Chapter 4
Freshman Year, Second Semester
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the way everything went down, because West was a surprise from the very beginning.
I didn’t know he had any intention of entering the writing competition, had no idea the Chia Pet story was his until he smirked at me on that last day of class and I realized too late that the train was about to hit.
But like I said, he’s always been a surprise.
My breath clouds in front of me in the fading sunlight as Amber and I wait outside the boys’ dorm. It’s cold for Tucson; the air has an unfamiliar bite. I breathe into my hands to warm them up.
“It’s about time you came out with us. You study too much,” Amber says. She likes to grumble that I never hang out, but because she’s with her boyfriend ninety percent of the time, I doubt I’m hindering her social life that much.
“I’m failing math,” I say instead of explaining that most of my time is spent writing fantasy worlds that have nothing to do with school. I am failing math, but that has very little to do with anything. Going out is just…harder than staying in. Always has been.
“Have you seen a tutor?”
“I’ll figure it out.” I brush off her question, not in the mood to think about it.
The front door of the Graham-Greenlee dorm swings open, and I can tell from Amber’s happy squeal that the frat boy wearing a Pi Beta Phi shirt and shorts that hit mid-thigh is her boyfriend.
“Kyle, this is Mars—”
“Like the planet?” Kyle asks, draping his arm around his girlfriend. “Does anyone ever call you Saturn?” He laughs at his own joke.
“Kyle, like Kyle Cotton?” I ask, my head cocked to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I see three guys approaching us in the cold, and I do a double take.
“Who?”
I snap my attention back to Amber’s boyfriend. “Kyle Cotton? Brown hair. Yea high.” I hold my hand at chest level. “He was in my third-grade class. Or wait—fourth grade? No, third grade.”
Kyle blinks at me. “How the fuck would I know him?”
I shrug innocently.
“It’s a joke!” Amber says. “When we met, she said, ‘Like the resin from Jurassic Park?’ Isn’t that hilarious? She does this to everyone.”
“Not everyone,” I say with a smile.
Amber waves and makes introductions. “Mars, these are Kyle’s friends Aaron and Nathan, like Aaron, um…Wait, this is hard.” She bites her lip.
“Aaron Burr and the famous hot dogs?” I supply.
“No. I was thinking of Nick Carter’s little brother. Anyway…” She points to the third friend, who’s towering over the rest of us in a hoodie and jeans. “This is Kyle’s roommate—”
“West, like Mae,” he says, nodding at me. “We’ve met.”
Amber’s eyes light up like this is extraordinary news. “Really? Oh, that’s perfect! We’re meeting up with a few more people at the game, and I didn’t want either of you to feel left out, but you can hang together. It actually makes sense. You’re both a little weird.”
“Ouch?” I cover my heart with my hand.
She rolls her eyes playfully. “Said with affection!”
“How am I weird?”
“C’mon, Mars! You never party with us, you’re always in some fantasyland in your head, and you brush your teeth in the shower!”
“Do people not do that?”
“They don’t.” West shakes his head emphatically as Amber and Kyle lead the way to the McKale Center. “Did I sound like Kyle when we met?” he whispers as he falls into step next to me at the back of the group.
“With my name? No. You didn’t try to call me Uranus, for one thing.”
“Did he really?”
“He would have gotten there if I’d given him two more minutes.”
“Is this a bad time to point out that you’re saved as ‘Jupiter’ in my phone?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not even in your phone.”
West stuffs his hands in his pockets. “So, your roommate is the reason I have to spend all my time at the library?”
“Wait—really? They’re…” I raise an eyebrow.
“Banging? Oh yeah. All the time.”
I laugh. “Not in my room, they’re not.”
“Consider yourself lucky. The things I’ve heard…” He shudders.
We cross the street with a growing horde of students decked out in cardinal red and navy blue.
We meet up with three girls I don’t recognize, and it becomes clear pretty quickly that West and I are the odd ones out, and without anything else to talk about while we wait in the security line, I find myself asking, “How’s Dr. B’s class? Any ‘heartsick’ appearances yet?”
Hands still in his pockets, West looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, now she’s in the mood to joke about it.”
Last semester we had a classmate who was fixated on the word heartsick.
Her characters were overwrought with emotion, all of them weeping and fainting and perpetually lovelorn.
Every time she used the word, West caught my eye with a meaningful glance and held up his fingers under the table.
One for each flagrant abuse of the word.
By November, he’d lost count and would clutch my knee while our shoulders shook from silent laughter.
“In my defense, I’m a sore loser.” I cross my arms.
“That’s your defense?”
“I don’t like failing. Is that so bad?”
“Ah yes, the abject failure known as second place.” His tone is dry enough to catch fire.
“Second isn’t—”
“I voted for you,” he says as we come to an abrupt halt in one of the security lines. The rest of our group gets swallowed up by the crowd.
“You did?” I don’t bother to hide my shock.
“Obviously. Why? Who did you vote for?”
“Myself!”
He shakes his head, the corner of his mouth twitching. “I don’t know why I asked.”
“Whatever. Second place or last, it’s all the same.”
“Which story do you think came in last?” He leans in, crowding me, his voice low in my ear. I stare up into his eyes, slightly hypnotized by the strange ring of amber around his pupils.
“Heartsick,” we say at the same time.
West finally cracks a smile and ushers me toward the student section. “We can talk about it now? No hard feelings?”
“As long as you don’t lie to me.”
The crowd presses us closer together, and I’m in front of West now, his hand on my shoulder so we don’t get separated. I crane my neck all the way back to look up at him when he scoffs. “When did I ever lie to you?”
“When you said you weren’t entering the competition because it wasn’t ‘your thing.’ ”
His eyes narrow as he looks down at me, his gaze nearly as heavy as his palm on my shoulder. “People are allowed to change their minds, Mars.” His voice curls pleasantly around my name.
“Why did you?” I’m knocked back into him, shoulder blades slamming flush against his chest.
He steadies me, keeping me pressed against him in a way that I definitely don’t hate until space opens around us. When I move, he clears his throat and finally answers my question. “Lots of reasons. You, for one.”
“Me?” I’m incredulous.
“Seeing how much you love writing made me want to love it, too.” He looks away. “Whatever. It’s mostly because Dr. B encouraged me to enter. Told me I had a good shot.”
He points to our group in the student section, and we squeeze our way through the crowd. I stand on my tiptoes and shout so he can hear me over the roar as the Wildcats’ starting lineup is announced. “Is that why you didn’t tell me? Because Dr. B put you up to it?”
“No,” he shouts back, his attention now on the game. He cups his hands around his mouth and cheers for our star player. He nudges me with his elbow, motioning for me to join in, but I have a one-track mind. Obsessive, some people have said. Focused. Determined. A buzzkill.
I put my hand on my hip, annoyed. I thought West and I were friends.
He’s the one who would kick my foot under the table when the pocket egg made its daily appearance.
He’d doodle cartoons for me on the corners of his notebook when he was bored.
He read Twilight because I told him to. West Emerson knew how much I wanted to win that contest, and he couldn’t even give me the heads-up that he was competing against me.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper. The national anthem is starting, but I’m a dog with a bone, and I can’t let it go.
West looks down at me, a puzzled expression on his face. “I wanted plausible deniability. If my story sucked, I never would have told you it was mine.”
“But why?”
He shakes his head like I’m missing the point. “I was just trying to impress you, Mars.”