Free Don't Ever Change by M. Beth Bloom Page B

100 percent: I’ll go to Barnes & Noble and buy ten blank journals and then sneak into Dad’s office and steal a fifty-pack of Bic pens; I’ll tie pink and turquoise yarn to everything, and then I’ll be ready.
    I hand Courtney back the book, and even though I know she won’t like me saying this, I say it anyway: “I don’t need some Lonely Planet guide. What a stupid name.”
    “Don’t you think the planet is lonely, though?”
    “I mean, space is lonely. Like, the Arctic tundra’s lonely.”
    “What about Sunny Skies?” Courtney asks.
    “I guess,” I say. “That can be lonely too.”
    “Get out your notebook,” my sister says. “Write this down: ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are.’”
    I write it down, look at it.
    “It’s true, Eva. There isn’t a city you could ever travel to where you wouldn’t be. So you can’t rely on a place to change you. You have to do that yourself.”
    “I know Boston’s not going to change me ,” I tell Courtney. “ I’m going to change for Boston.”
    “By getting a trench coat and a library card?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What about ‘Don’t Ever Change’ or ‘Don’t Go Changing’?” Courtney says, grabbing my senior yearbook, waving it around. “A bazillion yearbooks can’t be wrong.”
    “Nobody,” I say, “ nobody wrote ‘Don’t Ever Change’ in my yearbook.”
    Courtney flips through the signature pages. “This one says ‘Stay Cool,’” she tells me. “That’s basically the same thing.”
    But it isn’t the same thing—not even a little, not at all—and I know it. What I don’t know is what we’re talking about anymore: staying or going, changing or being changed, by someplace, or someone.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
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    “DON’T YOU EVER wish Los Angeles had a Little Italy?” I ask Michelle. It’s nine and we’re at the Grove, waiting for Steph to finish counting her register and lock up the Gap so we can all share bland Italian food at La Piazza. I’m happy to be out on a summer night and eating late, which feels so European. Even though I usually complain when meals take forever, I understand that there’s a sophistication to not rushing through the dining experience.
    “The phrase ‘Little Italy’ really has a vibe to it, doesn’t it?” I ask. “Like all the pleasures of somewhere exotic made super easy and brought right to your neighborhood. Little Italy really conjures something.”
    “I thought you didn’t even like Italian that much,” Michelle says distractedly, fishing through her bag. She pulls out her phone for what seems like the eighteenth time and checks for texts.
    “First of all—whose text are you waiting for?” I try to glance at her cell, but she shields the screen with her palm. “I’m already here and Steph’s coming any minute.”
    “Skip to second of all.”
    “And second of all,” I say, “it’s a cheese thing. I’d love Italian if they didn’t put so much cheese on everything.”
    “Cheeseless lasagna, you’re saying.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it’s lasagna. It’s like a centuries-old tradition.”
    “True, but we’ve evolved into humans who basically can’t digest dairy anymore.”
    “ De volved you mean,” Michelle says. Just then her phone beeps, and as her eyes scan the screen, she smiles privately. I’m about to pry for details when Steph finally arrives, wearing khaki shorts and a sleeveless denim button-up, total Gap-on-Gap—a Gap Attack. It’s less that I don’t recognize her in her work outfit, and more that I don’t recognize her as Steph, my best friend who never has a job or any reason to change out of her own Steph Uniform: velvet leggings and a baggy, boxy top.
    “You look like a camp counselor,” I say. “And I would know.”
    “Miranda calls it ‘the Basic Bitch,’” Steph explains.
    “Who’s Miranda?”
    “Miranda,” Steph says, and then