Free Crashing Into You Page B

blush, just enough to make me look decent. I grabbed my sociology
binder and headed downstairs.
    The walk from the sophomore
dorms to U-Hall would have been filled with a lot more tension if it hadn't
been so dizzyingly gorgeous outside on that early Monday morning. Birds soared
through the air above me; the waves of the Pacific Ocean crashed against the beach
in the far distance. When I first moved to L.A. I worried that I was going to
be surrounded by nothing but smog and honking cars, but Loyola Marymount was in
its own little world up on that bluff, a paradise unlike any other.
    I arrived at the classroom
ten minutes early, so I didn't immediately step inside. I looked through the
tiny window on the door. Only two students were seated, and neither one was
Evan. Part of me was relieved he wasn't there yet; part of me wished he
wouldn't show up at all. I needed to be focused on the final, not distracted by
Evan's wandering eye.
    I found my seat on the right
side of the classroom and took out my notes. I looked over them one last time,
as the minutes crept toward 8 AM, and as the thirty other students made their
way inside. I looked behind me. The room was full. Only one student was
missing: Evan.
    “All right, everyone,” Mr.
Hernandez said, an intimidating stack of stapled packets in his hands. “Please
put everything under your desk. All you need is a pen or pencil. I’m going to
hand out the scratch paper first, then I’ll give you the test. Are there any
questions?”
    I glanced back. Still no
Evan. I looked at the clock. 7:59.
    I raised my hand. “Yes, Miss
Baker?” the teacher asked.
    “Mr. Hernandez, I don’t think
everyone’s here yet.”
    He shrugged. “That’s not my
problem,” he said, and looked right past me. “All right, let’s begin. If you
will please—”
    The door swung open, just as
Mr. Hernandez set the first piece of scratch paper on my desk. It was Evan,
breathing heavily, a sweat stain forming at the top of his white t-shirt.
    “Mr. Taylor,” the teacher
said. “So glad you could make it.”
    Evan landed hard on his seat,
and took out a pen. When Mr. Hernandez gave him the scratch paper, he used it
as a towel for his face.
    I looked back at him, waited
for him to make eye contact with me. When he finally did, he waved, that same
friendly wave he’d been giving me all year. I pouted. Had he already erased Saturday
night from his mind?
    I spun back around. I
couldn’t think about Saturday, about Evan, anymore. I had a test to take.
    We were allowed two hours,
but I finished in about seventy-five minutes. That fear I had all morning of
opening the booklet to page one and my mind going blank didn’t last past the
first question. I destroyed the test, in the multiple choice, in the essays. When
I walked out of the classroom, I felt like Wonder Woman, albeit without the
Spanx.
    My confidence level shrunk, however,
when Evan stepped out of the room barely two minutes later, and headed straight
toward me. One second I felt like I could save the planet, and the next I
wanted to hide under the nearest bench. I didn’t know what to do. Hug him?
Shake his hand? Play it cool and ignore him? Wrap my arms around him and shove
my tongue down his throat?
    “Hey,” he said. “You want to
get some breakfast? I don’t have my next final until 11.”
    He looked so relaxed, so at
ease, not weird around me at all. I nodded my head toward the food court. “Yeah,
okay.”
    We sat outside again, me with
my fruit cup, Evan with his eggs and waffle platter. We talked about the final
for a few minutes, but my curiosity got the best of me.
    “So did you and Melanie hang
out yesterday?”
    He didn’t answer right away;
his mouth was full of scrambled eggs and syrup. “Uhh, no. I slept in until,
like, two in the afternoon, then went surfing with Zach. I didn’t start
studying until late last night. That's why I almost didn't make it on time to
the final, I overslept.”
    He made a few points in his