3. Isla
ISLA
I found an old pair of glasses in my desk drawer last night after fumbling around for a little while, knocking things on the floor and cursing my useless eyes the entire time.
I really am practically blind without them.
The lenses are a little too weak now and the frames are a little too small, since it’s been a couple of years of them gathering dust in my desk drawer.
I feel like I’m wearing somebody else’s face as I double-check the lock on the car door, then walk to the humanities building.
The best part? The part that doesn’t at all make me want to scream?
The right arm snapped off at one point. I never bothered getting them fixed since they were a backup pair, anyway.
I had to tape them at the hinge to keep them in one piece, and every time I turn my head too fast, the tape rubs against my temple and sometimes even catches my hair.
I look like a worn-out substitute teacher who’s had a really hard week. And that’s the nicest assessment I can come up with this morning. Granted, I am having a hard week, so it tracks.
At least I can see, sort of. This pair is from two prescriptions ago, but they’ll get the job done until I can afford a new pair.
I only hope it’s not too long before I can do that.
Because here’s the thing: the pitiful amount of money I have in my bank account has to go to Everett Stone, if I ever find him and grab a few minutes alone with him to float my idea.
It’ll mean sacrificing my comfort and my eyesight, but it’ll be worth it if my babies are safe from the evil HOA.
It’s unheard of for me to be lost and distracted during class. Normally, I’m the girl with both hands cramping from taking notes. I’m the one professors call on when nobody else bothers raising a hand. The girl who actually does the reading.
Today, I sit through an entire lecture on social stratification theory and retain exactly none of it, because my brain decided the only thing we’re thinking about today is whether the guy who gave me a ride home last night passed my number on to Everett.
If he did, then Everett is a complete and total asshole, because he still hasn’t called or even texted.
Okay, it’s been less than twenty-four hours.
Obviously. I’ve also checked my phone no fewer than twenty-three times since breakfast. Did I count?
Maybe. Why? I have no idea. Maybe to throw it in his face when he finally does get in touch...
if he does. Maybe I need to call my mystery driver, whoever he is, and ask why his buddy Everett is so bad with communication.
He called my phone last night while I was in the truck, so his number is saved.
But who am I kidding? The guy forgot I even existed the second I was out of the truck. I wanted to believe him last night, mostly because there wasn’t anything else to do but believe him while I sat there, half-blind in the dark with my whole life collapsing around me.
Instead, I have nothing but radio silence and these stupid glasses and the slow, swelling suspicion that I imagined the whole thing.
I mean, was I desperate enough last night to believe a vague promise from a stranger?
Did he even promise, come to think of it?
I don’t know. I can’t remember. It’s all a blur... much like my vision.
I’m funny when I’m in the depths of despair, apparently.
As the day goes on, I keep replaying the conversation in my head. Where did I go wrong? Did I go wrong at all? Maybe if I had said something different, he would’ve followed through with delivering the message. Maybe I should’ve been more specific.
And it’s not like I’m a memorable person. I blend. It’s sort of my whole thing. I’m surprised the guy even caught sight of me with all those other people on the field. It was sheer dumb luck. Not that I’m feeling very lucky today.
Instead of heading to the library for my usual study session, I head to the dining hall.
For one thing, it’s not like I’m suddenly going to focus up and stop obsessing just because I’m in the library instead of a lecture hall.
For another thing, I am going to officially lose my mind if I don’t find Everett and at least suggest my idea.
He’s free to tell me to go screw myself if he feels like it. Whatever. But I have to try.
The football team eats together at the same time every day, in the same corner of the dining hall. I know this because the group chat treats it like appointment TV. I’ve never once paid attention to it before.
Today, I’m hovering by the salad bar with a tray I haven’t yet used, watching a table of enormous guys in matching green-and-gold shirts laugh at something I can’t hear.
Exactly how am I supposed to work up the nerve to walk over there and ask a table full of strangers if any of them know where I can find Everett Stone?
This is, hands down, the least Isla Pickel thing I’ve ever attempted to do.
I am not the girl who approaches tables.
I’m the girl who emails professors instead of going to office hours.
I’ll wait until the line is completely empty before asking the barista a follow-up question.
I once spent four days too anxious to return a library book a single day late because I was convinced the librarian would remember my face forever and silently judge me every time I passed the circulation desk for the rest of my college career.
And yes, I was completely aware every passing day only made things worse.
So approaching a table full of football players is, on my personal scale of social difficulty, somewhere between public speaking and calling customer service. Just the thought makes me shiver like I accidentally touched a snake.
But Christine sent an email this morning to Grandma and me. It wasn’t even a formal notice this time. Just a casual reminder about how the board “looks forward to seeing compliance soon.” She even italicized the word soon. I don’t know why that detail bothers me so much, but it does.
Maybe I shouldn’t do this. There has to be another way, right? One that doesn’t involve me humiliating myself in front of strangers?
Then again, my babies are home right now, blissfully unaware their fate is up in the air. Nobody in my whole life has ever fought for me the way I’m trying to fight for them. Something about that thought is what finally gets my feet moving toward the table.
I make it about six steps before my nerve mostly evaporates, but six steps is still six steps more than I expected, so I keep going on momentum alone.
Finally, when I’m standing at the head of the table, I clear my throat.
“Hi.” My voice comes out smaller than I wanted it to.
The noise of the cafeteria almost swallows it.
Still, a few of them look up, because apparently a girl in taped-together glasses hovering at the edge of the table is a novelty.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for somebody. Everett Stone?”
Please, dear God, let me die here and now. I almost wish I didn’t have my glasses on, because then I couldn’t see the looks of judgment on their faces as clearly as I do. Like I’m some new and exotic species they’ve only heard about until this afternoon but have never seen in person.
There’s a beat of silence before one of them—blond and broad-shouldered, stupidly handsome—leans back in his chair and looks me up and down with an expression I recognize immediately.
I’ve been on the receiving end of it my entire life, after all.
It’s the look people give you right before they decide you’re funny in a way you didn’t mean to be.
“Nice glasses,” he quips. Of course, the table laughs, because that’s what people do in a situation like this.
They laugh at the stranger who pulled together every ounce of her courage just to approach them.
My face goes hot enough that I’m pretty sure I could fry an egg on it, and there’s a second or two where I consider turning around and walking straight into traffic rather than attempting to finish this conversation.
That is, until the guy sitting next to the blond punches him so hard he goes sideways out of his chair and onto the floor. I mean, he literally levels the guy with a single punch and doesn’t even say a word.
Everything around me goes dead silent for a full second before there’s an explosion of noise.
Gasps, stunned laughter. Chairs scrape back from tables.
“Is this a fight? Do we have a fight?” somebody calls out, because apparently that’s something to be excited about.
I swear, I will never understand people.
Meanwhile, here I am, frozen in horror and holding my tray like a shield while I watch a guy I’ve never met casually shake out his hand like he just swatted a fly instead of decking his own teammate in front of the entire team.
I don’t wait around to see what happens next.
I turn on my heel and walk fast for the exit, because every cell in my body is screaming that I have just witnessed something I was never meant to witness.
The safest possible move is to disappear before anyone remembers my face was the reason it started.
I don’t get far.
“Hey.” It’s a low voice, right behind me, so close I feel it more than hear it over the noise still rolling through the room. There are footsteps matching mine, too, closing in. “Where are you running off to?”
I don’t turn around because I can’t. I’m too horrified.
“I don’t want any trouble.” My voice comes out too high and too shaky, and I clutch the tray tighter, even though I’m pretty sure a lunch tray has never once been an effective weapon in the history of self-defense.
“I really, genuinely don’t. I’ll just go.
I won’t tell anyone what just happened, I promise, ’cause I don’t even know what just happened, technically—”
“Dimples. Relax.”
I freeze.