Hope is a no-show today. Not that I’m surprised. She skips school a lot, and then it’s just the three of us in the back of my truck (or four, because sometimes Traven joins us now). It’s kind of the best, feeling like with each person we add to our group, high school sucks a little less.
The bell rings, and we shoot off in different directions. I hunt down a trash can so I can spit out my gum, and then I notice Hope in the crowd of people streaming through the north lot doors. She looks like she’s been crying. When she spots me, she beelines over, but she just stands there, silent, in front of me.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She takes a deep, shuddery breath. “Pumpkinspicelatte.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I needed (hiccup) a Pumpkin (sob) Spice Latte.”
“Oh.” Hope isn’t the type of girl who has meltdowns over first-world problems (usually). “Is this a Janie thing?”
She nods, and her eyes have the look of a drowning person.
“It’s her birthday,” she finally says.
“Oh, hey, you don’t have to be at school today. You could go back home. I know the office would give you an excuse.”
“No! I mean, I don’t want to. I thought about it, but I decided I don’t want to be at home today. Because if I do that, it’s like the tumor wins. And I can’t let it win on her birthday.”
She’s so fierce and sad at the same time. I should do something. Give her a hug, at least. We’re friends, and that’s what friends do. But we don’t exactly have the best track record with hugs.
Instead, I say, “That makes sense.” But it doesn’t feel like enough.
Hope tries to wipe her nose on her sleeve without actually looking like she’s wiping snot on herself.
“So, um, what happened with the latte?” I’m reluctant to ask in case it sets her off again, but I am pretty curious.
“Oh. Yeah.” She laughs. “Do you ever feel like something really big and terrible could be happening, but if you could just get this one small thing to go right, you could be okay?” I don’t answer, but she shrugs and keeps going. “Well, I thought if I could do this thing Janie and I used to do and go get a PSL, then that would be this little piece of happiness, and I could say, ‘Today is going to be okay. I can get through today.’”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. It didn’t work, though?”
Hope’s eyes narrow. “They. Didn’t. Have. Any. Lattes.”
“Oh, no. It’s not time yet?” I remember her and Janie making a big deal about how they were seasonal, and you had to be on the lookout for them, and once I remember saying I could just look up when they came out, and they both shrieked “Nooooo!” while Janie explained how the not knowing was half the fun.
“It IS time. They didn’t have any lattes. Like at all. Their espresso machines were down. And I was all, ‘Whatevs, I don’t even drink espresso.’ But apparently that means they can’t make any good drink ever. What kind of piece of crap Starbucks can’t make lattes?! But the guy didn’t tell me that, so I kept asking for stuff, and he kept saying they couldn’t do it, and finally I was like ‘I give up.’ But it wasn’t just about the latte. It was a very meta ‘I give up,’ Spencer. And of course the guy just looked at me like I was a weirdo. And it’s like, I can handle that Janie’s gone, and I can handle that it’s her birthday, and that I,” her breath hitches, “really miss her. BUT I NEEDED THAT PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE, DAMN IT.”
I pull out my phone. I may be having trouble with things like re-friendship hug protocols, but mapping the nearest coffee place is something I can do. “The next closest Starbucks is twenty-five minutes away. We can go right now.”
Hope’s head cocks to the side, and I can see her brain calculating whether this day can be salvaged after all. “Well, um, okay.” She freezes and touches her hands to her cheeks. “Wait. Is my mascara all runny?”
She looks like the love child of a raccoon and a Hot Topic employee. “Um.”
She snorts. “That’s a yes. Hold on while I go to the bathroom and fix my face. I think I’ve scared enough Starbucks baristas for the day.”
“I’ll meet you at your car,” I call after her, but first I pop into the office and drop a few words like “emergency” and “dead sister,” because Hope’s already on their watch list.
I still get to Hope’s car before she does. When she emerges from the school building, you can’t even tell she’s been crying, and I don’t know much about how makeup works, but things about her face look different. Like, the black rings are gone, and I definitely think she put powder or something on her nose.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she says as she clicks the key fob to let us in. She’s quiet for a minute, just driving, and then she says, “I remember the first time Janie took me for a Pumpkin Spice Latte. I was eleven, and Janie was all, ‘Don’t tell mom I gave you coffee.’ It seemed like the coolest thing in the world.”
She smiles, and I can see her seeing that moment.
“Oh. I almost forgot.” She switches on the sound system, and some up-tempo hip-hop comes on.
It sounds familiar. “Hamilton?”
“Hamilton. It’s become a crucial part of the PSL-run tradition.”
“Oh, good,” I say. “I’m glad we’re not deviating from the protocol.”
Hope’s smile fades.
“What’s up?”
“Well, if Janie were here, we’d be singing along at the top of our lungs, but it’s not like you know the words, and maybe that wouldn’t be—”
“I know the words.” I make a big show of scoffing. The song “The Schuyler Sisters” comes on. “Well, maybe not every song, but I definitely know all the words for this one.”
She gives me this look, like: Jefferson, please.
“I do! I . . . ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal—’” Hopes eyes shoot wide open, but I keep going, belting all the words, even busting out the correct dance moves before I throw my hand in the air and snap my fingers and yell, “Work.” It’s a totally fierce impression of Angelica Schuyler (you know, if Renée Elise Goldsberry was a seventeen-year-old boy with no discernible musical talent).
Hope’s jaw is on the floor of the car. We may need a doctor to surgically reattach it. And then she starts giggling, and she can barely talk, and there are tears in her eyes again, only this time they’re the good kind.
“Where. Did you learn. The choreography?” she manages to choke out.
I shrug. “Janie made me watch that #Ham4Ham clip just as many times as she made you.”
“Factually impossible, but I’m still impressed.”
I spot the Starbucks, and she pulls into the parking lot and lets the car idle for a bit.
“You know she had a chance to go see it? Like on Broadway and everything? She was in New York visiting a friend, and she totally could have gone, but she was all, ‘No, it’s cool. Hope and I have to see it together the first time because seeing each other’s faces is the best part.’”
“That was really sweet of her,” I say.
“Yeah, except it’s not because now I have to go the rest of my life knowing that she never got to see Hamilton, and it’s all my fault.”
I have no idea at all what to say to that, but luckily Hope doesn’t seem to care. She gets out of the car, and I trail after her to the front door, which she flings open.
In a voice that carries to the far corners of the coffee shop, she announces, “Please tell me you have lattes because if you don’t, I am going to lose all hope in the universe.”
The nearest barista is wearing extra-thick guyliner and a confused expression. “Um. This is a Starbucks.”
“Yeah, well, apparently that doesn’t mean as much as it used to.” She hops in line, grinning now. “Spencer, you have to try one. We can get you some kind of skim-milk, no-whip thing.” Her mouth makes a noise between a sigh and an “oh.” “No whip.” She pauses with her hands clasped together, a moment of silence for my whipped cream. “Well, it’s okay. It’ll be okay as long as it has everything else. Coffee, pumpkin spice, magic.”
“Magic? That’s one of the ingredients?”
She fixes me with a look of utmost seriousness. “You are already on dangerously thin ice with the no-whipped-cream thing. Don’t test me about the magic.”
When we get to the front, she orders a venti for each of us, rattling off specifications for mine. I’ve always appreciated that about her. She might tease me about my diet, but she doesn’t nag me to break it the way other people do. My shoulders let off a chain of tic-shrugs while we’re waiting for our drinks. The new meds have been awesome—I’m definitely not tic-ing as much as I used to—but it would be nice not to feel so exhausted every time I take them. Thank goodness for caffeine. We snag a table by the window, and Hope scrutinizes me as I take my first sip.
“Well?”
“It’s good,” I say. And I’m not lying. Even without all the frills, I get it. “Very . . . seasonal.”
She beams. “Right?” She makes a big show of taking her own first sip. Leans back against her chair, eyes closed and smiling wide. “Mmmm. Fall.”
Complete. That’s how she looks right now.
Her eyes open. “Cinnamon is the most perfect spice ever. Like, I’m pretty sure I could put a stick of cinnamon in my mouth and gnaw on it like beef jerky, and that would be cool.” She takes another sip. “Oh. And in about twenty minutes when the aftertaste kicks in, your mouth is going to taste like cinnamon-flavored vomit.” She shrugs brightly and bumps her cup against mine. “Cheers.”