Never Always Sometimes Read online

  Praise for

  NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES

  “There is a kernel of truth in every cliché, and Alsaid cracks the teen-lit trope of friends becoming lovers wide open, exposing a beautiful truth inside....A good romance is hard to come by. This is a great one.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review

  “An utterly charming and thoughtful meditation on love, friendship and all the territories in between.”

  —NICOLA YOON, author of Everything, Everything

  “A refreshing novel about friendship and romance that defies cliché, Never Always Sometimes will win readers over with its hilarious musings and universal truths.”

  —ADAM SILVERA, author of More Happy Than Not

  Praise for

  LET’S GET LOST

  “An achingly beautiful story...Reminiscent of John Green’s Paper Towns, Alsaid’s debut is a gem among contemporary YA novels.”

  —SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

  “Emotional and exciting. Alsaid’s unique narrating style invites the reader to join in on the ride....A touching debut novel.”

  —VOYA

  “With equal parts heartache and hope, this debut is a fresh interpretation of the premise that ‘home is who you’re with.’”

  —THE HORN BOOK

  “Told from five different POVs—a tough trick that Alsaid pulls off well—Lost balances both the quirky fun and the harsh realities of adolescence.”

  —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

  NEVER

  date your best friend.

  ALWAYS

  be original

  SOMETIMES

  rules are meant to be broken.

  Best friends Dave and Julia were determined to never be cliché high school kids—the ones who sit at the same lunch table every day, dissecting the drama from homeroom and plotting their campaigns for prom king and queen. They even wrote their own Never List of everything they vowed they’d never, ever do in high school.

  Some of the rules have been easy to follow, like #5, never dye your hair a color of the rainbow, or #7, never hook up with a teacher. But Dave has a secret: he’s broken rule #8, never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school. It’s either that or break rule #10, never date your best friend. Dave has loved Julia for as long as he can remember.

  Julia is beautiful, wild and impetuous. So when she suggests they do every Never on the list, Dave is happy to play along. He even dyes his hair an unfortunate shade of green. It starts as a joke, but then a funny thing happens: Dave and Julia discover that by skipping the clichés, they’ve actually been missing out on high school. And maybe even on love.

  For Sylas and Lucy.

  Contents

  Prologue: The List

  Part 1: Dave

  Almost Four Years Later

  Friday at the Kapoors’

  Empty Coloring Books

  Homeroom & Happy Hour

  Making a Mess

  Particular Shades

  Viral

  Solve for X

  Tree House

  Date

  Nutella & Cupcakes

  Chemistry

  Nevertheless Belong

  Against the Current

  Part 2: Julia

  Without Knowing

  Apologies

  Cue the Montage

  Just Like This

  The Promposal

  Road Tripposal

  That Teenage Feeling

  Part 3: Dave & Julia

  Because I’m Dumb

  Perfect

  Sunrise

  Ridiculous

  Lazy

  Energy

  Off

  Without Him

  Mess

  More or Less

  Ceilings

  Float

  Prom

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Let’s Get Lost by Adi Alsaid

  PROLOGUE:

  THE LIST

  DAVE DROPPED HIS backpack by his feet and slid onto the bench that overlooked the harbor at Morro Bay. He loved the view here: the ocean sprawling out like the future itself, interrupted only by the white tips of docked sailboats and the rusted railing people held on to to watch the sunset. He loved how far away it felt from San Luis Obispo, even though it was only fifteen minutes away. Most of all, he loved when Julia would appear in his periphery mock-frowning, how she would keep her eyes on him, trying not to smile as she walked up, then she would slide in right next to him like there was nowhere else she belonged.

  “Hey, you goof. Sorry I’m late.”

  Dave looked up just as Julia was sitting down. She was wearing her usual: shorts, a plaid blue shirt over a tank top, the pair of flip-flops she loved so much that they were now made up of more duct tape than the original rubbery material. Her light brown hair was in a loose ponytail, two perfect strands looped around her ears. If the lights ever went out in her presence, Dave was pretty sure the brightness of her eyes would be more useful than a flashlight.

  “S’okay. How was hanging out with your mom this weekend?”

  “Greatest thing ever. Don’t get me wrong, the dads are awesome. But my mom is the coolest person alive.”

  “Hyperbole foul,” Dave said.

  Julia crossed her legs at the ankles and looked around the harbor. “Did I miss anything interesting?”

  “There was a couple breaking up by the ice cream shop. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the girl was such a sad crier. I wanted to go give her a hug, but that might have been a little weird.”

  Julia gave him a smile and stole a sip from the bubble tea he’d been holding.

  “Tell me more about your mom. What makes her so cool?”

  “Everything,” Julia said. “She lives the kind of life that I didn’t even understand was an option. She once biked from Canada to Chile. On a bicycle. For, like, months. Other adults work from nine to five and then go home to watch TV. She bikes a whole continent.”

  “Huh,” Dave said, impressed. “That is pretty cool. How come she’s never come by before?”

  “She’s too busy being awesome,” Julia said. She glanced around for a little while, swirling the drink in her hand. Dave followed her gaze to a little boy riding his tricycle down the harbor, his parents walking calmly behind, beaming with pride. “So. High school tomorrow. Big day.”

  “Yup,” Dave said with a shrug, reaching for his tea back.

  He imagined what other kids might be doing in anticipation of starting high school. Picking out outfits, getting haircuts, quarreling with parents and siblings, texting each other messages that made more use of emoticons than proper punctuation.

  “Any thoughts? Concerns? Schemes?”

  “Oh, you know. Nothing specific to high school. Take over the world.”

  She scrunched her mouth to one side of her face, then looked straight at him, which always made Dave feel like he was either lucky or about to turn into a puddle. A lucky puddle, that’s what he’d felt like ever since he’d met Julia. “We’re still gonna be us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean...we’re kind of different from most people, right? We don’t do what everyone else does. We’re more likely to bike a continent than watch TV all afternoon.”

  “I guess so.”

  Julia drank from his bubble tea, aiming the fat straw at the dark spots of tapioca that sett
led on the bottom of the cup. When she’d sucked up a few and chewed on them thoughtfully, she looked down at the ground. “As long as we don’t get turned into something that looks more like high school, more like everybody else and less like us, I’ll be okay.”

  She glanced at him, then looked across the harbor at the bay, where the water was starting to take on the color of the sun.

  “So I’m not allowed to become the high school quarterback that dates the cheerleading captain?”

  “I’m going to throw up this bubble tea right in your face.”

  He bumped her lightly with his shoulder, thrilled as always at the weight of her next to him, the warmth of her skin beneath the plaid shirt. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You couldn’t be a cliché if you tried.”

  Julia smiled at that, tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. She grabbed the bottom of the bench with her hands and leaned forward a little, stretching, and the brown tress slipped back in front of her face. She kicked at the backpack by his feet. “You have any paper in there? I have an idea.”

  PART 1

  DAVE

  ALMOST

  FOUR YEARS LATER

  THE KIDS WALKING past Dave seemed to be in some other universe. They moved too quickly, they were too animated, they talked too loudly. They held on to their backpacks too tightly, checked themselves in tiny mirrors hanging on the inside of their lockers too often, acted as if everything mattered too much. Dave knew the truth: Nothing mattered. Nothing but the fact that when school was out for the day, he and Julia were going to spend the afternoon at Morro Bay.

  No one had told him that March of senior year would feel like it was made of Jell-O. After he’d received his acceptance letter from UCLA, high school had morphed into something he could basically see through. When, two days later, Julia received her congratulations from UCSB, only an hour up the coastline, the whole world took on brighter notes, like the simple primary colors of Jell-O flavors. They giggled constantly.

  Julia’s head appeared by his side, leaning against the locker next to his. It was strange how he could see her every day and still be surprised by how it felt to have her near. She knocked her head against the locker softly and combed her hair behind her ear. “It’s like time has ceased to advance. I swear I’ve been in Marroney’s class for a decade. I can’t believe it’s only lunch.”

  “There is nothing in here I care about,” Dave announced into his locker. He reached into a crumpled heap of papers on top of a history textbook he hadn’t pulled out in weeks and grabbed a single, ripped page. “Apparently, I got a C on an art assignment last year.” He showed the drawing to Julia: a single palm tree growing out of a tiny half moon of an island in the middle of a turquoise ocean.

  “Don’t show UCLA that. They’ll pull your scholarship.”

  Dave crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it at a nearby garbage can. It careened off the edge and rolled back to his feet. He picked it up and shoved it back into the locker. “Any notable Marroney moments today?”

  “I can’t even remember,” Julia said, moving aside to make room for Dave’s locker neighbor. “The whole day has barely registered.” She put her head on Dave’s shoulder and let out a sigh. “I think he ate a piece of chalk.”

  It was pleasant torture, how casually she could touch him. Dave kept exploring the wasteland of his locker, tossing out a moldy, half-eaten bagel, occasionally unfolding a sheet of paper with mild curiosity, trying not to move too much so that Julia wouldn’t either. He made a pile of papers to throw out and a much smaller one of things to keep. So far, the small pile contained two in-class notes from Julia and a short story he’d read in AP English.

  “Still on for the harbor today?”

  “It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane,” Julia said, pulling away. “Come on, why are we still here? I’m starving. Marroney didn’t offer me any of his chalk.”

  “I do not care about any of this,” Dave repeated. Liberated by the absence of her touch, he walked over to the trash can and dragged it toward his locker, then proceeded to shovel in the entirety of the contents except for the books. A USB memory stick was wrapped inside a candy wrapper, covered in chocolate, and he tossed that, too. A few sheets remained tucked into the corners, some ripped pieces stuck under the heavy history textbook.

  But something caught his eye. One paper folded so neatly that for a second he thought it may have been a note he’d saved from his mom. She’d died when he was nine, and though he’d learned to live with that, he still treated the things she left behind like relics. But when he unfolded the sheet and realized what he was holding, a smile spread his lips. Dave’s eyes went down the list to number eight: Never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school.

  He looked at Julia, recalling the day they’d made the list, suddenly flushed with warmth at the thought that nothing had come between them in four years. She was holding on to her backpack’s straps, starting to get impatient. Everything about Julia was beautiful to him, but it was the side of her face that he loved the most. The slope of her neck, the slight jut of her chin, how the blue in her eyes popped. Her ears, which were the cutest ears on the planet, or maybe the only cute ones ever crafted.

  “David Nathaniel O’Flannery, why are we still here?”

  “How have we been best friends for this long and you still don’t know my full name?”

  “I know most of your initials. Can we go, please?”

  “Look at what I just found.”

  “Is it Marroney’s mole from sophomore year?”

  “Our Nevers list.”

  Julia turned around to face him. A couple of football players passed between them talking about a party happening on Friday. She was quiet, studying Dave with a raised eyebrow. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, O’Flannery? I could never forgive you.”

  “Gutierrez. My last name is Gutierrez.”

  “Don’t change the subject. Did you really find it?” She motioned for him to hand the paper over, which he did, making sure their fingers would brush. The linoleum hallways were starting to empty out, people were settling into their lunch spots. “I was actually thinking about this the other day. I even wrote my mom about it,” Julia said, reading over the list. A smile shaped her lips, which were on the thin side, though Dave couldn’t imagine wishing for them to be any different. “We did a pretty good job of sticking to this.”

  “Except for that time you hooked up with Marroney,” Dave said, moving to her side and reading the list with her.

  “I wish. He’s such a dreamboat.”

  Dave closed his locker and they peered into classrooms they passed by, watching the teachers settle into their lunchtime rituals, doing some grading as they picked at meals packed into Tupperware. Dave and Julia wordlessly stopped in front of Mr. Marroney’s room and watched him try to balance a pencil on the end of a yardstick.

  “This is your one regret from high school?”

  “There’s a playful charm to him,” Julia said, in full volume, though the door was open. “I’m surprised you don’t see it.”

  They stared on for a while, then made their way out toward the cafeteria. The line was at its peak, snaking all the way around the tables and reaching almost to the door. The tables inside the cafeteria and out on the blacktop had long since been claimed. “Kind of cool that we never did get a permanent lunch spot,” Dave said, gesturing with the list in hand. “I hadn’t even remembered that it was on the list. Had you?”

  “No,” Julia said. “The subconscious is weird.” She reached into her bag and grabbed a Granny Smith apple, rubbing it halfheartedly on the hem of her shirt. “How do you feel about the gym today?”

  He shrugged and they walked across the blacktop to the basketball gym tucked behind the soccer field. They had a handful of spots they sometimes went to, usually
agreeing on a spot wordlessly, both of them headed in the same direction as if pulled by the same invisible string. They entered the old building, which used to smell of mold until a new court had been installed, so now it smelled like mold and new wood. The walls were painted the school colors: maroon and gold. Next to the banners hanging from the ceiling there was a deflated soccer ball pinned to the rafters.

  Julia led them up the plastic bleachers. A group of kids was shooting around, and one of them looked at Dave and called out to him. “Hey, man, we need one more! You wanna run?”

  “No, thanks,” Dave said. “I had a really bad dream about basketball once and I haven’t been able to play since.”

  The kid frowned, then looked over at his friends who shook their heads and laughed. Dave took a seat next to Julia as the kids resumed their shooting. “I think you’ve used that one before,” Julia said, taking a bite out of her apple.

  “I’m kind of offended on your behalf that they don’t ask you to play.”

  “They did once.”

  “Really?” Dave rummaged through his backpack for the Tupperware he’d packed himself in the morning. “Why don’t I remember that?”

  “I was really good. Dunked on people. Scored more points than I did on the SAT. Every male in the room suppressed the memory immediately to keep their egos from disintegrating.”

  Dave laughed as he scooped a plastic forkful of chicken and rice. It was a recipe he vaguely remembered from childhood, one he’d found in his mom’s old cookbooks and had taught himself to make. His dad and his older brother, Brett, never said anything about it, but the leftovers never lasted more than two days. “So, you’ve heard from your mom recently?” Julia had been raised by her adoptive fathers, but her biological mom had always lingered on the fringe, occasionally keeping in touch. Julia idolized her, and Dave, who’d been yearning for his mom for years, could never fault her for it.

  “Yeah,” Julia said, unable to keep a smile from forming. “She’s even been calling. I heard the dads tell her the other day that she’s welcome anytime, so there’s a chance that a visit is in the works.”