Chapter 5 #2
There’s so much about this place that’s stayed the same since my childhood.
The sharp frame of the towering Adirondack Mountains.
The lush forest and rich pine smell. Mads was too young to absorb the campus in the way Jared and I did, but I remember everything.
Spending afternoons in the Chelmsford library and how my mother insisted she could wander in it for hours.
Grabbing maple-buttercream cookies in town and eating them in the courtyard while we waited for my dad to finish class.
And the time when I first peered into the biggest fountain I’d ever seen, mesmerized by the copper collected at the bottom, and my dad handed me a penny.
I don’t remember what I wished for. Back then I had everything I needed.
It’s moments like this when I start to feel myself glaze over. Like I’m coming untethered from the present, stuck somewhere in the depths of my own head. It takes precise mental energy to pull my focus back.
We catch up to Inessa, who’s ditched Stelmak, and she leads us through a dense cluster of seniors. As I wind my way behind them, someone clips my shoulder. I glance up, ready to apologize, but then I see who’s in front of me and bite my tongue.
Sumner.
He tries to step aside but is accidentally jostled by Justin Lee’s elbow.
We end up maneuvering in the same direction, making this whole interaction ten times more awkward as our chests collide.
And when we seize the opportunity to shift through the same gap in the crowd, our fingers brush in our hasty effort to escape.
It would be comical if it weren’t so infuriating.
His dark hair curls in half loops splayed every which way, shifting as he tips his head in my direction. “Following me?”
There’s a natural rasp in his voice. I was never sure if it was a result of him gaming or because he generally had a difficult time shutting up.
“You’d love that,” I deadpan before adding, “I was looking for Analiese.”
It’s the only thing I can think to say, because I do not want Sumner Winchel thinking I’ve intentionally sought him out.
Sumner cuts his eyes away from mine. “Sure.”
His tone grates against my bones. It’s cavalier. Haughty. My pulse rises, a result of his unwanted presence.
I’ve lost Sabine and Inessa. Great. I wonder if they assume I veered off to do my own thing. This only fans the flames of my irritation.
From the corner of my eye, I notice Julian Montfort waving enthusiastically at Sumner. Weird. Montfort’s a record-setting member of crew who has, in my recent recollection, never uttered a single word to him.
The question tumbles from my lips before I can stop it. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Befriend the entire rowing team in a week.”
“My striking looks and charismatic personality,” he intones, still avoiding my gaze. Which, again, is weird. Because I’m mad at him. Not the other way around.
It’s not a real answer, and I’m not sure I care to stick around for one, so I start toward the crowd.
“They were talking about my Twitch channel on Ivernia’s gaming Discord,” Sumner says, his words stopping me.
I turn. At least he has the decency to make eye contact, though he doesn’t appear happy about it. In fact, he’s looking at me like I’ve offered to extract his teeth with a rusty wrench sans anesthesia.
“They like it, I guess,” he clarifies. “I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary, Carmichael.”
I’m aware of Sumner’s Twitch channel, even if I haven’t seen it firsthand.
He’d go live from Jared’s room over the summer as he streamed himself playing this video game called Legends of Light while simultaneously breaking down complex math equations.
It’s a niche corner of the vast black hole that is the internet.
Jared told me he has hundreds of thousands of followers, which I don’t doubt.
Because while Sumner might be annoying, he’s brilliant when it comes to numbers.
He once unlocked improper integrals for me in a way that clicked.
Not that I’d ever admit it.
“Mild internet fame is a little out of the ordinary.”
“Fair.” He tilts his head. “This on the other hand—”
I raise my eyebrows. “This?” I echo.
“I assumed,” he begins, studying me earnestly, “our next interaction would involve an alarming number of torches and pitchforks.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I have a proclivity for dull blades.”
A smile cracks through his resolve. “Careful,” he says. “You almost sound believable.”
“You know, you could have kept your mouth shut,” I say, perhaps a little too forcefully. “For once.”
“It’s a game.” He slips his hands into his utilitarian olive jacket, the only one I’ve ever seen him wear, even in the winter. “Maybe one of these days, you’ll be good at it.”
Annoyance flits through me. “You couldn’t take the L?”
“No,” he says, firm. He takes a half step closer, lowering his voice. “And don’t stand there and act like you wouldn’t have done the same.”
I flatten my lips. Because he’s right.
I hate when he’s right.
“Besides,” he continues, a gleam in his eye, “Capture brings out your competitive side.”
“I don’t have a competitive side.”
“So you don’t care I’m currently in spot twenty,” he says, “while you’re ranked twenty-one?”
I walked right into that.
It was the Segner common room that brought Sumner and me together during our very first semester at Ivernia. He’d seen a quiz in my hand and asked me what I got. At least, that’s what I’d thought I heard. Turns out, he’d asked me my name, to which I’d replied with my grade. Ninety-one.
He went overtime with that unfortunate bit, calling me “Ninety-one” for three months before transitioning to Carmichael, which was almost worse because—for a fleeting few weeks—I’d developed a minor crush on him.
He had a Peter Parker type of nerdiness about him, a quick-witted sense of humor, and an endearing softness behind his eyes.
But all the guys called one another by their last name, except for Jared, who was Drexton—some gamer thing—so I assumed that’s how he saw me: as one of the guys. Not exactly what I was hoping for.
My crush evaporated as his desperation to be a high-key know-it-all grew.
I avoided him at all costs, but he didn’t avoid me.
It was as if I were a challenge, except I didn’t know the rules of the game.
He went out of his way to talk to me in geometry, boasting about quiz scores and informing me I had the worst taste in mechanical pencil brands, as if that were something anyone on this slow-spinning Earth had a strong opinion on.
He delighted in getting under my skin. Like a tick. Or a bacterial infection.
He grins. “You’re staring.”
I am, it’s true, but instead I say, “You’re delusional.”
It’s that look, the one I’d grown accustomed to over the past few months, that elicits an unnerving jolt of adrenaline.
The same one he’d broadcast when he’d slip into the living room after everyone else turned in, leaning in the doorway to ask what makeup assignment held my attention.
And when I’d show him, he’d join me on the floor, crossing his arms over the coffee table and resting his chin on top of them as he watched me work through calculus equations, as if this were an interesting sports game and I was on the winning team.
I don’t know why my brain decided to store these trivial things away, or why it spontaneously raised my dopamine levels every time he pulled up next to me.
At first, I thought it was an intimidation tactic—or a way to tout his mathematical strengths.
But whenever I was stuck, he’d offer guidance—Go back to line four of that solve—then I’d find my own error.
I never asked why he helped, and he never offered a reason.
“Your name is Delaney,” he’d say, spelling out my name in scratchy capital print. “Those letters exist as a finite sequence, always in that exact order. You can’t rearrange them. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be you.”
And then I knew. Like the Earth’s rotation, my crush had returned. I wondered how he felt but never gathered enough nerve to ask.
Over time, we made a habit of sitting on the back patio late at night after everyone else had gone to bed.
We’d read in separate corners of the living room until one of us caught the other’s eye, a silent signal to move toward the door.
There, back in my quiet suburban neighborhood, we’d talk for hours, arguing over meaningless things and volleying one-liners like a game of Ping-Pong.
Family seemed to be a sore spot for him—he never brought it up, so I didn’t either.
But he listened with dedicated rapture when something jogged a memory of my dad.
This is the longest conversation we’ve shared since August. His gaze falters.
I wonder if he realizes this too. And for a moment I’m back in Pennsylvania, the earthy-sweet balm of the night breeze singing through my lungs as the gentle pressure of my lips finds his.
Clipped memories of his hands sweeping down my shoulder blades and mine in his hair, softer than I’d imagined, his glasses skewed across his forehead.
The fluttering in my chest as he deepened the kiss and the hollow expanse when he pulled away.
I consider bringing it all up. Everything we should have talked about before he left.
But then I remember the soft rasp of his words after: We shouldn’t.
It’s not a good idea. A hot flame of embarrassment reignites inside my chest. He let me down gently, and it stung worse than I expected.
He may as well have said I don’t want you. How could you think that?
And how could I? Our relationship was built on harmless trolling and competition, nothing more.
The next morning, he acted like it never happened. He sat next to me at breakfast and rode in the car as my brother dropped me off at work, like it was so easy to reset. And two days later, after a brief goodbye, he left for New York with Jared.
I thought about texting him but didn’t.
I wondered if he thought about texting me but didn’t.
God, I wish he hadn’t stayed with us. Even though I’d made the first move, he’d managed to make the shittiest summer of my life even worse.
Forget it, a small voice tells me, so I move past him and head toward the open coolers away from packs of students. Sumner doesn’t follow. Instead, he tosses his empty can in the nearby garbage.
As I’m reaching for a soda, I notice Ellerby deep in conversation with Mrs. Faustino.
They’ve distanced themselves from the clusters of students with their backs to the commotion.
I’m about to walk over and say hi, maybe save face by reminding her I’m still in the pool of star students, when I catch something I’m positive I shouldn’t overhear.
“Surely something can be done?” Mrs. Faustino is saying. “The school year’s just started.”
“The board has struggled to find alternatives to prevent this from happening. I’m afraid there’s no way around it,” Ellerby says, her voice low. “Ivernia could close as soon as December.”