Chapter 1 #2
Unzipping the front pocket, I rifle through old receipts and mints and tampons, until my hand closes around an old mechanical pencil.
I hastily pull it out and pass it across the space between our desks, careful not to accidentally graze his fingertips as he takes my offering.
I watch with a mixture of horror and fascination as his big hand practically swallows it whole.
“Thank you,” he whispers, and our eyes meet for a split second before my gaze drops down to his grateful smile.
I narrow in on a set of straight, white teeth.
“I guess I owe you my firstborn in exchange for your kindness. Congratulations. Or…maybe I should offer you condolences instead? Kind of a shit deal to be saddled with a kid you don’t want, but hey, I don’t make the rules. ”
His grin stretches wider, and I quickly face forward, my cheeks growing hot at the prolonged attention from someone so…him. As a student athlete, he’s clearly used to getting what he wants. Probably even more so with a flash of those dimples.
Warning bells ring in my head because he’s everything I don’t need in my life.
Slumping a little in my seat, I refocus on Markham’s lecture.
I don’t look at Wes for the remainder of the class, and though I feel his eyes on me occasionally, he doesn’t try to talk to me again.
I concentrate on taking detailed notes on my computer, ignoring the sporadic click click click of the mechanical pencil to my right.
I try to keep my dread in check as we touch on topics such as audience appeal, ethics, and overcoming our public speaking reservations.
Reservations. Right. More like overwhelming, nightmarish terror.
By the time the hour-and-a-half is up, I’m no less panicked about this course (maybe more so, actually), and I book it out of the room before I’m forced into any more unwanted exchanges with my too-friendly neighbor.
He can keep the damn pencil for all I care.
More students clog the halls and sidewalks now that the sun’s up, but I keep my head down and my feet moving. I make it back to my apartment-style dorm within minutes.
Since Public Speaking is my only Thursday class, I spend the rest of my day lying in bed with my laptop open on my stomach, toggling between my Art History assignment and the add/drop page on the school website.
It would be so easy to drop. Just one little click.
Sure. Of course it would. But all the other courses I need for my major are full, which brings me back to my initial dilemma. Take a required class…or take a class that’s not and incur my parents’ wrath for wasting their money.
My finger shifts on the track pad, hovering over the button to remove Public Speaking once and for all.
I’m about to say fuck it and press when voices in the kitchen draw my attention.
My hand pulls back. I move the computer away.
I drop down off the bed and press my ear to the door, eavesdropping on my dormmates instead of working up the nerve to join them.
“Shots already?” I hear Kinsley ask. Of the three girls I live with, she’s my least favorite. The girl is cold and judgmental, with a resting bitch face to end all others, which wouldn’t be a huge deal if she didn’t live up to the name. “It’s barely seven. And it’s Thursday.”
“Which means it’s almost Friday and we nearly survived the first week back,” Ava replies, and I picture her filling two shot glasses with the rotgut tequila they drink like fish. “We should have started drinking at four, in my opinion.”
“Is she here?” Kinsley asks, and my chest tightens.
I know that the she Kinsley’s referring to is me. She hasn’t liked me from the first moment she met me, even before I turned down her invitations to go out first semester.
I just wasn’t comfortable. I’m still not, but they took my refusal to party and my disinterest in rushing a sorority and my aversion to guys altogether as personal affronts, even though my decisions had nothing to do with them.
I wish I could drink and let loose. I wish I could be alone with the opposite sex without an anxiety spike.
I wish I had the confidence to put myself out there like they do, but even I’ll admit that I’m nowhere near an ideal freshman roommate.
I don’t get drunk. I don’t hang out. I don’t hook up.
I don’t…connect. Not the way I used to. Not the way I did before—
No.
“In her room, I think,” says Ava, making no effort to lower her voice. “God, she is so fucking weird.”
Kinsley snorts. “I know. I don’t think she’s made a single friend at Stratus. How pathetic is that?”
“Oh my god, I forgot to tell you. You know Alexis? Alexis Cane?”
I wince at the name, pressing closer to the door.
“Oh, yeah,” Kinsley says. “She has, like, the best wardrobe. I bet her family’s loaded.”
“For sure. Well, apparently, her and Ivy used to be friends.”
Alexis Cane is not only one of the few girls at Stratus who went to my high school, but she’s also the last person I’d prefer to run into on campus.
It’s not surprising that she knows my roommates.
They share similar obsessions to boys and booze, and I wish they’d focus on all that rather than gossiping about me.
“Are you serious? Friends? What happened?”
I step away from the door and collapse back onto my bed.
I don’t want to hear whatever Ava’s about to say.
My friendship with Alexis ended on the worst of terms, but before that I never showed her any intentional unkindness.
The opposite, in fact. I gifted her earrings sophomore year (when Lizzie and Farah forgot her birthday altogether), and she wore them constantly.
Gold hoops adorned with delicate butterflies.
She loved butterflies. Still does, probably.
But after that night, things were never the same. Alexis demanded an explanation, but when I couldn’t give her one, our friendship went up in flames. Farah and Lizzie had my back, but I dropped them. I closed off. I pushed them away. I just…couldn’t be around anyone.
I have to use the bathroom, but I stay put, waiting out the clanking liquor bottles, loud music, and increasingly drunken laughter.
My dormmates don’t talk about me again, but I don’t leave my room until the front door slams and silence descends.
Only then do I do my business, make a cup of instant ramen for dinner, and return to the solace of my bed.
Turning on my side, I scroll absently through social media, pausing only when I come across one of Mom’s recent posts.
It’s a photo of her and Noah, the youngest of my older brothers, taken at Scott’s college graduation four years ago.
In the image, she’s got her arm wrapped around my much taller brother, broad smiles stretching both their younger faces.
I have no idea where I was when this picture was taken—the bathroom, maybe—but the sliver of blurry finger in the top right corner signals Dad’s handy work.
Sitting up a bit straighter, I read the caption.
I can’t believe my baby boy is a semester away from graduating COLLEGE.
Words cannot convey how proud I am of him for sticking it out and continuing to pursue his education, even when times were tough.
It’s the same perseverance he exhibited as a child, a young boy always striving for the home run and the biggest trophy.
You’ll have your degree soon, Noah! And then you can take on the world the way I always knew you would, with light, compassion, and steel-hearted resolve.
Ugh.
I shut off my phone screen, my chest growing tight at Mom’s Ode to Noah.
What really gets me, though, are those “tough times” she’s referring to.
At the start of his junior year, my brother quit his college baseball team out of nowhere.
Fifteen years of travel games and championships, and then suddenly, it was over.
He started partying so much that his grades dropped, and Mom and Dad just couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
They were so worried about their precious baby boy that they had a literal “intervention.” My other brother Scott was there.
Scott’s girlfriend Olive was there. Noah’s high school baseball coach was there.
They left me at home.
Shutting off the light, I make myself comfortable beneath the covers and wonder what exactly I’d have to do for Mom to write a post like that about me. Cure cancer, probably. End world hunger or win a Nobel Prize.
The only thing I can do is try not to piss her off further, which means using a credit on a throwaway class is out of the question. I decide once and for all to stay in Public Speaking, knowing full well I’m going to regret it.
Oh man, am I going to regret it.