying about running into him. Which is such a relief I can’t even tell you. They have the best gelato ever. They also have this puffy purple couch I adore. It totally feels like you’re sinking into a cloud when you lounge on it. I’m hoping that the couch is free. I’ve spent hours on that couch, wishing one day a boy I loved would be sitting there next to me.

Not that I love Jason or anything. I’m just psyched about the couch.

But I’m also worried that someone from school might see us. Which wouldn’t be a major issue if Erin and Jason were still together. No one knows they broke up yet, but if someone sees us and tells Erin when she gets back, she’ll know we kept hanging out after Jason dumped her. How would I explain why?

When we go in, I’m relieved that no one we know is here. The couch is taken, though. I get a cup of honeydew gelato, and Jason gets a cup of watermelon gelato. I put my cup under Jason’s nose and say, “Smell this.”

He sniffs. “Whoa. That’s intense.”

“I know!” The honeydew gelato is so good. It smells like you just cut open a fresh honeydew. “I usually get watermelon, but I’ve been OD’ing on actual watermelon lately.”

“Oh, totally. They’re so good right now.”

We sit at a window table. There’s no way I’m eating outside. I am in desperate need of air-conditioning. We both are.