Chapter Fourteen
OfficialEndeavourHigh: Please keep in mind that in your college classes, absences and tardies are dealt with at the instructor’s discretion.
Everyone is sitting in the classroom like we always do, waiting.
As usual, Lowry’s late. It’s a bad habit, but unfortunately not one of her worst. I know everyone is counting down.
I can practically hear the clock ticking, winding toward the fifteen-minute mark where we can leave without being dinged an absence. People here love that policy.
I tap my pencil against my textbook.
I’m so exhausted today that I’m counting down with them.
I don’t know how things got this bad, how I waited three years to take a class I’m now hoping gets canceled.
At first, I was counting down the minutes of valuable class time I was losing.
Five minutes a day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
That’s fifteen minutes a week. An hour a month.
At least a week’s worth of class time over the entire semester.
That used to feel like such a loss. Now, I would love to lose that week’s worth of time. And more.
“You okay, Novella?” Hayes asks.
I’d almost forgotten he was there. He’d been sitting silently next to me, and I guess I’m getting used to that. Him being there.
I feel like I’m always so aware of everyone else. Anyone so much as steps toward me, and I’m on high alert. Something’s become different with him, though, and I don’t know what it means.
“I’m okay.” I nod. I don’t know if I’m trying to convince him or myself. “Just tired.”
He hums in response.
I check the phone I’m not supposed to have in class and see we’re down to three minutes left until the fifteen-minute rule kicks in.
“So.” The lady in the back corner stands up and slowly makes eye contact with each of us. “Do any of y’all know where she is?”
Hayes and I look at each other, sharing a matching eyebrow raise that’s becoming kind of familiar. I don’t know when I developed this nonverbal code with him.
I don’t know when he learned to read me like a book.
“I definitely do not,” says the girl in back of me.
Kelsey, I think that’s her name. She wears a big cheer bow with her name on it sometimes.
“I mean, she barely comes even when she comes, you know? We’re all completely lost in this class.
” She gestures to the group of girls around her. They nod in response.
All at once, the room erupts in a wave of conversation.
It’s such a loud volume for so few people.
Hayes looks at me. I look at him. He quirks one eyebrow again, and I don’t know what this one means.
He looks over my shoulder at the clock on the wall.
I follow his eye. Sixteen minutes after the hour.
We could all leave right now, and there’d be no consequences, even if Lowry showed up right on our heels.
I could shuffle out of this room, away from the chaos and the noise and Hayes’s eyebrow.
I pick up my stuff to do just that, but Hayes stands up.
He turns toward where everyone else sits behind our first-row desks.
I know that look on his face. That certainty.
It’s an expression of his unadulterated charisma.
I used to hate him for that look. Hate how easily he could use it to control a whole room. Like he’s about to right now.
“Hayes,” I whisper, desperate for him to sit down and shut up and not do what he’s about to. “Don’t.”
“Hey, so,” he starts, looking around the room with his easy smile. “I know that we’re all kinda drowning here because Lowry sucks at the whole teaching thing.”
He grins at me. I scowl back. There’s still a twinge in my chest when he says that. Logically, I know he’s right. She sucks. But in my heart, she’s still the person who was going to help lead me to my dream major—and my dream future.
“Fortunately for me, I have a partner who puts Lowry to shame.”
Oh. Okay. All the air whooshes out of my chest. It feels like I’ve never breathed before.
That’s the last thing I expected him to say.
I don’t put Lowry to shame. I don’t even want to.
I thought he was going to stand there and tell everyone they just needed to toughen up and develop a grindset.
I thought he was going to tell them he was smarter than anyone else in this room, and they should all suck it up and teach themselves—like he will.
It’s at this moment that I realize how horribly I’ve misjudged him.
That twinge in my chest turns into a cavernous wound, like all of my ribs cracked open and left my heart beating out in the open air.
“I read her midterm notes. She has these brilliant ideas,” he continues, shaking his head.
Like even he can’t believe what he’s saying.
“Brilliant. And she cares about this stuff. More than anyone, I think. More than Lowry for sure. I know we’re all kind of lost with this project, and no one really knows where to start.
Lowry isn’t responding to emails or doing office hours.
She leaves the second she stops talking at the end of class.
But Nova is always here. She responds to emails.
She’d probably do office hours if anyone asked.
She has notes and plans and both the mind and the heart for this subject.
If you have questions about literary criticism or about American literature in general, Nova can answer them. Especially questions about Poe.”
The entire room is looking at me now. I don’t love public speaking, but there is a certain kind of adrenaline rush in it. Right now, it’s my classroom. These twelve people are ready to listen to me. It’s just like my dream.
All because of Hayes.
As I sit with that for a minute, pondering what this means and why he did it and all of that, I realize that they’re waiting for me to say something.
“I don’t know about ‘brilliant,’ ” I say slowly.
“But I do care about the subject. I care … so much.” What did teachers do with their hands?
“This is a weird situation, I know. And I’m not a professor or a TA or anything.
But I will absolutely help the rest of you.
You can text or email me with questions anytime. ”
Hayes nods at me encouragingly. The clear green of his eyes is grounding.
“In fact, we can all help one another.” I swallow. “I think I have an idea.”