Don't Ever Change Read Free

else in my head, until I’m thinking it so hard I realize my lips are pursed, my forehead’s scrunched, and my eyes are just narrow slits. Courtney’s mouse-face stays motionless, in a state of total Zen. I don’t let it faze me, though; I keep beaming and beaming. I visualize my thought filling the entire space of the room: Tell Me What to Do .
    I’m five seconds from the beginning of a bad headache when I notice a packet of papers on her otherwise empty desk, which means I probably wasn’t meditating very deeply at all.
    “What’s that?” I ask, pointing.
    “What’s what?” Courtney says.
    “On your desk.”
    “Just some forms.”
    “Fine,” I say, “don’t tell me.”
    “Chill, Eva. I’m just applying to study abroad next semester.”
    “Are you serious? I could never do that,” I say. “It’s not my kind of thing.”
    “You’re seventeen. You don’t have a thing.”
    “Yes, I do. I’m very specific.”
    “Whatever. What are you going to do all summer while I’m packing for Amsterdam?”
    “Amsterdam’s not where you go,” I say, thinking about it. “Paris is where you go.”
    “Paris is where you go, Ms. Not My Kind of Thing.”
    “I guess I’ll get a job,” I say.
    “Okay,” Courtney says. “Close your eyes again.”
    “Okay.”
    “Picture the ideal place you’d want to work this summer, if you could work anywhere. Like, if you could do anything, what would it be?”
    “Something in the sunshine,” I say. “Maybe, like, doing some good . But nothing too dirty, and it still has to be fun, but I also have to learn about myself and other people and hopefully meet a boy—or a few boys.”
    “Got it,” Courtney says. “Easy. Camp counselor. I’ll call Steven at that camp I used to work at, Sunny Skies.”
    “Kids,” I say. “Like, little kids?”
    “Doesn’t Dad say he learned everything in life from raising two girls?”
    “That’s Dad,” I say. “What does Dad know?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
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    AT GRADUATION I’M seated between boy Alex and girl Alex. They converse across me through the whole ceremony about some big party at boy Leslie’s house tonight, which they assume I’m going to. Tiffany Lee’s valedictorian speech is literally called “The University Is the Universe,” and near the end she breaks into intense, choking sobs. I try to spot Courtney and my parents in the bleachers but, since I’m not wearing my glasses (thanks to AP English last semester I’ve become haunted by the Dorothy Parker quote, “Men seldom make passes at women who wear glasses”), it’s impossible to distinguish faces that far off. It’s even hard to tell boy Alex apart from girl Alex, but mainly because we’re all wearing the same thing.
    During our principal’s speech I wonder what the party will be like tonight and if I should go. I’ve been to less than ten party parties in all of high school, but this seems like the one not to miss—mostly because it’s the last one. I assume at least a few of my friends will be going, so I decide I’ll go too. Plus, it sounds kind of nice to get sentimental. Not in a Tiffany Lee meltdown kind of way but just appreciating right now, what we all went through. It feels like all this obsessing over just getting to college already is somehow missing a point. But when I ask boy Alex who’s coming to the party, he says, “The usual,” and I realize I’ve probably been missing the point for years.
    Then someone in the row in front of me turns around and waves. I lean forward to see who it is, and it’s Foster Hoyt, which makes me wish I hadn’t leaned forward.
    “Hey, Eva,” he says.
    “Oh hi, Foster.”
    “Tiffany Lee really went for it, huh?”
    “She’d been waiting for that moment her whole life,” I say. “Considering that, she did all right.”
    Foster nods. I notice he’s holding some black blurry thing,