Remembrance (The Transcend Time Saga) (5 page)

Jeremy thrust the bag of popcorn in my face, the buttery smell filling my nose. “Want some popcorn?” he asked. “It’ll take the edge off.”

I shook my head. “No thanks,” I whispered.

I tried focusing on the movie again—not on Drew sitting so still next to me, or Jeremy crunching on the other side. I wondered if Drew would mention what had happened between us. Even if he did, it meant nothing. He wouldn’t be there with Chelsea if he wasn’t into her.

However, no matter how hard I tried to forget about it, the place where Drew’s hand connected with mine felt warm for the rest of the movie. He didn’t look at me again after that, and I wondered what he was going to say to me about the moment between us in the theater—if he planned on mentioning anything at all.

CHAPTER 7

Drew refused to look at me when we got out of our seats, and Jeremy held my hand as we walked down the steps—the same one that Drew had held only an hour before.

“What’d you guys think of the movie?” Chelsea asked as we walked outside.

“It was alright,” Drew replied, not going into any more detail. I looked at him, and he held his gaze with mine for a second before turning back towards Chelsea. Neither Chelsea nor Jeremy noticed.

“There could have been more jump scenes.” Jeremy laughed.

“There were enough,” I answered quickly, looking at the ground so my eyes wouldn’t wander in Drew’s direction again.

“You looked scared to death in there.” Jeremy laughed again. “Almost as much as when I drive fast.”

Drew turned to look at me, surprised by Jeremy’s statement. “You’re scared of speed?”

I pressed my lips together and narrowed my eyes at Jeremy for bringing it up. “Yeah,” I said, looking away in the hope that they would get the hint that I didn’t want to talk about it.

“It’s really funny,” Chelsea said with a smirk. “Don’t speed in a car with Lizzie, or she’ll totally freak out.”

Drew remained silent and looked out into the parking lot, like he wasn’t listening to a word she said. It was the same distant look in his eyes that he’d had during the movie—like he was trying to remove himself from his surroundings by concentrating on something far away.

“So,” Chelsea said, trying to regain Drew’s attention. “Are you guys up for ice cream? That really good place where you can pile on the toppings is around the corner.” She looked at me after asking, her eyes begging me to say yes.

“Sure,” I agreed after a few seconds. It wasn’t like she gave me any other choice.

She smiled and looked at Drew, excited to spend more time with him. At least that made one of us. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be around him—it was actually quite the opposite—but I still didn’t know what to say to him after the incident in the theater. It would be best to forget it ever happened.

Jeremy’s iPhone started blasting the most recent rap song before he could respond, and he pulled it out of his pocket, looking at the screen. “Hold on guys, I need to take this,” he said, bringing it to his ear and walking a few feet away.

“That movie scared me so much.” Chelsea attempted to fill the silence. “I was totally freaking out every time something was about to pop out. I’m surprised you liked it, Lizzie,” she said, looking over at me. “I thought horror movies scared you.”

“I was fine,” I said, wishing she would stop talking about the movie. It wasn’t helping me forget about the incident in the theater. I looked at Jeremy as he paced back and forth while talking on his cell, wondering what was taking him so long.

“I’ll be there,” I overheard him say to the person on the other end of the line. “See you soon.” He ended the call and rejoined us. “It’s time for the new members of the team to be initiated,” he said, his eyes shining with excitement.

“But you’re co-captain,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t you have known in advance?”

“I’m still a new member,” he explained, slinging his arm around my shoulders. “And the fun part’s how we don’t know when the initiation’s gonna be until it’s time. You’ll be fine getting a ride home with Chelsea and Drew, right?”

Drew glanced at me and took a step closer to Chelsea. “I’ve got no problem driving home two beautiful girls,” he said.

Jeremy nodded, squeezing my shoulder to pull me closer towards him. “Hey, man. Liz is all mine.”

“I’ll remember that.” Drew’s voice was edgy.

Chelsea looked from Drew to Jeremy and back again. “How about that ice cream?” she asked, clapping her hands together to regain everyone’s attention. 

Jeremy ignored her and looked down at me, cupping my cheek in one of his hands. “I’ll let you know how it goes,” he said, pressing his lips against mine right in front of Chelsea and Drew.

I pulled away a second later, guilty that Drew had to see that. But the feeling was unreasonable. Jeremy was my boyfriend—not Drew.

“Have fun,” I said, despite my annoyance that Jeremy ditched me again for the team. At least he was there for part of the night, which was better than nothing.

He threw his keys into the air, catching them in his other hand. “Don’t worry, I will,” he said, turning around with a small hop to make his way to the Jeep.

Chelsea turned towards Drew, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “I bet you can’t guess my favorite flavor,” she challenged, smiling in a way that she probably thought was seductive. I thought she looked overly animated, but guys fell for it all the time.

He paused, unprepared for her question. “Rocky Road?” he guessed, his lazy tone giving me the impression that he didn’t care one way or the other.

“No way! I’m totally a chocolate girl,” she said, laughing. “Now try and guess Lizzie’s.”

“Strawberry,” he said without a second thought.

Surprise flashed across Chelsea’s face. “Lucky guess,” she said, looking at me in annoyance. She seemed to get over it a second later and returned her attention to Drew. “I bet yours is … coffee. Since you’re a New Yorker and all. But let Lizzie try, too.”

“Vanilla,” I went with my first instinct. A moment later I realized that I should have guessed something that I knew couldn’t be right so I wouldn’t irritate Chelsea, but it was too late.

He looked at me, showing no emotion. “You’ve got it.”

Chelsea scrunched her nose in distaste, like I did something wrong by guessing correctly. “I’m actually not hungry anymore,” she said, looking at Drew. “Do you want to come over to my place after we drop off Lizzie?”

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and paused. Chelsea looked worried, and I suspected he might turn down her offer. I hoped he would.

“Sure,” he said, focusing on Chelsea like I wasn’t even there.

“Cool.” She smiled and looked at me, her eyes sparkling with happiness. But I must have looked as upset as I felt, because her features softened with concern. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Just upset that Jeremy left so quickly,” I lied, saying the first believable excuse that came to my mind.

“He’s excited about his new team,” she said gently. “And you heard him—it’s not like he had a choice.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, not wanting to make a bigger deal about it than it was. I looked at Drew, who was silent through the entire exchange, surprised to find him watching me intensely as I spoke. He turned his attention back to Chelsea before she noticed, removing his keys from his pocket.

“Are you girls ready to head out?” he asked, twirling the keys around his finger.

Chelsea turned in the direction of the parking lot, excited to get out of there. “Let’s go,” she said, looking up at Drew.

He didn’t look at me again as we walked to the car, and Chelsea had a smile plastered on her face for the entire drive, like she didn’t have a care in the world. I supposed she didn’t; it seemed like everything was working out perfectly for her.

If only I could say the same for me. All I knew was that I couldn’t forget the feeling of Drew’s hand wrapped around mine in the theater, and judging from the way he looked at me when we were talking, I doubted he could either.    

I couldn’t help but wonder what he would say the next time we were alone together.

CHAPTER 8

I didn’t want to know what had happened between Chelsea and Drew after they dropped me off. I imagined them sitting close together on the couch, laughing about something funny Drew said, while Chelsea threw herself all over him until he couldn’t resist her anymore. It made me upset to think about it, and I spent all day on Sunday reading
Pride and Prejudice
, trying to worry about Lizzy and Mr. Darcy’s problems instead of my own.

Chelsea and Drew sat together in history on Monday morning, and there were no empty seats near them. I sat next to Hannah’s boyfriend Sheldon, who was in the middle of the room talking with Shayna, a girl who was in the school play with him. He smiled when I sat down but went back to his conversation with her a second later, so I took out my sketchbook to pass the time before the beginning of class.

“We’re doing something different today,” Mrs. Wilder said upon entering the room. “I’ve noticed that a lot of you don’t feel comfortable speaking up in discussions. In order to change this, I’ve devised a ten minute exercise to do in class so we get to know each other better.” She removed a stack of papers from her desk, handing them to a girl sitting in front who started passing them around. “Take a few minutes to read the directions and then we’ll begin.”

When the papers arrived in front of me, I took a copy and passed them along. The assignment was that for ten minutes we were to write about a turning point in our lives. It had to be a specific event—no generalizations—and we were supposed to write everything we remembered about it and how it changed who we are and our outlook upon life. When time was up we had to share what we wrote, saying as little or as much as we wanted.

“Does everyone understand what you’re supposed to do?” Mrs. Wilder asked after giving us a few minutes to read the instructions.

The class nodded unanimously.

“Then you may begin.”

I held my pen over the paper, contemplating what to write.

When Drew walked into the room on the first day of school
, I thought, shaking the idea out of my mind a second later. There had to be something more significant in my life than meeting Drew, but I knew that the moment we first saw each other was a huge turning point in my life. The connection I felt with that one glance was more than I’d ever felt with anyone, and even though it didn’t make any sense, there was a strange emptiness in my chest when we were apart. 

I ultimately decided to write about the day when Chelsea and I became friends, and didn’t stop writing until the ten minutes were up.

I’ll never forget the day that Chelsea and I became friends in third grade. The two of us had never spoken before—she had tons of friends on the playground who surrounded her during recess, whereas I was shy and always built sandcastles with Tracy Summers. Tracy and I were “default friends”—the type who only spent time together because we were too afraid to talk to anyone else.

Then Chelsea was absent from school for an entire week, and our teacher explained to us about her mom passing away. I tried imagining how I would feel if the same thing happened to me, but couldn’t begin to comprehend the pain that Chelsea must have been going through. I’d always envied Chelsea’s extraversion and how easily she made friends, but then I realized that she could be as fragile as the rest of us.

When she came back to school the next week, her friends seemed awkward around her. They didn’t know what to say and treated her like a china doll that would shatter with the lightest touch. Tracy was home sick the day of Chelsea’s return, and Chelsea walked over to me building a sandcastle by myself and asked to join. I was shocked that she even knew who I was, and that she was more interested in building sandcastles than playing house with her usual friends on the jungle-gym.

That was the best recess I’d ever had. We created an entire world revolving around the castle we built—taking place in England when people lived happily ever after, attending balls and not having to go to school. It seemed like the perfect life, and we laughed the entire time. We had perfect husbands who were Kings of the land, and the two of us were both Queens. Technically there could only be one Queen, but we allowed two because we didn’t want one of us to be a higher rank than the other.

I was the only one who treated her like an actual person and not “that girl whose mom had just died,” and she helped me open up to others. From that day on, sandcastle building became the most popular activity at recess, and I met so many more friends, including Jeremy, who played the part as King of the castle after “marrying” my make-believe Queen. Ever since then, I’ve known that whenever I needed a true friend, Chelsea would always be there for me, just as I would always be there for her.

“Ten minutes are up,” Mrs. Wilder said, interrupting my train of thought.

I dropped my pen on the desk and looked at everyone else in the room. Most people were looking over what they had written, and a few of the shyer students were fidgeting in their seats, looking worried about sharing their pieces with the class. Mine wasn’t as personal as what I’d imagined some other people wrote about, but talking about something life changing in front of people that I didn’t know very well was still a strange concept.

“Who wants to go first?” Mrs. Wilder asked, looking around for volunteers.

A blonde girl named Lara raised her hand and shared her first experience riding on a roller coaster. It didn’t sound like a life changing experience to me, but I decided not to judge what other people wrote, since that defeated the purpose of feeling more comfortable with the other members of the class. After Lara finished, Mrs. Wilder told the boy next to her to go, and we continued going around in a circle from there.

Just as I expected, Chelsea wrote about her mom passing away. Her voice quivered as she spoke, and she mentioned how our friendship helped her through the mourning process. Chelsea wasn’t one for sharing emotional moments, and I nodded in encouragement, afraid that she was going to start crying in front of the class. She refused to look at anyone when she finished, and I saw Drew’s hand squeeze hers under the table. My chest tightened at the affectionate gesture.

“Thank you, Chelsea,” Mrs. Wilder smiled. “Drew, it’s your turn.”

He hesitated before speaking. “Mine’s when I moved here,” he said, not going into any more detail. His eyes flickered to mine, and I wondered if he was just as affected by meeting me as I was from meeting him. Then he looked away, and the hope disappeared. I tried convincing myself that I was just imagining he felt the same way. It could never work out between Drew and me, so there was no reason to get my hopes up. Chelsea and Jeremy created too many complications.

It got to my turn and I shared what I wrote, leaving out the part about not having any friends before meeting Chelsea. I leaned back in my chair when I’d finished summarizing what I’d wrote and looked around to see the reaction of the class. Most of them looked bored, but Chelsea smiled in encouragement, the same way I had to her earlier. Drew looked disappointed—I wondered if he’d hoped that I would write something about him—and he smiled for a second before looking away, pretending that the tiny interaction didn’t occur at all. 

* * *

“Aren’t you curious about what happened with Drew after we dropped you off from the movies?”

I turned around, surprised that Chelsea was talking to me instead of walking to the language wing with Drew.

“Sorry about not returning your calls yesterday,” I apologized, preparing to recite the excuse I’d already planned. “I forgot to charge my phone, and didn’t realize until this morning.”

“It’s fine.” She shrugged before continuing. “But in case you were wondering, we had lots of fun. We watched a movie, but didn’t end up watching much of it, if you know what I mean.”

I looked around at the other students walking through the hall, not wanting to hear any more. “Sounds great,” I managed to say. My voice sounded fake to me, but she didn’t appear to notice. 

“I’ll tell you more in trig,” she said, turning around on her heal and practically floating towards the Spanish classroom. She looked over her shoulder a second later and added, “And remember to charge your phone from now on!”

I smiled until she turned around again. Luckily she wouldn’t be able to talk with me about the rest of the night during lunch since she sat with Drew at a table by themselves in the commons, so I wouldn’t have to hear her gushing about him until later that day. He didn’t like sitting at Jeremy’s table in the cafeteria. Not that I could blame him—I didn’t like it either, but it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. 

I sat down at my desk in French class and was disappointed to find Drew’s seat empty. Maybe he was skipping. I took my books out to get ready for class, and a minute later he strolled into the classroom, refusing to look at me as he sat down.

“Hey,” I said to him, placing my elbow on the table and resting my chin in my hand.

A look of annoyance crossed over his face. “Hi.” He glanced at me before turning away, making it clear that he was done talking to me.

My heart felt like it dropped into my stomach at how cold he was being, and he didn’t seem to care. “I’m sorry about what happened on Saturday night,” I said in a rush. “The movie caught me by surprise. I don’t know why …” I felt my cheeks turn red, and I started fiddling with the pen that I’d laid on my desk. “I don’t know why I jumped like that.”

He refused to look in my direction. “Don’t worry about it,” he finally said, the coldness of his voice feeling like tiny daggers piercing my skin.

I dropped my pen on the desk. “I don’t get why you’re so angry about it,” I said, leaning back in my seat and crossing my arms over my chest in frustration. “I didn’t do anything besides … guessing your favorite ice cream flavor. There was Friday in the library, the movies on Saturday night, and now you don’t want to talk to me.” The boldness of my words surprised me, but the entire situation was ridiculous.

“I’m not mad at you.” His face softened for a second, returning to the hard stare a moment later. “But I think we should stop the French sessions. You’ll pick it up without my help.”

I huffed in annoyance. “Fine. I don’t know why you wanted to help me so badly, anyway. I’m hopeless in French.”

“You’re not hopeless,” he insisted. “You’re smart. I mean it when I say you’ll do fine without my help.”

“Right.” I shrugged, not wanting him to know how disappointed I was about his canceling the French sessions.

“Anyway,” he started, turning to face me. “Chelsea invited me to the soccer game on Saturday.”

“Okay…” I said, not quite sure where he was going with this.

“Just wanted to let you know.” He glanced at the door when Mrs. Evans walked in. “I’m guessing you’re going, too. Although you don’t strike me as the type to enjoy watching soccer.”

“I don’t mind it,” I lied. I hated watching soccer.

He smirked. “I’m sure you find it fascinating.” 

I shrugged, glad when the bell rang and the class started to quiet down. He shook his head in disbelief and turned to face the front of the room, not looking over at me for the rest of class.

The fact that he was going to the soccer game that weekend made me dread it even more than normal. I should have known that Chelsea would invite him. However, he didn’t make it sound like he’d agreed to go, so maybe there was hope that I wouldn’t have to sit through the entire game dealing with him being there with Chelsea instead of me.

Because I wasn’t sure if I could handle that.