Chapter Fifteen
“I let you out of my sight for—thirty-six hours, give or take?” Christina asks, squinting up at a cloud. “And things between you and Seb got this fucked?”
I wince, not sure how to answer that question. Christina and I have been studying for so long this afternoon that our brains feel more like Silly Putty than functioning organs. Or rather, Christina has been studying—I mostly spent the few hours staring at the same page and reliving yesterday’s blowup conversation with Seb in my head, alternately punishing myself for the conclusions I leapt to and justifying them. Like it’ll make the whole thing easier if I can assign a bad guy to the argument, make it black-and-white and easy again, the same way it was when we were competing before.
But that ship sailed a long time ago. Now there’s no bad guy, but two deeply confused people and no script for what happens next.
“Well, when you put it that way, it’s almost impressive,” I say. “Nobody can say I slacked off in the screwup department.”
Christina tosses an empty Tupperware at me. True to my word, I brought back two giant slices of Marley’s birthday cake, which is why we are now starfished on the grass on the quad in a Funfetti-induced coma.
“Be serious a sec,” she says. “This is obviously a big deal or you wouldn’t have fled your own home like a ghoul to avoid him.”
That wasn’t exactly how it went down. Seb was going to drive us both back later in the day, but Christina thought we were coming back earlier and asked if I wanted to study with her this morning. When I texted back a yup be there in two hours!! she didn’t know that that was the approximate amount of time it would take me to book the earliest morning bus back to campus, kiss my parents goodbye, and slink over to the bus stop a mile away like the cowardliest coward in the history of Maple Ride.
Time that I also spent on the bus reading Seb’s draft in full and hating myself a little bit more for the way I reacted to it with every line.
I let out a sigh deep enough to inflate a hot-air balloon.
“Okay. If I’m being serious—it’s a great piece. Like, nuanced and empathetic and genuinely helpful. You’ll see when it comes out.” I start talking too fast then, spurred in equal parts by guilt and pride. “He interviewed so many people for it. Just really captured how everyone feels in over their head about romantic relationships in college, and the whole end of the piece is about resources and tactics to help. He even talked to one of the psych professors on campus.”
And if I’m being honest, once I read the piece—once I saw how he worked our conversation in not just as something personal but as a key example to frame a larger whole—the piece felt like a balm for me, too. The understanding that I wasn’t alone in the confusion of navigating these feelings. That none of us were.
Naturally I’ve gone ahead and used it as a springboard to feel even more alone than I did before.
“Sounds like a kick-ass piece. But I don’t care about that,” says Christina. “I care about you. And it sounds like you’re pissed at him.”
“I’m not. Anymore,” I amend. “I’m just—upset in general. Because I think…” I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, because it feels like I’m tugging at something essential in myself, saying it out loud. “I think I really like him.”
When I open my eyes, Christina has a hand on her chest. “I, for one, am shocked.”
The sun comes out from behind a cloud. I shove my forearm over my eyebrows to block it. “Ha ha,” I say miserably.
“If only a best friend could have seen this coming from a hundred miles away.”
I let out a groan that’s interrupted by Christina’s phone pinging and then pinging again.
“You wanna check that?” I ask.
“It’s just the cross-country group chat popping off again. We’ve been having a heated debate about what’s worse, leg chafing or boob chafing.” Christina sighs. “Well, I say he’s not fully off the hook for not giving you permission.”
“He apologized. Like a lot.” I squeeze my eyes shut again. “And I said some things I shouldn’t have.”
Christina lets out a doubtful noise but humors me anyway. “So what are you going to do?”
If that isn’t the question of the hour. I’m so unused to being the source of drama that I don’t even know where to start when it comes to fixing it.
“Damage control all around, I guess. I’ve texted Hadley like five times today. She’s still not talking to me. My parents definitely know something’s up, which means Seb’s parents know something’s up.”
There’s so much else to do that saying it all out loud will only make it worse. I have to stop Seb from editing the piece. I have to apologize for some of what I said. I have to somehow make enough space in my brain to start thinking about what on earth I’m going to do for this third miraculous, out-of-the-box, unbeatable piece that’s due for Round Three in a few weeks.
“I mean about the fact you’re in love with Seb.”
I pull my forearm off my face to turn my head and gape at her. “Put all those words back where they came from. I said I like Seb.”
“You said ‘really.’”
“Well, that’s the end of me using adverbs ever again, then.”
Christina puts her hands up as if in surrender, still smirking. I feel a now-familiar dread crawl back under my skin when I actually answer her. “And anyway—I’m not going to do anything.”
I stare back up at the sky, indulging in a little self-pity to take the edge off all the guilt. “He thinks I’m a mess.”
“He knows you’re a mess,” says Christina without missing a beat. “So is he. And I’d say so am I in solidarity, but I feel like I get a free pass because I found some green paint in my armpit this morning and need to pump myself up.”
I laugh despite myself, and Christina elbows me.
“That’s eighteen, though,” she says. “Being a mess.”
She was on a roll until that last bit, which she delivers with an air of defeat I’m not expecting, her gaze cast at nothing in particular. She seemed to be in better spirits this morning after getting some sleep and studying done, but I know better than to think that’s going to fix anything long-term. Our Bitch List was still ominously unchecked when I got back to the dorm this morning.
“If that’s true, I’m a little bit worried about yours,” I tell her.
As if on cue, Christina’s phone goes off again. “Ugh,” she says. “I have to be talented and smart and popular? What a racket.”
She shifts to prop herself up on her elbows and read the texts. I stare back up at the sky, mulling over Christina’s “everyone’s a mess” theory. Particularly about Seb. It’s strange—I’ve never considered Seb capable of being a mess. Not because I haven’t seen him in weak moments, but because I haven’t let myself fully acknowledge them. Like Seb is a measuring stick I’m constantly holding myself to—like I should be able to keep it together as long as he is, and if he isn’t I should look away before the weakness gets me, too.
Last night neither of us kept it together. It rattles me now, to think of how much inadvertent power I had over Seb in those moments, to nearly make him cry. To understand we’ve always had that power over each other but just innately known never to use it. There was always an uncrossable line.
Now that line is more tangled than ever, and I’m tripping over it headfirst.
“Did you know about this?”
Christina’s sitting upright again. I sit up, too, leaning to look at Christina’s phone, which is open to the Newsbag homepage. Instead of the splashy custom font rotating the headlines from the most recent issue, there are just a bunch of dollar signs and very, very large numbers.
“What are these?” I ask, taking the phone from her and scrolling.
“ Newsbag got ahold of the school’s finances and published the athletic budget line by line.”
I scroll further and see that it isn’t just the budget for the athletic department—including all kinds of extras and ridiculous expenses that don’t seem to be going to the students in any way, shape, or form—but for all the student orgs, too, with visuals showing how little money it takes to keep them running. Newsbag is among the highlighted ones that the school is threatening to shut down.
There’s a note at the top of the page: “The athletes wanted transparency about their budget, and so did we. Looks like we’re all being taken for a Maple Ride.”
“Holy shit.” Despite everything, a grin starts blooming on my face. “I didn’t know. But shit. I wonder if they’re real.”
“They are.” Christina takes the phone from me slowly, her expression strangely flat. She pulls back up her group chat and does something I’ve never seen her do before and tilts her screen away from me. “That’s what everyone has been texting about.”
“Your cross-country group chat?”
Christina shakes her head. “I’m in another group chat with the scholarship students. They, uh—said we all got an email. Something about how we shouldn’t worry about our scholarships being jeopardized by this.”
I do a quick skim of her face. She’s too distracted to meet my eye. “That’s good, right?”
Christina purses her lips. “Some of them are nervous. I guess it’s just a little weird that they felt like they had to email us that on a Sunday. Like, why would we have any reason to think they were jeopardized in the first place?”
“They’re not,” I say, frowning. “Of course they’re not.”
She picks at some grass, still staring at her phone. A few more texts come in. She turns to me.
“I know a lot of the athletes are happy about this. Unlike me, some of them managed to find time for student-run stuff, so this is a double win for them.” She considers the broken blades of grass in her palm. “But I just—I hope you’re all being careful about how you play this, is all.”
She sounds so somber that I assume it’s just a bit, and I let out a breathy laugh that I immediately regret. Christina just looks at me, tired and unmoved.
“Christina, they’re not going to do anything about your scholarship,” I tell her. “I mean, look at these numbers. They’re swimming in money.”
Christina hikes up her knees closer to her chest, making herself small. “That they’re using on media support and coaches for football and the other big-draw sports,” she says. “Cross-country isn’t one of them. If they’re going to make a show out of pulling funding from the athletes, I’m just nervous that…” She runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t know.”
I take a beat and try to put myself in Christina’s sneakers. She’s tired. She’s stressed. And she doesn’t have any context for this aside from that email and the other people worrying about it. No wonder this is getting under her skin.
“I get it. I do. But this is going to be good for all of us,” I tell her reassuringly. “Now that they’re exposed it would look way worse for them to pull money from other sports. That’s why we’re teaming up with the athletes in the first place. So we can all protect each other.”
I don’t know the specifics of everything Amara and Rowan have been talking about with the more senior athletes, but I do know that’s the gist of it—not looking out for just the interests of the less-publicized sports but the well-being of the students in them. There was talk of trying to push an agenda for more resources to take the pressure off the athletes, and I have no doubt the scholarship kids would be the top priority for that.
I pull in another breath to tell her so, but Christina stands abruptly.
“Right. Well, speaking of that scholarship thing, I’d better get back to studying.”
“I can come with you,” I offer.
She shakes her head, already pulling her headphones back over her ears. “I’m going into full lo-fi–bops mode. I’ll see you at dinner.”
I uneasily watch her go, trying to decide if I should press the point. My own phone pings before I can: Emergency Newsbag meeting @ McLaren. All hands on deck.