Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

When they reach the long drive leading up to the high school, Aidan frowns. “So tell me,” he says as they pull up to the front of the sprawling building and into one of the empty parking spots. “Why exactly are we here?”


It’s early evening on a Friday toward the end of August, and the school sits hushed and empty. Though she spent four years here, Clare’s already having trouble remembering the feel of the place when it’s full of students, everyone spilling out the wooden doors and onto the front lawn. It’s only been two months, but somehow, all that seems like a very long time ago.

“Because,” she says, turning to Aidan, “it’s the first stop on the list.”

“I know that,” he says. “But how come?”

“It’s where we met,” she explains as she gets out of the car. “And the idea is to start at the beginning.”

“So this is a chronological scavenger hunt then.”

“It’s not a scavenger hunt at all. Think of it more like a refresher course.”

“A refresher course in what?”

She smiles at him over the top of the car. “Us.”

“So kind of like our greatest hits,” he says, twirling the keys on his finger as he walks around to her, and for a moment, it’s like none of the rest of it happened. Just now, just for this second, he’s not the person she knows best in the world, but the new kid again, the one who’d shown up on the very first day of junior year, all red hair and freckles and ridiculous height, appearing out of nowhere and turning her inside out.

The slanted light is at his back, forcing Clare to squint as she studies him for a few long seconds. “Did I ever tell you,” she says, “that I used to be late to English every single day, just so I could bump into you on your way to Pre-calc?”

“Well, now I feel kind of bad,” Aidan says, his eyes creasing at the corners. “If I’d known that, I would’ve tried to be more punctual.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she says, remembering the way he used to come loping around the corner, his books tucked under his arm like a football, always missing the bell, at first because he’d get lost, and later because he’d always manage to lose track of time. “I would’ve waited all day. I probably would’ve waited forever.”

She’s not serious, of course, but there’s something wistful in his smile.

“Yeah?” he says.

She shrugs. “Yeah.”

“I wish you still would,” he says, though not spitefully; he says it quietly, evenly, a simple truth, an earnest request.

But it still leaves a mark.

“You have to stop doing that,” Clare says. “Stop being the romantic one.”

Aidan looks surprised. “What?”

“It’s not fair,” she says. “I hate that you get to be the good guy here. It’s not like I want to break up with you. It kills me just thinking about it, but I’m trying to be practical. Starting tomorrow, we’re gonna be a million miles away from each other, and it doesn’t make sense to do this any other way. So you have to stop.”

“Stop… being romantic?” Aidan asks, looking amused.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe you need to stop being so practical?”

Clare sighs. “One of us has to be.”

“The one who planned a romantic scavenger hunt for our last night?” he says, looping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a little squeeze.

She rolls her eyes. “It’s not a scavenger hunt.”

“Well, whatever it is, I think it’s suspiciously romantic for someone so annoyingly practical,” he says, drawing her closer. Her head only comes up to his chest, so she has to tip her chin up to look at him. When she does, he leans down to kiss her, and even though they’ve kissed a thousand times before—have kissed, even, in this very parking lot—it still makes her stomach go wobbly, and she’s seized by a sudden worry over how few of these they have left.

Together, they walk up the front steps of the school, and Clare tugs on the handle of the big wooden door, but it refuses to budge. She knocks a few times, in case there might be a security guard inside, but nobody answers.