Chapter 2
Lucy
The photo on the fridge is staring back at me, and for a very long moment, I wish Gianna hadn’t put photos of her family across the apartment.
It’s awkward for me to know exactly what Benson Reeve looks like, and he has no idea who I am.
In the photo, he’s in a Camden U jersey, and he’s laughing next to Gianna.
I can’t fully comprehend how he is that much taller than her when she’s already so tall.
I glance at the background, hating that I have studied this picture every time I’m in the kitchen.
It’s been on this fridge for the past year.
But is it my fault? I need to access the fridge, and I just so happen to see his face every single time.
I understand why the tutoring center paired us together, but it doesn’t erase the fact that he’s Gianna’s older brother.
She’s had very strict rules about her family that I don’t dare cross.
So, the anxiety thrumming through my body is mostly because of her.
The other part is seeing his face in photos across the apartment I live in, and he has no clue who I am.
From down the hallway, through the cracked door of Gianna’s bedroom, I hear her voice. “All of it. The captain thing. The voice. The whole — the whole Benson Reeve thing. Bring sixty percent.”
I freeze.
My heart starts racing. He sounds like a real piece of work if his sister has to call to tell him to tone himself down.
I open the fridge to stop myself from staring at the face she’s talking to right now.
The hum of the fridge gets louder, somehow, or my hearing tunes her out.
The cold air is on my face. There is a half-empty container of pho broth from downstairs.
“Don’t be weird,” she says.
I am two things at once. Mortified, in a way that is sitting between my shoulder blades like cold water. And — embarrassingly, against my will — grateful. Because she’s doing this for me. She has, ever since I met her freshman year, been the person who goes ahead of me into rooms.
I have to stop listening, so I reach for something and hum “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to myself.
Then I walk on the balls of my feet across the kitchen and around the half-wall to the living room couch.
I sit down, pick up the throw blanket, and pull it over my legs.
By the time Gianna’s bedroom door creaks open thirty seconds later, I have arranged myself into a person who appears to have been here for ten minutes.
“Hey.” I smile, eating a small container of yogurt.
“Hey.” She comes down the hallway in leggings and an old t-shirt, phone face-down in her hand, hair piled in the bun she puts in when she’s going to be home all night. She drops onto the other end of the couch and exhales.
“Okay,” she says. “He’s going to behave. I scared him.”
I keep my face very still. “Is that so?”
“Mm-hm. I scared him deeply.”
“Okay.” I lick my spoon.
“I told him not to captain at you.”
“That’s a verb now?”
She smiles. “As of tonight, it is.”
I tip my head back against the cushion. “There’s really no way out of this.”
She knows how busy my schedule is, and when the tutoring manager begged me, I didn’t know the name of the athlete until she sent me over the schedule.
“He could be benched,” she says, like she didn’t think she’d ever say those words. “He had to find a tutor as soon as possible. You know how the college is about its athletes.”
I lick my spoon. “I thought you said he was smart.”
She glares at me. “He is.” She huffs loudly, and I think I overstepped. “I don’t know why he’s failing, but I understand why they called you specifically. You’re smart and good at your job. You can help him.”
“I don’t know.”
“I tried to tell him I could tutor him.”
I think this might be the kindest thing she could do for me right now, and I don’t know how to thank her for it without making it weird, so I don’t.
“But he said it had to be a real tutor through Camden U. And,” she shrugs, “I’m not taking Stat 217, so there’s no way I could actually help him.
” She sighs, staring at her phone. She places it down and then says, “He’s my brother, so you’ll probably get along just fine, and you don’t need to worry. ”
My throat tightens when I look at the TV console and see another photo of his bright smile, looking right at me. I scoop the last bite of yogurt and nod like a normal person. Deep down, I don’t agree. I don’t want to worry, but I can’t help how I feel.
“Okay,” she says. “Lay it out.”
“What?” I ask, confused. I set the yogurt and spoon on the coffee table.
“Your week. I know you’re already underwater. Lay it out so I can see how bad it is.”
I sigh. The sigh has been waiting in my chest since Saturday.
I open the Notes app on my phone and scroll through my list for the week. “Real Analysis problem set due Wednesday.”
She nods. “Mm.”
“Cog Psych quiz next Monday.”
“Okay.”
I look at what’s next on the list. “Math Club secretary minutes from last week — I haven’t typed them up. They have to go out by Thursday.”
She shrugs, fiddling with her phone case. “That’s nothing, those take you ten minutes.”
“They take me forty.”
Her eyes roll. “They take you ten and you spend thirty making them perfect.”
I continue, “I have the study group I run on Thursday for the intro Stats class.”
“The class you TA.”
I nod, reading the rest of the list. “I have my Wednesday tutoring session — it’s a swimmer, she’s a very nice.
That’s two hours. I have Thursday afternoon tutoring — it’s a baseball guy, just one hour.
His should be ending in a couple of weeks.
I have prep on Sunday for the Tuesday class.
I need to go to my mom’s house on Wednesday. ”
She winces. The wince is small, but I see it, because I know the geography of her face better than my own.
“How bad is it at your mom’s lately?”
I think about this as I was just there. My mom hadn’t done a load of laundry, didn’t rinse a single dish, or put any dishes away.
Forget about sweeping or vacuuming. The house was a wreck, and it’s embarrassing to tell Gianna about it every week, so I’ve stopped telling the truth.
“It was bad. But I don’t know. I noticed she bought some groceries, so we’ll see. ”
She gives me questionable eyes but says, “Okay.”
I take a Camdenth. “Also.”
“Mm?”
“I told the tutoring center two weeks ago that I was at capacity for new students this semester.”
She lowers her mug.
“In writing,” I say. “I emailed Karen. I said no new students. Karen said, quote, totally understood, you’ve earned it. Karen called me today. She doesn’t call. She called and said it was a star athlete, and the AD was hoping I’d reconsider.” I close my eyes. “So I said yes.”
I open my eyes, and she’s giving me that look.
“Lucy,” she says sympathetically. “You always say yes.”
“Yeah.”
“You said you were at capacity. You are at capacity. And you told them yes?” She doesn’t say you have to learn to say no.
She has said that to me before, but it doesn’t mean I listen to her.
She just leans forward and bumps her foot against mine under the blanket, which is our version of a hug when neither of us has the energy for the sit-up.
“There’s nothing I can do now,” I add. “I’ll manage.”
She doesn’t reply, and that silence speaks volumes.
Later, in my room, I’m staring at my Real Analysis problem set on my laptop screen.
The cursor is blinking on Problem 3, where I left it on Sunday.
My phone rings. The screen says Bear, which is the contact name I have for my little brother because when he was six he asked me to please please please be Bear in my phone forever because bears are the strongest. He’s thirteen now and would be horrified if I changed it and also if I didn’t.
I answer, “Hi, Bear.”
“Lucy? Mom won’t sign the field trip thing.”
I close the laptop and curl my legs up under me. I move the phone from one hand to the other and lean back against my pillow.
“Okay. What field trip thing?”
“It’s a thing for Mr. Carlson’s class. We’re going to the museum.
It’s twenty-two dollars. She said that we don’t have it.
” I can hear in his voice that he’s pacing the room.
He has never been able to sit still since the day he was born.
“And then she said — she said I should just stay home that day.”
“Stay home?”
I hear something drop on the ground. “Yeah, she said I could play video games.” There’s more shuffling on his end.
I widen my eyes, not surprised that she’s saying something like this. “Do you want to go on the field trip?”
“Yes!” He scoffs. “I want to go. Kirill and Max are going.”
“Okay,” I say, knowing exactly what I’m going to do. “I’m going to handle it. Don’t worry about the twenty-two dollars.”
“Lucy, I don’t want Mom to get mad—”
“It’s twenty-two dollars. Don’t worry about it. She won’t be mad. When’s the deadline?”
“Friday.”
“I’ll Venmo Mom in the morning. She’ll sign it. If she doesn’t sign it, I’ll talk to her tomorrow during my lunch.”
“Okay, but I also need home lunch that day.”
“Right.” I calculate in my head what he would need to take for the field trip. “I will send Mom more money to buy home lunch. What did you have for dinner?”
“I haven’t yet.”
“What’s in the fridge?”
“There’s the spaghetti from Sunday.”
“Eat the spaghetti from Sunday. Microwave it for two minutes, stir, then microwave it for one more.”
“Okay.”
“Brush your teeth before you go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“I love you. Eat the spaghetti.”
“Okay.”
He ends the call. I sit on the edge of the bed for a minute and look at the closed laptop.
I think about opening it and starting Problem 3 again, but I should probably read the Cog Psych chapter and take notes.
I don’t do either. I plug my phone in and go to bed without finishing the problem set.
I need to turn my brain off for the night.
All of this is a Tuesday-Lucy problem.
Tonight-Lucy needs sleep.