Scene One #2
“Listen, I’m going to be late for calc.” I wiggle myself out of her grip. “I’ll catch up with you at lunch?”
“Okay,” Charlie says, but she’s squinting at me, trying to read something off of my face. “Hey, Rosie,” she says. The sound of my nickname startles me. Rob is the only one who usually calls me that.
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be okay.” She says it firmly, like she’s trying to convince herself as much as me.
“I know,” I say, but it’s not true. For the first time it feels like nothing is going to be okay.
Like something went very, very wrong. That the course of things, the natural order, has been tampered with.
As I trudge up to the math cubicles, I can’t help but keep thinking, This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
The day moves absurdly slowly, like it’s dragging its heels. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, like I’m falling backward, except I never hit the ground. I wonder if this is how it’s going to be from now on. If I’m going to be stuck in high school forever.
AP Bio is even worse than last week. Mrs. Barch gives us a pop quiz at the beginning of the period that I haven’t done the reading for because I’ve been moping around my room all weekend like somebody died.
I literally do not know the answer to a single one of these questions.
I’m sandwiched between Lauren, who is bent down intently, methodically working through the problems, and Len, who is scribbling animatedly, like he’s trying to piss me off.
I feel beyond pathetic. Even the class joker is managing to ace this thing.
The worst part is that after we’re finished, Mrs. Barch makes us grade each other’s quizzes while she runs an errand. Since it’s an AP class, we’re supposed to “use our sense of merit” while she’s gone. Of course, since Len’s my lab partner, we’re meant to swap quizzes.
He gives me that lopsided smirk and rubs his hands together. “Hand it over, Rosaline.”
He tosses his to me freely, like he’s Charlie passing me a sparkling water at lunch. I look it over. I’m surprised to see his handwriting is actually neat and his problems look fairly organized.
“Since when have you shown any initiative?” I ask, holding it up.
He shrugs. “I was in the mood to study this weekend.”
“Right. Sure. You just felt like it.”
He smirks. “Why so blue?”
“Mrs. Barch is ruining my life,” I mutter.
“She’s not so bad,” he says, knocking me on the back. “You know she runs drama?”
“How is that relevant?”
He makes a face like, Yikes, and holds his hands up. “You get extra credit if you help out with one of her plays.”
“For bio?”
Len nods. “So are you going to show me that thing?” He gestures to the quiz that’s still tucked neatly under my elbow.
“I didn’t…,” I start, but I’m not sure what to say, so I give up and hand it to him.
He whistles. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Are you kidding me?” I hiss. “I couldn’t answer a single question.”
“I know,” he says. “Ballsy.”
“Not ballsy. Incompetent.”
“Relax,” he says. “It’s a quiz, not the goddamn SATs.”
“Relax?” I say, my face getting hot from frustration.
“Do you know quizzes are twenty percent of our grade? If I get an F on this one, that means that even if I pull As on all the rest, the odds of still getting a B in this class even if I work and study constantly for the rest of the semester are very likely. And a B is a 3.0. Do you know what Stanford’s admission average is? It’s like a 4.3.”
“Breathe.”
I exhale and fold my head down onto my desk, knocking my forehead on the wood. When I look up, Len is smiling.
“You’re so dramatic,” he says. “The way I see it, it’s not that big of a deal. But if it really means that much to you, fine.”
He takes his quiz out from under my hand and erases his name, putting mine in its place. Then he takes my quiz and erases mine, writing his own.
“Could you cool it with the hysteria now?” he says. “ ’Cause that panic attack was really getting in the way of my Monday.”
My mouth hangs open as he puts a one hundred on one quiz and a zero on the other and hands both of them to Lauren to pass up to the front.
“What did you do?”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Helped a fellow classmate out. Revolutionary, I know.”
“You just cheated.”
He looks behind him. “I cannot catch a break around here.”
“You’re going to get an F now.”
“So?”
“Don’t you care?”
“Not really.”
“That’s your problem,” I say, anger boiling up to my throat.
“My problem?”
“You don’t care about anything.”
“Correction: I don’t care about anything unimportant.”
“But I just explained to you—”
Len holds up his hand. “I get you’re anxious about Stanford, or whatever. All I’m saying is that there’s more to life than obsessing over quizzes.”
“I get it. I’m lame. Just some totally type A nerd you have to work with. I just can’t believe you’d go so far to prove it.”
Len laughs. “You must have had a really rough weekend. Because you sound wild.”
I sniff. “I did.”
“Look, that guy’s an ass,” Len says.
“Rob?”
“No, Spartacus. Of course Rob.”
I blink. I’m not sure what to say. Thankfully, the bell rings before I’m forced to answer.
“Don’t sweat the quiz,” Len says, stuffing his notebook into his seemingly empty backpack. “See you tomorrow.”
I’m blowing my nose, leaving bio, when Rob grabs my elbow.
“I need to talk to you.”
Len is in front of me, and for one brief moment I see him glance at Rob’s hand on my arm. But then he’s walking off toward the math cubicles.
I’m so defeated by the quiz debacle and surprised by Rob’s presence that I let him lead me away, over to behind Cooper House. It isn’t until we’re facing each other, alone, that I pull away.
“Look,” he says a few times, and then sighs, starting over. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “I didn’t expect this to happen.”
“What?” I ask. We both know what, but it feels important that he clarify.
“Her,” he says. “You know, Juliet.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. I don’t want him to see that I’m upset. I bite my bottom lip and will my voice steady.
“It does matter. The thing is, I didn’t expect to fall for her. But there’s just something about her. It feels right.”
I don’t say anything, because the fact that he used “fall for” instead of “meet” has sent my heart throbbing. It feels like someone’s just jabbed the sharp end of a pencil right into the center.
“It’s like fate, or destiny or something,” he continues.
“You don’t believe in fate.”
Rob inhales and looks at me. “I care about you, Rosie. You know I do. We’re friends.
Best friends.” The sound of the word makes me lose it.
Friends. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for years, what I’ve been trying to talk myself into for months.
He was the one who told me I was beautiful, who asked me out, who kissed me.
He was the one who set this thing in motion, and now that I’m here, actually wanting to be with him, he wants to take it all back.
“We are? That’s news to me.” He looks taken aback. Hurt, even. Good, let him. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re not friends anymore.”
“But—” He swings his arms around and grabs on to his elbows. “Rosie?”
“I’m serious,” I say. I’m fighting back tears now. I know I need to leave before I lose my cool. “You made your choice. Live with it.”
Then I turn and walk away. And I walk until I start running.
And I run until I’m sprinting. Past Cooper House and the math cubicles and all the way down to the lower soccer field.
I don’t stop until I’m at the edge of campus.
And then I sit down and for what seems like the millionth time in a handful of hours, I let myself cry.