Chapter 2

 September 2008

Carley first met Drew five days after her first date with Jay Swenson. Jay was a popular boy in the same grade as her, who’d asked her to the movies in the second week of their junior year. She loved his charming old-fashioned ways—he paid for her ticket and drove her to the theater in his cream-colored 1959 Mustang, and played her his favorite Beatles song—the same as hers, “Eleanor Rigby”.

Jay was the kind of person who took everything seriously. The day after their date, he went up to her in the halls and asked her nervously if she really meant she wanted to see him again when she said she’d had a good time; she laughed and said of course. By lunchtime everyone had heard that  they were a couple.

Monday was the first day of yearbook club. She and Jay had both been members since freshman year; he because it looked good on his college transcript and she because the club had been looking for members in the middle of the year after one of the members had dropped out, and she needed the extra credit her art teacher promised to all the members.

Halfway through the president’s welcome, a tall boy with dark, wavy hair came in. The president, a suspiciously thin girl with stringy hair named Ellen Dunbar, turned impatiently to face him.

“You’re late,” she said, sighing. The boy smiled sheepishly and ran a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, I know. I almost forgot yearbook started today, see, and since I really didn’t want to miss it I had to turn around quick and get back. I’m really sorry.” He smiled at her again, showing his cute dimples, and she loosened.

“Sit down, then,” she surrendered. “But I have to get your name first. Hold on…” She turned around and shuffled through the papers on her desk, finally holding up a pink sheet. “Okay.” Ellen sat poised with a pen on the paper.

“Drew Argyle?” he said, turning around to look back at her from where he was looking for a seat. “Like the pattern.”

“Okay…thanks.” She put the paper back on her desk. Drew made his way toward Jay and Carley, who were sitting next to each other.

“Can I sit here?” he whispered to Carley, gesturing to the empty seat next to her. She nodded and  smiled at him before turning back to Jay.

The next day, Drew sat next to her in Calculus II and passed her a note telling her she was the only one in the classroom who didn’t convince him they were going to school in a mental institution and asking for the English homework. They were friends from then on.

Jay never liked Drew. He thought he was a player and always worried about Carley getting sucked into his charm. Drew in turn thought Jay was a prick, that he worried too much, that he was neurotic, and he wondered how Carley could stand him. Sometimes things are so predictable that even the participants can see it coming, but Carley tried to deny her attraction to Drew even after she first kissed him.

They were in D.C. for the end-of-year trip, in May. She and Drew, by fate’s sick sense of humor, had been placed in the same tour group and partnered up for the team scavenger hunt. Their assignment was to find the home of the famous red phone of the president, and Drew had looked it up on his Blackberry, so they stood at the steps of the Capitol and gazed up at the white building. They sat down on the steps and Drew looked at her in the way only he could, like he was looking into her soul. He took her face in his hands. Carley’s whole body tingled and she felt an exhilaration, like a rush of adrenaline. He leaned down and whispered that she was beautiful. They kissed, there, on the steps of the Capitol, and Carley knew that she would rather be with Drew than Jay.

She avoided Jay for the rest of the week. Finally she decided that she would stay with him and Drew would always be her other option. On the last day of school, Jay tried to get her to sleep with him and they had a huge fight, and her other option came over the next day and made her breakfast and showed her somewhere she had never been. Carley didn’t know what to do.