TIme After Time

I shrug and say, “Good, I guess,” as I look around campus. “Just…different.” I’ve always found the glass walls and metal railings interesting, but today they serve as a reminder that everything about this place and its modern architecture is in such stark contrast with the refined look of Westlake Academy. I can’t imagine what Anna would think of these buildings. I’m pretty sure she’d have no idea what to make of the solar panels next to the living roof above the art studio.

“What do you have after lunch?” Sam asks as he bites into his burger.

I lean back, digging into the front pocket of my jeans for my schedule. I unfold it and look for the fifth- period box. “English. With Wilson.”

Sam wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and says, “Hey, me too. Good.” Just as he says the last word, someone lets out a gasp from behind us and we both turn our heads. “Hey, Linds,” Sam says, sliding down the bench to make room for her between us.

“What did you do to your hair?” Lindsey puts her food on the table and stares at his nearly bald head in wonder. She reaches out like she’s going to touch it, but then pulls her hand back again.

“I cut it.”

“With what?”

Sam laughs as he rubs his hand back and forth over the top of his head. “I love it. It feels cool. Here,” he says, leaning over in her direction. “Touch it.”

“No.” She smacks his shoulder with the back of her hand but laughs along with him. Then she plants her palms on the sides of his face and kisses him on the forehead. “I just saw you yesterday. You couldn’t have warned me?” Lindsey’s shaking her head as she sits down.

He shrugs. “It was spontaneous.”

She stares at me pointedly. I resist the urge to laugh. And to touch my own hair. “See, Coop, this is the kind of stuff that happened last year when you weren’t around to keep him in line. Where were you during yesterday’s head-shaving debacle?”

I hold my hands up in front of me, palms out. “Not my night to watch him.” Lindsey rolls her eyes and takes a long draw of soda from her straw. She’s still shaking her head as she digs into her pasta.

Sam runs his hand over his head wearing a wide grin. “I like it.”

Lindsey and Sam have been together since the beginning of our junior year. She’s a full inch taller than any of us, including Sam, and dominates on the volleyball court. We’d always been friends with her, but at some point during our sophomore year, she started eating lunch at our table. I don’t even remember it being weird. She just sat down.

I think she had a falling out with her friends. I once asked her about it, and she admitted that, aside from her teammates, she didn’t have a lot of close girlfriends. I like to know where I stand with people, I remember her saying. None of this today we’re friends, tomorrow… poof. She had pinched her fingers together and made them explode apart. Guys are so much easier. A long pause. That’s a compliment, by the way.

Maybe we’re more complicated than you think, I’d said, keeping a straight face. What if we don’t like you at all and we just don’t know how to tell you?

She’d looked at me right in the eyes. Do you guys like me, Coop?

I couldn’t help but smile. Yeah. We do.

She had shrugged. See.

Months later, a bunch of us were hanging out at the beach. Sam was on one side of the bonfire telling one of his remember that time stories, complete with animated facial expressions and exaggerated gestures, when Lindsey wrapped her hand around my arm and rested her chin on my shoulder. “I think I like him,” she admitted, and I stared at her in disbelief. “Sam?” I asked, and she shrugged and said, “Look at him. He’s kind of adorable.”

I looked at him. I didn’t find him adorable. But then I looked back at her and saw that she meant every word. Sam caught her looking his way and shot her a smile that made her turn red and bury her face in my shoulder, and just so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea, I subtly motioned back and forth between the two of them. Two weeks later, they were Sam and Lindsey. I gave her endless amounts of grief for blushing so hard that night.

She twists her pasta around her fork and looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “So tell me everything. I barely got to see you this summer. How was it? What did you do?”

“It was fine.” I can’t think of anything interesting to tell her outside of the concerts I went to with Brooke or my trips to visit Anna in La Paz, so I leave it at that and ask her what she did. She tells me she spent most of the summer driving back and forth to beach volleyball tournaments in Southern California.

It reminds me that it’s been a long time since I saw her play. “When’s your first game?” I ask.

“A week from Saturday,” she says. “You should come. Sam will be there.” She elbows him and gives him a half smile. “He’ll be the one wearing a hat.”

Sam ignores her comment and leans forward on the table, resting his chin in his hand. “What are you doing after school today?” he asks me.

“Homework.” I think about the mountain of assignments that have been doled out over the last four classes, and the sad fact that I still have three more to go.

“That’s it?” Lindsey asks.

“I don’t know. I guess I was thinking about heading over to the climbing gym.” I look at Sam. “Want to come?”

“Sure. But it’ll have to be on the late side. I’m tutoring tonight.”

Since when does Sam tutor? “You’re tutoring?”

He shrugs. “I must’ve told you. I started at the end of last year, but this year I’m running the sixth grade math program, so it’s a lot more intense.” He takes a big sip of his drink. “It’s fun. You should do it. It’ll look good on your college apps.”

I haven’t even thought about college applications. “Are the kids cool?”

Sam shakes his head. “Hell, no. They’re a bunch of spoiled brats with some serious entitlement issues.”

I laugh. “Way to sell it.”

“I’m kidding. There are, like, two cool ones. But seriously, you’d be good at it,” he says to me. “You’re good with kids and stuff.”

“Yeah,” I say sarcastically, “I’m super patient. Especially with the spoiled ones with entitlement issues.” I give him a wide smile and two overly enthusiastic thumbs-up.

I reach for my water, suddenly realizing what Lindsey meant by her That’s it? question. Everyone’s afternoons are filled with sports, clubs, and community service projects that look good to a college admissions staff. I haven’t even thought about what I’m doing next year, let alone boosting my application.

The bell rings and everyone dumps their trash in the bins before taking off in their separate directions. Lindsey gives Sam one more eye roll before she pushes his head in my direction. “Watch him,” she says with a wink. I laugh, thinking how much Lindsey and Anna would like each other. The four of us would have fun together.

I’m glad Sam and I are going the same way, because I didn’t even look at the room number before I stuffed my schedule back into my pocket. As we walk through the halls toward our lockers, my mind drifts back to Anna again, and I start piecing together her schedule, wondering what she’d be doing back in 1995 Evanston. Would she still be in class, or out on the track? Would it be her day to work at the bookstore? Did she, Emma, and Danielle talk about me over lunch? Did Anna tell them that I’m coming back? Did Emma lose it when she found out?

Sam comes to a stop.

“What?”

He points at a row of lockers. “Don’t you need your stuff?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.…” It suddenly dawns on me that we’re standing in front of my locker.