Not Now, Not Ever: A Novel

But Sid had run her tongue over the tip of her canines as she thought about it. Her eyes stared off a thousand yards and then some while her hands held on tight to a sweating bottle of water. When she finally spoke, her voice was low.

“It’s the worst food and the hardest physical challenges and the shortest, coldest showers. It’s people screaming at you more than you’ve ever been screamed at in your life. And through it all, do you know what you’re wearing?” She had paused, staring me down until I shook my head.

“Granny panties,” she said. I must have looked shocked, because she actually smiled as she went on. “Big, white, itchy-ass cotton panties. You can’t wear anything with a logo on it, so good-bye Calvin Klein and Under Armour. You’re running around and getting yelled at and thinking, I’m gonna do this shit for the rest of my life? And when you think that you can’t handle it—you’re going to truly fucking lose your mind—they let you put your own chonies back on. And it all makes sense. They turn up the heat so you can transform into something else. Hot sand doesn’t turn into glass, Ellie. Molten sand does.”

I hadn’t understood it then. Then, my main takeaway was that I must have been getting older, because Sid had never sworn in front of me before. She never cursed in front of Isaiah. He would have told.

I understood it now. Now I was feeling the heat get cranked up and my sand was figuring out how to melt.

This was my trial run. At the end of my senior year, I was going to have to make a choice as to which parent I hurt. If I enlisted, my dad and Beth would be crushed—constantly scared, always half in the dark about what I was doing. If I stayed close to home and got a business degree, coming home on weekends to do my laundry and babysit my brother, my mother would be ashamed.

I wanted to try on my third option, the nuclear option—getting a degree that I wanted. Not close to home. Not with the military. The route that hurt everyone. I wanted to know if it was worth it.

And—bonus!—I got to keep my good underwear.

I slowed as the corner of the Lauritz library came into view. A familiar dark-haired figure was wedged into the corner of the stairs with a typewriter. I’d almost forgotten about the typewriter. Brandon made all of his notes in pencil, like the rest of us, during classes. It was strange to watch him mashing at the round keys and shoving aside the roller.

Now that I’d spotted him, it would have been rude not to say hello. We were teammates, after all. And, unlike Perla, Brandon wasn’t a teammate that I fantasized about decimating in the Melee.

I took my headphones out and wound them around my wrist as I climbed the first stair.

“Hey,” I said. My stomach immediately contracted as I waited for him to register my voice. This was already a mistake. This was why I had Leigh. She was supposed to help me not make an ass out of myself.

At least, once I humiliated myself, I could go inside and read more of the Octavia Butler book in the sci-fi section.

Hands still poised over the keys, Brandon’s head popped up. He quickly pushed the hair out of his eyes, looking down at me intently. Like he was really trying to commit my visage to memory.

My sweaty, sweaty visage. I was sure my lucky Angry Robot shirt was sticking to me in big wet clumps. God, this was a dumb idea.

“Ever,” he said. “Hey. Hi.”

“Hello,” I said, assuming this was the next greeting in the sequence. “Nice typewriter.”

I wasn’t sure if it was actually a nice typewriter. It could have been the worst typewriter ever made—The Plan 9 from Outer Space of typewriters. But it was shiny and not currently rusting in an antique store, so it seemed like the appropriate response. What the hell is up with that ancient bucket of bolts? didn’t have the same ring.

“Thanks,” he said, passing a possessive hand over the keys. “I don’t have a laptop.”

Mystery solved.

Well, no. Not really. I knew plenty of people who didn’t have their own computers and none of them—literally zero percent—had opted for a typewriter. Generally, people used school computers or borrowed their parents’ tech.

“It’s not, uh, super practical,” he said. He must have been used to questions about it. “Jams says that the noise is distracting, so I come here to transcribe my notes.”

He gestured to his binder, laid flat on the step above him with a three-hole punch and a collection of pencils rolling toward freedom.

I shot a look toward the library’s doors. “Why don’t you go inside?”

“The general consensus is in favor of Jams,” he said. He mimed typing in midair. “The clacking. It’s not exactly white noise.” His hands flopped into his lap. “But how are you? Leigh didn’t kick you out of your room, did she?”

“No. I left of my own free will so she could have some space to do her yoga and study. She needs a lot of alone time. And she’s kind of freaked out about not entering this morning’s event.” I winced a smile as I leaned against the warm metal railing. “All of this must be pretty standard for you. Compared to actually going to the Messina, a couple weeks of camp must be nothing.”

“Oh. I guess. It’s still a lot of work.” He glanced around, as though expecting a crowd to gather, even though there wasn’t anyone even remotely near us. “Look, I really don’t want everyone to know that I go to the Mess. If you already told Leigh, that’s fine. I should have been clearer about it when I mentioned it last night—”

“I haven’t told Leigh,” I interrupted. Curiosity fluttered around my insides. I tried to keep my face neutral. “Did you go to school with all of the Messina counselors?”

His long nose scrunched in the middle. “Yeah. Ben was my student government mentor when I was a freshman. I kind of fell in with their crowd. But only for a year. Then they all graduated. I can tell you that Trixie is a vegetarian and Cornell is a Magic cardsharp, but that won’t help anyone win the Melee.”

I searched my brain and came up with a blank. “And which one is Trixie?”

“Um.” His cheeks went pink. “Red hair, blue-gray eyes. Not as tall as you, but tallish—”

“Oh. The Perfect Nerd Girl.”

He sputtered a laugh. “Is that what you call her?”

“It seemed nicer than the busty white girl.”

Not that I hadn’t mentally referred to her as that also.

He started to say something but stopped himself with a twitch of his shoulders. “Since the Mess helps run the camp, if I told people I went there, they’d think I had some insight about what’s coming at us. I don’t. Being here is proof enough of that.” Reading the continued confusion in my face, he added, “Most Mess kids already have their early admission locked. We have a class junior year that’s just for perfecting admissions essays and picking out your safety schools. None of my classmates would ever consider going to summer camp to win placement.” He brushed his hair back into his eyes, possibly to hide the lemon rind bitterness that had seeped into that last statement. “Ugh. That makes me sound like such an entitled, private school asshole. I don’t think I’m too good to be here. I’m definitely not. Hey, is it rambling out here or is it just me?”

I laughed. “You don’t sound like an asshole.”

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