Chapter Seven
Seven
THERE IS NO FANFARE AROUND the announcement that I’m staying. By the time Jamie and I get home, everyone is gone, and when I emerge after unpacking, they’re engrossed in a Ted Bundy documentary.
“For educational purposes,” Felicity explains, nodding at Mikey. “I don’t need her helping some sad dude with his sailboat and ending up dead because she never learned true-crime basics.”
While Mikey launches her own defense—“I would never help someone with a sailboat! Obviously anyone with a sailboat is rich and can afford to hire someone!”—Jamie gives me a look that is a clear line in the sand. Go away.
I don’t need another hint, and no one invites me to join them anyway. Instead I spend the rest of the night meticulously planning my outfit for my first day of the APM.
But the next day, my plans to leave early die a swift death when I lose thirty minutes to Felicity, who beats me to the bathroom for a shower before she has to leave for work.
When she finally emerges in a towel and a cloud of steam, I’m left with five minutes of hot water before it turns ice-cold.
I lose another fifteen minutes to the shuttle, which arrives late, as every forum thread about UGH promised.
Then I’m down another five minutes when my loafers start to rub at my heels, slowing my speedwalk.
I end up skidding into the classroom with only a minute to spare, my hair both frizzing and clinging to my neck like some kind of parasitic creature. Sweat has dampened the underarms of my top. I can feel blisters forming in several places on my feet.
Everyone in the room turns to stare when I walk in.
This is fine. I’m probably a tomato-red swamp monster, but it’s fine.
I drop into the first empty seat and try to catch my breath as my professor calls roll.
The APM is small—only twenty students including myself, the few spots making it so competitive—and a cursory scan tells me I’m going to find mostly computer bros in here.
But there are two girls—one within a small cluster of guys who are all comparing something on their phones, and another by herself in the very middle of a middle row.
The first girl has a pair of headphones slung around her neck and dark hair thrown in a messy bun.
She wears a threadbare T-shirt and a pair of CFSU sweatpants, a bag of what looks like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos sticking out of one pocket.
When the professor calls, “Gabriela Gutierrez,” she raises one cheesy-fingered hand and says, “Gabi.” Then she grins and sucks the cheese from her fingers, as though she isn’t worried about anything in this class, least of all what our professor thinks of her.
The other girl, Renee Zhou, is slightly more approachable, being that she is surrounded by 100 percent fewer guys and that when her name is called, she says, “Here,” like a normal person.
Her severe black bob and baby bangs make her seem cool and artsy, but the look is softened by her approachable cardigan-and-T-shirt combo.
“This will be the last time I take roll,” Professor Douse says once he’s finished.
He’s a big man with a barrel chest who’d look more at home barking orders at Jamie’s ROTC troop if it weren’t for his long gray ponytail and Firefly Ship Works T-shirt.
“If you’ve done the work needed to get into the APM, then I expect you to want to be here.
I don’t care what your reasons are for missing class, and I won’t hear them.
If you miss an assignment, an assessment, or a lecture, there are no do-overs. ”
I expect startled murmurs, but when I glance around, everyone looks as though they weren’t only expecting this—they’ve heard it before.
I have the strange, sliding feeling of arriving on the second day of class without having done the reading and finding that everyone has already paired up for a presentation, which is a recurring nightmare of mine.
“If your classmates are nice enough, they might share their notes,” Professor Douse continues, “but I don’t post my decks online.
The APM is not easy. It’s meant to assess if you’re good enough to be awarded class credits.
It’s like four AP classes rolled into one intense boot camp, and it starts today.
Get into groups of two. I’ll be giving you a quick assignment, and you’ll be graded on your own work and how well you can assess your partner’s work. You’ve got thirty-five minutes.”
There’s a ruckus as everyone scrambles to pair up, and when I turn to the guy closest to me, he’s already shuffling away to pair up with someone else.
I catch sight of Renee trying to get the attention of someone in front of her, but no one turns.
I blow out a breath and stand, making my way toward her.
“Hey,” I say from the end of her row. “Do you want to work together?” The guys sitting between her and me are blocking the way toward her, and I have to almost shout over them to be heard. They all look up at me at the same time, and I feel a flash of embarrassment as Renee hesitates.
Clearly I miscalculated coming over here. She does not want to work with me, that much is certain. But she seems to realize she has no other options, and she gives a shrug, nodding to the empty seat next to her.
This is a strange feeling for me. I’m normally very comfortable in a classroom.
I know the rules at school, and I’ve never had trouble finding a partner in class.
I don’t think I’ve ever had to approach someone else to partner up before.
Once you establish yourself as someone who does well in school, people will seek you out.
I shared very few classes with Starr and Leni, yet I was never left on my own scrambling to find people for a group project. I was always absorbed or latched on to.
I hope I was nice about it. Because being the latcher-on feels terrible.
“Do you mind if I…?” I say to the guys on the end of the row, motioning to their chairs.
They all begin to scoot in minimally, and when I realize this is the best they’re going to attempt, I squeeze behind them.
I suck in my belly and tuck in my tailbone, pushing onto my toes as I try to make this as fast and painless as possible.
I feel my butt brush against something on one of the desks behind me, but I don’t look even as someone snickers.
I just murmur, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry” as I scoot along, praying for it to end.
When I finally make it to Renee, I’m sweating again, likely redder than ever, and wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.
To make matters impossibly worse, when I drop into the seat beside her, the plastic chair gives a horrific noise like it’s about to crack in two. Heads swivel in my direction.
There is no subtlety to the reminder of being fat.
I forget sometimes how much space my body takes up.
How heavy it is. The way it looks to other people.
What they think of it. I spend most of my time playing the bird-flipping game with fatphobia, waiting for it to flinch first. I wear a two-piece bathing suit and short skirts and crop tops, and I’m not afraid of being looked at.
When Kyle and I made out in my car for the first time, I took my shirt off like it was a dare.
Look at me. See me. And I was gratified when he slipped off his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, and put them back on like he wanted to get a clearer look. I felt powerful.
But back then, I always had Starr and Leni behind me. It was easy to take a risk when I knew Starr would snarl and snap at anyone who looked at me wrong, or Leni would squeeze my hand and tell me I was beautiful.
Now, with my chair wailing at my heaviness and the gazes of the other nineteen APM hopefuls upon me, shame prickles through me, familiar as an old friend. I hold myself very still in my seat as I open my laptop and navigate to my email.
Slowly, attention shifts away from me once again, but I still have trouble focusing on the assignment. I have to double back twice to fix simple mistakes, and when Professor Douse calls time, I’m still on the last few lines of code.
“You didn’t finish?” Renee says when she opens my submitted assessment. She’s already scrolled to the bottom, and I don’t miss the leaden annoyance in her voice.
“I almost did,” I murmur, wishing it weren’t so dead quiet in the classroom. I sense people looking my way again.
Renee raises her hand. “Professor Douse, unfinished assessments are a zero, right?”
“Yes,” Douse replies.
My stomach lurches. “What? Even if I—”
He doesn’t look up from his laptop as he says, “If you can’t finish in the allotted time, your assessment is a zero.
You can make up the points with your evaluation of your partner’s work, but the best you can do is fifty percent.
If you’ve determined that your partner didn’t finish, then congratulations. That’s a perfect mark.”
I glance at Renee, fighting a frown. Did she really determine that, or did I just flat-out tell her? And why did she feel the need to sell me out like that in front of everyone else?
I try to tamp down the hot anger warring with embarrassment as I pull up her assignment. Beside me, she relaxes in her chair and slips a paperback copy of Dark Matter from her bag.
With the morning weighing heavily on me, I run down to the last minute of class before I hit submit on my evaluation of her work. But even if I manage a perfect mark on that half, it’s still only a 50 percent in total. Which means…
I just failed. For the first time in my entire life.