Chapter Seven
I’m fuzzy on the details of what Pavlov fed the dog in that experiment, but I sure do feel a kinship with him when I wake up on Sunday morning and my brain immediately goes, Pancakes. My eyes are not even cracked open and the compulsion is so strong that my feet might just carry me to Betty’s without one other logically formed thought.
I squash the urge only because I know Seb will be there, and I’m not entirely sure where we stand. Or rather—I’m not sure I want to right now, when we’re both on edge and waiting for a decision to come down from the Newsbag fates. Better to know how things shake out.
Two things eventually change my mind as the morning goes on: the first is that I genuinely have no interest in investigating our dining hall’s less than artistic interpretation of a chili egg bake a second time over. The second is that I’ve been thinking about what my dad said on and off all of yesterday. “You know how he gets.” It reminds me that for all the friends Seb has, he doesn’t have a best friend—not a Christina to keep his secrets or tell mindless inside jokes or keep him in line.
Well—nobody aside from me.
So then the guilt just kind of spirals from there. Because if the person closest to Seb is also the one most hell-bent on destroying him—well, I’m no psychology major, but that feels less than healthy. And also it makes it extra shitty that I’m avoiding him for no real reason other than “I don’t know where we stand.” Five minutes eating pancakes with him isn’t going to kill me.
So I yank on some bike shorts and my oversized T-shirt from our block’s annual Spaghetti Bonanza (yet another one of my dad’s and Seb’s dad’s delicious ideas) and head over to Pancake It or Leave It. The curtains on the window are open enough today that I can see a few other customers inside, a mix of families and university students. It only takes me a second to find Seb sitting by himself at the same table, seemingly deep in thought about something.
I knock lightly on the window. He jumps a bit in his seat, and the instant his eyes connect with mine I see the same uncertainty in them. It takes us both a beat to smile, like we’re waiting for the other’s cue. A far cry from the brazen, almost smug version of ourselves the last time we saw each other.
In lieu of asking what I want, Betty just hands me a plate when I walk in the door. Today’s pancakes are full of giant, juicy blueberries, as are everyone else’s in the place. Seb kicks the chair out for me, his smile small but at ease again.
“Look who’s here to gloat,” he says.
I set my pancakes down. “About what?” I ask. “Being superior to you in every way, or pulling off this look better than you could ever dream?”
Because naturally Seb is also wearing his Spaghetti Bonanza shirt, the green one from the year before mine. He looks down at his chest and laughs. “I think we both know spaghetti’s more my color than yours. And no, I meant about Newsbag. ”
He better elaborate and fast, because I just caught a whiff of the blueberry and I don’t know if I’m going to be a coherent human after taking the first bite. I barely have the wherewithal to swap out a bit of pancake for Seb’s syrup as it is.
Seb nudges my foot under the table. “Check your phone.”
I narrow my eyes at him. I know better than to think this is actually good news for me, if he looks so pleased by it. But when I open my email to the subject line of ROUND ONE WINNER , it’s my name in the message.
“Holy shit,” I say.
“Watch your damn mouth,” says Betty from the grill.
“Holy shit, ” I say anyway, unable to help myself. If I’m not mistaken I hear Betty let out a quiet snort.
“Congrats,” says Seb, without a trace of irony. When I look up he’s leaning back in his seat and watching me with this knowing look that almost seems proud. It knocks me off-kilter, kicks up a flutter under my ribs.
“No. Don’t ‘congrats’ me,” I protest. “Then I can’t be a jerk about winning.”
Seb’s close-lipped smile deepens enough that I can see the small dimple on his left cheek. “You have my permission to be a jerk. You earned it. You’re going to have your first byline in Newsbag next week.”
It really hits me then, the magnitude of it. Not just a byline but one with my actual name on it. Not just my actual name but printed in the zine I’ve been dreaming about getting published in for so long that I was worried I might jinx it, for hoping too much. I have to blink because my plate is swimming in front of me, so overwhelmed that my eyes are genuinely threatening to leak.
Seb snaps me out of it by tapping my plate lightly with his fork. “Eat your victory pancakes,” he tells me. “And enjoy this while you can. You’ve got a reckoning coming your way.”
“Is that so?” I ask, digging into my plate.
“I’ve got big plans for Round Two.”
I don’t doubt that. The topic of “relationships on campus” may be broad but definitely lends itself more to Seb’s skill set with interviewing and more hands-on reporting than mine. Especially since they’re giving us three weeks for it instead of two, implying that they want us to be more thoughtful about it.
Still—“If you think I’m gonna coast on this win, you’ve got another thing coming,” I tell him through a mouthful of pancake.
“Oh, I’ve got a lot of things coming,” says Seb. “I’ve already started writing.”
“Me too,” I shoot right back.
Which is only kind of a fib. I haven’t started writing, but yesterday in the aftermath of the FaceTime with my dad and the strange, unresolved guilt I’ve had about leaving home since I got here, I decided I would focus on family relationships—specifically freshmen leaving home for the first time, and how different family dynamics affect how students adjust on campus. It’s going to have to be more specific than that, I know, but it’s a jumping-off point at least.
Seb leans forward in his seat. “Speaking of relationships on campus—how was your little date with Joey yesterday?”
The blueberries are too ripe and juicy to turn sour in my mouth, but they metaphorically do. I take my time answering, mostly because I know I can’t actually lie to Seb without him catching me out on it. And the truth is if the near-imagined kiss with Joey was a commercial break, then Saturday at the farmers market was a full blooper.
“It wasn’t a date,” I say carefully.
Seb nods. “And this isn’t a pancake joint.”
I roll my eyes. “It wasn’t—I mean. I thought we were just hanging out, is all, and then…”
It’s not like I did anything cataclysmically awkward. It’s just that I didn’t exactly pick up on what Joey was putting down, so to speak. In retrospect I should have realized something was up when Joey cheerfully started telling me his dating history and politely asking about mine. He seemed unfazed by my explanation that it was pretty much summed up with “nonexistent,” and we moved on to talking about Newsbag and our sisters and funny stories about the school baseball team, where he’s a scholarship athlete like Christina. I didn’t think it was anything more than friends making conversation until later when we were wandering around the farmers market looking for a bench to try the pie on and Joey said, “Next time we go out, we’ll just go to a place with actual tables and chairs.”
Which, of course, prompted me to say, “Next time?”
Joey faltered. “I mean, if you want to go out again.”
And then, in a moment of mild humiliation that might just take the top spot in the Awkward Things Sadie Has Said hall of fame, I blurted, “I didn’t even know we were going out right now. ”
I must be making quite the face at the memory, because Seb laughs. “Damn, Sadie. Only two weeks on campus and already breaking hearts?”
“That’s your job,” I remind him. He pulls a face of his own like he’s going to interrupt, but I’m in no mood for Seb underselling his hotness right now. “And no. I don’t—I mean, we might go out?”
We left on a good enough note, at least. Joey got my number and said if it was okay he’d text me a few options to grab lunch or something this week. I haven’t thought about it much since, mostly because I’ve been too anxious waiting for the email from Newsbag to worry about waiting for a text from a boy.
“Aw.” Seb’s tone isn’t mocking, but it’s a close cousin to it. “You like him.”
“He’s nice,” I say, unsure why this conversation is grating on me so much. Maybe it’s the knowing gleam in Seb’s eyes. Like he’s already peered into the future and knows that Joey and I won’t work out.
The thing is, I recognize that feeling. Even when Seb was dating Janie and then Roger, I had this undeniable, borderline smug understanding that neither of them would last. I never said as much to Seb, but it’s impossible to know someone as well as I know him and not be able to clock that kind of thing. Seb was happy with them—was thoughtful and funny and all the things a committed boyfriend should be—but I never saw that spark. Not the quiet kind you can see between my parents when they thoughtlessly kiss each other on the cheek, or the loud kind when Marley makes public displays of affection after getting back together with her very nice and wholesome boyfriend Ken (whose only real flaw is owning too many khakis for a twenty-two-year-old to justify).
Which is to say, I was unsurprised by Seb’s amicable breakups. And I guess Seb has the right to be unsurprised by me and my apparent misfire with Joey, too. But I don’t like the idea that the future is already set in stone, even if it’s just in Seb’s mind. Maybe I will feel that same spark with Joey if I get to know him a little better. I’ve never dated anyone, or how else would I know?
Before either of us can press the point, both of our phones buzz. It’s the group chat that has Seb’s parents and my whole family on it, and the text that comes in is a picture of everyone gathered around my family’s kitchen table with a mountain of pancakes. Hadley is still in her pajamas, Marley is rocking some major bedhead, and most of our parents’ heads are cut off because my dad thoroughly miscalculated the angle of his selfie-taking arm.
“We can do them one better,” says Seb, and holds his phone out and turns on the front-facing camera.
I lean in and at the last second spear one of Seb’s pancakes, biting into it and holding it between my teeth like a dog. Seb lets out an indignant noise and that ends up being the shot—both of our eyes crinkled in laughter, me cheesing at the camera, Seb grinning at me.
Seb hits Send, and I find myself wishing, suddenly, that I’d made him retake it. The shot pops up on my own phone then, and I see why—this picture captures something I’ve felt but never actually seen. Not just that crackle of electricity between me and Seb, but a version of myself that my family hasn’t seen in such full force. That I’ve never seen in full force.
It’s too late now, though. Within seconds the group chat lights up again with texts back from our parents: Cute! And Looks delish! And Where is that?? The last one comes from my dad in a separate thread between the two of us—just three smiley-face emojis. Dad Speak for “You’ve done good.”
I feel a pinch of guilt, because I didn’t join Seb on my dad’s account, but now I’m feeling the instant gratification of parental approval just the same. It’s even more ridiculously potent now that I haven’t been in the house for my usual daily hit.
I glance over at Seb, but he’s scrolled back up the thread to stare at the picture of our families. His expression is the same kind of distant it was when I saw him through the window.
“The audacity of them to enjoy themselves without us,” I joke.
Seb blinks himself back. “Yeah. You homesick yet?”
The question catches me off guard only because nobody’s asked me that point-blank since we got here. Like all the freshmen are posturing because we know that admitting we’re homesick when it’s barely even September would be admitting some kind of weakness that would weed us out, like the collegiate version of natural selection.
But mostly it catches me off guard because I’m not sure of my answer. Sometimes the ache of missing them is so intense that I’m afraid to let myself fully feel it, like it’d be pressing down too hard on a fresh bruise. But I can’t tell if some of that ache is just guilt, because as much as I love them, I can’t help my relief.
“Kind of,” I say after a moment.
Seb frowns. “Only kind of? Hell, I miss your family more than that.”
“I’m sure your eardrums don’t,” I joke. I don’t mean to say anything else, but now that someone has scratched the surface of the feeling, I can’t help it. “It’s just—nice, sometimes. To have a little space to be someone new.”
“New,” Seb echoes, like he doesn’t follow.
“Or just to get to be like, fun and spontaneous about things,” I say. “Hard to do when you’re living in a circus tent. Already too much chaos going on.”
I’m expecting Seb to riff off me like he usually does, but he just tilts his head at me curiously, like he’s waiting for me to elaborate. And I could, but not without embarrassing myself. Not without explaining that I don’t think I’ve ever been fully myself around my family, or anyone back in high school, really—that even in these two weeks of having space from that reality, I feel like a different person. One who cracks jokes and goofs off instead of worrying about keeping other people’s strings pulled together. One who goes to parties and accidental dates and ridiculous food competitions. One who gets a shiny new byline in Newsbag.
It’s not explaining myself that’s embarrassing, I realize. It’s embarrassing because Seb already knows I’ve been pretending. A theory that’s all but confirmed by the way Seb nods, his brow furrowing like he has a follow-up question.
“Are you homesick?” I ask, before he can voice it.
Seb pauses, a corner of his lips quirking. “Is it cheating if I steal your ‘kind of’?”
“As your former editor, I’ll let this flagrant act of plagiarism slide,” I joke.
“Appreciated,” he says.
“It’s just that I didn’t realize how relieved my parents were that I didn’t get into Maple Ride until I got off the waitlist.” He glances out the window self-consciously. “They were so thrown off when I decided not to go to Blue Ridge State.”
“Thrown off?”
“Like, disappointed,” Seb admits.
I search Seb’s face, only because he seems reluctant to meet my eye now. At first I think maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to flex that he got into Blue Ridge, which is so well known for its academic standards that it’s even harder to get into than Maple Ride. Hell, when he got the acceptance letter from them a week before Maple Ride’s decisions came out, I worried I was tanked—if he got a spot at Blue Ridge, it seemed like there was no way I’d beat him out for the spot here.
But I did. It seemed like a tidy ending. I may have won, but since Seb had Blue Ridge, he didn’t technically lose. Except right now he looks a little bit like he did.
“Well, your dad did go to Blue Ridge,” I say, lightly probing.
Seb nods, his teeth grazing his lower lip. “Yeah, and he’s—you know. A little more into the whole academia thing. And there’s only one of me, so. I guess that made it more important. The whole ‘rah rah, continue the legacy’ cliché.”
It’s something that doesn’t come up often, that Seb doesn’t have any other siblings. My mom mentioned to me once that it was hard enough for Seb’s parents to have him—our parents meant to have their first kids at the same time. My parents had Marley, but it took Seb’s parents another four years to have him. I think the reason it hardly comes up is that we all grew up in the same fenceless shared backyard, so Seb was always part of the mix just the same.
Still, that’s not the part my brain snags on.
“But they’re okay with you being here now?” I ask carefully.
Seb’s lips thin out. “They’re okay with me majoring in engineering,” he says after a moment. “That’s always been the plan.”
I raise my eyebrows, waiting him out. Sure enough he ducks his head and says, “My dad has this—thing. Blue Ridge has the better engineering program. He’s making me apply there again, on a midyear transfer.”
There’s a flash of hurt that comes so fast that I can’t figure out what’s driving it: the fact that Seb is putting me through the paces of this competition even though he’s going to ditch me, or that he’s ditching in the first place.
“Why are you competing for this spot if you’re just going to leave?” I demand.
Seb lifts his head again, and something cracks just wide enough in Seb’s eyes for me to understand.
“If you don’t get the spot in Newsbag, he’s going to make you leave,” I say slowly.
Seb immediately shakes his head. “He would never make me leave,” he says. “But the idea of me having a backup plan made them okay with the last-minute switch. Blue Ridge has the better engineering program.”
I know Seb’s parents are paying for school, and that they’d never cut him off based on which one he was attending. But I also know that Seb’s family loyalties run as deep as mine. In ways I probably can’t understand, even, because I may have been the “good kid,” but I was never the only one. So maybe Seb’s dad won’t make him do anything in the traditional sense. But Seb loves his parents too much to disappoint them.
“You actually turned in a transfer application, then.”
It comes out flat, and I feel like I’m deflating, too. At the core of what Seb just told me is an inescapable truth: if I win, I won’t just edge Seb out of Newsbag. I might edge him out of the whole school.
Seb swallows hard. “I mean, yeah. I said I would,” he says. But then he catches sight of my face, and something in it makes him firm his resolve. “But I’m here now. This is where I’ve always wanted to be.”
The words are implied but louder than the ones he actually said: Don’t you dare go easy on me over this.
I never would, of course. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about what this means to him. That I’m not stuck on what it means for me, too.
He gives me this definitive smile then, the kind that means he’s moving the conversation along. I take his cue and say, “Well, good. Even if it means I have to go to the trouble of taking you down all over again.”
Seb’s smile eases up then, smug as ever. “You like having me here.”
I let out an indignant scoff. “Oh, sure. Let me list all the reasons why.”
Then I lean back in my seat, utterly silent, and cross my arms over my chest. The seconds tick by until Seb’s smile hitches into a smirk and he leans forward to cross the distance I made.
“I gave you that idea for the quiz,” he says, raising his eyebrows.
“Right after I gave you the idea for your little cost-analysis piece,” I say right back.
“And where did that get me?” Seb gestures to his phone. “You’re the one getting published. Seems like you’re the one getting the better end of the deal here.”
I snatch up my fork and take the last bite of pancake off his plate, per tradition. “I’d send a thank-you note but I don’t think the postmaster general recognizes ‘pain in my ass’ as a formal address.”
“I recently changed it to ‘Wherever Sadie Least Wants Me,’ which is probably what got me off the waitlist in the first place,” he says.
“Eh. At least I have these pancakes to ease my pain.”
We meet each other’s eyes then, the conversation coming to a natural close. Usually a conversation between us only ends when there’s a clear victor. Now it’s just ending with a calm that somehow makes me uneasy, because I don’t know where we go from here.
Seb sets my empty plate on top of his, and we wordlessly start rooting for the cash in our wallets to set on the table.
“So what is the number two–ranked staff writer candidate up to the rest of the day?” I ask him.
“Other than devising ways to thoroughly crush you in the next round?” He tilts his head toward some vague direction outside the window. “I was going to hit up the theater department’s interactive play.”
I shudder at the words “interactive” and “theater” being used in the same sentence. “What for?”
Seb’s eyes flicker with amusement, but his tone is thoughtful. “I caught up with Rowan the other day about the funding issue. Apparently all the campus orgs are dealing with some version of it right now. They seem to think that if we show up for each other as much as possible, we can show the administration how important they all are.”
If that’s the case, I’ve got plenty of other ways to support. I’m already two chapters into the Sad Bitch Book Club’s pick for September, and our utter ruthlessness during the Dorm Food-Off got me recruited for the next informal Kickball Club game.
“Well, godspeed,” I tell Seb in the meantime.
“Care to join?” he asks, a challenge in his voice.
I keep my eyes on his and say deliberately, “I don’t know what sounds like worse of a nightmare—the threat of getting pulled onstage, or the idea of getting stuck in a theater for two hours with you.”
Seb stands and settles his warm hand in the juncture between my shoulder and my neck, squeezing lightly. “Well, that’s not very fun or spontaneous of you, New Sadie.”
The smile is creeping back onto my face despite myself. Usually I don’t like for him to have the satisfaction, but it feels like it doesn’t matter as much anymore. Everything is open season now.
“Hmmm,” I say, pretending to mull it over. Less because I’m thinking and more because I like his hand there. It’s strangely grounding.
“I’m headed over there right now. You’ve got ten seconds to decide.”
I’m going to say no. I only hesitate for a moment because of my parents—my mom asking about Seb earlier this week, and my dad sending those emojis just now. They’d be upset with me if I didn’t go with him, especially because it’s clear from the way he hasn’t mentioned anyone else that he’s going alone.
He squeezes my shoulder again before letting me go, and I realize that’s only part of it. The other part is that Seb is right. There’s a part of me that does like having him here. And the last thing I want to do is dig any deeper into that when I have one real goal this semester, and it might push Seb out of my life for good.
So I take a breath to say no, but end up wasting it.
Betty decides for me. “I ran out of patience for this fucked-up rom-com vibe of yours about ten smirks ago. Go nauseate someone else.” She juts her chin toward the door. “Those theater punks are national treasures. You’re going. Now scram.”