Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

She doesn’t know whether she’ll get along with her roommate, a girl from New York City named Beatrice St. James, who seems to only want to talk about what bands she’s been seeing this summer, and who—Clare suspects—will end up wallpapering their room with concert posters.

She doesn’t know whether it’s a mistake to leave her winter coat behind until Thanksgiving break, whether she’ll find it unbearable to share a bathroom with twenty other people, whether girls from the East Coast will dress differently than the girls here in Chicago. She doesn’t know whether she’ll stand out or blend in, sink or swim, feel homesick or independent, happy or miserable.

And mostly, she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to survive all this without having Aidan on the other end of the phone.

Now she steps back from the wooden doors of the school with a defeated sigh.

“This,” she admits, “is not a great start.”

Aidan shrugs. “Who cares? I mean, don’t you think this is close enough?”

“Close enough isn’t good enough.”

“Of course not,” he says, rolling his eyes, but he follows her anyway as she makes her way along the building, past the staff parking lot and the auditorium and the whole east wing until they loop around to the back. Each time they pass another door, one of them jogs over to try it, but they’re all locked, every single one of them.

Finally, just behind the school, they stand at the ground floor window of Mr. Coady’s classroom, their hands cupped against the glass as they peer inside. The room is dark and quiet, the chalkboard wiped clean, the black tables coated in a thin layer of dust, the rocks and other samples stacked neatly in cases along the opposite wall.

“It looks different,” Aidan says. “Doesn’t it?”

Beside him, Clare nods. “It almost seems like it’s smaller or something.”

“That must be because we’re such big-time college students now,” Aidan says with a grin, and they both step back again. He puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get inside.”

She doesn’t answer him; instead, she lifts her gaze to the top of the enormous window, then runs her fingers along the edges before rapping on the glass.

“I wonder if—” she begins, but Aidan cuts her off.

“No way,” he says. “Don’t even say it.”

“I wonder if we could break in somehow,” she says, ignoring him.

“Are you kidding?”

She blinks at him. “Not entirely.”

“I don’t think this is exactly the right time for either of us to get arrested,” he says, the color rising in his cheeks, as it always does when he gets frustrated with her. “I have a feeling UCLA might frown upon that sort of thing, and I don’t need to give my dad another excuse to be disappointed in me. Not when I’m just about out of here.”

“Yeah, but—”

He holds up a hand, stopping her before she can continue. “I bet Dartmouth wouldn’t be too thrilled about it, either,” he reminds her, then gestures at the window. “Besides, we’re right here. I realize the phrase ‘close enough’ isn’t in your vocabulary, but why is this so important to you?”

“Because,” she says, holding out the piece of paper, which is now balled up in her hand, “because this is our last night. And it’s supposed to be perfect. And if we can’t even get this right…”

Aidan’s face softens. “This isn’t a metaphor,” he says. “If we don’t check off everything on this list, all that means is that we can roll with the punches. And that’s a good thing, you know?”

“You’re right,” she says, swallowing hard. “I know you’re right.”

But still, she feels inexplicably sad. Because of course Aidan would think that. He wants desperately for everything to work out between them. If he walked over a patch of sidewalk right now that read CLARE AND AIDAN SHOULD ABSOLUTELY BREAK UP TONIGHT in brightly colored chalk, he’d still manage to somehow explain it away, to turn it around and make it into something positive.