Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE my very first day, I don’t arrive at the APM burdened by pure, naturally sourced dread.
After working with Jamie on my weekly assignments, I turned in my code and received the autogenerated scores—perfect, no errors.
I haven’t been awarded a perfect, no errors score all summer, and now I have two of them.
Jamie even looked over my comparative analysis and made sure I touched on the most important factors Professor Douse would be looking for.
(And after finding the sticky notes, I managed to sit next to him the rest of the day without running screaming from the room. I’m batting a thousand right now.)
I sail into the classroom and have just slid into a seat when Professor Douse walks in, takes one look at me, and says, “Milligan, I’d like to have a word.”
I feel the attention in the room swivel in my direction, and my stomach does a nosedive. I stand, my skin prickling as eyes follow me to the front of the room.
“I wanted to talk to you about your assignments from this week,” Professor Douse says when I reach him, making no effort to lower his voice.
I let out a small exhale, relief flooding me. My assignments this week were miles better than what I’ve been producing so far. Is Professor Douse about to do a complete one-eighty and actually praise me? Where everyone can see?
“You took quite a hard turn,” Douse continues.
“Yeah,” I say, fighting a smile. “I think I’m really understanding—”
“It’s strange,” he says, speaking over me, “that someone who’s struggled so much could turn in something this well done with such a short turnaround.”
My heart begins to jackhammer in warning, some ancient survival instinct passed down from my earliest ancestors. “I’m sorry?” I say, voice shaking.
“One perfect mark I might have overlooked. But two was odd to me.” He taps at his computer, pulling up my assignment. “I’d like you to walk me through how you did this.”
Someone whispers, and another person laughs. Then the door opens and a group of boys thunder in, Gabi at the center, a bag of—you guessed it—Cheetos in one hand. She glances from me to Douse and back, eyes widening.
“Right now?” I ask. “Why—”
“Because I’m concerned you had outside help, and I want to make sure this grade is fair.”
“You think I cheated?”
He meets my gaze, his expression impassive.
I swallow hard, moving to his computer. “Okay. Well, first I wrote the partition function to rearrange the elements around the pivot. The code wasn’t selecting the pivot number correctly, so I had to troubleshoot it.
But I’d used the wrong relational operator at some point, so it degraded the performance. I went back—”
“How did you know?” Douse asks. “That the performance was degraded?”
“I…” This I can’t answer; obviously it was because of Jamie. “Professor Douse, I—I’ve been working really hard.”
“Whether that’s true or not, I hope you know that your assignments aren’t enough to get you through this class on their own.
Anyone”—he raises his voice for this—“can get a perfect score on homework. But our grades here are weighted, and if you can’t pass your in-class assessments, you will never graduate from the APM. ”
I lower my head, mortified. Tears prick at my eyes.
I hate this feeling. I hate this. Here. This entire situation I’m in.
I was so happy when I got to class, and it’s been sucked right out of me now.
I try to think of Jamie, searching for that hopeful feeling from when he sat me down and told me he’d help me through this, but I can’t get a grip on it. Instead I hear the question he’d asked me as we sat outside EmTech.
Why are you torturing yourself?
I thought this was what I wanted—to excel past the average, to impress my professors, to please my parents. My first big steps toward my career, the key to happiness. Money. Stability. A goalpost that I’ve had in mind for years.
But I hate this.
I hate this so much, even the promise of Jamie’s help isn’t enough for me to spend one more second of my life in this classroom, where everyone treats me like a joke, my professor most of all.
I fan my shirt as I move away from Douse, heading back to my seat. Across the room, Gabi catches my eye. You okay? she mouths.
I force a smile, nodding even as my eyes fill. The rush of embarrassment I would normally expect doesn’t hit me. Let them see me cry. I don’t care.
I’m sick of sprinting to keep up with a pack I don’t even want to be a part of. I’m done with sleepless nights and stomachaches, with panic attacks.
I don’t sit. Instead I close my laptop with a snap and pick up my bag.
Professor Douse keeps talking as if I haven’t moved, waiting until I’m almost to the door before he says gravely, “We have an assessment today. If you leave now, it’s a zero. I don’t think you can afford that, Milligan.”
I turn to face him, holding my head high even as tears drip down my cheeks. “That’s okay. I won’t be coming back.”
Douse purses his lips, nodding. “That’s probably for the best.”
“I’m well aware, but it’s not for the reasons you think. You’ve spent this entire summer trying to wear us down and break us and make us feel less. I’d rather take the loss than give you more opportunities to mess with my head. I’m a good student, and you were lucky to have me here.”
At that he chuckles.
“You keep telling us to ask ourselves why we’re here, and what we hope to gain,” I say, hand on the door. “Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re here, and why attempting to crush the life out of twenty incoming freshmen brings you so much joy.”
I fling the door open and walk out. It’s still swinging closed when I hear Professor Douse say, “I apologize for letting that interruption go on for so long. I shouldn’t have allowed one mediocre student to derail us—”
The door bangs shut.
I expect the word to feel like a gut punch. Mediocre. My greatest enemy, the thing I’ve been running from. But it barely plinks off my armor.
I don’t feel entirely immune to Douse’s judgments, but at least I know they’re just that. Judgments from one man. And maybe I was never good at the APM—maybe I am mediocre. But that’s not for him to decide within a few short weeks, when he doesn’t know anything about me.
As I shove open the doors to the ice-cold computer science building, heat streams in, the humidity enveloping me like a hug.
I tip my head back to the sun, letting it touch my face and chase away the chill, and I remember everything that’s waiting for me.
Felicity, laughing as she pulled me into the ocean.
Andres, making me tea after my panic attack. Mikey, trash-talking during UNO.
Jamie. His name thrums through me like a second heartbeat.
I don’t know how he’ll feel about me quitting. Maybe he’ll think I’m an idiot for dropping the APM in an emotional whirlwind. Maybe he’ll be proud of me. Maybe…
Maybe he’ll just be happy if I’m happy.
Whatever it is, I know one thing for certain: he’s the person I want to tell first.
I’m vibrating in anticipation when I finally board the shuttle. If I’m right about his schedule, it’s physical training day for ROTC. Jamie would have been out of the apartment at dawn, meaning by the time I get home, he should be there.
I feel lit up like a Christmas tree. I’m done with the APM. I’ll have to tell my parents, but the thought of coming clean makes me go almost boneless in relief.
They’re my parents. They love me. I can be honest with them. And if they’re mad, they’re mad. It’s my life.
And maybe I need to remember that about more than the APM.
There are so many things I’ve been holding myself back from.
I close my eyes, remembering a stack of sticky notes.
Cuddling. Running my hands through his hair.
The way he sat so still, modeling for me.
How he’s shown up, again and again, whenever I needed him.
When the shuttle pulls up to my stop, I break into a run. I spy Jamie’s Jeep in the parking lot, and I simply can’t help myself.
I throw open the front door, gasping for breath. “Jamie!”
But I lose momentum on my second step, freezing as the door swings shut behind me.
Jamie stands in the middle of the living room, his eyes widening at me as I come into view. His face goes white, his expression helpless.
He isn’t alone, and I know what I’m looking at before the other person turns. As familiar as my own reflection, even from the back. Tousled dark hair, battered Nikes I’ve tripped over a thousand times.
“Sawyer.”