Haley Braverman Forever Young

The Beginning

I never sleep in. Even when I'm stick I don't sleep in. It doesn't matter if I go to bed late, I wake up at 6am every day. I used to care about it, thinking something was wrong but now I think its kinda cool. So here I am in my room waiting for everyone else to wake up. It's Saturday, Max has baseball. I don't even think Max cares about baseball but my mom and dad insist that he does so we waste several Saturdays with the entire Braverman family. I get my weekend homework out of the way and finally hear my mom making her way downstairs. I pull up my hair and go join her. Since I can remember, we always have coffee together when it's just us in the morning.

"Hey honey" says Kristina
"Hey" I smile "Do we have to go today?"
"Haley, we've been over this, yes we are all going to support Max"
I take a bite of my toast and sip my coffee.
"Ok but he doesn't even care that we're there", I scoff
"We're all going, sorry, final decision", she kisses the top of my head and pats my shoulder as she walks behind me

We sit in silence for a few minutes, then Max comes bounding in followed by Hattie and my dad. It suddenly got very crowded and I hurriedly eat the last piece of toast and chug my coffee as everyone assembles in the living room.

"Gotta go" I say and stand up to rush
"Hey wait!" Says Adam
"So close" I snap my fingers
"Where are you going?" He looks at his watch. "Game's in 20 minutes"
"To change" I snap
"Ok hurry up, we have to leave" He says. My mom gives me her patented "c'mon Haley' look behind his back.
"Okee dokee" I fake a smile and run upstairs.

I change into my baseball watching clothes and wait until I hear my mom call for me which means Max made it to car. That's my cue to run downstairs and directly into the car. I get in and receive the annoying stare from my sister. Hattie and I used to be close. We kind of grew apart in the last few years. Now we can barely stand to be in the same school as each other let alone the same car. You can feel the tension in the car. You see, Hattie doesn't understand why I prefer to have one best friend, not six, and that we prefer to write music and take pictures and spend my money on a MacBook to compose music and photoshop instead of at the mall on clothes. For my birthday last year I asked my family to all go together to buy this awesome Nikon that does pictures and video which gratefully they did, but Hattie thought it was stupid and felt the need to share that during dinner. If things were going south at that point, it was Antarctica. So we are cordial. Our parents have tried to sit us down and talk to us and it gets no where. My mom always ends up crying, Hattie screaming like a lunatic and I sit in silence so we've stopped trying.

We get to baseball and everything is fine. I get as far away from Hattie as possible and sit with my grandma Camille. She immediately puts her arm around me and pulls be close. Suddenly we realize that my dad is in the middle of the baseball diamond screaming at the umpire because of the call he made on Max. I stand up with Grandma who has a very concerned look on her face. I make eye contact with my mom and mouth "what the hell" she sighs and turns back around to yell at my dad.

"Adam!" She yells "Adam, let's go!"
My dad storms over, not because of my mom, but because he's been kicked out of the game and told to leave. Dad speedwalks to the car screaming obscenities. My mom closely follows with Max and Hattie. I look at grandma who uncovers her mouth and tells me I need to go.
"Bye grandma" I kiss her cheek. "Bye grandpa!" I yell over at him.
"Bye kiddo!" He smiles and waves as she walks towards grandma.
I run to the car and jump in. I am pretty sure my dad was about to drive off without me. We all sit in silence. I look over at Hattie and we both try to keep from laughing. Dad is a shade of red I've never seen before. Mom is looking out the window trying not to cry or yell, I can't tell. Max is oblivious as usual.
"Dad we're you going to hit that guy?" I finally break the uncomfortable silence.
Hattie looks at me and I shrug.
"No, Haley I was not going to hit that guy" says my dad calmly.
"Kinda thought you were going to" I egg him on.
My mom turns around in her seat and glares at me.
"He wasn't Haley" she basically barks at me
"Ok...jeez" I sit back and cross my arms and the rest of the car ride is in silence. We get home and Max and Hattie fly out of the car into the house followed by my mom. My dad stands next to the car and takes a deep breath. I take my time getting out of the car and start walking inside.
"Hey Hails"
I turn around, "Yeah dad?"
He walks up and hugs me. He rests his chin on my head.
"I wanted to hit that guy" he laughs
"I knew it!" I pull away but he holds on tighter "I could tell, you were fifteen shades of red, and you were right..."
He laughs, "thanks for that" he kisses the top of my head and lets me go, I punch his arm and fix my hair, flash him my patented Braverman smile and walk inside.

I spend the rest of the day looking through pictures I took during the week. I soon come across a picture that I can't stop looking at, so I sit back and think about Brayden. Brayden Scott. The dark hair blue eyed boy that I can't stop wanting to kiss but he barely knows of my existence. I almost said Hi once but panicked and it kinda came out garbled and I just ran away instead. Not my most shining moment. Hattie is the only person who knows about my obsession and that's only because I have been carrying this torch for him for a very long time. When we used to talk, we would sit up and talk about Brayden and Steve. We would talk about how we would go to prom together and go on double dates with our cute boyfriends. I look at the pictures of Brayden until my mom comes in to tell me to get ready to go to our grandparents for our weekly dinner.

"Hey Hail, we are going in 20"
I stare at the picture of B a little longer than I should have and it gets my mom's attention. I snap out of it.
"Yeah, ok, I'll be ready" I smile
She looks as me suspiciously and walks over and sits on the bed.
"Whatcha got there" she points at the camera.
"Uh..nothing" I put it down and get up to change, unknowingly leaving the best picture I've ever taken of Brayden on the screen.
She picks up the camera and sees the picture.
"Hail who's this boy?" She says suspiciously
"What?" I act surprised. I walk over to where she's sitting and look at the camera. "Oh, I'm not sure"
My mom is clearly not buying it, she skips through the next several pictures of Brayden
"So you just take 20 pictures of this one boy you don't know?" She asks.
I sigh and sit down "that's Brayden Scott" I look at her, "and before you ask, yes I like him, BUT he doesn't know I exist so save your speech" I get up and she grabs my arm to stop me.
"Haley, I..." she start to say something..
"Mom, no, I really don't want to talk about this. Look, we're late for dinner" I take my camera and turn it off and walk out of my room where my mom is sitting. I run downstairs and directly into the car. I know this isn't the end of the conversation. Soon the rest of the family joins and we head to my grandparents for dinner.

We get to my grandparents and I get out out the car immediately and Hattie follows.
"Hey!" She yells
"what?" I stop and turn around
"What's going on?"
"No idea what you mean" I cross my arms
"C'mon Haley, I know you better than anyone here, you were first to the car, you said nothing the entire way here, mom kept looking back at you basically in tears...what happened"
I sigh, it looks like Hattie and I are back in sync, "Mom saw me starring at pictures of Brayden and started asking questions, I freaked on her and well here we are" I gesture to the sky.
"Oh my god" she feigns shock
"Yeah and I know that she's going to keep bothering me until I tell her about him but she's so annoying about boys"
"I know" Hattie sits. "I have been talking with Steve lately and I think he wants to ask me out but I'm worried that if he does then mom and dad will freak out and lock me away"
"They'll definitely do that!" I laugh, "Can you imagine if Brayden and Steve came over? Oh my GOD! Mom would be crying the entire time, dad would be giving dagger stares" we are both hysterical laughing when our mom finds us.
"Wow, look at this" she gestures to the two of us bent over laughing, "this is a nice change, what's so funny?"
"Nothing" Hattie immediately responds
"Yeah nothing" I chime in still laughing.
"O...k...well dinners ready let's go"
Hattie and I join our mom and the three of us sit down at the table. Hattie and I can't look at each other without laughing, our parents keep giving strange looks to each other. The rest of the family seems to notice that Hattie and I are back to being the old Hattie & Haley. Who would have thought that boys would be the reason we came back together.