The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [50]
“What do you want to happen?” I asked.
Tristan didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell if that was because he didn’t want to tell me, or if he didn’t know himself. Maybe he was trying to keep me on my toes.
“Are you and your dad still fighting?” Tristan asked, changing the subject. He saw the confusion on my face. “Kelsie told me everything, about him bailing on your summer plans.”
“I was counting on him, on our plans. Then, with everything that’s happened, he’s not exactly pleased with me these days. I feel like he and I need to hash things out.”
“What good does that do? Do you think he’ll change his mind?”
I slumped against the wall. “No.” My dad and I still hadn’t talked since the call with Dean Winston. He’d sent me an e-mail that he was out of town for a business trip and that he was still trying to determine what punishment he wanted to add over the whole statue incident. I hadn’t bothered to write back. What would I say? He’d perfected the fine art of ignoring me the past few years. It only seemed fair that I do the best I could to try ignoring him for a change.
“Not having the end-of-summer party won’t be that big a deal.”
“Mandy practically considers it the crime of the century. You would think I’d canceled her birthday.” I sighed. “It’s not really the party that matters.”
“I know. It’s your dad’s loss, not having the summer with you. You can’t get time back.”
“Thanks.”
“I keep thinking that we won’t be able to make up time either. We already didn’t have much time left,” Tristan said. “Just the rest of this year, and then you’re gone for the summer, and then college for you after that.”
I didn’t say anything. Tristan and I had never talked about what would happen after senior year. I knew he wasn’t happy that I was going away for college, but he also knew it wasn’t reasonable to ask me to not apply to the schools I really wanted to go to. I knew there were millions of high school couples facing the same issue, but it was different for us. We’d spent almost every day of our lives together for the past four years. We were like a married couple that just happened to live in different dorm rooms. Our parents weren’t around to tell us to take things easy. We spent more time with each other than with our families. It had a way of making things more intense. We’d dealt with the end of school by ignoring it altogether. Maybe Drew was right. Maybe I had wanted to bring things to a definite end rather than let them slowly die out in a painful long-distance relationship.
Tristan stood. “I want things to go back, but I honestly don’t know if they can. That’s what I came to tell you. I hate that we’re not talking. A million times a day I go to tell you something, that my dad got the part in the movie he wanted, or that I heard there are those brownies you like on the menu for dinner, or to ask you what you think I should do for my senior thesis project in government, and then I remember all over again what happened.”
“I don’t think we can go back,” I said. Tristan looked down at me. “We either go forward or we don’t, but there is no going back. I’d understand if you didn’t want to, but if you do, I’m here.”
22
I sat straight up in bed. I looked at my clock and saw it was six a.m. I couldn’t figure out what had woken me up. After Tristan had left the library, at first I didn’t think I’d be able to focus. I wondered if there was something else that I should have said. There was no telling if I was going to get a chance to talk with him like that again. I could have thrown myself into his arms or begged for him to take me back. I suspected that was what he’d expected me to do. Then in the middle of worrying, my mind cleared out and I was able to bury myself in the history of Evesham. I stayed at the library until it closed just before eleven, and brought a few of the books back with me to my room. I’d actually found myself caught up in the project and hadn’t turned my light out until after one a.m. I was exhausted, and now, for some reason, I was awake.
I closed my eyes and lay back