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Description
The funny thing about relationships is that each one is unique, and has a specific way that it's supposed to be. Sometimes they don't start that way, or sometimes they do but something happens to change it temporarily. But if you could ever understand the way any govn relationship was meant to be, you could bet on it eventually coming back to that -- the strained respect between me and Nana, for example. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the whole destiny thing, and I wish I could say that we all had the freedom to choose how and with whom we acted, but this is a time-tested am reliable theory.

I guess the reason i'm going on like this is out of some weird send of guilt over the way I let things get out of hand with Gerard. In light of Holly's and my conversation -- and my subsequent breakdown -- I began to wonder if I hadn't given him his fair shake. What if we weren't all that different after all? What if our reasons for alienating ourselves from the world around us were more similar than I wanted to believe? I owed it to Gerard to at least hear him out; but, more importantly, I owed it to Holly to try and fix our friendship with our best friend.

I called his house first, forgetting for a moment that the rest of the school wasn't on summer vacation yet; a lit had happened in the past week, so much so that I was dumbfounded to discover it wasn't at least July. After Miss Smith corrected my sense of time, and told me Gerard wouldn't be home for another two hours, she made a point of asking how Holly and I were "holding up," and offered me a handful of unwelcome condolences. I smiled through the phone and gave her my most practiced thanks before I hung up.

I found Holly in the living-room, curled up in the bay window with a book opened in her lap; the light steaming over her shoulder and the way her sundress clung to her shoulders and washed down her frame made it a scene worthy of a gallery painting, and I felt a little guilty for disturbing the portrait. "I need to go across town for an hour or two, do you want to come?"

Holly looked up, absently adjusting her bookmark into the pages and setting the novel down beside her. "Where are you going?"

"Marshal." I shrugged. Like I had with Marie at our birthday party, I wanted to keep Gerard a surprise if everything panned out -- and a secret, if it didn't. "The mall, on my way home. Maybe."

Holly shrugged her shoulders; the look on her face told me she was trying to choose between conflicting replies. Finally, she settled on, "That's okay, thanks. I'm too deep into this book now to put it down." Like everything we had said to each other in the past couple of days, it was just truthful enough to get away with, while hiding what we really wanted to say. The thought made me grimace

"Will you be okay here by yourself, or do you want me to wait until Jerry gets home?"

Holly had picked her book up again, and spoke with her nose buried in paper. "You don't need to worry about me."

"I do anyway." it had slipped out before I could stop it, even before I knew I was thinking it. Three small words and I broke the delicate truce, the terms of peace that had wordlessly been agreed upon trampled underfoot. Holly's head snapped up in surprise at the tone of my voice, but where I expected her to glower at me, I could see her whole heart in her eyes as she smiled.

"I'll be fine," she rephrased. "Lock the door on your way out, hey?"

Against my better judgement, I walked across to her, bent down to kiss her on the temple. "I love you."

Her smile broadened to a grin. "I know."

With that settled, I called Susan at work to clear my itinerary with her. The man who answered the phone gave me some graff for dialing the wrong extension by accident, but he transferred my call easily enough after he forced an apology out of me. Susan, once I got a hold of her, seemed overjoyed that I was taking action and not moping around the house. "Are you okay taking the bus? Do you know which ones to take?"

I nodded into the receiver. "The sixteen comes across the street, and it'll take me up to the mall, where I can catch the thirty-one up to Marshal." They were Marie's words, when she first brought us to the Petersons'. It was still hard to believe that it was only three days ago. "I should be home around five-thirty, if that's alright?"

"I'm off at five, you know. Did you want a drive home?"

"That's okay, thanks. I might drop by the mall on my way back, I don't know. Don't worry about it." I paused, let a breath go by, then two. Then, "Listen, I know it's short notice, and I'm sorry, but is it okay if I bring a friend home for an hour or two?"

Susan jumped at it. "Absolutely! I was beginning to worry you two didn't have any friends," she teased.

"Just the one," I said, trying my best to make it sound like a joke.

"Alright, kiddo. Apparently, I have a meeting that no one told me about, so I'll have to let you go. Have fun today." I swear, I could hear her smiling.

A little under an hour later, I was sitting on the front steps of Tom Chellings Middle School, waiting for the final bell to sound. I had considered going inside, saying hello to my teachers, but the sun was high and warm, and it was too nice a day to spend hearing about how sorry everyone was for my loss. That, and somewhere inside myself I knew that my appearance without Holly would raise more than a few eyebrows; I silently hoped that I could soon get over myself enough to let things get back to normal. With any luck, today would at least be a good first step.

I was a little lost in myself and these thoughts, and a flood of students was sweeping past me before I even realized the bell had rung. I went sprawling down to the pavement when some careless girl who didn't see me in her way planted her knee in my back by accident. I felt a hand grab my elbow to help me to my feet and when I looked up, I saw Gerard smiling down at me. "I wasn't expecting to find you here."

I shrugged in a poor attempt to act nonchalant. "I needed to get some fresh air, thought I'd come visit you. You don't mind, do you? I called your house before, I actually forgot you had school."

"You're lucky you don't," he said, "we have four tests next week, it's brutal." for a moment, I wondered if the school would waive the free pass they gave us because of Nana if we wanted to come back to school. I shook the thought out if my head as quickly as it had arrived -- why waste a good thing, after all?

"Hey, do you think you could convince your mom to let you come over to our new place for dinner?"

Gerard laughed. "Are you kidding? I think she'd pay your foster parents to feed me. She's getting sick of me spending every day at home, I think."

I laughed. "Well, tell get I'm sorry, will you?"

"You're not the one who should be sorry, Hannah." Gerard sighed. "I--"

"Can I ask you a question?"

He smiled, grateful for the change of subject. "Yiy just did, but I suppose I can give you another one. What is it?"

I ran the past two years through my mind, from our inseparable summers to the birthday disappearance, re dodged phone calls and the hot and cold attitude, our Nana's sickness. "Why weren't you at the funeral last week?" There was an accusing tone in my voice I hadn't meant, and I could have slapped myself for the look on Gerard's face. I'm sorry," I said, "that actually wasn't the question." I thought back to Holly and me pulling the second bed out of the Petersons' basement, and further to my last visit to church. "Do you ... Do you have a crush on Holly?" That wasn't the question either, not really, but it was close enough and it was certainly easier to vocalize.

The heat that flushed Gerard's cheeks was answer enough for me. "I didn't think I should say anything. I guess it was just easier to stay away."

"Easier for you, right? It wasn't for Holly." I had to laugh at him, though. "Have you looked around school? Everyone has a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Why would you need to keep your crush a secret?" every word that came out of my mouth was a nail being hammered into my body, but it was a necessary, cleansing kind of pain.

Gerard, bless him, was blissfully ignorant of that pain, but still somehow overflowing with wisdom. "That's everybody, though. We ... Holly ... she's different."

I forced a smile, refusing to let the tears come. "Yeah, she is."

Gerard's laugh was a little nervous. "Are you sure you still want me over for dinner?"

"Of course," I assured him. I decided not to tell him that it was why I wanted him over -- I had a hard enough time admitting that to myself. "Do you need to call your mother?" He shook his head, said he could call when we got to my place.

We were far from the end of this conversation, but we had said everything we could without reaching beyond our maturity level, so the rest would have to wait. As it was, we were at peace, and that was enough for the moment.

I made a beeline for the mall when we got off our first bus at the Lashley terminal. With almost five years of Nana's allowance -- or, rather, her hush money -- and only the rare occasion to ever spend any of it, it was hard to turn away from the flashy boutiques selling fresh summer fashions at fire-sale prices. Okay, so I couldn't have cared much, but it was hard to pass up all the things I saw and knew Holly would have loved for me to buy her. But I pulled through intact, and we managed to leave the mall with only one bag; I handed it to Gerard once we found seats on our second bus.

"What's this for?" he asked, pulling out a teddy bear and a bag of chocolates.

"You still owe Holly a birthday present." I winked at him. "If I haven't forgotten, it's a good bet she hasn't, either."

He smiled as he ripped off the price tags and shoved them in his pocket. "Doesn't that mean I still owe you a gift, too?"

I shrugged. "I'll have what I need soon enough. We'll call it a wash."

"What does it matter what you need? Shouldn't you get what you want for your birthday?" I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh or die at that.

"This is where we get off," I said, ringing the bell for the bus and the conversation to stop. For once, he took the hint.

Gerard's face was incredulous as we approached the Petersons' house, as I unlocked the front door, as we stepped into the foyer. I got the feeling he'd trade his right leg to live in a house like this. "And just wait 'til you see the rest of it," I said, laughing. I turned into the hallway and called out. "We're home!"

"We?" Holly poked a curious face out from the doorway to the living-room, and her face lit up. "Gerard!"

Gerard took a step forward, and Holly ran up to wrap him in a hug. She used the embrace as a diversion, looking at me while he couldn't see us. The question he eyes hurt us both -- Is this what I think it is?

I gave her an apologetic nod, and watched as her face sorted through a dozen different emotions befre she pushed Gerard to arm's length and hid behind a plastc smile. "Where have you been hiding? We missed you!" she glanced at me again, almost but not quite sorry, as she let her hand slide down into his. There was an electric shock that shook through us both when Gerard squeezed her hand, but her plastic smile returned so quickly that I wondered if I'd imagined it. "Come on, I have to introduce you to our foster parents. What's in the bag, anyway?"

Gerard held it out to her. "Happy belated birthday."

Description
The funny thing about relationships is that each one is unique, and has a specific way that it's supposed to be. Sometimes they don't start that way, or sometimes they do but something happens to change it temporarily. But if you could ever understand the way any govn relationship was meant to be, you could bet on it eventually coming back to that -- the strained respect between me and Nana, for example. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of the whole destiny thing, and I wish I could say that we all had the freedom to choose how and with whom we acted, but this is a time-tested am reliable theory.

I guess the reason i'm going on like this is out of some weird send of guilt over the way I let things get out of hand with Gerard. In light of Holly's and my conversation -- and my subsequent breakdown -- I began to wonder if I hadn't given him his fair shake. What if we weren't all that different after all? What if our reasons for alienating ourselves from the world around us were more similar than I wanted to believe? I owed it to Gerard to at least hear him out; but, more importantly, I owed it to Holly to try and fix our friendship with our best friend.

I called his house first, forgetting for a moment that the rest of the school wasn't on summer vacation yet; a lit had happened in the past week, so much so that I was dumbfounded to discover it wasn't at least July. After Miss Smith corrected my sense of time, and told me Gerard wouldn't be home for another two hours, she made a point of asking how Holly and I were "holding up," and offered me a handful of unwelcome condolences. I smiled through the phone and gave her my most practiced thanks before I hung up.

I found Holly in the living-room, curled up in the bay window with a book opened in her lap; the light steaming over her shoulder and the way her sundress clung to her shoulders and washed down her frame made it a scene worthy of a gallery painting, and I felt a little guilty for disturbing the portrait. "I need to go across town for an hour or two, do you want to come?"

Holly looked up, absently adjusting her bookmark into the pages and setting the novel down beside her. "Where are you going?"

"Marshal." I shrugged. Like I had with Marie at our birthday party, I wanted to keep Gerard a surprise if everything panned out -- and a secret, if it didn't. "The mall, on my way home. Maybe."

Holly shrugged her shoulders; the look on her face told me she was trying to choose between conflicting replies. Finally, she settled on, "That's okay, thanks. I'm too deep into this book now to put it down." Like everything we had said to each other in the past couple of days, it was just truthful enough to get away with, while hiding what we really wanted to say. The thought made me grimace

"Will you be okay here by yourself, or do you want me to wait until Jerry gets home?"

Holly had picked her book up again, and spoke with her nose buried in paper. "You don't need to worry about me."

"I do anyway." it had slipped out before I could stop it, even before I knew I was thinking it. Three small words and I broke the delicate truce, the terms of peace that had wordlessly been agreed upon trampled underfoot. Holly's head snapped up in surprise at the tone of my voice, but where I expected her to glower at me, I could see her whole heart in her eyes as she smiled.

"I'll be fine," she rephrased. "Lock the door on your way out, hey?"

Against my better judgement, I walked across to her, bent down to kiss her on the temple. "I love you."

Her smile broadened to a grin. "I know."

With that settled, I called Susan at work to clear my itinerary with her. The man who answered the phone gave me some graff for dialing the wrong extension by accident, but he transferred my call easily enough after he forced an apology out of me. Susan, once I got a hold of her, seemed overjoyed that I was taking action and not moping around the house. "Are you okay taking the bus? Do you know which ones to take?"

I nodded into the receiver. "The sixteen comes across the street, and it'll take me up to the mall, where I can catch the thirty-one up to Marshal." They were Marie's words, when she first brought us to the Petersons'. It was still hard to believe that it was only three days ago. "I should be home around five-thirty, if that's alright?"

"I'm off at five, you know. Did you want a drive home?"

"That's okay, thanks. I might drop by the mall on my way back, I don't know. Don't worry about it." I paused, let a breath go by, then two. Then, "Listen, I know it's short notice, and I'm sorry, but is it okay if I bring a friend home for an hour or two?"

Susan jumped at it. "Absolutely! I was beginning to worry you two didn't have any friends," she teased.

"Just the one," I said, trying my best to make it sound like a joke.

"Alright, kiddo. Apparently, I have a meeting that no one told me about, so I'll have to let you go. Have fun today." I swear, I could hear her smiling.

A little under an hour later, I was sitting on the front steps of Tom Chellings Middle School, waiting for the final bell to sound. I had considered going inside, saying hello to my teachers, but the sun was high and warm, and it was too nice a day to spend hearing about how sorry everyone was for my loss. That, and somewhere inside myself I knew that my appearance without Holly would raise more than a few eyebrows; I silently hoped that I could soon get over myself enough to let things get back to normal. With any luck, today would at least be a good first step.

I was a little lost in myself and these thoughts, and a flood of students was sweeping past me before I even realized the bell had rung. I went sprawling down to the pavement when some careless girl who didn't see me in her way planted her knee in my back by accident. I felt a hand grab my elbow to help me to my feet and when I looked up, I saw Gerard smiling down at me. "I wasn't expecting to find you here."

I shrugged in a poor attempt to act nonchalant. "I needed to get some fresh air, thought I'd come visit you. You don't mind, do you? I called your house before, I actually forgot you had school."

"You're lucky you don't," he said, "we have four tests next week, it's brutal." for a moment, I wondered if the school would waive the free pass they gave us because of Nana if we wanted to come back to school. I shook the thought out if my head as quickly as it had arrived -- why waste a good thing, after all?

"Hey, do you think you could convince your mom to let you come over to our new place for dinner?"

Gerard laughed. "Are you kidding? I think she'd pay your foster parents to feed me. She's getting sick of me spending every day at home, I think."

I laughed. "Well, tell get I'm sorry, will you?"

"You're not the one who should be sorry, Hannah." Gerard sighed. "I--"

"Can I ask you a question?"

He smiled, grateful for the change of subject. "Yiy just did, but I suppose I can give you another one. What is it?"

I ran the past two years through my mind, from our inseparable summers to the birthday disappearance, re dodged phone calls and the hot and cold attitude, our Nana's sickness. "Why weren't you at the funeral last week?" There was an accusing tone in my voice I hadn't meant, and I could have slapped myself for the look on Gerard's face. I'm sorry," I said, "that actually wasn't the question." I thought back to Holly and me pulling the second bed out of the Petersons' basement, and further to my last visit to church. "Do you ... Do you have a crush on Holly?" That wasn't the question either, not really, but it was close enough and it was certainly easier to vocalize.

The heat that flushed Gerard's cheeks was answer enough for me. "I didn't think I should say anything. I guess it was just easier to stay away."

"Easier for you, right? It wasn't for Holly." I had to laugh at him, though. "Have you looked around school? Everyone has a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Why would you need to keep your crush a secret?" every word that came out of my mouth was a nail being hammered into my body, but it was a necessary, cleansing kind of pain.

Gerard, bless him, was blissfully ignorant of that pain, but still somehow overflowing with wisdom. "That's everybody, though. We ... Holly ... she's different."

I forced a smile, refusing to let the tears come. "Yeah, she is."

Gerard's laugh was a little nervous. "Are you sure you still want me over for dinner?"

"Of course," I assured him. I decided not to tell him that it was why I wanted him over -- I had a hard enough time admitting that to myself. "Do you need to call your mother?" He shook his head, said he could call when we got to my place.

We were far from the end of this conversation, but we had said everything we could without reaching beyond our maturity level, so the rest would have to wait. As it was, we were at peace, and that was enough for the moment.

I made a beeline for the mall when we got off our first bus at the Lashley terminal. With almost five years of Nana's allowance -- or, rather, her hush money -- and only the rare occasion to ever spend any of it, it was hard to turn away from the flashy boutiques selling fresh summer fashions at fire-sale prices. Okay, so I couldn't have cared much, but it was hard to pass up all the things I saw and knew Holly would have loved for me to buy her. But I pulled through intact, and we managed to leave the mall with only one bag; I handed it to Gerard once we found seats on our second bus.

"What's this for?" he asked, pulling out a teddy bear and a bag of chocolates.

"You still owe Holly a birthday present." I winked at him. "If I haven't forgotten, it's a good bet she hasn't, either."

He smiled as he ripped off the price tags and shoved them in his pocket. "Doesn't that mean I still owe you a gift, too?"

I shrugged. "I'll have what I need soon enough. We'll call it a wash."

"What does it matter what you need? Shouldn't you get what you want for your birthday?" I wasn't sure whether I wanted to laugh or die at that.

"This is where we get off," I said, ringing the bell for the bus and the conversation to stop. For once, he took the hint.

Gerard's face was incredulous as we approached the Petersons' house, as I unlocked the front door, as we stepped into the foyer. I got the feeling he'd trade his right leg to live in a house like this. "And just wait 'til you see the rest of it," I said, laughing. I turned into the hallway and called out. "We're home!"

"We?" Holly poked a curious face out from the doorway to the living-room, and her face lit up. "Gerard!"

Gerard took a step forward, and Holly ran up to wrap him in a hug. She used the embrace as a diversion, looking at me while he couldn't see us. The question he eyes hurt us both -- Is this what I think it is?

I gave her an apologetic nod, and watched as her face sorted through a dozen different emotions befre she pushed Gerard to arm's length and hid behind a plastc smile. "Where have you been hiding? We missed you!" she glanced at me again, almost but not quite sorry, as she let her hand slide down into his. There was an electric shock that shook through us both when Gerard squeezed her hand, but her plastic smile returned so quickly that I wondered if I'd imagined it. "Come on, I have to introduce you to our foster parents. What's in the bag, anyway?"

Gerard held it out to her. "Happy belated birthday."