Locked

Chapter One

*FAMOUS IN LOVE is now available everywhere books are sold. See what happens behind the scenes of bringing LOCKED to the big screen....

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LOCKED: 

Where we were sitting on that small seaplane said everything you needed to know. Ed should have been next to me, but he was in the front of the plane, the result of a fight we’d had twenty minutes before.

The point of this spring break trip had been to look at colleges. It was only junior year. We had plenty of time to decide where we would go. But Ed was a planner, and he was set on us choosing the same school. “I don’t want to be anywhere you’re not, A,” he had told me. “And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

My name is August, by the way, although Ed and my little sister, Maggie, who was currently in the front row next to Ed sharing an iPad, call me A. Ed and I have been together since we were fifteen, almost two full years, but it seems like longer. It seems like forever. He’s been my next-door neighbor for as long as I can remember. We’re totally that couple. Please don’t hold it against me.

But lately I had just been feeling…I don’t know. Like I was in a box or something. Like too many things were decided—four walls, no room. I loved him. I knew I did. He was my best friend. He had been there for everything—my whole life. He was there when my mom died freshman year and there when my dad got remarried, just a few short months later. He held my hand during the ceremony. He knew enough to take me to get burgers during the reception—that there was no way I could sit in that tent and watch my dad on the dance floor with another woman all night. Before we were even together, Ed was my lifeline.

He was everyone’s lifeline, really. His little brothers worshipped him. And he was the only one of the three of us—me, Noah, and Ed—who had a consistently solid home. Two parents. Dinner at six. The whole bit. We relied on him. We needed him. I needed him. But now…

Now I wanted a chance to see what I wanted, away from everything. Away from having to be my little sister’s keeper. Away from having to look out for Dad while Miss Opportunity was off at her Pilates trainer. College was my chance to finally be selfish. And to break what I feared was a habit—I relied on Ed so much it scared me. I didn’t know how to tell him, but Ed wasn’t my top priority. Not now. Not on this.

So I didn’t. Tell him, I mean. Instead, I acted sullen and irritable until finally he called me out on it while we were in the waiting area at the tiny Lake Union airport.

“I don’t think you want this,” he said. I pretended, at first, that he meant Seattle University, which we had just seen, but I knew he didn’t. I knew he meant us, together forever.

“Of course I do,” I said. I didn’t want to get into it then, but it was true. Being with him was like air—it was necessary. I needed him. I loved him. And even though he claimed otherwise, I knew he didn’t need me. He would be fine on his own. I knew that he loved me, but I also knew that love was fragile. I knew how quickly things could fade and be gone. But Ed didn’t. Ed had never lost someone.

Maggie was standing at the window, waiting to see our plane land, and she pretended not to hear us. She was only a freshman, so she wasn’t looking at schools, but she had tagged along because Dad was on a business trip and our chaperone okayed it. My dad is on the board of our school, and we can pretty much get away with whatever we want—a fact that my friends say I never take advantage of. They’re right. The only time I’ve ever been in trouble was when I skipped SAT prep and drove to Barnes & Noble instead. I came home at seven, and my dad had already called the cops. When I asked him what could have possibly prompted him to take such extreme action before sundown, he said simply: “You always do what you say you’re going to.”

Fay and Karin were a few seats away, looking at magazines, and I knew they could hear us, too. I knew everyone could. Even Noah, who had earbuds in, his eyes fixed on his lap.

Ed looked at me. I could see my words hanging between us. Of course I do. He exhaled. “The fucking sad part is, you really don’t.”

Ed never swore. He was class president, the oldest of four brothers. The chair of the student outreach program. He was the go-to good guy. But right then, he was something I had never seen before. He was pissed.

“Please don’t do this right now,” I whispered. I reached for his hand, but he curled his fingers away. Ed never turned away from me. Not once over our two years as boyfriend and girlfriend or our lifetime as friends do I remember him denying me anything—his touch, his voice, his time. He gave everything so freely. It was easy for him. It was easy for him to love me. Maybe because, for him, it felt like a choice.

He shook his head. “I love you,” he said. It was under his breath, but he didn’t make much effort to hide his words. “But you have to figure out what you want.”

My body went numb. We never fought. I knew something was really wrong. So wrong, in fact, that when it came time to board, he wouldn’t sit with me. He went right up to the front of the plane and plunked down next to Maggie.

Why couldn’t I have told him then? Why couldn’t I have just said the words? I wanted to tell him I wanted him. That I wanted to go to the same school. That I wanted to lie on the bed in his dorm room, laugh with his roommate, watch TV on his computer side by side. That I wanted to hear about his classes, and have him help me with that history prereq I was definitely going to have to take. I wanted to tell him he was the only one I wanted to share all of that with.

But I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t tell him anything. Because even though I wanted it to be, I wasn’t sure it was true anymore. Instead, I sat in the back row with Noah Greer. Noah—Ed’s best friend. Noah—the boy with the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen. The object of a crush so enduring that I had learned to live with it—like traffic or high school or the low hum of the radiator in the winter. It didn’t have a beginning or, despite my relationship with Ed, an end.

It had always been the three of us, and then it was the two of us—Ed and August. There was not, nor had there ever been, a chance of a Noah and August. And that was fine. Because the truth was, I had known Noah forever but still had no idea who he really was. Especially not now.

Mr. Davis got into the jump seat and the pilot read off the safety rules. We were going to the San Juan Islands for two days. We were meeting up with the other half of our tour, which had opted to visit the University of Portland. “An entertaining and educational spring break,” Principal Celleher had promised our parents.

Two days on the islands. Some sun. Some water sports. Some campfires. Then home.

Nowhere did it say anything about a plane crash.