Chapter 4
One Friday afternoon in mid-December, Mick asked if I was free to get together over the weekend and study for our math exam.
“Good idea,” I said. My heart skipped a beat. We’d never seen each other outside of school.
“How does Sunday afternoon look?” he asked. “Around three?”
“That works,” I said. “Where should we meet?”
“Can we do it at your house? Maeve will never leave us alone.”
“Sure. Do you need my address?” I smiled. “Or did Will give you that, too?”
“Hey! I’m not a stalker!”
We both laughed as I scribbled my address on a piece of paper, then handed it to him.
“Cool,” he said. “I’ll ride my bike over.”
“Cool,” I echoed, holding his gaze.
—
I was bursting to tell Erin the news, but she was in rehearsal, having scored the role of Urleen in Footloose. I had to wait two hours for her to come home, and by the time I raced over to her house and upstairs to her bedroom, I could barely contain myself.
“Guess who asked me to study this weekend?” I said, breathlessly throwing myself onto the bed beside her.
“No freaking way!” she yelled.
“Yep,” I said. “He’s coming over on Sunday afternoon!”
“Billie! This is the moment we’ve been waiting for!” She reached over to grab my shoulders. “I bet he wants to ask you out!”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “But it feels like progress.”
“Huge progress,” she said. “You need to get your family out of the house.”
“So they don’t embarrass me?”
“No. In case he wants to make a move.” She shot off her bed, ran over to her desk, and rummaged through a drawer, pulling out her makeup pouch and a hairbrush. “C’mere. Let’s do a trial run.”
“A trial run for what?”
“Hair and makeup. You always look great, but we need to kick it up a notch. Do a slightly glossier version of you.”
She pulled a tube of lip gloss out of the pouch and opened it, swiping it on me. She tilted my chin toward the mirror. “See? Doesn’t that look nice?”
“It does,” I admitted.
She kissed the tube, then handed it to me. “Here. Take it. It’s now your good-luck lip gloss.”
I smiled and wedged it into my back pocket, knowing I needed all the luck I could get—and maybe a little of Erin’s confidence, too.
—
That Sunday, when Mick rang our doorbell, the chime echoed through our house.
I smoothed on a coat of Erin’s lip gloss and hurried down the stairs.
Unfortunately, my father got to the foyer first, opening the door with a surprised hello.
I’d told my parents that a friend was coming over to study but hadn’t mentioned that he was a boy.
“Hi, Mr. Wright,” Mick said in the same polite voice he used with Ms. Sprinkman. “I’m Mick—”
“Holy smokes! I know who you are! Mick O’Leary! Number thirty-one!”
“Dad—” I said behind him, mortified.
He ignored me and kept going. “That eighty-yard run against Mukwonago! Man oh man, that was something else!”
“Thank you,” Mick said, shifting his feet.
Gus skidded to the front door, eyes wide. “Look who it is!” my dad said. “Mick O’Leary. In the flesh!”
“Can you sign my football?” Gus asked.
My mom suddenly appeared at my shoulder. I gave her a pleading look.
She caught it immediately. “Rich,” she said firmly, touching his arm. “Why don’t we take Gus over to the mall?”
My dad took the hint.
“Good idea,” he said, then looked at Gus. “Autographs next time. Get your shoes on, buddy.”
I mouthed “thank you” to my mom. She smiled and nodded.
As soon as the door closed behind them, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Mick and I headed to the kitchen. My mom had tidied the table and prepared a plate of her famous nachos, still warm.
“Help yourself,” I said.
Mick slid into Gus’s chair and ate a loaded chip. “These are delicious,” he said. “Did you make them?”
“Ha. No. My mom did.”
“Can you cook?”
“Only if Pop-Tarts count.” I laughed. “Can you?”
“I’m good on the grill,” he said. “And my chocolate chip pancakes are no joke.”
I smiled, then offered him a drink. “Water, Coke, orange juice?”
“Water’s good,” he said.
I poured two glasses from the jug in the fridge, then joined him at the table, where I’d already laid out my notebook, calculator, and several sharpened pencils.
“I was thinking we could do practice problems from each unit,” I said, flipping to a tabbed page.
He leaned forward, nodding.
“What do you need to get on the exam?” I asked, a roundabout way of asking his current grade.
“I just want to pass.”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on. Passing is not the goal here. Colleges care a lot about math.”
He made a face.
“They do!”
“I guess. But I don’t know if I want to go to college.”
I stared at him, shocked. “Seriously? I thought for sure you’d want to play college football?”
“Nah. I’m not that good—at least not for D1.”
“So you don’t want to go at all?”
I knew college wasn’t for everyone, but Mick was clearly book smart, taking all honors classes. It didn’t add up.
“I might go. But I’ll probably just go work with my dad at the orchard.”
“You can still do that after college,” I said. “But don’t you want the options that a degree would give you?”
He looked at me—really looked at me—then nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “So, Wilhelmina, where do you want to go to college?”
“Whatever gives me the best chance at medical school. My dream school is Yale. But I doubt I’d get accepted, and I don’t think my parents can afford it anyway. So I’ll probably go to Wisconsin. Assuming I get in.”
He nodded. “What kind of doctor do you want to be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a surgeon.”
“That doesn’t freak you out? Slicing someone open?”
“Not really. Blood has never bothered me.”
“Wow,” he said. “You’re really impressive.”
I shook my head and looked down at my notebook. “Not at all,” I mumbled, feeling his eyes on me.
“Yes, you are,” he said. “Maybe some of your ambition will rub off on me.”
I met his eyes and smiled, hoping my face wasn’t as red as it felt.
—
Later that evening, Erin called to get the scoop.
“How did it go? Did he kiss you? Hold your hand? Stare into your eyes?”
“No, no, and no.”
“So what happened?”
“We studied and ate nachos. That’s pretty much it.”
“Billie. Ugh. You are the worst narrator.”
I smiled into the phone. “Okay. How about this? He told me he’s not sure if he wants to go to college.”
“That’s interesting. Can you see yourself marrying someone who didn’t go to college?”
“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun a little?”
“It could happen.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said with a laugh.
But later, lying in bed, I found myself dreaming of a wildly farfetched happily ever after.
—
Later that week, it was the opening night for Footloose. The auditorium buzzed with the kind of small-town excitement usually reserved for Friday night football. Programs fluttered in the crowd, hairspray and perfume drifted from the wings.
When the curtain rose, Erin bounded onstage as Urleen, plaid skirt swishing, her voice sharp and sassy as she lobbed one-liners at Ariel. At one point she cocked her hip, rolled her eyes, and drawled, “Girl, you are playin’ with fire.” The audience laughed, and pride bloomed in my chest.
As the show ended, I glanced across the rows and spotted Mick.
He was sitting near the aisle, shoulders hunched, hands clasped loosely between his knees.
A second later, he looked over at me and gave me a thumbs-up.
My stomach flipped. Had he come to see Erin—or me?
I pushed the thought down and joined the applause.
Later that night, my friends and I crowded into Erin’s kitchen to celebrate. Boxes of pizza were stacked on the counter, the smell of melted cheese and pepperoni mingling with the rich chocolate of Joan’s homemade brownies.
Eliot leaned back in his chair, looking at Erin. “You were fantastic.” He smirked. “But let’s be honest, you were sort of playing yourself.”
Erin punched his arm, then laughed her infectious laugh.
“He’s not wrong,” Joan said, raising one eyebrow.
“Careful, Mom,” Erin shot back. “I’ll sock you, too.”
“Seriously,” I said, linking my arm through hers. “You looked like a star.”
“Constructive criticism?” she asked.
Anna shook her head. “Zero notes. You were perfect.”
“You really were. Best fake southern accent I’ve ever heard,” Sam said, then mimicked her: “Girl, you are playin’ with fire.”
Lucy nodded, then said, “Just don’t let it go to your head—you’re already our full-time job.”
We all laughed, and as I looked around the bright kitchen, I tried to savor the moment, wishing we could always have nights like these.
—
Suddenly, exam week was upon us. My stomach churned every time I opened a notebook, the pressure tightening my chest. These grades mattered a lot. They were one-eighth of my high school transcript, the first piece colleges would see.
When my math exam landed on my desk, numbers and symbols swam in front of me, my heartbeat loud in my ears. Beside me, Mick leaned back in his chair, twirling his pencil like it was any other day.
—
I called Mick as soon as our results came in, confiding that I’d only scored an eighty-eight.
“That’s good,” he said.
“Not exactly top-college material.” I hesitated. “How’d you do?”
“I did okay.”
Something in his voice gave him away. “Oh my gosh. You aced it, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“So what’d you get?” I pressed.
“Umm…A ninety-seven.”
“What?! Mick—that’s amazing! You know what this means, don’t you?”
He laughed. “This’ll be good—”
“It means you have to go to college.”
“One math test means I have to go to college?”
“The fact that you are brilliant means you have to go to college.”
He laughed again. “Okay. Look. I’ll make a deal with you. If you go to Madison, and I get in, we’ll go together.”
Together.
The word glowed inside me, warming me like a promise, as if we’d just agreed on more than test scores and college plans.
“Deal,” I said, grinning.