Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“How’re your parents taking it?”


“Oh, I think they’ll survive,” she tells him, but he runs a hand over the back of his beefy neck with a rueful look.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he says. “Allie left last week, and I’ll tell you what: Her mother and I are at loose ends. It feels like I’m missing my right arm.”

“I’m sure she’s missing you, too,” Clare assures him as Aidan finishes up at the pump and walks back around the front of the car.

“Hi there, young man,” Officer Lerner says. “You showing Clare a nice time on her last night?”

“Yes, sir,” Aidan says, sticking out his hand. “It’s mine, too, actually.”

“Last night,” he says, nodding appreciatively. “That’s big, huh?”

From where she’s sitting in the car, Clare can only see Aidan through the bug-speckled windshield, and she watches as he bobs his head a few times.

“You know,” Officer Lerner says, “I met Allie’s mother when I was in high school.”

“Oh, yeah?” Aidan says, cutting his eyes in Clare’s direction.

She knows what he’s thinking.

He’s thinking: See?

He’s thinking: I told you so.

He’s thinking: It can happen.

But Clare only looks away.

It’s true that the world is full of signs. They just mean different things to different people.

To Clare, this looks like the exception.

To Aidan, it looks like the rule.

“Love of my life,” Officer Lerner says with a wink, then taps the hood of the car once and steps back. “Though I’d better get going. If anyone spots me hanging around here too long, she’ll think I’ve been buying candy again, and she’ll have my neck for that.” He pats his chest pocket, which rustles, then winks at them again. “You two enjoy your last night, okay? Stay out of trouble.”

“We will,” Clare promises.

When he’s gone, Aidan slips back into the driver’s seat, and then sits there for what seems like a very long time without turning the key. As she waits, the silence starts to feel like something tangible, so thick it’s hard to breathe, and her face has gone warm in the too-small car. She moves to roll down her window, then changes her mind.

“Gum,” she says, her mouth a little chalky. “I need gum.”

Aidan frowns. “Okay.”

“Be right back,” she says, pushing open the door and gulping in the cool air as she weaves between the pumps.

Ahead of her, the mini-mart is like a brightly lit fishbowl in the surrounding darkness, and inside, it smells like an odd mix of gasoline and hot dogs. As she wanders up and down the aisles of chips and candy, the packaging electric-looking under the too-harsh lights, her heart beats fast at the thought of returning to the car.

They’d had a fight here once. It wasn’t their first, and it wasn’t their biggest, but it had trailed them all the way from Aidan’s house, where his father had—as usual—been on his case about his grades, which were always hovering somewhere between decent and pretty good, not because he wasn’t smart, but because he didn’t care enough to try. As they drove away, Clare couldn’t quite bring herself to disagree with Mr. Gallagher.

“If you spent even half the energy you do on the lacrosse field…” she’d said, and he shot her a look.

“It’s just as important,” he said. “We both know I’m not getting into college because of my grades.”

“Not if you don’t try,” she agreed as they pulled up to the gas station.

It had only escalated from there, and by the time they walked into the mini-mart, they were barely speaking. But after a few minutes wandering separate aisles, both of them still stewing, Clare felt something hit her lightly between her shoulder blades, and she spun around to find a box of Nerds on the floor at her feet.